Latest news with #MattWolf
Fox News
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
‘Pee-wee Herman' actor Paul Reubens hid terminal cancer from documentary director until his death
Paul Reubens did not tell his director, Matt Wolf, that he was dying from cancer. The actor and comedian, who famously starred as Pee-wee Herman in the 1980s, passed away in 2023 at age 70. Before his death, he gave over 40 hours of interviews on camera about his life and career for a two-part documentary, "Pee-wee as Himself," now streaming on HBO Max. "I was scheduled to do a final interview with him the week after Paul Reubens passed away, and we had a conversation a week before he died," Wolf told Forbes on Monday. "I could tell something was up with his health, but I didn't understand the gravity of it," the filmmaker shared. "I had no reason to believe he was terminally ill, but we had a meaningful private conversation that gave me the assurances I needed to move forward with this film." "I left that conversation feeling like it was intense but not thinking too much about it," Wolf continued. "I found out on Instagram that he [had] died, along with the rest of the world; only a very small group of close friends were aware that he was dying." According to Wolf, they spoke about everything — Reubens' childhood, his complicated relationship with fame, his ambitions, his commitment to his alter-ego, his sexuality, his arrest — except the fact that he had been battling cancer for the past six years. Wolf told the outlet that from the beginning, Reubens was eager to tell his story. "When Paul and I met, he started the conversation the same way the film starts, saying, 'I want to direct a film myself, but everybody's advising me against it, and I don't understand why,'" Wolf recalled. "I said, 'Well, I'm here to talk to you about directing a film, so why don't we get to know each other and see if we can conceive of an approach that would appeal to you.' That began a very long and involved process of communication, but in that initial meeting, I didn't relate to Paul as a fan." WATCH: PAUL REUBENS WORKED WITH KIDS WITH CANCER BEFORE HIS DEATH: MARK HOLTON While Wolf admitted that he did not know at what point he felt Reubens trusted him, the star later remarked, "At some point, you just have to take a leap of faith.'" "He took a leap of faith with me, and I'm grateful for it," Wolf added. Wolf told the outlet that he had a question that was never fully answered by Reubens during their lengthy sit-downs. "It wasn't that I wanted an answer, but I was working chronologically through Paul's life in this epic interview, and we stopped before the arrest in Florida," he explained, referring to the entertainer's 1991 detention for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater. At the time, Reubens was handed a small fine, but the damage was incalculable. In 2001, he was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession of child pornography, which was reduced to an obscenity charge with probation. These are covered in the documentary's second part. "Paul anecdotally discussed that because we had a digressive conversation for over 40 hours, but I wanted to go in more detail through his arrest step by step," Wolf told the outlet. "At the end of the film, I wanted to reflect with him, not only about his late career work, but also about how he felt having gone through the full interview about this process, if he did have all the perspective he thought he had, or if he had learned something about himself through the course of telling his full story. He had also been on the record and in the media discussing his second arrest." Wolf noted that it was important for the film to have Reubens' last words in his own voice, as well as for the film to end in his voice. "The day after Paul Reubens died, I started reading the 1,500-page transcript of my interview with him, and I found significance and meaning and all sorts of things that I wouldn't have understood before," said Wolf. "I did encounter what are the last words of 'Pee-wee as Himself,' which were profound and moving to me, and they actually were the last things Paul said in the interview." "… All these different emotions, all these different influences and factors, stuff that I saw when I was little, I felt like I could somehow give that back," Reubens reflected in the documentary. "I felt like a good collector of it all. I was like a good vessel for it all." "Nothing would stop me," he shared. "Nothing would deter me that it would be pure in every way. And I think that's what it was. It's part of why I feel so proud of it. Because I delivered that. I've lived up to that. Not just for you, but for myself." Wolf told The Associated Press that in looking back at their final conversations, it was clear that Reubens was "privately contemplating mortality." "I was aware that this was an extraordinary situation that was part of the story of the film and that the stakes were the highest I had ever experienced," said Wolf. "Pee-wee as Himself" premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
