Paul Reubens’ ultimate efficiency as Pee-wee Herman is broadly thought of to be the function movie Pee-wee’s Huge Vacation, produced by Judd Apatow and launched by Netflix in 2016. However Reubens truly returned because the character one final time, albeit in a very completely different format: radio.
Airing Nov. 26, 2021, the Pee-wee Herman Radio Hour was a one-time broadcast that noticed the enduring character play KCRW music DJ, with visitor appearances from Jack White and Charo in addition to Pee-wee’s Playhouse characters like Chairry (Alison Mork), Conky (Josh Myers) and Miss Yvonne (Lynne Marie Stewart). Whereas ostensibly a option to port Pee-wee into a brand new format, one of many broadcast’s producers — Most Enjoyable proprietor/founder Jesse Thorn — says it additionally fulfilled a longtime fantasy for Reubens, who died Sunday (July 30) at age 70 following a six-year bout with most cancers.
“We had concepts to include parts of the Playhouse and all of that, however central to it was that Paul liked the thought of being an FM radio DJ” of the type that dominated the airwaves in the course of the FM radio revolution of the Sixties and ’70s, says Thorn. In actual fact, Reubens was so earnest in regards to the gig that whereas recording the published, Thorn says that he, fellow producer Julia Smith and Myers — who wrote a lot of the published with Reubens — “needed to remind Paul repeatedly that it was a comedy present,” including, “It was very clear that this was a honest profession dream of his.”
Whereas the press launch saying the mission contained a letter written by “Pee-wee” that made it sound like the results of a last-minute, fan-driven marketing campaign, in actuality, the published took almost three years to come back to fruition. It started, says Thorn, after a KCRW staffer learn an interview with Reubens through which he talked about his affinity for the station. That led to a gathering between Reubens and then-KCRW program director Gary Scott; the station subsequently reached out to Thorn to supply.
Thorn’s first assembly with Reubens in regards to the mission occurred at Café 101 in Hollywood, the place Reubens informed him his causes for desirous to debut the character within the radio format. “He liked doing Pee-wee Herman and was looking for methods to do Pee-wee Herman with out having to undergo what he needed to undergo in his 60s to be Pee-wee Herman on display,” Thorn remembers.
Produced on a price range of simply $10,000, the present proved to be a time-consuming course of partially as a result of Reubens was “a unprecedented perfectionist,” says Thorn. Paul Bennun, then KCRW’s chief content material officer who oversaw the mission for the station, says Reubens was “a pure producer” who was “punctilious and demanding” (the present went by numerous rounds of edits earlier than making it to air, says Thorn) but additionally “joyful and mild and inclusive.”
“He discovered himself on this place with ethical and industrial possession over this character, and he needed to make it possible for it was projected in ways in which have been as true to his ethical goals as to anything,” says Bennun.
For added star energy, Reubens enlisted superstar mates Charo (who had beforehand appeared on a 1988 Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas particular) and White — who first met Reubens when the actor appeared in a Raconteurs music video — to visitor star on the published.
For the present’s music playlist, Reubens leaned closely on basic soul, weaving in such tracks as “Again Stabbers” by The O’Jays, “You Bought the Love” by Rufus, “I Can’t Get Subsequent to You” by The Temptations and “Come Again Child” by Aretha Franklin.
“Paul had a selected imaginative and prescient, and the imaginative and prescient was pushed by that concept of being a basic FM radio DJ, like being Sly Stone on KSOL in San Francisco earlier than he was a singer,” says Thorn. “There was by no means a second the place he mentioned, ‘What if we threw Huey Lewis in there?’ It was at all times going to be Stevie Surprise and Aretha Franklin.”
Neither Thorn nor Bennun knew that Reubens had most cancers once they labored with him on the mission, however in hindsight, Thorn believes Reubens’ want to play the character on the radio — which exacted much less of a bodily toll — could have been a clue. “The one indications that I had have been that I knew that he didn’t have it in him to do the character bodily anymore,” he says.
Whereas there have been discussions to supply further episodes, the Pee-wee Herman Radio Hour remained a one-off. Being the fastidious performer Reubens was, it merely couldn’t be carried out to his requirements frequently with the type of price range the station needed to work with. “[KCRW had] this concept, like, ‘Oh, we might simply make a bunch extra of those,’” says Thorn. “And I used to be like, ‘I’d like to, however Paul doesn’t wish to do a budget model of this.’”
“There was lots of goodwill and we actually needed to search out out a means of extending the lifetime of that mission,” says Bennun. “However sadly, we weren’t able to make any very agency commitments on the time.”
Thorn and Bennun each have fond reminiscences of collaborating with Reubens.
“He was the sweetest, most humble particular person to work with…He actually cared about how the character was portrayed,” says Bennun. “It actually mattered to him that the best element was going to be carried out in the way in which that Pee-wee would do it.”
For Thorn, who had watched Pee-wee on display whereas rising up, working with Reubens was the conclusion of a childhood dream.
“My job is to satisfy individuals I love,” says Thorn, who additionally hosts the Most Enjoyable/NPR interview podcast Bullseye. “It’s a giant deal to sit down in a room with Pedro Almodóvar or speak to David Letterman. However I used to be sitting in that studio in KCRW and I [thought]…the remainder of my life I can say, ‘I made one thing with Pee-wee Herman.’”
You’ll be able to hearken to the total Pee-wee Herman Radio Hour broadcast right here.
UPDATE: This story was up to date on Aug. 2 at 1:24 p.m. ET to mirror that this was Reubens’ ultimate efficiency as Pee-wee Herman.
