Best. Death Scene. Ever.
He was great as a gay drug dealer in the movie Blow.
In that regard:
What was Hartman going through that you are referencing? His wife was off and on again having major drug issues. Likely psychiatric ones. He was sometime after that interview murdered by her after which she killed herself.
Nothing in that clip seems other than likely accurate. Ruebens and Hartmann did apparently cease to be friends after Hartmann went on to SNL and likely Hartmann did feel that his role in creating the Pee Wee idea and implementation was not adequately credited or recompensed. Hartmann certainly was correct that others ended with Ruebens on bad terms and in court. It is also of some note that the creative team that brought the huge success of movie one did not return with him for movie two.
Should Hartmann have lied in that interview and claimed to be best buds? He was one of apparently many who separated on less than great terms from working together. The sense I got from the documentary was that Ruebens was a creative and interesting man who frequently self sabotaged personally and professionally, with some pathological control issues. His hoarding … collecting … fits.
Why? He was arrested in a theater showing gay porn films.
Well, I got a clue when he was arrested in a gay porn theater. No gaydar needed.
That’s probably why the first film is a beloved classic, and the second film is best forgotten.
FTR, screening in the Sarasota theater was Nurse Nancy (worksafe IMDB link)
- There’s nothing in the name of the theater (South Trail Cinema, “catering primarily to Sarasota’s elderly audience.”) that marks it as a “gay porn theater”,
- there is no mention of it being a gay porn theater in any contemporary or (that I could find) modern news story, and
- the films being shown sound like typical “straight” porn (b/g and g/g).
Other than that, yeah, it’s obvious.
Had the biggest crush on E.G. Daily until I saw she had been married to Rick Salomon. Really? That’s her type? Still cute as a button, but lost a little respect.
Back in the 80s I did too.
I remember her from “The Righteous Apples”.
It was a really interesting (if long) documentary, but the film maker was extremely deferential to Ruebens. You had to read between the lines to realize just how much more he valued his career than he did his colleagues, collaborators, friends, and lovers. I was surprised at the time about how few people came to his defense in the aftermath of what was obviously a bullshit arrest. It’s now pretty obvious that most of those who turned their backs on him thought he was an asshole unworthy of their sympathy.
FWIW, he had a great friendship with Conan O’Brien. Every year he would text him on his birthday to let him know he remembered, and would usually try to have some kind of joke and/or kind thing to say.
I don’t think he was just an asshole to everyone.
But there was obviously career value to that relationship. What if the Letterman folks told Reubens he couldn’t appear on any other late night shows? I have little doubt he would have chosen the higher rated show, friendship be damned.
Conan was just one of the people on his b-day message list. The scene in the doc shows him sending out messages to 11 people just in that one day.
Right. I was always under the impression that it was a straight porn theater. Which isn’t to say that there was never anything that would attract gay men to a b/g film, even if it wasn’t mean for them, if the man were attractive enough with enough focus on him. It’s just that going to this theatre didn’t imply that he was gay.
Of course not. But what comes through loudly unsaid is that the @Llama_Llogophile pegged it perhaps understated early on:
Yeah, I get that.
He collected pictures of naked young men.
An allegation was that some of the pictures were of children, which he denied. His description was that it was just a collection of pictures of naked young men that were popular with gay men in the 1950s.
I think that even in the doco, they dance around the word ‘gay’. There is a problem that in the 70’s and 80’s, gay politics emphasized that the only true form of gayness was anti-church, anti-family, anti-society unrestricted anonymous sex. I know people who still don’t like to be associated with those ideas.
Reubens was a complicated person. Sometimes he was nice in the interview and orhers suspicious and nasty.
That’s odd because it was his project. Reubens even says he suggested topics to ask about.
Overalĺ it’s a good profile of Reubens. He was nothing like his Pee Wee character.