Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Pee-wee as Himself’ Director on His Attempts to Gain Paul Reubens’ Trust: ‘There Was a Real Power Struggle Between Us’
In the opening sequence of Matt Wolf’s HBO documentary series “Pee-wee as Himself,” the late artist and performer Paul Reubens mulls over who should have control of a celebrity documentary.
“It turns out that you are not really supposed to direct your own documentary,” he tells the camera. “You are not supposed to control your own documentary. You are supposed to [make] people, many people, alright, everyone but me, feel that as the subject of a documentary that you really don’t have a handle. Have a take. What’s the word I’m looking for? What is everyone telling me that I don’t have on myself?”
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“Perspective,” Wolf says off-camera. Reubens, who originally wanted to direct “Pee-wee as Himself,” disagrees. “You and I are going to be arguing [about that] for a long, long time. Until this documentary is finished. You mark my words.”
Wolf and Reubens’ contentious relationship is captured throughout the two-part doc that chronicles Reubens’ career. In the 1980s, he starred as his alter ego, Pee-wee, in multiple films and a Saturday morning TV series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” But Reubens’ image as a beloved childhood hero was severely tarnished in 1991 when he was arrested for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater, and then again in 2002 when he was charged with misdemeanor possession of obscene material.
“I don’t want this to be like a legacy movie,” Reubens tells Wolf. “It’s not that. I really want to set the record straight on a couple of things, and that’s pretty much it.”
Unbeknownst to Wolf, Reubens was battling cancer throughout the production of the doc. The performer died in 2023 before the film was complete.
Variety spoke with Wolf about “Pee-wee as Himself” ahead of the its Sundance world premiere on Jan. 23.
Establishing trust between a director and a subject is a key component of making a good documentary. But Reubens made it clear he didn’t necessarily trust you. What was that like for you as a documentary filmmaker?
When I meet a subject, I typically say out the gate, “I don’t expect trust. I would like to earn it.” And I certainly said that with Paul and wanted to build his confidence. My goal was to support him. I was coming to this project with a lot of affection but still with autonomy as a filmmaker who wanted to do a portrait of an artist. The amount of conversations Paul and I had probably amounted to several hundred hours of just constant dialogue about what this film would be, how the process would unfold and what Paul’s role would be within that process. So it was a process of trying to earn Paul’s trust, but at a certain point, I had to accept that Paul, by his own admission, was not necessarily a trusting person, and I empathized with why. He was somebody who lost control of his personal narrative in the media. So it seems logical and natural to me that he would be reticent of the documentary process and that it was going to be an unconventional path forward.
He died before the final version of the film was complete, but he did serve as an executive producer on the doc. Was he supposed to have final cut?
I went into the film with the final cut, and Paul went into the film with meaningful consultation. That’s an arrangement that’s becoming more typical in our field, but the nuance of that is very blurry. I didn’t want to make a hit piece and I also didn’t want to make it a puff piece. I wanted to show Paul in his full complexity, and I would say to Paul, “It’s OK to be complicated. Being simple is beneath you. I want to embrace your complexity, and I think you should as well.” He was on board with that. But as it became clearer that documentaries are made in post-production, that created a lot of anxiety for Paul and for me because I wanted to be able to do what I do with integrity. So there was a real power struggle between us, but ultimately, I was the one who had the final cut over this film.
Reubens didn’t inform you that he was suffering from cancer until a few days before he died. Did he ever see a version of film?
Paul had seen 40 minutes of the cut before he passed away. I showed him that cut to try to instill confidence in him that this doc reflected the type of film that we had discussed. I was completely unaware that Paul was sick or had cancer. I spoke to Paul about two weeks before he died. He gave me his blessing to proceed with the project. I could tell something was off or affecting his health, but I had no idea about the gravity. But we had a private and meaningful conversation in which I felt confident proceeding on the film, and he expressed that he felt confident that I would make the kind of film that we discussed. And then he died.
Reubens’s second arrest in 2002 is not addressed in any of your 40 hours of interviews. The film relies heavily on other people to tell that part of his story. Was that a struggle in the edit?
That final interview was scheduled to take place a week after he passed away. So he intended to do that final interview. But, yes, I was concerned that the film, to some extent, would be lopsided — to have him be so present at the beginning and then absent at the end. But the day Paul died, I started reading the 1,500-page transcript of our 40-hour interview. I realized how much we had covered, particularly about his first arrest and how that affected him. I was fortunate that there was an interview with him regarding the second arrest with Stone Phillips, so I was able to include his voice. So yes, it was a challenge when crafting the edit to make sure that he felt present throughout, even though we weren’t able to shoot that final interview.
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