South China Morning Post
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How HBO Max film Pee-wee as Himself about Paul Reubens came together after comic's death
Paul Reubens did not tell his director that he was dying. Advertisement On July 31, 2023, the news of Reubens' death came as a shock to documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf, who had spent a year trying to convince the actor and comedian to make the ambitious two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself, now streaming on HBO Max, and over 40 hours interviewing him on camera. But in 2023, the project was in danger of falling apart. The two had been at an impasse for a while over the issue of creative control, and they had finally found a way forward. He had one last interview scheduled, set for the first week of August. Then the texts started coming in. Wolf sat there shaking. They had spoken about everything – Reubens' childhood, his relationship with fame, his ambitions, his commitment to his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, his sexuality, his arrest – except the fact that he had been battling cancer for the past six years. But after the initial shock, a renewed purpose set in. 'I went to work the day after Paul died. I started to read the 1,500-page transcript of our interview through the night and was struck by the significance and meaning that came by understanding that he was privately contemplating mortality,' Wolf said.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Pee-Wee As Himself' Director Had No Idea Paul Reubens Was Dying
"I was scheduled to do a final interview with him the week after Paul Reubens passed away, and we had a conversation a week before he died. I could tell something was up with his health, but I didn't understand the gravity of it," recalls Pee-wee as Himself director Matt Wolf. "I had no reason to believe he was terminally ill, but we had a meaningful private conversation that gave me the assurances I needed to move forward with the film." "I left that conversation feeling like it was intense but not thinking too much about it. I found out on Instagram that he died, along with the rest of the world; only a very small group of close friends were aware that he was dying." Reubens passed away from cancer on Sunday, July, 30, 2023. He was 70 years old. The two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself spotlights the life and career of iconic actor and comedian Paul Reubens, best known for his child-like character Pee-wee Herman. Both parts are now streaming on Max. Wolf and his team transferred, logged, and digitized over 1,000 hours of archival footage, much of it from Reubens' own private collection. Despite agreeing to the project, it's clear that the iconic entertainer is never entirely comfortable with the process. "As a documentary filmmaker, they always ask you, 'Who is your dream subject?' And I would say, 'Paul Reubens,' but I didn't know that much about Paul," Wolf muses. "I knew he went to CalArts in the heyday of conceptual art and was part of The Groundlings, but that was about it. I knew about his arrest, but that wasn't really my point of interest in making a film. We were connected by the Safdie Brothers and my producer, Emma Koskoff, through an unexpected convergence." "When Paul and I met, he started the conversation the same way the film starts, saying, 'I want to direct a film myself, but everybody's advising me against it, and I don't understand why.' I said, 'Well, I'm here to talk to you about directing a film, so why don't we get to know each other and see if we can conceive of an approach that would appeal to you.' That began a very long and involved process of communication, but in that initial meeting, I didn't relate to Paul as a fan." Pee-wee's Playhouse served as Wolf's gateway to Reubens' creative world, being "transfixed" as a kid. "Pee-wee's Playhouse was probably my first encounter with art that I had a visceral, emotional relationship to, and that stuck with me," Wolf muses. "In retrospect, Playhouse was depicted as this place of radical acceptance where creativity thrived, and it got wrapped up in my DNA. Pee-wee remained a touchstone for me, not as an uber fan, but as something influential that was part of the slate of references that informed who I am and what I do." The filmmaker realized Reubens was "very different" from Pee-wee Herman and more "intense and skeptical." "Every word I said counted and mattered," he explains. "It began a long process of building a relationship. Something I always say to people when I start a film is that I don't think trust should be expected. It has to be earned, and I wanted to earn Paul's trust. That proved to be a very difficult endeavor." At what point did he feel that his subject trusted him? "It's a good question, and I don't fully know, but I know he said, 'At some point, you just have to take a leap of faith.' He took a leap of faith with me, and I'm grateful for