‘Pee-wee as Himself': Director Matt Wolf on exploring the duality of Paul Reubens and earning his trust — ‘It was a constant struggle'
When Matt Wolf took on the daunting task of creating a documentary about the enigmatic Paul Reubens, the man behind the flamboyant and charming Pee-wee Herman, the filmmaker never could have imagined just how deeply layered the story would be. Now, in Wolf's Pee-wee as Himself, audiences are given an unprecedented look at a fiercely private artist whose boundary-pushing creativity and resilience impacted an entire generation.
The two-part HBO documentary introduces viewers to Reubens in an unexpected way: as an eccentric figure claiming to have been born in 1938 on the banks of the Mississippi River. It's humor that cuts straight to the core of who Reubens was, but also hints at the complicated man behind the bowtie. Wolf admits that the opening moments of a documentary often come together through trial and error: "Oh, I don't know. You just try stuff out and it sticks and we probably tried that immediately as the first thing and it stuck. I mean, it's funny."
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For Wolf, getting a chance to tell Reubens' story required more than just persistence — it required fate. 'People, when you make documentaries, ask who's your dream subject? And mine always was Paul,' Wolf tells Gold Derby. After several unsuccessful attempts to connect with the famously private Reubens, a serendipitous sequence of events involving the Safdie brothers [Benny and Josh], who were at one point rumored to be working on an autobiographical Pee-wee film, ultimately led to Reubens reaching out to Wolf through producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff.
From the outset, however, trust was a challenge. Reubens, known for his intense control over his public image, was reluctant to relinquish that same control for the film. "It was hard. It was a constant struggle of trying to earn Paul's trust, but to also accept that there were limits to how much he was willing to trust somebody," Wolf explains. Reubens' fraught history with the media, where he felt his personal story was often misrepresented, left him wary.
"I empathized with where he was coming from," Wolf continues, "but trust is a foundation of what we do as documentary filmmakers. ... And Paul was somebody incapable of taking a leap of faith." Over the course of hundreds of hours of conversations, the two worked to find a middle ground, even as Wolf recognized that Reubens would never completely let his guard down.
Courtesy of HBO
Unbeknownst to Wolf and the crew, Reubens was privately battling cancer while filming the documentary. "I was scheduled to complete a final interview with Paul the week after he died," Wolf shares. "I found out that Paul died on Instagram, the day he died, along with everybody else." The reveal added an even deeper emotional weight to the production. Despite this devastating blow, Wolf pressed on, knowing Reubens wanted the documentary to move forward, giving his blessing in their final conversations.
'I read the 1,500-page transcript of our interview right after [he passed],' Wolf recounts. 'I wanted to rise to the occasion and do justice under these extraordinary circumstances.'
The film explores the duality that defined Reubens' career: Pee-wee Herman, the irrepressible, childlike alter ego, and Paul Reubens, the man behind the magic. It's a balancing act few have undertaken successfully, as Wolf points out: 'Somebody else who's in the film that's done that a bit is Elvira, Cassandra Peterson. But it's a small club of people who live as their alter ego. And Paul was kind of the most visible member of that club.'
Reubens made a conscious choice to keep Pee-wee a separate entity, a concept born out of both creative and personal motivations. "He wanted people to believe that Pee-wee Herman was a real person,' Wolf explains, 'but on a deeper level, Paul was very protective of his privacy and anonymity."
HBO/Pee-wee Herman Productions, Inc.
As the documentary delves into Reubens' life before Pee-wee, it reveals the formative influences that shaped not only the character but the artist himself. From his art school days at CalArts to performing as an openly gay man before retreating into the closet for his career, Reubens' trajectory captures the struggles and compromises of a queer artist in the entertainment industry of the 1980s.
"He chose to go into the closet to focus on his career,' Wolf notes. 'It was a personal but also pragmatic decision, knowing that in the early 1980s, an openly gay man would not be able to rise in the entertainment industry."
