Word got out this morning that the long-awaited comeback movie for Paul Reubens (AKA Pee-wee Herman) was indeed happening and indeed coming to a television near you. The Judd Apatow-produced film will not be playing at a theater near you but rather on Netflix. The picture will start shooting early this year for an unknown release date. It is called Pee-Wee's Big Holiday and I have absolutely no idea whether it will be any good. Obviously this is another big "get" for Netflix, Inc., which has been making moves into producing and self-distributing original feature films over the last year. But what interests me is exactly who it will be aimed at. I imagine the people most excited about this news are people my age. But I for one hope that the new film is not an adult-skewing romp that happens to star Pee-wee Herman. Not only is Pee-wee Herman most beloved as a children's character, he is significantly funnier that way.
I like many of my age group discovered Pee-wee Herman not via his guest spots on The Dating Game or his 1981 stage show but via Tim Burton's debut feature Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which turns 30-years old this coming August 9th. The Warner Bros./Time Warner release was of course a popular and leggy hit back in the day, earning $40 million in America off of a $4.5m debut weekend, which was the kind of thing that was possible back in 1985. A second feature, Paramount's Big Top Pee-Wee (where Pee-wee must make the grueling choice between dating Penelope Ann Miller or Valeria Golino) came and went in 1988, opening with $4.6m but ending with just $15m domestic. But for most of the world, the character is known for the five-season CBS television show that ran on Saturday mornings known as Pee-Wee's Playhouse. The connective tissue between all three of these madcap projects is that they were technically intended for kids. The majority of the adults who speak fondly of Paul Reubens's iconic character remember the PG-rated movies and TV-G-rated television shows of their youth. And part of that is because they knew as kids that they were getting away with something.
The humor was often just this side of blue, the puns were almost risque, and the madcap zaniness was a breath of fresh air during a time when Saturday morning television was arguably at its most muted. Pee-Wee's Playhouse was funny and intended for kids, yet also (I have long argued) funny because it was intended for kids. The show's anarchic spirit, which masked an unapologetic sense of inclusiveness that would inspire a million "think pieces" in today's landscape ("What K.D. Lang's Christmas at Pee Wee's Playhouse cameo in gets wrong about gay rights!"), was funnier and more worthwhile because of the would-be "danger" in presenting said material to kids. I happened to watch The Pee-Wee Herman Show when it debuted on Netflix back in 2011. It is of course a revival of the 1981 show that introduced the more-or-less introduced character. It's so much that it wasn't funny (although the audience seemed to be laughing less because they were amused and more because they knew all of the punchlines and set-ups ahead of time) but rather that it wasn't remotely dangerous. It was Mr. Ruebens being Pee-wee to an adult audience in a no-holds-barred environment. Nothing was sacred so nothing was at stake.
The same thing happened to The Ren and Stimpy Show. When that controversial show aired on Nickelodeon, it was genuinely subversive and genuinely dangerous. Kids loved it because it felt taboo and felt like something they hoped their parents wouldn't catch them watching. Of course, it was dangerous in that Nickelodeon eventually fired creator John Kricfalusi and the show slowly died. But it returned in 2003 to Spike TV in a TV-MA format and absolutely no content restrictions whatsoever. The result? Well, like your father telling you that it's perfectly okay for you to look at those issues of Playboy lying around, the thrill and danger vanished (a true story that happened to a friend of mine and played a big part in my social-libertarian leanings). Ren and Stimpy doing their gross and vulgar thing on Nickelodeon was downright subversive. Ren and Stimpy doing their shtick on an adult show airing at night on an adult channel aimed at adult audiences was as boring as unbuttered (powdered) toast.
As tempting as it might be to make a Pee-Wee movie that puts the character in an adult-skewing, R-rated world, I would argue that doing so negates much of his appeal while preventing new fans (or younger fans discovering the character through discovering the above-noted 1980's content) from latching onto the character. Now maybe this is what Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens have in mind, in which case this is somewhat redundant. And I will admit that a case can be made for an R-rated Pee-Wee movie purely on the notion of trying something different with an established property. But as more and more of the properties that we loved as a kid return to us as adults, we have to remember exactly why we liked them as kids in the first place. Paul Reubens's Pee-Wee Herman was a lovable man-child whose fantasy adventures stretched the boundaries of the PG rating or the all-ages television show. The notion that his show (and his movies) was different than the standard watered-down kids faire of the era is part of what separated him from the pack.
Of course what was wholly unique in 1988 is arguably common place an era where nearly every comic cartoon is a madcap chaotic flight of TV-Y7 fancy, but that's a conversation for another day about whether or not Pee-wee should come back at all. We loved Pee-wee Herman when we were kids precisely because we were just old enough to get that we weren't being condescended to while young enough to not be able to experience so-called grown-up entertainment. I'm not sure if you can replicate that in an era of unlimited entertainment options. But I'm pretty sure that watching Pee-wee Herman exist in an R-rated environment with no content restrictions will negate much of the reasons the character has resonated for the last 30+ years. Pee-wee may indeed be a rebel, but you can't be rebellious without anything to rebel against.