it," Wolf, who also produced the documentary, reveals. "That said, it wasn't because he fully trusted me; it was because he wanted a documentary to be made, and I think he felt I was the right person. He felt I understood how to do something artistic that wasn't a run-of-the-mill celebrity biopic and that, while I may not have been a pushover who would do as I was told, I was willing to collaborate with him and engage in the hours of conversation that he needed to feel involved and secure that his point of view would be included in the film." "I maintained the final cut, and Paul had meaningful consultation, which is an arrangement that's typical of docs these days, but that's fairly ambiguous as to what that means. We kept punting the issue of what that meant and doing the kind of precarious dance people do when making a documentary." Among the many anecdotes Reubens shares is how much weed he and his co-writers smoked when creating Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the movie that made the pop culture phenomenon a movie star. However, the revelation didn't shock Wolf. "Stoners love Pee-wee, myself included," he shares with a laugh. "I think that was also part of what was so odd about Pee-wee's Playhouse. You would have the stoner college kids, get up in the morning, then wake and bake and watch Pee-wee's Playhouse, and you'd have little kids. The two could exist side by side." "There was nothing tawdry about that; it was just a sensibility that crossed boundaries. There was something psychedelic and out there about the world that Pee-Wee lived in, and the world that Paul and his collaborators built, that I think was transfixing to kids like myself and trippy to adults who found the sweetness in Pee-wee, but also this aversiveness in his wild imagination." Now considered a classic, Pee-wee's Big Adventure was a box office hit, grossing $40.9 million despite Warner Bros., the studio behind it, having little faith in it. The screwball caper marked the feature directorial debut of Tim Burton, Reubens' pick for the job. Securing time with him for the documentary was a coup for Wolf. "Tim said no initially, and then he said yes, and I was incredibly grateful," he confirms. "It was a quick and fast interview, but Tim said everything I needed to hear, and it would have been such an oversight not to have him and to hear his point of view because I think it was a magical collaboration. It was a case of right place, right time. The first big work people make, that first foray into the public eye, has something so naive about it. There's a freedom that I think is on full display in that film, so it was a very kismet collaboration, and I'm glad that Tim took the time to share those memories." "There were a fair amount of interviews that were shot after Paul's death, for instance, his sister, Tim, and artist Gary Panter, and some interviews that were unresolved became possible after Paul died. People wanted to reflect on their relationships with him. We also created a sort of museum of Paul's collections and props, so we were able to do that after Paul passed away and to film that as well. It was a great representation of his creativity and his mind that we still had access to." Aside from Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Reuben's other notable movie work includes Batman Returns, Flight of the Navigator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mystery Men, and Blow. Paul Reubens in 'Pee-wee as Himself.' HBO Wolf and Reubens were due to have one last mammoth interview session before his death. Although he had much of what he needed to complete the film, was there a burning question Wolf wanted to answer to but never received? "It wasn't that I wanted an answer, but I was working chronologically through Paul's life in this epic interview, and we stopped before the arrest in Florida," he laments, referencing the entertainer's 1991 detention for indecent exposure at an adult movie theatre in Sarasota. "Paul anecdotally discussed that because we had a digressive conversation over 40 hours, but I wanted to go in more detail through his arrest step by step. At the end of the film, I wanted to reflect with him, not only about his late career work, but also about how he felt having gone through the full interview about this process, if he did have all the perspective he thought he had, or if he had learned something about himself through the course of telling his full story. He had also been on the record and in the media discussing his second arrest." "There was material that allowed me to give his last words in his own voice, but it was important to me for the film to end in his voice. The day after Paul Reubens died, I started reading the 1,500-page transcript of my interview with him, and I found significance and meaning and all sorts of things that I wouldn't have understood before. I did encounter what are the last words of Pee-wee as Himself, which were profound and moving to me, and they actually were the last things Paul said in the interview."
