Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman in 'Pee-wee's Big Holiday.' Photo courtesy of Netflix
Postcard from Paul Reubens in 1991. Courtesy of the author
Pee-wee's Big Holiday, Reuben's most recent reprisal of the character since the Pee-wee Herman Show in 2009, is a fittingly weird comeback in the form of a homoerotic road movie/love story, Peter Pan as imagined by John Waters.At 63, Reubens has been digitally altered to appear younger, and the effect is that he appears ageless. His suit is still smart, and his eyes are still bright, if a little world-weary from all that they've seen. An effete, well-heeled bachelor who lives, much like the actor himself, in a superannuated efficiency apartment, Pee-wee flips pancakes and flattens grilled cheeses at the local greasy spoon in Fairville, a cozy small-town paradise in Anywhere, USA. Pee-wee rides not a bike, but a toy-sized red sports car. He tows an old woman downtown on a skateboard. "Is there anything sweeter than you?" she asks Pee-wee. "A root beer barrel," Pee-wee responds.
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Pee-wee answered my letter a couple years later after I wrote it, in the fall of 1991.This was by postcard—a black-and-white glossy. Its top-right corner reads: "Hi Cousin Adrian!" In it, the actor is sitting on Chairy, his sentient easy chair playhouse companion, and the shot has him posed with a quill and a notepad, his white platform shoes barely touching the floor.This was, of course, around the time, under painfully dubious circumstances, that Reubens pled no contest to a self-abuse charge in a Florida theater. There were eyewitnesses, a security tape, grisly mugshots where Pee-wee looks like Steve Buscemi at the end of Fargo, but with much longer hair."I found my red bike and it's in the garage," Pee-wee's letter informs me—I'd asked him about it.Uneasy at what my reaction should be, I never wrote my cousin back. The stakes were too high—what was I, a nine-year-old, going to say?That was before I realized that Paul Reubens is but a man, after all—appetites, missteps, enhancements, and all. These days I prize the postcard as a family memento. Perhaps one day, I'll have it framed, hang it on my study wall."Paul Reubens," the base of the frame might read, "born that he might live again."