Inside Pee-wee's Playhouse Read online

  For my brother, Curtis,

  As proof you can do anything you put your mind to

  and a reminder not to rush to put aside childish things

  Introduction

  “Quality television programming can open wide the windows of curiosity for children and enable them to share in the wonder of man’s experience.”

  — Ronald Reagan, October 13, 1986

  [© Ken Sax]

  In the spring of 1986, Saturday morning children’s television was popular, profitable, and predictable. The three major television networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, aired cartoons that lacked in originality and, for the most part, had no educational value. There were superheroes (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians), animated adaptations of live-action movies and TV shows (It’s Punky Brewster, Star Wars), new shows with established characters (Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs), and even a show starring a larger-than-life wrestling personality (Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling).

  [© John Duke Kisch / CBS]

  As children urged their parents to empty their wallets for toys based on their favorite Saturday morning cartoons, some parents began paying closer attention to children’s programming, and many didn’t like what they saw. Critics described the networks’ lineups as being filled with “program-length commercials” for merchandising like Pound Puppies, G.I. Joe, and Care Bears. Peggy Charren, the founder and president of Action for Children’s Television, claimed that Saturday morning TV was “filled with do-goody nonsense” and she urged networks to introduce shows with more educational value. With the scrutiny of children’s television increasing, President Ronald Reagan established National Children’s Television Awareness Week that October, a month after the new season of Saturday morning programming debuted. Television as we knew it would be forever changed.

  Into the Saturday morning television war zone stepped Pee-wee Herman, the man-child in a too-small gray suit of armor, a soldier of a new era of creative children’s programming. While Pee-wee’s Playhouse was hardly the first show to blend animation, puppetry, and live-action — PBS’s Sesame Street had crossed that bridge almost 20 years earlier — it added a subversive, hipster sensibility to the format, providing a gust of fresh air to a tired timeslot reserved for the stale ideas of network execs.

  [© Ken Sax]

  Playhouse’s impact was immediate. The Washington Post described the program as “utterly magical, beautifully realized, and veritably giddy with plaintive charm.” The show gained the respect of parent advocacy groups and critics alike for being the lone Saturday morning children’s show that was not completely animated. In the weeks following its debut, Playhouse was frequently cited as being not only the best new show of the season, but the best program on Saturday morning, period.

  As William S. Burroughs once said, “In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents.” This was certainly true for Playhouse. The show not only provided a generation of children with something wildly entertaining to watch as they ate their sugared cereal, but it also became symbolic of a national changing of the guard. Just as cassette players had replaced turntables, the new and inventive consumed the old and traditional. Video killed the radio star. Pee-wee’s Playhouse killed The Smurfs.

  In fact, it was the popularization of a new and inventive technology that introduced me to Pee-wee Herman. In 1985, my grandpa purchased his first VCR and began taping everything he was remotely interested in that aired on pay-cable networks. By 1986, the surprise success of the film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure ensured that it would be placed in heavy rotation on HBO, often coupled with 1981’s The Pee-wee Herman Show special, which had regained attention as Pee-wee became a household name. My grandpa would sit down with me, before I could even form complete sentences, to watch Pee-wee double features. My parents were aware of my interest and they turned the television to Pee-wee’s Playhouse on Saturday mornings. I watched religiously, often screaming the secret word at the top of my lungs whenever it flashed on the screen and jumping up and down in my footed pajamas. I owned the pull-string doll, which now sounds more like one of the Chipmunks, and it traveled with me to family gatherings, on long car rides, to birthday parties, and everywhere else my parents would let me carry it. One of my cousins had a few episodes on tape that I begged her to watch with me whenever I went over to visit. There are home movies of me imitating Pee-wee’s laugh and obnoxiously asking my family the quintessential rhetorical question, “I know you are, but what am I?”

  When I started working on this book, I believed myself to be the biggest Pee-wee fan around. However, during the two years I spent working on this project, I found thousands of fans all over the world who have kept their love for Pee-wee alive. Birgit Schuetze, a fan from Germany, spent close to $3,000 to fly to the States to see Pee-wee Herman on Broadway last year. Perry Shall of Philadelphia has a full-sleeve tattoo of the Playhouse characters on his arm, with a large illustration of Jambi the Genie on his chest. Ben Zurawski of Chicago, an artist who makes replicas of Playhouse characters, coordinated with the producers of the recent stage show at Club Nokia in Los Angeles to propose to his girlfriend Summer Violett, also a fan, on the Playhouse set.

  Fans Birgit Schuetze and Kevin Buell [© Birgit Schuetze]

  Fans like Birgit, Perry, Ben, and Summer are not alone. There has been overwhelming support for Pee-wee on social networking sites, with over half a million people linked with him on Twitter alone. Thousands of fans have shown up to see Paul Reubens, the man behind Pee-wee’s make up, at public appearances throughout the years with requests for him to sign 15-year-old merchandise and say some of Pee-wee’s signature lines. These are the fans who caused Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim reruns of Playhouse to average nearly 1.5 million viewers a night in 2004, and who have defended Reubens throughout his various personal and professional struggles.