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Pee-wee as Himself' director reveals what happened after Paul Reubens backed out of documentar
The two-part HBO documentary Pee-wee as Himself (on Crave in Canada), directed by Matt Wolf, is an incredibly fascinating exploration of the life of Paul Reubens, who created the infamous character Pee-wee Herman, and died in 2023. But part of the alluring aspect of the documentary is questioning how much Reubens will actually open up to Wolf. As Reubens states in Pee-wee as Himself, he wanted to make his own film about himself. "Turns out that you're not really supposed to direct your own documentary," he says. While identifying that the belief is that you don't have "perspective" on your own self. In the interviews with Wolf, you get the sense that Reubens is never actually sure that he wants anyone telling his story for him, creating a complex dynamic between Wolf and his documentary subject. "My first meeting with Paul, it was clear that there could be a power struggle with this subject, because Paul said when I met him, 'I want to direct a documentary about myself, but everybody's advising me against it, and I don't understand, why,'" Wolf shared with reporters ahead of the documentary's premiere. "It was a lot of talking and processing to get Paul to sit into that interview chair." "When Paul sat down he was very rebellious and slippery. He wouldn't follow my lead with any questions. He wanted snacks, pretzels, lollipops. He would make funny facial expressions and it was a competitive dynamic. I remember before the shoot I said, ... 'Typically when we do these interviews, people sort of get tired around five hours.' And he said, 'I'm not going to get tired, you're going to get tired.' ... So it was kind of like game on from the beginning. But he was sort of rebelling, procrastinating, giving me a hard time." At one point Wolf actually said to producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff, "I don't know if this is going to work." "It occurred to me then that this is who Paul is, this is portraiture. We're seeing in real time him, in theory, rebelling against me, but he's really kind of grappling within himself about how much he's willing to share," Wolf said. Pee-wee As Himself is quite a comprehensive journey through Reubens life, from his upbringing and connection to the circus, to avant-garde performance theatre, joining the Groundlings and the development of Pee-wee Herman. "Paul had just an extraordinary recall for details from his childhood. Like the colour of the wallpaper in his childhood bedroom, he could talk about that for like an hour," Wolf said. Reubens also had an impressive archive that he kept throughout his life, from things he filmed himself to significant artifacts from moments in his life. "He saved most of these tapes ... in a temperature controlled bedroom, and he had recordings of almost every public appearance and media appearance he ever did," Wolf said. "I think some of the most revelatory material is the Super 8 that Paul shot from the 1970s. The Groundlings was hardly documented. He has some of the only stuff we were able to find, and boy did we search. And his early relationship with his boyfriend Guy, beautifully rendered on Super 8, and that's all shot by Paul. So to my knowledge, there was no material that was off limits." Wolf identified that the most powerful connection he had with Reubens was when they spoke about him coming out and the discussion about his early relationship, and the decision that followed to go back in the closet. "My career absolutely would have suffered if I was openly gay," Reubens says in the documentary. "That was, I would say, the most powerful connection I ever felt to a subject," Wolf said. "Paul went into this process wanting to come out. That was a decision he had made. He was aware that I was a gay filmmaker. ... I wanted, as a younger person, to support him in that process, but he also was intensely sensitive that the film would overly emphasize that, or focus entirely from the lens of sexuality when looking at his story." "I do think that the level to which Paul discusses his, I wouldn't say sexuality, but his relationships and intimacy and vulnerability, and the poignant decision he made to go back into the closet, I do have to believe to some extent he shared that because of our connection." Nearing the end of the second part of the documentary, Reubens and those who were close to him talk about his arrest on charges of child pornography, connected to his collection of vintage gay erotica. The charges were later dropped. But then we find out that after a year Reubens stopped cooperating and never completed the final interview about his arrest. "I had been promised final cut and Paul was given meaningful consultation," Wolf explained. "It's a