Pee-wee Herman has returned. The character, played by Paul Reubens in a series of movies and a children’s television show through the 1980s into the early ’90s, is as strange as ever, with his boyish haircut and skinny grey suit one size too small. In 1991, when Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, and thrown into the flames of a burning hot press ready to incinerate a children’s television star who was doing something naughty, he retreated from the spotlight. The actor appeared in a few movies and television shows following the uproar, but made little public noise and seemed to have grown weary of suiting up to play his most famous character.Now, a new movie, the first proper screen appearance for Pee-wee following 2009’s “Pee-wee Herman Stage Show: The Return” (essentially an updated version of the original Pee-wee show performed in Los Angeles in 1981), has arrived. “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” premieres March 18 on Netflix, reviving the character in all his strangeness. There are aliens, shirtless muscle men, a trio of female bank robbers, and snakes, because it wouldn’t be a Pee-wee movie without snakes. Joe Manganiello, most famous for his roles in the “Magic Mike” movies, plays himself, and he cries. It’s ridiculous, sort of crazy, and a lot of fun.The film has been in the works for more than a decade. As early as 1999, Reubens, in talk show appearances and various interviews, began mentioning Pee-wee again. He expressed interest in doing another movie, but offered few details. It wasn’t until 2007 that he put the costume back on for an appearance on Spike TV’s poorly named and thankfully forgotten “Guys’ Choice Awards,” for the first time in 15 years. The year before, reruns of “Playhouse” began airing on Cartoon Network’s nightly stoner-marathon Adult Swim, where it fit nicely alongside weirdo comedians such as Tim & Eric. The seeds were planted for a comeback.In many ways, the placement of “Playhouse” on Adult Swim signaled that the world, or at least a segment of the world, had finally caught up with what Reubens was doing with the Pee-wee character. Weirdly affected and highly suggestive, Reubens was way ahead of his time — his popularity is even stranger in hindsight. A combination of John Waters’s campy-sleaze, underground comix perversity, and slapstick comedy, his work is the type of thing that would never be marketed toward children today. It’s too ambiguous, too sly, and too obscure. Part of his success with Pee-wee might have to do with the time Reubens spent at CalArts during a fruitful period for the school, and his work with the Groundlings comedy troupe just as punk was crossing through Los Angeles, which put him in contact with people like Gary Panter, whose comics became instrumental in the look and tone of Pee-wee. John Waters, himself somebody who has been embraced by the art world in recent years, is a longtime friend, and Pee-wee crossed paths with Warhol many times. Here’s a look at Reubens’s many interactions with the art world.CalArtsAccording to a recent profile in the New York Times, Reubens attended the school in the early 1970s and studied under John Baldessari and Alison Knowles. “The thing about art school that was so amazing to me is just that I always really approached what I wanted to do as having something to do with art,” Reubens said in an interview with Gary Panter. “At that time that school was set up, it was Walt Disney’s brainchild and he wanted a school where the arts could commingle, intermingle, and where musicians would have filmmakers, actors, and dancers at their disposal.”In a 2015 radio interview, Reubens expanded on the ways in which conceptual art impacted his work. “I was very influenced by conceptual and performance art, and I always felt like Pee-wee Herman had some strong elements of that,” he said. “[A]nd what made it even more interesting to me is that no one knew that except me. I always felt like it was conceptual art, but no one knew it because I went out of my way to make people feel like Pee-wee was a real person.”“Pee-Wee’s Playhouse”The CBS children’s television show, which aired from 1986 through 1990, was a hothouse of weird creative talent. Gary Panter, then known locally in Los Angeles for his covers of Slash Magazine and underground comics, was hired by Reubens, a fan, to make the sets for the original stage show. He also brought in Ric Heitzman, whom he had worked with in a performance group in Dallas, to help out with production design. Panter and Heitzman were later joined by the artist Wayne White, and the three created a majority of the insane designs for the television show. Panter also reportedly wrote an early version of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” with Reubens that was never made. And let’s not forget the time that the MoMA-approved art-project-slash-rock-group The Residents supplied music for the show. Andy Warhol“I called the Factory when I was in high school to try to get into Andy’s movies,” Reubens said in a television interview at the 1994 opening of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. “That didn’t really work out.” But Pee-wee did have an encounter with Warhol years earlier. On “Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes,” a short lived talk show that aired on MTV, Pee-wee made an appearance, bopping the artist on the head with a toy hammer during the interview. “I met him the first time [when] he came to see me at Caroline’s club in New York,” Reubens said in a 2011 interview with USA Today. “It was overwhelming to meet him, he was such a big influence on me. He was definitely a fan.”Reubens was also good friends with former Interview magazine art director Marc Balet, and appeared on the cover of the July 1987 issue.Artists Pay TributeIn 2011, Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles held an exhibition of work inspired by Pee-wee Herman, titled “I Know You Are, But What Am I?”Wonder ShowzenOne of the biggest surprises of “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” is that it was directed by John Lee, the co-creator of MTV’s short-lived but hugely influential “Wonder Showzen.” Lee is one-forth of PFFR, an art collective and production company that, along with their television shows — the aforementioned “Wonder Showzen,” “Xavier: Renegade Angel,” “The Heart, She Holler” — have had exhibitions at LFL Gallery in New York City in 2003 and at Synchronicity Space in Los Angeles in 2010.
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