In Pee-wee Herman, Joy and Fun Got Flat-Out Weird

He by accident knocks over the bikes of a bunch of grizzled Hells Angels varieties, earlier than charming them by leaping on the bar and dancing to the Champs’ surf tune “Tequila.” In one other bit, he’s speaking in a phone sales space and making an attempt to clarify the place he’s, so he peeks his head out to sing, “The stars at night are big and bright.” A workforce of cowboys responds in unison: “Deep in the heart of Texas!”

The world of Pee-wee is filled with this crazy surrealism that might veer into innuendo however by no means bought darkish. It was at all times welcoming, wildly various, profoundly foolish. The film, alongside together with his anarchic Saturday morning kids’s present, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” melded a toddler’s vitality with a love of present enterprise. Reubens, who grew up in Sarasota, Fla., close by the winter headquarters of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, managed to imbue such leisure with the spirit of efficiency artwork, whereas by no means taking the simple route of going imply or darkish. His work simply bought weirder.

Pee-wee’s tv stint resulted in infamy when Reubens was arrested on a cost of indecent publicity in a porn theater. Late-night hosts pounced, and so did the news media. CBS took reruns of his exhibit the air. The controversy now appears preposterously overblown. That occurred only one 12 months earlier than Sinead O’Connor’s profession suffered a blow from her protest on “Saturday Night Live” in opposition to sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church — an episode that has come underneath new examination after her loss of life final week. It’s clear that dopey moralizing scandals are removed from an indicator of our age alone.

The one time I talked with Reubens, round seven years in the past in an interview, he was, not surprisingly, fairly totally different from his character: considerate, reserved, sober-voiced. He was modest about Pee-wee, who finally returned.

No character that beloved, that meme-able, wouldn’t be pulled again to motion in our present nostalgia-driven tradition. There was a Pee-wee Herman Netflix film and a Broadway present, and, whereas there have been small updates right here and there, the character remained in essence the identical: giddy, exuberant, singularly unusual and primally tapped into childhood.

Pee-wee bought older however he by no means grew up. His profession is an replace on the Peter Pan story, besides nobody in Neverland would say: “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”