Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I never stop appreciating the cool shit I get to do in this job. Interviews like this are constant reminders that 10 year old me would beat the shit out of me if I ever started legit complaining about this line of work.
I've been lucky enough to have interacted with Paul Reubens a couple times before. One was a lengthy phone interview and the other was something even cooler. He made an appearance as Pee-wee Herman at the San Diego Comic-Con and I was asked to moderate the panel, so for 45 minutes it was just me and Pee-wee in front of 7,000 geeks in Hall H.
It's cool talking to Paul Reubens, it's flat out surreal talking to Pee-wee Herman. That's one of them out of body experiences you hear so much about.
Mr. Reubens was in Austin to premiere Pee-wee's Big Holiday. By now you've all had a chance to see it since it debuted on Netflix last Friday. We talk a little about Netflix and how he shaped the world of the new Pee-wee outing and we also talk a bit about his other Pee-wee related projects in the works. Oh, and that time he was at a bachelor party with Channing Tatum. Yeah, it's a fun chat. Hope you guys dig it!
Quint: I don't know if you remember, but I moderated the Comic-Con panel you did a few years back.
Paul Reubens: Wow, I do remember! Thank you.
Quint: I remember you talking after the panel that seeing that full Hall H crowd go crazy for Pee-wee was something kind of new to you because during the Playhouse/Big Adventure days you weren't exposed to that.
Paul Reubens: I didn't go out anywhere. I wasn't part of the feedback and stuff
Quint: So you've seen that a little bit more now, not just in Hall H, but also last night watching Big Holiday in the packed 1200 seat Paramount Theater.
Paul Reubens: It was so exciting. Were you there last night?
Quint: I was, yeah.
Paul Reubens: It was super exciting. I get emotional just thinking about it.
Quint: At the Q&A every audience member that asked a question prefaced it by talking about how much Pee-wee meant to them.
Paul Reubens: It was amazing. It's really staggering to me.
Quint: I can imagine you'd never get tired of that stuff, knowing you've had an impact.
Paul Reubens: I try to not be involved in it very much, to be honest.
Quint: You want to keep that separate, just focus on the creative aspect?
Paul Reubens: I just want to do it and not talk about it much, you know. I don't want to dissect it. It's scary to me. I'm afraid I'll cross some kind of line and understand it too well or something.
Quint: The last time we talked was before Judd Apatow came around. You had two Pee-wee projects you were trying to get going. One was a Playhouse-related film and the other was a darker Pee-wee story. Obviously Pee-wee's Big Holiday isn't either one of those, so what was the thought process behind going with something new versus the two projects you already had written?
Paul Reubens: They were too expensive. Judd couldn't afford the scripts. Judd just wanted to make a different movie. He thought we should do something more in line with Big Adventure, specifically a road picture, and he was kind of insistent on it and I was open to it, so we wrote a new script.
Quint: While I was watching Big Holiday it struck me that all the Pee-wee projects are their own isolated worlds. Playhouse has really nothing to do with Big Adventure which has really nothing to do with Big Top Pee-wee and Big Holiday has no direct ties to any of those.
Paul Reubens: That's true, I think.
Quint: Can you talk a little about approaching the new project knowing you could once again put Pee-wee out on the road without having to acknowledge that he had a big road trip story before?
Paul Reubens: I feel like a lot of stuff is over-explained today. Over the years of me trying to get a new Pee-wee movie made, a lot of people were caught up with “Is it Pee-wee: Origins? How are you going to deal with you got older? How are you going to deal with the question of where has Pee-wee been for 30 years?” If you decide “I'm going to watch some Pee-wee tonight on Netflix” and you watch two movies, you don't have to feel like “oh, there was 30 years in-between.”
If you look at people who have had long careers... I mean, you see them age, but I don't think it really matters. Pee-wee Herman has always been a character to me who didn't require a backstory. Part of what I like about Pee-wee Herman is you look at Pee-wee Herman and you know who he is. He walks in a room and in 30 seconds you're like, “I got it. I know who that is.” That's all I ever really wanted out of it.
I really dislike too much exposition for no reason other than somebody thinks we're dumb. I don't know how to explain it.
Quint: The need to play to the cheap seats, the people who aren't paying attention.
Paul Reubens: Yeah. I feel like people like it more if you just jump in. Most of those things that have 20 minutes of exposition, I feel like you could just chop that out and the movie could start twenty minutes in. That's what I try to do. Well, I don't try to do anything, really. I never approached it going “Oh, I have to make sure it all connects.” In fact, some of that stuff makes it more confusing since I'm a man playing a sort of boyish character. It's always been a little dubious and/or confusing. Is Pee-wee slow? Is he old? It was confusing 30 years ago to a lot of people, so 30 years after that it becomes even more crazy.
Quint: But not to kids. Pee-wee never had to be explained to my generation. Kids relate to Pee-wee in a weird way. Now all those kids are adults and have kids of their own. It's weird, my nephews are 8 and 5 and they love Pee-wee just as much as I did, they just get the Playhouse through Netflix instead of having to wait every week like I did. Pee-wee doesn't seem to have a generational restriction.
Paul Reubens: I never answer this. I don't know what the real answer is, but I may have already answered it for myself. So much stuff is overthought or dumbed down. I feel like audiences are, by and large, really smart and you don't have to be that smart with comedy. You do something and either people laugh or don't laugh. Most people aren't actors. Most people don't try to figure out “how could I laugh at this?” You laugh or you don't.
Quint: One of the decisions you made on Big Holiday that I liked a lot was you resisted the urge to make it a fish out of water story. Pee-wee leaves his small town and suddenly he's in “our world” and having to find his place in our world.
Paul Reubens: That would be another studio note kinda thing.
