Pee-wee Herman Part 2 with Jamie Loftus

Feels like adults were more upset maybe than kids ever were.

Welcome to Your Wrong About.

I'm Sarah Marshall and here we are in part two of learning about Pee Wee Herman, aka Paul Rubens.

And we're of course learning about the character and the man with author, comedian, and podcaster extraordinaire Jamie Loftus.

I'm so happy to be bringing you part two of this episode.

I loved this conversation.

I feel so lucky to have been able to have it and to pass it on to you.

And now, here's the show.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves because before that, before the TV show comes Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

Oh my gosh.

In 1985.

It's fascinating that it was a movie first and then TV.

I think I really thought it was the other way around.

Yeah.

So it was a movie, then TV, then a movie, and then nothing for a long time.

Again, Paul has, as with everything he ever made, he was really, really involved in every part of production.

But he gets into this in the documentary.

A source of frustration for him is that it's starring Pee Wee Herman, but all the work is being done under the name Paul Rubens.

So it's confusing.

He feels like

he feels like, and again, it's like one of his

things of jealousy of

this is also Tim Burton's first movie that he ever directed when he was like 28, which tried not to think too hard about it.

And the two of them get connected via Shelly Duvall, which is incredible, of course.

Because Because she was in his short film, Frank and Weenie.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So they, so Shelly and Paul are friends because I don't know how, but of course they are.

Of course they are.

They go to the same Juice place or something.

Exactly.

And so he gets connected with Tim Burton.

Tim Burton directs the movie.

And Paul feels that he gets most of the credit and that his career benefits more than Paul's because it says directed by Tim Burton, written by

Paul Rubens.

Who's that?

But no one knows who that is.

Right.

Because he's done, it's that like classic thing of like he's done such a good job at becoming peewee that it becomes kind of a liability.

Yeah.

And this is something that comes up for him again and again.

But off of the movie, he gets the TV show that aired on Saturday mornings on CBS.

Wow.

From 1986 to 1990.

It's the greatest kid show of all time.

It's so special.

And luckily, people generally agreed on this.

It was almost immediately successful.

It was the number two show on Saturday morning.

This is like peak Saturday morning cartoons.

It was, can you guess what was the one children's show more popular than Peavy's Playhouse in 1987?

Oh, boy.

This feels tough.

My Little Pony?

It is the Smurfs.

Unfortunately,

yeah, the Smurfs were huge, I guess.

But I read a lot of the early

writing and criticism around not, I mean, there wasn't a lot of criticism, but part of the reason that parents really liked this, and I didn't really connect this, was it was refreshing because there were jokes that were just for the parents.

And every time I hear that, every time I hear, like, and there's jokes for parents, I immediately and embarrassingly am like, oh, like Shrek.

I, you know,

that was the point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like Shrek, there's jokes for adults.

But the real appeal of it for some TV critics was that it was not based off of existing intellectual property.

Yeah.

I mean, and if you look at 80s cartoons, it does seem like most of them were based on toys.

Care Bears, G.I.

Joe, like Smurfs.

It's all of this, like...

There's this feeling in all of the TV criticism I was reading from that time that most critics and parents were like, oh my God.

And the reason that was happening, and I didn't know this, is because there was a change to FCC laws in 1984.

I'm pulling this from the Buffalo Reagan.

Yes.

Buffalo News in 1987.

Until 1984, the FCC regulated programs and commercials for young viewers.

Since it stopped, there has been an onslaught of commercial-oriented cartoon shows for action figures and other toys.

Since deregulation, the National Coalition on Television Violence reports the number of war cartoons has jumped from a few hours a week to 43 hours a week.

The NCTV said the increase is almost entirely due to toy companies using cartoons to sell various lines of war toys.

How else will we brainwash children into supporting Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal?

Exactly.

Maybe the government can do something to clean up kids' TV, but if not, at least Pee-Wee's Playhouse provides a worthwhile alternative to the other shows.

So people are also just like, this is the one show on the Saturday morning TV block that isn't trying to sell me something.

But at least, but it's like the bar is like, well, at least it wasn't conceived of so that it could be made into a toy.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Like, so it's very, very successful.

It's the number two show.

It has a really unusually high budget because Paul was really adamant that they

keep the production budget high.

It's really also the only live-action show on a Saturday morning block as well.