  Perry Shall’s ode to the Playhouse [©Perry Shall]

  Playhouse fans Ben Zurawski and Summer Violett, a year after their engagement [© Ben Zurawski]

  Over the last two years I reached out to over 200 people affiliated with the show — including Reubens himself, but I was informed that he was reserving his memories for a future memoir. As I told his manager, when his book comes out, I will be among the first to preorder a copy. Reubens’ reflections of creating what TV Guide called one of the top 10 cult classics of all time will undoubtedly be worth reading. However, in speaking to others involved in the show’s creation, I realized that there are hundreds of other stories that can be told about bringing Pee-wee’s Playhouse to the screen. What I found most striking during the interviewing process was the pride and affection that everyone I spoke to felt for the show and for their own accomplishments, despite some of their personal feelings about Reubens and problems behind the scenes. Twenty-five years later, many of the show’s crew described Playhouse as the best job they’d ever had. The show’s lasting success is due to the contributions of a number of talented individuals, many of whom allowed their stories to be told in these pages.

  My goal with this book is to trace how a show that must have sounded bizarre on paper managed to captivate the public’s attention throughout the ’80s. Every once in a while something comes along that becomes a dominating force in our society, often without reasonable explanation. For five years, Pee-wee’s Playhouse was it. Off camera, there were personal and professional complications that weighed on the production, yet the end result was often pitch perfect. The exact reasons for the show’s success and its lasting impact on our culture are difficult to define, but my hope is that this book will help readers form their own hypotheses.r />
  Caseen Gaines with Prudence Fenton, animation and effects producer for Pee-wee’s Playhouse [© Angela De Gregorio]

  Caseen Gaines with John Paragon and Lynne Stewart [© Johanna Calle]

  Caseen Gaines with Phil LaMarr [© Angela De Gregorio]

  This book is for loyal fans of Pee-wee’s Playhouse who watched every Saturday morning, as well as for those who always secretly wanted to know what the fuss was all about. This book is for parents who have introduced their children to the show, as well as for teenagers who have recently discovered the show on reruns and DVD. This book is for girls who wanted to be Miss Yvonne and boys who substituted their mothers’ heels for Pee-wee’s platform shoes when dancing along to “Tequila.” Most importantly, this book is for the hundreds of people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to contribute to a pop culture phenomenon and the millions of fans around the world, like myself, who always wanted to take a look inside Pee-wee’s playhouse.

  A promotional still of 17-year-old Paul Rubenfeld in Asolo Repertory Theatre’s 1970 production of Life With Father alongside Isa Thomas, Robert Britton, and William Pitts. [Courtesy Asolo Repertory Theatre]

  1: From the Groundlings Up

  Inside Pee-wee’s playhouse in the late night of February 7, 1981, Miss Yvonne, the most beautiful woman in Puppetland, and her boyfriend Kap’n Karl, joined Jambi the Genie in a magic spell to make their pal’s wish to fly come true. The trio, along with their friends Hermit Hattie, Mailman Mike, Mr. and Mrs. Jelly Donut, and nearly a hundred onlookers, loudly and methodically repeated the magic words: mekka lekka hi mekka hiney ho. With a clap of thunder the lights went out, and from the darkness a nasal voice cried, “I’m flying!” prompting an eruption of laughter and applause from the sold-out audience at the Groundling Theatre in Los Angeles.

  “I’m Pee-wee Herman,” he said. “I’m the luckiest boy in the world.” He flew off into the night sky, waving goodbye to all the adult boys and girls who had just watched the first performance of The Pee-wee Herman Show, the live precursor to what would become the most groundbreaking Saturday morning children’s program of the 1980s, Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

  Pee-wee Herman, with his wonderland of puppets, vintage educational videos, and classic cartoons, seemed to be plucked out of a 1950s television set. Twenty-five years before The Pee-wee Herman Show opened at the Groundling Theatre, Paul Rubenfeld, a young kid from Peekskill, New York, huddled before the living room television set with his brother Luke and sister Abby to watch children’s programming like Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo. These shows followed a basic format that was reproduced on a countless number of local television networks across America: a charismatic host speaks directly to the viewing audience, there are simplistic puppets, and crazy friends drop by at random. Decades after those young viewers reached adulthood, many still held fond memories of these programs, including the young boy who had since changed his name and moved to Los Angeles, where he was hoping to catch his big break.

  A Star Is Born

  [© The Groundlings]

  Pee-wee’s imaginative world had its formal unveiling at the Groundling Theatre, the home of an improvisational comedy troupe and an acting school where the relatively unknown Paul Reubens honed his comedic skills. The show was a creative collaboration of Groundling talent, as was the evolution of Pee-wee himself.

  Reubens began at the Groundlings as a student in a class taught by Phyllis Katz in 1978. As a culminating project, Katz announced that the class was going to prepare a “scene night,” similar to the showcases produced by West Hollywood’s The Comedy Store, to be performed in-house for other Groundlings and invited guests. Each student would develop a character and perform a short stand-up act.