Quint: Yeah, but I loved that there were even crazier characters outside of Pee-wee's small, isolated town.
Paul Reubens: Which is true. I'm always in situations where I'm talking to people or seeing something and I'm like, “You can not make this stuff up. You couldn't write this.” I just feel like life's like that. You feel like, “I'm going to go out and go somewhere normal” and then you run into somebody totally abnormal. It's just reality.
Quint: It's interesting to me that's not what the instinct is for people. They expect the normal world to be the normal world. In movies. Maybe not so much in real life...
Paul Reubens: But it isn't, really. I would argue that. I think in movies everything is heightened reality. I have stuff that's far-fetched and I try to figure out a way to put it into a reality based context. It's like Judy Tenuta... “It could happen.” I sort of feel like all of that could happen. There's nothing in my movie I feel like couldn't... maybe the flying car, but even that... They have flying cars now. They're hard to get. We had to fake ours because we couldn't get one of the real ones.
Quint: The internet has also made a lot of those colorful characters real. You see stories all the time about crazy people doing crazy things, usually with a headline that reads FLORIDA MAN... Florida Man Throws Robs 7-11 With An Alligator or something.
Paul Reubens: I saw that one. It was a fast food restaurant.
Quint: Was it?
Paul Reubens: I think he threw an alligator through a window, a drive-up window.
Quint: And just reached in and grabbed the cash?
Paul Reubens: I don't think he was a robber. I think he just threw it in. Maybe there's two things.
Quint: I know there was one that was a robbery because he got charged with using the alligator as a deadly weapon in a robbery.
Paul Reubens: I don't know about that one.
Quint: One of my favorite things about Big Holiday was Joe Manganiello.
Paul Reubens: Me, too.
Quint: I knew of Joe, but it's not like I was a huge fan...
Paul Reubens: But you love him now, right?
Quint: I think it's the best thing he could have done. Watching him in Pee-wee's Big Holiday makes me want to go back and watch everything he's ever done.
Paul Reubens: I feel the same way. I mean, I'm biased, but I feel the same way. I feel like I've been sitting on that secret for 6 months. I've got a movie that's gonna make people fall in love with Joe Manganiello and see what a dork he is! He's nothing like what people think he is and neither is his wife. They're hilarious together! They're like nerds. They're just hilarious.
Quint: With this he might have made people realize how good he is at comedy. Channing Tatum has made a career out of hitting that sweet spot of being kind of a funny dork despite looking like an action hero.
Paul Reubens: You know what's great about Channing Tatum to me? I don't know him at all. I met him at Joe's bachelor party and at Joe's wedding, but it's the same thing I love about Joe. I think what people love about both of them is you discover that they're both very accessible and normal and funny and down to earth. Not that there's not lots of those people in show business, but it's not the most common thing in show business. Or in life. Go sit down in any office, gather the whole office staff into the meeting room and you look around and some people are assholes, some people are really nice, some are in-between and boring or introverted.
Quint: I'd like to end by talking about the future of Pee-wee. Were you looking at Pee-wee's Big Holiday as a capper on the character or the beginning of a new age of Pee-wee?
Paul Reubens: I don't know where I was even six months ago on that, but right now, the day after hearing 1200 people laugh like crazy? I'm totally energized for the future. I have a television series I've been trying to get made for a couple of years.
Quint: Pee-wee related?
Paul Reubens: It's Pee-wee related. And I hope I make another movie, too. As you mentioned I have two other scripts and I have loads of other ideas. As far as right now, the sky's the limit. And I'm in big sky country! Texas! I feel great today. I could read a few reviews and get my bubble burst, I don't know what's out there yet.
Quint: I doubt it. Every critic I know really loved it.
Paul Reubens: I haven't read anything besides one review this morning. That was it.
Quint: So, the two scripts you had before are still things you're interested in pursuing?
Paul Reubens: Oh yeah. I mean, I have a totally non-related Pee-wee TV series. I got a couple movie ideas that are Pee-wee related. I just wrapped a Steven Soderbergh movie three days ago, which is why I can't stay awake today. I came from Utah where I worked for three weeks. Life's really good right now, you know?
Quint: Netflix seems to be a bit of a safe haven for content creators right now...
Paul Reubens: They seem more than anything... I don't know this for a fact, but I think why so much of their stuff is successful right now it's the person they hire to do the shows' vision of it. They really never said “Could that boy be a girl? Could that cat be a dog?” They never said anything to us other than “What do you need? How could we help you?”
I'm somebody that's super spoiled. That's not unusual for me. I had that on my kid's show, both other Pee-wee scripts were shot first draft. I've been super lucky. People ask me “Why do you think it all works?” I don't know the answer to that, I never try to think of it, but I also feel like most of the studio people I'm involved with don't know either. So, I'm lucky because they're like “I don't know what note to give you because I don't really get it.” That's a good situation to be in.
But Netflix is a whole new can of worms. Netflix is like “Do what you want. Go do it.”
Quint: Do you think they'd be an avenue for some of the other Pee-wee projects you have?
Paul Reubens: I hope so.
Quint: Well, thank you so much for your time.
Paul Reubens: It was great to see you again!
Before I left the room, I made mention that I was kind of hoping we'd see Pee-wee marry Alia Shawkat's character in Big Holiday... because then they'd both be named Pee-wee Herman. It was a silly, just goofy enough to be funny, thought and Reubens agreed. He then said how fun it'd be to do that and make the next movie a War of the Roses style Pee-wee flick between the two. So, if that happens remember where you read about it first! (It's not gonna happen).
Anyway, that's my SXSW chat with Paul Reubens. Playing transcription catch-up this week so keep your eyes peeled for more fest conversations!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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