Reubens' rejection from Saturday Night Live became the catalyst for Pee-wee Herman's creation. "I think that rejection really kind of emboldened Paul to take matters into his own hands," Wolf observes. From a midnight play at the Groundlings to the cult success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Reubens carved out a path that was quintessentially his own.
HBO/Pee-wee Herman Productions, Inc.
Collaborating with now-iconic director Tim Burton on his feature debut, Reubens enjoyed a type of creative freedom and naïveté in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Wolf reflects on Burton's experience making the film: 'You're just kind of putting it all out there. And I think there was something very naive about the making of Pee-wee's Big Adventure that allowed it to be very pure."
His subsequent Saturday morning show, Pee-wee's Playhouse, broke barriers with its artistic vision and diverse cast. 'In some ways, people recognize that the show was revolutionary,' Wolf says. 'But to watch in more specific detail the types of things that they accomplished and the ambition of it, it will be undeniable how singular it was as a cultural phenomenon.'
The documentary doesn't shy away from the controversy that derailed Reubens' career. The incident in an adult movie theater — and subsequent false allegations of child pornography — forever altered public perception. Wolf describes the impacts of that time: "Paul was in a state of shock for a number of years and it had a profound impact on his life... But thankfully we were able to see him in his full breadth of talents as a character actor."
Reubens' ability to persevere and work through those challenges is a testament to his resilience. "[He] was a resilient person," Wolf emphasizes. "I didn't see him as a victim. I think he proved over and over again that he could overcome hardship and kind of put his work first."
For decades, Pee-wee and Paul existed as two separate beings, a distinction even immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where Pee-wee Herman has a star — Paul Reubens does not. Wolf hopes that his documentary helps fuse these two sides of the same coin. "Paul Reubens created Pee-wee Herman," Wolf reminded us. 'Now that Paul has passed away ... I hope people can respect and appreciate the artist that was always there within, behind, and alongside his creation.'
Pee-wee as Himself is currently streaming on Max.
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When Christian Slater made his purported "comeback" on Mr. Robot in 2015, winning a Golden Globe for the eponymous role, he didn't think he had gone anywhere. He had been steadily working onscreen for 30 years, since his film debut in 1985's The Legend of Billie Jean. Sure, most of the films and television series he made over the first decade-plus of the 2000s weren't smash hits out of the gate, but neither were many of what would ultimately be his most memorable projects. Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, True Romance, Very Bad Things — all box-office failures-turned-cult classics. More from GoldDerby 'Elio' reviews knock Pixar for 'repeating itself' with 'forgettable' space adventure 'F1: The Movie' reviews: Brad Pitt burns rubber with 'macho panache' in a high-octane thrill ride Could '28 Years Later' contend for Oscars? Here's the complete awards history of the '28' franchise. 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I was living in Los Angeles, I was 18, 19 somewhere around there. I had my first place in the Hollywood Hills, a little one-bedroom that I loved. I would have parties and just never really took anything too seriously. I read the script called Heathers and thought it was kind of fun. I really did get into it, went in, auditioned, met with [director] Michael Lehmann and Winona [Ryder]. I think having done The Name of the Rose with Sean Connery gave me a good foot in the door. … I think I'd also done Tucker: The Man and His Dream at that time. I was working, so it opened the door for me to get in and do something else. Heathers was considered a total failure. When it opened up here, it was not successful at all. I mean, I think people in Los Angeles saw it. But as far as it being a real juggernaut of a movie, [it wasn't]. And I don't know if it is today, but it definitely has taken on several lives since then and been rediscovered and has become a musical. All these fun things have happened with it, which I love and think is very, very cool. But yeah, when it came out, not successful, I think the for the people [in the industry] who did see it in Los Angeles, it was good to get other gigs, and it made getting other movies produced a lot easier. Slater showed a penchant for dark teen movies when he played a rebel radio DJ 'Hard Harry' in this early '90s favorite, for which he earned an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor. Pump