dance that we do to figure out how to include somebody, both for fact-checking and to take the temperature of how they feel about the representation of their story, and Paul and I were at odds about that." "I wanted to do for Paul what I said I would do, which is to create a nuanced and complicated portrait of an artist, and to reappraise the significance of his work so that people would stop looking at his arrests as the first point of entry into Paul Reubens. But I didn't feel that I could accomplish that with the level of control that Paul wanted. And we were going back and forth trying to make an agreement on very specific terms as to how involved he would be in post-production. I held the line on that and that went on for over a year, and I was prepared to move on, go on to different projects, and then suddenly we heard that Paul was ready to finish his interview, to sign his release, and that it needed to happen within two weeks." When Wolf spoke to Reubens to discuss how the final interview would go, the filmmaker could tell that something was "off." "A week later, I'm en route to Los Angeles to proceed with filming this final interview and I got a text from my executive at HBO with a post from Instagram saying, 'Is this real?' And it was a post that announced that Paul Reubens had passed away. And I was just in total shock," Wolf said. "And then I got a call from Kelly Bush Novak who was Paul's publicist, but also a very close friend, and she was like, 'I tried to get to you before the news broke, I couldn't, but Paul recorded something for you, for the documentary. And he had things to say, but he ran out of time.'" "I went into Kelly's office and she played the audio for me and it was devastating. But he wanted it to be said, what he had to say in the documentary, and I had to figure out a way to use that not in a sensational manner." As we hear Reubens say in a voiceover in the documentary, he wanted to show people who is really is, and how "painful" it was to be labelled a pedophile. "I wanted to talk about what it's like and have some understanding of what it's like to be labeled a pariah, to have people scared of you, or unsure of you, or untrusting, or to look at what your intentions are through some kind of filter that's not true," we hear Reubens say. "I wanted people to understand that occasionally, where there is smoke there isn't always fire." "I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career, everything I did and wrote, was based in love and my desire to entertain, and bring glee and creativity to young people, and to everyone." With 40 hours of interview footage, Wolf identified how unique the process of creating Pee-wee as Himself was as a filmmaker. "It was thrilling to go this deep. I've never been able, or I don't know if I ever will go this deep with another human being," Wolf said. "I revered Paul as an artist and had come to know him in complex ways as himself. And it was ... thrilling to be able to excavate this much material from him and really to collaborate." "I think people often overlook the sense that documentary filmmakers, unlike journalists, have a much more collaborative relationship with our subjects. We need lots of things from them, we have to invade their home with our cameras, and to gather all of their archive and scan it." The filmmaker said that the "intensity" of the project changed him, specifically has made him feel more confident. "It made me confident that I can rise to the occasion under really extraordinary circumstances," he said. "I came to understand how scary I am as a documentary filmmaker approaching a subject." "Obviously, the power dynamics I had with Paul were unique. He's a celebrity. He [was] a different generation. We also had a lot of stuff in common. But through his eyes and how extreme he felt in this process, I understood better how it feels, not just for him, but for anybody I approach to be the subject of a documentary."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How the Director Behind 'Pee-wee as Himself' Convinced Paul Reubens to Reveal Himself
Paul Reubens sat for 40 hours of interviews for Pee-wee as Himself. Credit - Courtesy of HBO On July 31, 2023, Matt Wolf received news that no documentarian wants to hear: The subject of his uncompleted film was dead. This was no mere talking head. It was a man who left an indelible mark on pop culture, whose manic persona, gray suit, and bowtie helped define the 1980s. On a personal note, says Wolf, it was someone who 'changed who I was through his art.' The subject was Paul Reubens, the actor best known as Pee-wee Herman, who had been diagnosed with cancer six years prior. 