Per Matt
Words cannot express the feelings… For the past three weeks, I’ve been struggling to encapsulate my thoughts. Paul Reubens, better known as Pee-wee Herman, has passed away after a six-year battle with cancer, which he kept very private. Thankfully, his work within the entertainment industry was not. Sadly, I cannot help but feel like part of my childhood has died along with him.

While the childlike characterization of Pee-wee would highlight the actor’s hilarious imagination, it would eventually outshine every other role he would play, regardless of its quality. That’s not a knock against all those other characters, but it means his comedic genius was on full display with each and every step that he took while wearing that little grey suit. His other characters ranged from mildly humorous, to serious and even seriously scary.

As a Child of the ’80s living out in the country, I didn’t have basic cable while growing up. That wasn’t really a bad thing, but it meant that I missed seeing the very early days of The Pee-wee Herman Show on HBO. Since I wasn’t old enough to have seen his standup while debuting the character with the Groundlings, I’m still hoping to get a chance to see that 1981 performance. The nightclub show-turned-TV special would air five years before Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and six years before Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which meant there was plenty of adult humor involved — Image Entertainment released the special as a DVD in 2006, so there’s still hope that I could find it, somewhere.

The comedian’s big break happened with Big Adventure, and with it, I was introduced to Tim Burton, who instantly became my favorite filmmaker (I’m still a HUGE fan, to this day). Of course, I was a Day One fan of Beetlejuice and Batman, eventually following filmmaker and buying the DC comics for many years to come.

Pee-wee’s appearance on Saturday Night Live was a definite highlight, encouraging me to learn how to set my VCR for rewatching the comedy sketch show many more years down the line, and although I felt a little too old watching Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, I was definitely a fan of the bizarre show, which happened to offer subliminal humor for kids of all ages (as if offering a wink and a nudge back to those midnight adult-only shows).

While I wasn’t a huge fan of Big Top Pee-wee, I did see it on opening night at my local movie theater. Reubens’ character was described as being innocent, playful and eccentric. He was also queer-friendly, but was Pee-wee — or Reubens, for that matter — gay? I have no idea and really don’t care, but the joy his character brought me is nostalgic, by every definition of the word.  He was my childhood.

Admittedly, the actor made some really bad personal decisions and was shunned by many because of this — I felt unjustly, compared to what others in Hollywood have done in their lives — but he managed to somehow keep on working, often making jokes at his own expense. Remember that MTV Video Music Awards appearance? Ah, the good old days…

He always managed to steal the show with iconic characterizations in every production he appeared in, whether they were big-budget, indie or animation productions.

Some notable roles which I enjoyed from the actor appeared in The Blues Brothers, Walt Disney World/Disneyland’s Star Tours, Frankie and Annette’s Back to the Beach, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Murphy Brown, Mystery Men, Blow, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, various Robot Chicken releases and Bob’s Burgers. But one of my current favorites was when he returned as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer character, Amilyn, on the brilliant all-star episode of What We Do in the Shadows.

Paul Reubens reprises his immortal role from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the FX series, What We Do in the Shadows.

Had he not gotten into various legal troubles, I wonder what kind of meta movies Reubens would have eventually created in his later years. There are the unproduced scripts he wrote, The Pee-wee Herman Story and Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Movie, which both could have been super successful in this day and age, but they never received the green light.

I missed my chance at seeing him perform on Broadway and I happened to be living in Los Angeles when the adult-skewing Pee-wee Herman Show returned to the Sunset Strip (unfortunately, I passed, because it was expensive, and parking was unbearable, while living as a starving artist). Although I still haven’t seen the Netflix film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, now I’ve got incentive. I’m ready to binge-watch some of his great performances.

Paul Reubens was a creative genius, and his cult-classic status will never disappear. Playhouse may have won 15 Emmy Awards, but as highlighted on one of Nashville’s nightly news shows, his friendship with Minnie Pearl offered him a bit role at her Grand Ole Opry celebration. It’s these not-so-predictable friendships that seemed to be the norm for Reubens. After his passing, I read online tributes by Cassandra Peterson (Elvira Mistress of the Dark) and Katey Sagal, among others, which were incredibly sincere. Apparently, he was one of the few actors in Tinseltown who truly cared about his friends and coworkers, often sending them holiday/birthday messages and gifts.

In recent years, I’ve enjoyed following Pee-wee’s Twitter account and with the news of Rueben’s passing, I really hope his child-like humor will continue in the years to come. Paul Rubenfeld (his original name) created a legend that will hopefully be remembered for all the right reasons by future generations.

He was more than simply Pee-wee Herman. Paul Reubens was comedy.