Up the Volume was the next script I read, and it came together [easy] like, 'Whatever you want to do, kid, you can do it. The world is your oyster.' And fortunately, I had read a good script. And that was really my favorite movie. But again, it didn't break any box-office records. It was a nice elegant movie to have done and a great character, and more of an acting opportunity for me, to kind of get to play two different characters in a way. So that was something I really enjoyed. And I got to work with Samantha Mathis, who's great. I've gotten the chance to work with her several times, so I feel very, very blessed. It is [my favorite to a certain degree]. It was just a really special time. I was so excited to do it and really loved working with the people on it. And I felt like it was a very special movie, I just liked the heart of the character, how he reacted to the people he spoke to on the radio. It was more unpredictable. He didn't judge people. He was more embracing. … I thought it was great. So it's definitely one of my favorite movies. Following 1988's Young Guns, Slater was the new guy on set joining other rising stars Kiefer Sutherland, Emilio Estevez, and Lou Diamond Phillips in the Western sequel. As Slater became a bigger and bigger star, however, the temptations of Hollywood were catching up with him and he was arrested for drunken driving in 1989. It absolutely was [as fun as it looked]. If you ever get a chance to do a Western, it's the best, man. I had such a good time. I loved working with those guys. It was remarkable. Pump Up the Volume hadn't come out yet. Going into Young Guns, putting on a cowboy hat and strapping on a couple of six-shooters and spending time rehearsing with my horse, it was the best. I just had a great relationship with that animal, and shooting guns and being a kid was so much fun. It was incredible. There were certain things that the stunt people asked me to do that I was unwilling to do. I was willing to jump through the glass into a store, and be like a bull in a China shop on my horse. But there was one stunt they wanted me to do where I was like, 'No, I want to live. I'm good. I don't want to do that.' It was some crazy stunt. And they let Lou Diamond Phillips do it. And I was like, 'Let him do it.' I think he broke his arm doing it. Not that I wish him ill, but I think I made the right choice. I got into a little bit of trouble right before doing Young Guns, too. And I got sober. I got sober and stayed sober for a few years. But there was pressure and anxiety. Certainly being that age, what success does to the people around you is a little bit confusing and a little bit confounding. It just it changes things and to a certain degree makes you feel less safe and less trustworthy of people. It's like, why are they really there? What do they really want? And dating is tricky. And so all of that is a little bit confusing and you can end up feeling more alone. I did stay sober for a few years, but then I think the anxiety finally got to me, and I needed to escape again. Which I did. And I did that through alcohol and some other substances. And it was fun for a while, until it wasn't. It always starts out fun. It always feels like a relief. But then it always turned on me, it got hard, got very difficult to deal with. So there were absolutely challenges, struggles, hurdles, personal hurdles to overcome, lessons to learn. His star still rising, Slater joined Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, and Alan Rickman for what would become one of the biggest movies of 1991 — even if critics thrashed it and Slater earned a Razzie nomination for his role as Will Scarlett (shared with his turn as Lucky Luciano in Mobsters). I mean, look, you can't have everything. I'd had a nice run of some critical successes, I think. And some very complimentary people saying nice things about me. And then, yes, Robin Hood struggled a little bit with the critics. But you know what? It was a fun movie. I loved it, getting to be one of the scoundrel Merry Men was a lot of fun. And we actually shot in Sherwood Forest, which was pretty authentic and pretty amazing. And I'd always been a fan of Robin Hood. I mean, I guess my version of Robin Hood was Errol Flynn, which is just weird. And now here I am on the set with these other merry men dancing around and just having a great time. I love [director] Kevin Reynolds. I loved Alan Rickman. Kevin Costner is a legend. Morgan Freeman, we were friends, so it was a really special, special time. Slater teamed with Patricia Arquette, whom he remains close friends with today, for the Quentin Tarantino-penned, Tony Scott-directed crime thriller about a couple on the run with a suitcase of drugs stolen from the mob. So it was only around the beginning, during rehearsals, [that I met Tarantino]. And Patricia [and I] only had one meeting with him