Pee-wee as Himself, a New Documentary Series About Pee-wee Herman
Before he died in 2023, Paul Reubens conducted 40 hours of interviews about his life and career with filmmaker Matt Wolf. These interview form the backbone of Wolf’s two-part documentary series Pee-wee as Himself. The series recently premiered at Sundance and there’s no trailer yet, but Variety has an overview and review.
Reubens is a compelling enough figure to carry a straightforward bio-doc, and over its substantial length, Wolf’s two-part film does justice to its subject’s thoroughly sui generis artistry — a rare blend of experimental performance, broad comedy and high, queer camp that caught imaginations of all ages — while giving due scrutiny to the off-screen legal troubles that unfairly threw his career off-course. Reubens is a generous, engaging raconteur on all such matters, while also allowing himself to be drawn on a personal life that he kept close to his chest up until his death. But it’s the brittle, unsettled dynamic of the interview footage itself that makes “Pee-wee as Himself” unusual and engrossing, as Wolf and Reubens — never, we learn, an artist comfortable with surrendering creative authority — grapple for control of a story that each wants to tell very differently. The result is perhaps a draw, though far from a dull one.
In the interviews for the film, Reubens reveals publicly for the first time that he is gay. He’d been openly gay earlier in his life but had his reasons for not talking about it as his career blossomed:
In adolescence, those inclinations shifted toward the bohemia of the late-1960s art scene, and upon leaving home and going west, CalArts proved a sympathetic environment for his singular talents and personality. At this stage of his life, Reubens was openly gay, while his family was fully supportive in this regard. A long-term, live-in relationship with a fellow artist brought him both happiness and creative stasis: “I lost a lot of myself and my ambition in being with someone else,” he says, reflecting on his subsequent decision to suppress his sexuality to prioritize his career.
Pee-wee as Himself will air later this year on HBO.
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