'Paul was very preoccupied with the film being finished before he died,' says Wolf, whose two-part HBO documentary, Pee-wee as Himself, debuted at Sundance to rapturous praise and premieres on May 23 on HBO and Max. Though Reubens never said his death was imminent, or even told Wolfe of his cancer diagnosis, his legacy was clearly on his mind. 'Every day I woke up saying, 'You must rise to the occasion. Do not drop the ball,'' says Wolf, whose previous documentary subjects include the musician Arthur Russell and the Biosphere 2. Reubens was, according to Wolf, intense, complex, and 'the funniest and one of the smartest people I've ever met.' He was also a 'resistant subject.' That resistance plays out onscreen and distinguishes Pee-wee as Himself from other celebrity bio-docs. This one tells, but it also shows. The telling comes via recollections from Wolf's talking heads—drawn from 40 hours of interviews with Reubens, plus friends, family, and colleagues—as well as Reubens' career archive, including 1,000 hours of video footage and tens of thousands of images. These take us from Reubens' early life as a precociously creative child growing up not far from the Ringling Bros. Circus headquarters in Florida, through his work in the improv group the Groundlings, to his career successes: creating and starring in the hit 1985 film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and practically rewriting the book on children's programming during the five-season run of his Saturday morning CBS show Pee-wee's Playhouse. Where the doc shows rather than simply tells, however, comes when Reubens breaks the fourth wall about the process of making it, including wanting to be more hands-on with the production and his suspicious regard of Wolf. The tension is palpable. At one point, Reubens tells Wolf that he made 'one documentary that I liked out of, what—six?' 'There were times I was angry at Paul,' recalls Wolf. 'I accepted this was great material for the film, and he knew it.' Reubens, who admired people 'living conceptually' during his college days at California Institute of the Arts, had devised Pee-wee as a character meant to exist in the real world as well as showbiz. He was often billed as Pee-wee Herman during interviews and in movies, rarely letting his real self show in service of his full-time performance art piece. For Wolf, the trick was to pull back the curtain on the performance to reveal the man himself. Reubens was Wolf's 'dream subject.' They connected in 2020, during the height of pandemic lockdown, after Wolf caught wind that Reubens was interested in making a film about his life. So began a series of FaceTime and Zoom interactions that would number in the hundreds of hours. 'With Paul, there was no 15-minute conversation,' Wolf says. Reubens, unsure whether Wolf was the right guy for the job, proceeded begrudgingly. And then one day, the resistance just abated. 'He said, 'I'm in. Sometimes you gotta take a leap of faith,'' remembers Wolf. Though the line between director and subject was fixed, Wolf nonetheless considered Reubens a collaborator. But the question of just how much Reubens was to contribute added to the strain. Before Wolf had completed his interviews, Reubens went incommunicado. 'We were at an impasse as to what post-production would look like, and I was holding my ground that I would be doing that independently, and that he would have opportunities to see the cut,' says Wolf. 'And that didn't feel like enough to him.' 'Paul was very particular,' says Cassandra Peterson (better known as Elvira), who befriended Reubens in the 1970s when both were in the Groundlings and who appears in the doc. 'He wanted to control things, and have things exactly the way he wanted, to a really extreme degree. So I kind of felt sorry for the filmmakers. I knew it would be a tough road.' Peterson recalled falling out with Reubens due to a work issue that she did not specify. It happened not long after the 1986 debut of Pee-wee's Playhouse and lasted for years until they found themselves reunited while presenting an award together. 'It was great to be friends with Paul,' she says. 'He was funny, brilliant and a fantastic friend, but I really had to separate the work from the friendship.' She expressed great admiration for her friend's creativity. 'One of Paul's strong points was remembering how he was and what happened to him as a child,' says Peterson. 'He kept ahold of that childhood thing that everybody wishes they could hold on to. The freedom and creativity that you had when you were a child, Paul never let that go.' Wolf was initially reluctant to include his own presence in the movie, but he and Reubens decided together to explore their dynamic on-screen. Control was a frequent topic behind the scenes and in front of the camera, where Reubens openly pondered if he should be the one making the film. Wolf attempted to shoot candid footage of Reubens to augment the talking-head material, but it didn't work. 