from what I recall, where he talked about what he thought these characters were like and how he based Clarence on himself. And when I heard that, I just thought, 'Well, thank you.' That really gives me some insight and some knowledge into who this guy is and his level of obsessiveness. You can just tell with Quentin Tarantino, he's got a particular energy and particular passion that is unmatched. So I think that is what I wanted to be able to try and accomplish, conveying that uncomfortable in his own skin sort of character, but full of passion, full of life, full of love and determined to do the next right thing. Yeah, I wanted to [channel Tarantino] for sure. I think this is where Tony Scott and I at times had mixed opinions, because Quentin was just sort of becoming well-known. And I don't think he developed the coolness factor that he now has to such a degree. So I think my desire to play the character exactly as being Quentin Tarantino kind of freaked him out a little bit. He was more interested in me being like the character from Heathers, who was a little bit cooler and a little bit smoother. Slater was cast as the interviewer Daniel Molloy alongside Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt after the tragic death of River Phoenix, who was originally hired for the role. It was tragic for sure. River Phoenix was a legend and somebody that I was extraordinarily competitive with. I just thought, "This guy's such a good actor." We're both growing up at the same time, and I just thought we'd be competing for roles for the rest of our lives. I thought we'd be trying to get one job from the next, and battling back and forth, for our whole lives. So I think we lost a great actor. I feel like eventually he and I would have become really good friends. I feel sad about it every day. I tried to make it, to a certain degree, more comfortable for myself by donating the salary from that movie to River Phoenix's charities that he was involved with. Just because there was just a part of me that didn't feel like I wanted to take any money for the job. It happened in such a tragic way that I wanted to honor him in any way that I could. So that's what I did. The majority of my work was with Brad. And I think I was catching him at the end of a long shoot [laughs]. It was a good, long six month shoot. And I feel like he was at the end of his rope at that point. I think he was sick and tired of getting his face painted with those little veins and wearing fangs. But you know what? He was a professional. He was great. Certainly in the role. He did it. … He still showed up. 100 percent. But I just thought it was funny that he was so sick of it by that point. He was just over it. And Tom was amazing. I mean, he's Tom Cruise, and he's a phenomenal human being. He heard somebody else say this about working with a vampire. 'Once a vampire bites you, once you share that experience, you're connected for life.' And he did swoop down on me in that Mustang and he did bite me, and I'll never forget it. That was a special night. I mean, we closed down the Golden Gate Bridge to shoot that scene. So it was just me and Tom going around and around on the Golden Gate Bridge. So again, another moment that I just will always cherish and remember for the rest of my life. He is incredibly generous. He gave each and everybody a beautiful photo album. Like not just a photo album, but high end, probably each one of them cost $1,000. I have it somewhere. … Oh, I think I see it. It's in the bookshelf. Slater had stopped drinking again when he made the debaucherous dark comedy about a bachelor party gone very wrong with Jeremy Piven, Jon Favreau, and Daniel Stern. It was [a good experience]. I got in sober again, so that felt better. It felt better to show up and actually be present on a movie set. I've always felt like I was able to participate. I always felt like I was showing up and giving 100 percent. But you just end up feeling better when you're not drinking the night before. Like, for example, that movie Hard Rain (1998) I did. That was a tough shoot. It was six months. We were shooting in this huge airplane hangar in the dark every day, and it was wet. It was gross … not one of the more fun experiences. Definitely challenging, but I think there was an element of, I'm not going to say needing to have a drink while making it, but there was a great deal of need to escape. It was just a hard one. So anyway, Very Bad Things … I mean, it was Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven, Daniel Stern, some legends again, that have become more legendary since then and are just people I was grateful to work with. Fantastic, crazy character. To a certain degree, I felt like I was trying to do something that I had done before in a movie, so I wasn't 100 percent comfortable with that. I felt like, 'I'm trying to be the nut again.' But now I really