Neat interview with Paul Reubens at the Onion’s AV Club. I first discovered Pee Wee Herman (I was going to write, “My first exposure to Pee Wee Herman”) when I was watching Cheech & Chong films with my dad at far too young an age (like 11). What’s great is that my father had no idea C&C movies were all about drugs. He just found them funny.
Anyway, I went from there to HBO’s showing of Pee Wee’s stage act, which was also transformatively weird. I’m glad he’s rebuilt his career, and I hope he can get funding for his Pee Wee movies.
AVC: The Internet Movie Database says you had “complete creative control over Pee-wee’s Playhouse, with three minor exceptions,” but it doesn’t give any details. Do you remember what the exceptions were?
PR: In the first episode, the network said “You can’t stick that pencil in that potato, because pencils are sharp, and you might encourage kids to stab things.” So we didn’t do that. Let’s see. There was an episode they got a letter about, where there was a fire in the playhouse, and a firefighter showed up and he and Miss Yvonne were flirting, and he said “You have to have a smoke detector,” and she said “I have one in my bedroom, above the bed.” They asked us to change that for subsequent airings of the show, so we went in and looped dialogue over it, so instead, she said “I have one in my kitchen.” I put it back to the original version for the DVD release. There was a shot of a bathroom door that we held for a really long time, and you could hear Pee-wee peeing. They asked us to tone the sound of the peeing down, and add a score so it was a little less graphic. All the changes they asked us to make seemed really reasonable to me, and we accommodated them. I think in 45 episodes, there were only maybe three other changes they ever asked for.
And if you don’t enjoy that, here’s a piece from Foreign Policy about forgotten (but ongoing) territorial disputes. I can’t wait for Canada and Denmark to declare war.
On my Ipod, I have a playlist of songs for the girls, and one song is Mr. Roboto. Your eldest niece–unbeknowest to me–then started to explore the ipod during our trip out west. At one point I asked her what she was listening to, thinking it was the theme to Annie or the Muppet Movie, and she responded with “Grand Illusion.”
“I don’t like it as much as “Come Sail Away,” but it’s definitely better than “Renegade,” she quickly blurted out.
Informing her that girls don’t like Styx but actually like Journey, I tried to get her to listen to “Don’t Stop Believing” but after 20 seconds she complained that the song was dull and wanted to hear “Rocking the Paradise.”
Ha-ha! Your daughter’s gay! Maybe she’d be more into the “rock” part of Journey’s oeuvre: Chain Reaction or Separate Ways, perhaps?
(she doesn’t like Renegade? where did we go wrong?)
She was mortified when I told her Dennis DeYoung was more responsible for the breakup than Tommie Shah
Given the differences in their dispositions, I bet Sela will dig “Girls with Guns” a lot more than her sister will.
BTW: One real highlight of our trip occured on the drive back home. In western Missouri, I looked up overhead and thought I saw a big kite or flat bird; three seconds later I realized that it was no bird–it was a stealth bomber. WOW!!! My wife–busy watching the second season of 24–wondered what sort of plane could distract me while driving. I made the following analogy: seeing a stealth is the equivalent of Jessica Simpson showing up at your door with two bottles of vodka, one of which is already empty.
I’m more of a Lohan-guy. Or Shakira, but I get yer point.
“Thanks. You owe me a bottle.”