'If anything that wasn't planned happened, he would be unhappy,' Wolf recalls. As to Reubens' need for control, Wolf has some theories. 'Many exceptional artists are incredibly controlling,' Wolf says. But also: 'He was controlling because he lost control of his personal narrative in the media.' Wolf is referring to two arrests that resulted in career-upending scandals. The first occurred in 1991, when Reubens was picked up in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Fla., and charged with indecent exposure. This resulted in the effective cancellation of Pee-wee's Playhouse; he pleaded no contest and maintained publicly that the allegations were false. The second happened in 2002, when Reubens was charged with possession of child pornography. He eventually took a lesser plea of obscenity, while maintaining that nothing in his archive of vintage gay erotica constituted child sex abuse material. The impasse between Wolf and Reubens occurred before Wolf got to ask about these arrests in detail. Those parts of the movie are largely told through the recollections of his friends and family. Wolf did capture Reubens discussing his sexuality, which Reubens had never done publicly. Though he had relationships with men, he was closeted for the sake of his career. In the film, Reubens seems at ease discussing his life as a gay man, but Wolf says the filming of that interview 'was not a chill, easy day.' Sexuality was both a point of connection and tension among director and star. Wolf, too, is gay, but came out at 14 and values his sexuality as a key feature of his identity, a position Reubens didn't share. When Wolf engaged Reubens about his sexuality, he noticed his subject was 'squirmy and procrastinating a lot' then spoke only in vague terms. Finally Reubens took Wolf aside and said, 'I don't know how to do this.' To that, Wolf had a simple directive: 'Just say, 'I'm gay.'' Once the cameras were back rolling, Wolf asked Reubens point blank, 'Are you gay?' Reubens joked and then 'snapped in,' discussing his sexuality freely. 'It was extraordinary, and I felt very proud of him,' Wolf says. In July 2023, Wolf and Reubens resumed communication and agreed to proceed with the shoot. But the interview they planned never came to pass—Reubens died at 70 just two weeks later. Peterson says she was aware of the cancer 'from day one'—Reubens had called her crying the day he received his diagnosis of lung cancer. But he fought it and seemed to recover completely only to find out that he had a brain tumor some time later. Treatment for that also seemed to go well. 'He never dwelled on it,' Peterson recalls. 'He never talked about it. He ate healthy. He really turned his life around.' But then maybe a month or two before his death, Reubens told her that he wasn't feeling well. 'He'd had a few episodes of feeling sick, and I was getting worried,' she says. As indicated in the documentary, Reubens left behind a partner when he died. Peterson could not recall how long they were together before Reubens' death, but she said that their bond was undeniable. 'It was the first time I heard Paul talk about somebody who he really, really liked,' she said. 'It was nice that Paul had somebody at the end, a very nice person who really cared about Paul. I was so happy to see that.' The day before he died, Reubens recorded a voice note in which he reflected on his 2002 arrest and sent it to his publicist, Kelly Bush Novak, who passed it on to Wolf. Toward the end of the film, a frail-voiced Reubens says, 'More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn't. The moment I heard somebody label me as, I'm just going to say it, a pedophile, I knew it was going to change everything moving forward and backwards.' Reubens' death put Wolf in a shaky position. He pushed down feelings of grief in order to finish his film. The stakes couldn't have been higher. 'I've never felt so trusted to take on such a big thing,' Wolf says. Peterson loves the resulting film. 'I really felt like Matt got Paul. He had a handle on what he was doing,' she says. The documentary is an honest portrait of a creative technician, his drive, his process, and the way he negotiated life in the public eye. The film rather explicitly asks a question that has preoccupied the culture on conscious and subconscious levels in the age of social media and scorn for traditional media: Who gets to tell people's stories? It seems clear that, had Reubens been in creative control, we wouldn't have seen the glimpses of his humanity that, while not always flattering, make Pee-wee as Himself so riveting. And, while they might not have been what Reubens wanted, they are the product of the deep respect and admiration Wolf had for his subject. 'I was determined to make meaning out of this,' says Wolf. 'I said to Paul, 'I will do right by you.' I meant it.' Contact us at letters@