don't judge it, you know? Now I don't put that kind of pressure on myself today. After a string of underseen film and television projects released in the 2000s and 2010s, Slater landed his biggest role of the millennium with the eponymous anarchist who recruits Rami Malek's hacker to his cause in Sam Esmail's Emmy-winning cyber thriller. Yeah, it [felt special from the beginning]. It started off with me and Rami sitting in the Wonder Wheel doing all those scenes together. And that was the perfect way to start it. It put us together in close quarters where we couldn't help but get to know each other and how it was we both like to work. So that was a wonderful accident. Whoever organized that did a great job. Did the same thing on Dexter, too. … It was exciting. And it just drew the two of us together. So I think it just helped with our chemistry throughout the show. Well, I mean, [as far as it being called my comeback], I definitely had done some other TV shows. I was giving it a shot in the TV world a few times, always with the best of intentions. And no matter how they performed, it's not like I was used to huge successes initially, anyway. I was never really used to having huge successes right out of the gate, right? Like a lot of the things that I've done have become popular over time, not initially. ... So when it came to a [movie] or a TV show not really necessarily working out? It didn't disturb me greatly. I just looked at it as an experience. And that somebody will get it later down the line. That's what kept happening, right? But I don't think they're going to be doing a musical of The Forgotten [Slater's short-lived 2009 detective series], unfortunately, but that's OK. But Mr. Robot, it was wonderful to be on that ride. I was definitely proud of the show. You just never know. There's no guarantee something's going to turn up. You just got to keep showing up and not give up. And have the faith that, at some point, people are going to find something interesting and exciting. 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‘Pee-wee as Himself': Director Matt Wolf on exploring the duality of Paul Reubens and earning his trust — ‘It was a constant struggle'
When Matt Wolf took on the daunting task of creating a documentary about the enigmatic Paul Reubens, the man behind the flamboyant and charming Pee-wee Herman, the filmmaker never could have imagined just how deeply layered the story would be. Now, in Wolf's Pee-wee as Himself, audiences are given an unprecedented look at a fiercely private artist whose boundary-pushing creativity and resilience impacted an entire generation. The two-part HBO documentary introduces viewers to Reubens in an unexpected way: as an eccentric figure claiming to have been born in 1938 on the banks of the Mississippi River. It's humor that cuts straight to the core of who Reubens was, but also hints at the complicated man behind the bowtie. Wolf admits that the opening moments of a documentary often come together through trial and error: "Oh, I don't know. You just try stuff out and it sticks and we probably tried that immediately as the first thing and it stuck. I mean, it's funny." More from GoldDerby 'Gypsy' and 'Just in Time' producer Tom Kirdahy on serving a 'social and cultural need' through creative work TV Visual Effects supervisor roundtable: 'Black Mirror,' 'The Boys,' 'The Wheel of Time' 'The Wheel of Time' VFX supervisor Andy Scrase: 'I always think of visual effects as the magic of filmmaking' For Wolf, getting a chance to tell Reubens' story required more than just persistence — it required fate. 'People, when you make documentaries, ask who's your dream subject? And mine always was Paul,' Wolf tells Gold Derby. After several unsuccessful attempts to connect with the famously private Reubens, a serendipitous sequence of events involving the Safdie brothers [Benny and Josh], who were at one point rumored to be working on an autobiographical Pee-wee film, ultimately led to Reubens reaching out to Wolf through producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff. From the outset, however, trust was a challenge. Reubens, known for his intense control over his public image, was reluctant to relinquish that same control for the film. "It was hard. It was a constant struggle of trying to earn Paul's trust, but to also accept that there were limits to how much he was willing to trust somebody," Wolf explains. Reubens' fraught history with the media, where he felt his personal story was often misrepresented, left him wary. "I empathized with where he was coming from," Wolf continues, "but trust is a foundation of what we do as documentary filmmakers. ... And Paul was somebody incapable of taking a leap of faith." Over the course of hundreds of hours of conversations, the two worked to find a middle ground, even as Wolf recognized that Reubens would never completely let his guard down. Courtesy of HBO Unbeknownst to Wolf and the crew, Reubens was privately battling cancer while filming the documentary. "I was scheduled to complete a final interview with Paul the week after he died," Wolf shares. "I found out that Paul died on Instagram, the day he died, along with everybody else." The reveal added an even deeper emotional weight to the production. Despite this devastating blow, Wolf pressed on, knowing Reubens wanted the documentary to move forward, giving his blessing in their final conversations. 