Paul Reubens gets his due in the Pee-wee as Himself trailer

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Published May 2, 2025 by Travis Johnson

The late entertainer takes centre stage in what looks like a bit of a tear-jerker

Pee-wee as Himself takes us into the world of the late and much-missed Paul Reubens: comedian, actor, children’s entertainer, and occasional public masturbator. You might think that’s a cheap shot, but it looks like the film itself doesn’t shy away from it:

Ah man, Reubens was a champ, wasn’t he? Notoriously private, he broke through into mainstream celebrity in the ’80s with his squeaky-voiced alter-ego Pee-wee Herman, and for a minute there, he was everywhere – a Wiggles/Bluey level superstar. Then he got busted for indecent exposure in a Miami porno theatre and it all came crashing down. Then it came back up again, but not to the same degree.

You’ll get the whole story in the two part HBO Original documentary Pee-wee as Himself, which premieres on max on May 24, with part two dropping the same night. Directed by Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) and with Josh and Benny Safdie on the producing team, the film was in production prior to Reubens’ death in 2024, and includes material culled from 40 hours of new interview footage.

We’re apparently getting the whole Reubens/Herman story here – the full Pee-wee, if you will – including “…his kaleidoscopic influences, origins in the circus and avant-garde performance theater, and career choices, while reflecting on the reasoning behind, and the consequences of, severing his beloved alter ego from his authentic self.”

Additional interviews include his sister Abby Rubenfeld, artists Gary Panter and Wayne White, actors Lynne Stewart, John Moody, Alison Mork, Natasha Lyonne, S. Epatha Merkerson, Laurence Fishburne, Debi Mazar, David Arquette, Laraine Newman, and Cassandra Peterson, and filmmakers Tim Burton (of course) and Judd Apatow.

I think I first saw Pee-wee Herman in the largely forgotten beach movie revival flick Back to the Beach, and I had no idea what the hell I was looking at. After, of course, he cropped up all over the place – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman Returns, Mystery Men – but I was Today Years Old when I learned he voiced the spaceship, Max, in the weird 1985 kids’ sci-fi adventure, Flight of the Navigator, under the name Paul Ball. How about that?