Yeah, so this continues for basically all five seasons of the show.

There's also a second thing.

There's also a second movie that comes out that I've only seen once.

It's not very good.

It's called Big Top Pee Wee.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't do great.

Paul is disappointed, but ultimately it doesn't affect the success of the TV show.

So we'll kind of glaze over that.

And Pee-Wee's big adventure is basically like, it's a big adventure.

He kind of has a hero's journey, right?

He has to get his bike back.

Exactly.

He has to travel across America.

Big Top Pee Wee is more based on like Pollyanna, where it's like, we got to get the town together.

It's very circus-based.

Like, you can see why he was sad because he's pulling in

all the stuff he loved for me as a kid.

But sorry, Paul.

The movie was not very good.

Love means telling the truth.

But the show is super successful.

Another one of my favorite fun facts about it is that, you know, they would do the king of cartoons would come and introduce the cartoon of the week, which sometimes would just be an old cartoon in the public domain, but it was also the first consistent animation gig for the creator of one of my favorite cartoons, Hey Arnold.

There are these shorts called Penny Cartoons on Pee Wee's Playhouse that was created by Craig Bartlett as well.

So there's like this very, I feel like it's most often like the Dana Carvey show is considered like this launching point for all of these very successful creative people.

But Peewee ends up launching a lot of people,

including Tim Burton,

the creator of Hey Arnold.

He's a big part of Lawrence Fishburne becoming more mainstream successful, like all these people.

You know,

Phil Hartman.

Right, because he was like a theater guy, I feel like, before that.

Yeah.

Well, and I was thinking of Hey Arnold earlier because Arnold is also like a child who also has like the most incredible, cool, basically adult living space that you could possibly imagine.

Yeah.

And it's weird because I feel like the appeal of Arnold is kind of like

different where he's like a child who is an adult.

Like he is, yeah.

He's so mature.

He's kind of the bizarre O Pee Wee.

Yeah.

And also that he like lives in a boarding house with his grandparents.

So he's like kind of a free agent, you know, who's like, and he's like a kid about the city.

It's a little bit of a noir even.

It kind of is.

Yeah.

Arnold, I mean,

also a show I loved, but he lived in the real world.

Oh, yeah.

Arnold had to like deal with bureaucracy and stuff.

It was exhausting.

It's brutal.

It's God.

The Hay Arnold Christmas episode where Mr.

Wynne gets reunited with his daughter after they were separated during the Vietnam War.

I'm like,

because a callous adult won't do it unless Arnold can get Nancy's Famoni snow boots.

And because for adults, everything has a price.

But oh my God.

Yeah.

it's I love crying at that episode it's so beautiful um

and yeah I guess very different for pee-wee which is weird which is why it's weird that they're connected but but they are yeah they support each other you know they're like each other's

force soulmates like

I don't know What's Her Ass and Kylo Wren.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

But so the show lasts for five seasons, including an incredible Christmas special.

Have you seen the Pee-Wee Christmas special?

No, I have not.

Sarah, pick myself.

You would fucking lose it for this Christmas special.

Let me just.

I can't wait to lose it.

Which is why it's so funny that in retrospect, people are like, I wonder if he was involved in the queer community because listen to the list of guests on this show.

It also starts with him singing a welcome song in front of these like hot navy guys.

Of course.

So for moment one, you're like, okay,

we're locked.

I'm sorry.

I'm here.

Okay, here are the people who are in the Christmas special that are not just pee wee.

Joan Rivers, Dinah Shore,

Ja-Jacques Gabor,

Oprah Winfrey, Little Richard, KD Lang,

Cher,

Charo,

Whoopee Goldberg,

Grace Jones,

Frankie Avalon.

There we go.

Annette Funicello.

Like

just

queer icons, top to bottom.

Like, ooh, it's he, he made it to kind of bounce back from being disappointed about Big Top Pee Wee.

And it is so worth it.

It's so good.

I feel like the weirdest part of the story is just that somebody got to do what they wanted to do creatively and that they were able to do it.

And it was just on TV and people loved it.

Until.

Until, inevitably.

Yeah.

Until, so I think one of the big important things to correct that I think is misremembered in general, I definitely remembered it this way is that Paul Rubens is arrested in 1991.

It is often portrayed that it was because of this arrest that the show was canceled.

That is not true.

