Last night, I finished “Pee Wee as Himself” on Max. It’s a ROCK SOLID documentary about the character and the man behind the brilliance, Paul Reubens, who passed away in 2023. His contributions to comedy go back to before Saturday Night Live, and my kids and I religiously watched Pee Wee’s Playhouse. It was cutting edge, smart, and funny as hell. By the end of the documentary, one question nagged me, and continues to nag me. Why in the hell did the Kennedy Center choose Adam Sandler, a marginally funny person, AT BEST, to be the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, when his contributions to humor involve such dreck as: Cajun Man, The Waterboy, and numerous other unmemorable/unwatchable films? Reubens’ contributions to American humor and culture are undeniable, indelible and durable. There’s not one of us that can hear the song “Tequila” and not immediately visualize and want to do the Pee Wee dance. See? You know precisely what that looks like. I know the Kennedy Center prefers to give the prize to living recipients, but made an exception for George Carlin. They should make an exception for Paul. Not doing so is an egregious sleight to his brilliance and solid contributions to American humor. No one cares if he rubbed one out in a Sarasota adult bookstore, it’s why they exist. Give Paul Reubens the Twain Prize!
Look at the list of recipients! Comedy icons, then there’s Sandler.
To be fair, Reubens was sidelined from participation for several decades, while Sandler was still actively contributing (whether that’s fair or not, be as it may, Reubens did only contribute to the entertainment world in any meaningful sense for a few years, very long ago).
While Sandler made most of his money doing sort of stupid movies, he also has a few that are more adult (e.g. Murder Mystery) and he has a number of serious drama films (e.g. Punch Drunk Love).
Even if we view Sandler purely as a guy that makes stupid comedies, we might compare his output to people like Pauly Shore, Chris Elliott, or the Farrelly Brothers. Others in that realm had one schtick that was either too extreme or too obnoxious and didn’t know how to adjust or update it. Sandler has done a good job of changing from obnoxious and faux-mentally ill to playing more sincere, likable characters in films that don’t make you feel like you need to clean something off of your soul, afterwards. And, as said, he’s used his money and fame to try and stretch out into other fields, with success.
I’d probably pass on any offer to watch The Waterboy but I’d watch Anger Management or Punch Drunk Love any day, and I’m looking forward to Murder Mystery 3.
From Wikipedia, “The Kennedy Center’s intent is to give the award to living persons, but one recipient, George Carlin, died in 2008 before receiving his award. Carlin died five days after the official press release that he would be awarded the prize.” So that was an unusual situation.
Paul Ruben’s legacy will always be PeeWee’s Big Adventure and PeeWee’s Playhouse. Timelessly quoteable ageless classics. Outside of that unfortunately there just wasn’t a lot of success. The follow up Big Top PeeWee and the decades later PeeWee’s Big Holiday failed to register. Other roles (The Spleen from Mystery Men or an agent from Matilda) were fast forgotten.
As much of a Pee Wee Herman fan I am I unfortunately feel Paul Ruben’s genius began and ended in the late 80s.
Not to mention that Big Adventure was also a Tim Burton film, at the time that Burton was also entering his moment (which, I fear, was also pretty constrained to a few years at the end of the 80s) so you’d really need to dig into the making of to try and figure out which of the two guys deserves more of the praise.
As I understand it, Reubens wasn’t, himself, much of a fan of Pee Wee’s Playhouse so when given an excuse to just spend his free time getting his porn on, that wasn’t a hard choice for the man.
In general, I advocate against documentaries. They have the misfortune to be, overwhelmingly, just reality TV without the common knowledge that it’s all edited for entertainment and/or to push the editor’s viewpoint - honestly or not. If it’s an entertaining and meaningful tale, then every bit so much as that is true, it’s almost certainly evidence that you’re not getting the straight story.
Nah. He talks fondly of it in the documentary. They filmed the 4th and 5th seasons at the same time so he was burnt out on it. He had hoped to do it some more but the arrest put an end to that.