'I read the 1,500-page transcript of our interview right after [he passed],' Wolf recounts. 'I wanted to rise to the occasion and do justice under these extraordinary circumstances.' The film explores the duality that defined Reubens' career: Pee-wee Herman, the irrepressible, childlike alter ego, and Paul Reubens, the man behind the magic. It's a balancing act few have undertaken successfully, as Wolf points out: 'Somebody else who's in the film that's done that a bit is Elvira, Cassandra Peterson. But it's a small club of people who live as their alter ego. And Paul was kind of the most visible member of that club.' Reubens made a conscious choice to keep Pee-wee a separate entity, a concept born out of both creative and personal motivations. "He wanted people to believe that Pee-wee Herman was a real person,' Wolf explains, 'but on a deeper level, Paul was very protective of his privacy and anonymity." HBO/Pee-wee Herman Productions, Inc. As the documentary delves into Reubens' life before Pee-wee, it reveals the formative influences that shaped not only the character but the artist himself. From his art school days at CalArts to performing as an openly gay man before retreating into the closet for his career, Reubens' trajectory captures the struggles and compromises of a queer artist in the entertainment industry of the 1980s. "He chose to go into the closet to focus on his career,' Wolf notes. 'It was a personal but also pragmatic decision, knowing that in the early 1980s, an openly gay man would not be able to rise in the entertainment industry." Reubens' rejection from Saturday Night Live became the catalyst for Pee-wee Herman's creation. "I think that rejection really kind of emboldened Paul to take matters into his own hands," Wolf observes. From a midnight play at the Groundlings to the cult success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Reubens carved out a path that was quintessentially his own. HBO/Pee-wee Herman Productions, Inc. Collaborating with now-iconic director Tim Burton on his feature debut, Reubens enjoyed a type of creative freedom and naïveté in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Wolf reflects on Burton's experience making the film: 'You're just kind of putting it all out there. And I think there was something very naive about the making of Pee-wee's Big Adventure that allowed it to be very pure." His subsequent Saturday morning show, Pee-wee's Playhouse, broke barriers with its artistic vision and diverse cast. 'In some ways, people recognize that the show was revolutionary,' Wolf says. 'But to watch in more specific detail the types of things that they accomplished and the ambition of it, it will be undeniable how singular it was as a cultural phenomenon.' The documentary doesn't shy away from the controversy that derailed Reubens' career. The incident in an adult movie theater — and subsequent false allegations of child pornography — forever altered public perception. Wolf describes the impacts of that time: "Paul was in a state of shock for a number of years and it had a profound impact on his life... But thankfully we were able to see him in his full breadth of talents as a character actor." Reubens' ability to persevere and work through those challenges is a testament to his resilience. "[He] was a resilient person," Wolf emphasizes. "I didn't see him as a victim. I think he proved over and over again that he could overcome hardship and kind of put his work first." For decades, Pee-wee and Paul existed as two separate beings, a distinction even immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where Pee-wee Herman has a star — Paul Reubens does not. Wolf hopes that his documentary helps fuse these two sides of the same coin. "Paul Reubens created Pee-wee Herman," Wolf reminded us. 'Now that Paul has passed away ... I hope people can respect and appreciate the artist that was always there within, behind, and alongside his creation.' Pee-wee as Himself is currently streaming on Max. Best of GoldDerby TV Visual Effects supervisor roundtable: 'Black Mirror,' 'The Boys,' 'The Wheel of Time' 'The Wheel of Time' VFX supervisor Andy Scrase: 'I always think of visual effects as the magic of filmmaking' 'The Boys' VFX supervisor Stephan Fleet explains why a one-minute shot 'took about 17 hours' to make Click here to read the full article.