  For Reubens, this was a dream project. While a student at the California Institute of the Arts, he had been encouraged by friend Charlotte McGinnis to appear with her on The Gong Show. Before that time, he’d had aspirations of being a dramatic actor in the style of James Dean, but McGinnis’s offer intrigued him. He decided to give comedy a try.

  Paul Reubens in high school [© Seth Poppel]

  Reubens and McGinnis performed as the Hilarious Betty and Eddie and won $500 for their performance. He continued to work with McGinnis, and other friends on Gong Show acts, ultimately making over a dozen appearances on the show. Reubens realized he had a natural knack for creating larger-than-life characters, and his success on The Gong Show inspired him to pursue comedy full-time.

  “Being a part of this duo act and coming up with material for The Gong Show then led me into the Groundlings, which was an improvisational group that had a real bent towards writing and character creation,” Reubens recalled in a 2004 interview with NPR. “It was pretty early in my career where I realized, ‘No one’s going to do this for me.’ I needed to write and create my own vehicle and material.”

  Although Reubens excelled at character creation, he had difficulty getting started on Katz’s assignment. According to Gary Austin, the founder and artistic director of the Groundlings, Reubens was short on ideas for a character and an act. He told Reubens of an 18-year-old aspiring comedian who used to perform at The Comedy Store, where Austin used to emcee.

  “The kid’s name was Jeff,” Austin says. “And because of his age and liquor laws, he was required to sit in the back of the room until two a.m. before he could perform.”

  According to Austin, Jeff, who refused to give a last name and insisted on being referred to as “Just Jeff,” was an unintentionally memorable performer. He looked like Bobby Kennedy’s assassin and his act revolved around a shopping bag filled with props that Just Jeff would crack jokes about. None of the jokes worked.

  “He would bring out a transistor radio and announce, ‘I will now do my impression of a disc jockey,’” Austin says. “He turned on the radio and moved his lips as if he was lip synching a disc jockey, but he never knew what would actually be playing on the radio at that moment and it was never a disc jockey. It was usually a song or a commercial or a ball game, anything but a speaking DJ. This was the nature of his act.”

  Austin recounted Just Jeff’s characteristics and mannerisms to Reubens, and other classmates suggested ways to exaggerate his behavior. Reubens began improvising, reinventing Just Jeff’s prop routine and speaking in a voice he had created during a 1970 production of Life with Father at Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre. Reubens grabbed a bag and some props from around the room. He began playing with his “bag of tricks,” laughing his now-classic laugh that seamlessly flowed from his new character. Within moments, Pee-wee Herman — named after a “crazy, high-powered kid” Reubens had known as a child — was born.

  An early version of Pee-wee Herman [© The Groundlings]

  Austin remembered a tailored glen plaid suit that had once been in his wardrobe’s heavy rotation until his friends derided him for its lack of style. The suit was now reserved exclusively for when Austin was auditioning for nerd roles, so he suggested Reubens borrow it. Reubens agreed sight unseen.

  The night of the performance, Reubens arrived with a white dress shirt and matching patent-leather shoes. He borrowed a black bowtie from another classmate and put on Austin’s suit. With his costume complete and his routine ready, Pee-wee Herman took the stage for the first time.

  Reubens’ performance was the standout moment of the showcase, and it led to regular bookings at the venue. For a year, he performed for ten minutes a night, making slight alterations to his routine. He began inviting audience members onto the stage and peppering his act with classic schoolyard taunts like “I know you are, but what am I?” and “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer!”

  “At first he was sort of a bratty kid,” Austin remembers. “He was kind of offensive, but he became nicer and more appealing.”

  Initially, Pee-wee was not the only character in Reubens’ arsenal. Among them were Joe Longtoe, a Native American chief with a pro
pensity for dancing on his toes, and Al and Arnie, a pair of corpulent friends whom Reubens created along with fellow Groundling John Paragon.

  “There were so many characters,” Austin recalls. “I never thought that Pee-wee was his best character. I thought he had better ones. It just turns out that, for whatever reason, that’s the one he chose to really pursue, and it made his career.”

  The many faces of Paul Reubens [© The Groundlings]

  Reubens’ other characters took a backseat as Pee-wee took on a life of his own.

  “I used to do this thing [as Pee-wee] where I’d say things like ‘Who’s got a hard-boiled egg?” Reubens remembered in a 2004 interview with Los Angeles Magazine. “I knew something weird was going on when people started coming to shows with that stuff.”

  As Melrose Avenue began to gain more shops that catered to the new wave and punk scenes, the Groundling Theatre attracted more attention from people in the entertainment industry looking for something new. And in 1980, Reubens caught the eye of three individuals who dramatically altered the course of his career.

  Wowing the Audience

  Doug Draizin went into the Groundling Theatre one night after drinks with friends. He was an agent working for the Agency of Performing Arts (APA), but that night, work was the farthest thing from his mind. He took a seat in the front row and soon found himself engaged in a tête-à-tête with Pee-wee, the character throwing Tootsie Rolls into the audience right at Draizin.