I thought the documentary was brilliant. It was very much told from Paul’s perspective, although yes it clearly was the work of a documentarian. In the documentary it shows him interacting with the producer a lot and trying to do some directing. At least all of the pre-1991 material is pretty well driven by Reubens. By the time 1991 rolls around in the story, Reubens is kind of busy dying from cancer.
I love docs.
Yeah they can be over edited to go one way or another. Thats the beauty of it. You can sit home and make your own determination.
Paul Reubans was a good subject.
He was so much more than PeeWee Herman.
Him going in a porn movie or store and masterbating, well thats kinda the whole point of those places, right?
Unfortunate that he was singled out.
And the fall out. Kinda ruined his whole life.
It always shocks me what people will do to other people for no reason.
The joke I remember when Paul Reubens was caught in that porno theater was that he got arrested and then cancelled for practicing safe sex, while Wilt Chamberlain was admired for claiming to sleep with 20,000 women. (As I remember, Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography in which he made that claim had just been released.)
Hey! Nowadays, even being convicted of sexually assaulting women and being recorded stating you routinely grab women by the genitals isn’t dealbreaker for how high you can go in this country. The pendulum has definitely swung HARD
Sorry about that confusing wording. In the documentary, by the time they get to discussing 1991, Reubens is not participating as much as he previously had been discussing. As in, he was very active in discussing his life from 1951 to 1991. But he stopped cooperating so much when they got to the 1991 part of the story (presumably by this time it was around 2023), then he died.
Forget about whatever personal problems he had after his peak years of productivity. Even if I judge based solely on his work, he falls into that “to each based on their own taste” category. I find his work creepy and off-putting, and not at all funny. And that was the judgment of the 10 to 12 year old me who was watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse (not by my own choice clearly) during the late 80s. Today I find it even more creepy and less funny than I did back in the day. I’d guess that I’m probably not the only person with that opinion.
Which is to say that even if we don’t take into account his personal life and judge him only by his artistic output, he is still a controversial figure.
ETA: Which isn’t to say I think Sandler is one of the all time great’s. IMHO he falls into the area of solidly above average but not Hall of Fame level talent.
I don’t mean to be confrontational here, but is he, though? Your rationale for his controversial-ness (?) appears to be:
Today I find it even more creepy and less funny than I did back in the day. I’d guess that I’m probably not the only person with that opinion.
I’m not a huge Pee-Wee fan, but I think if you judge him only by his artistic output, as you stipulate, he is not controversial at all these days. Maybe in the 80s he was? I could maybe buy that. But now?
I mean in the sense that (and admittedly this is an assumption) that there are probably a fair number of other’s like me who think Pee Wee’s Playhouse is creepy rather than funny, whether as children watching it in the 80s or as adults watching today. Sure, that probably applies to every entertainer, but my guess is that the percentages for people who find Pee Wee’s Playhouse creepy is probably higher than people who think some of the other people on the list of Mark Twain Prize winners are not funny.
Looking at the list, I’d guess that award winners like Richard Pryor, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, and Bill Cosby (assuming again we ignore the problems in his personal life) are not controversial in the sense that there are probably not large numbers of people who think they aren’t funny, and who even cringe and find their work creepy. All I’m saying is that Pee Wee does not fall into the same category as those comedians. Neither does Adam Sandler, but not for the same reasons.
ETA: Of course maybe I’m misjudging the general public. It could be that the numbers of people who find Pee Wee’s playhouse creepy is actually quite small.
Think about Saturday cartoons BEFORE Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and the cartoons after. PWP opened the door for out-of-the-box, unconventional animation and themes like Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead, and many others. To suggest PWP was a flash-in-the-pan that didn’t influence our current culture isn’t remotely accurate.
I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting that the influence was a negative rather than positive. I might not have made the connection, but now that it’s been brought up, I’ll note that I feel the same way about Ren and Stimpy (and Aqua Teen Hunger Force and a lot of other Adult Swim shows) that I do about Pee Wee’s Playhouse. They’re creepy, and I don’t get the attraction. On the other hand, I do enjoy Beavis and Butthead.