Even though

as time goes on, that would be reported reported more and more, even though at the time it's not true.

Paul decides.

It's just like the brain seeking cause and effect.

And then one newspaper does it.

So the others copy it or something.

Yeah.

We're just, I, I don't, or people or people just don't give a shit.

I don't know.

But like, as a Pee Wee historian, I give a shit.

And Paul decided to end the show after five seasons.

I love that.

He was really burned out.

He was exhausted and was like, I, you know, I think that we had a good run, but I'm ready to end it.

And I just love stories like that.

Ending a show on your own terms.

It's like, oh, what a privilege.

What an incredible thing to be able to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also to be able to resist, you know, being sort of bribed to do more of it.

And like, look, I know we all know Gary Seinfeld is terrible, but I do appreciate.

As you know, I dream in Seinfeld sometimes.

And like, Seinfeld is probably like one of the only shows to have been ended on purpose by the people who made it when it was like the top show in the country, which it was.

You know,

you have to be able to walk away from something.

Yeah.

I think.

And of course, we're seeing like the effects of, you know, and we really can really just blame studios and corporations for this mostly, but this thing of like having something that audiences like and then giving it to them so hard and refusing to make anything else until everyone just like cannot stand you anymore.

Movies are being made by like the worst kind of casino gambler, which is somebody who just like stands at the slot machine for 14 hours because they have to keep going because

surely this will work out if we just keep doing it as opposed to like, you know, especially in entertainment, which is a creative field ultimately to sort of be like, I am the person who makes this and I

don't I don't have anything anymore and I don't want to do a final season of Game of Thrones.

I think it's just rare to be able to like

have dignity

as a professional creative person and all.

And this feels like a rare instance of getting like I also think of like Nathan for you.

I'm pretty sure Insecure was ended in that way fleabag where you're just like, this is all there is to the story.

Yeah, the story is over.

You can't make me make more story because you paid me too much.

And I love that.

Because stories really do, like, they just end.

And then you, if they're truly over, you cannot do anything more with them.

I really think.

And Pee-Wee could have gone on forever, but it was like he was done.

He was done.

And he's Pee-Wee.

So, you know.

No one can replace him.

And I know that because many have tried.

And when you think about it, this is very clear because the show ends at the end of 1990.

And Paul,

who...

was never estranged from his family, but hadn't been able to spend a lot of time with them since becoming very famous for like basically 10 straight years.

Yeah.

Wow.

Goes back to Florida to spend time with his family.

And it is while he is spending time with his family in the, I think, the summer of 1991 that he is arrested in Sarasota.

This is like the most famous incident.

And so I want to just get into exactly why.

I mean, it's obvious.

He was arrested at a gay porn theater in Sarasota, possibly the same one one he was arrested at when he was 18 years old.

But he is arrested, of course, as Paul Rubens.

But the public doesn't really know who Paul Rubens is.

They know who Pee Wee Herman is.

Right.

He's the man who doesn't exist.

Right.

But now, all of a sudden, Paul Rubens does exist, and everyone's mad at him.

So, what exactly happened here is, and I do appreciate that the residents of Sarasota are like, no, hold on, because

he is arrested allegedly, which he denies, and I believe him that he was exposed or like jerking off in a porn theater, essentially.

Which, to be clear, like, even if a person does do that, it is kind of the best place to do it.

Yeah.

Who fucking cares?

Like, he wasn't, even if he did do it, he wasn't the only person to do it that hour.

And also, if this were a straight porn theater, it would be a very different conversation, obviously.

Yeah.

So there's already this like homophobic witch hunt aspect to it.

But the way they explain it is just so fucking weird because they're saying there are no fewer than three Sarasota undercover cops in this porn theater.

Yeah.

What's the story there?

In the middle of the day,

the two movies showing were called Nancy Nurse and Turn Up the Heat.

And they were just waiting to see someone jerking off.

Like, it's very unclear.

Also, at the time, Paul, like, Paul denies that he, he doesn't deny being at the theater, but he was like, I wasn't jerking off in the theater.

And there was, if it had gone to trial, which it didn't, his lawyer said that they had footage of, like, security footage of Paul in the lobby at the time that these three cops were, for some reason, looking for people jerking off at a theater, which should be illegal.

Like, it's, it's so fucking weird.

Um,

and I was like following this story like day to day because it unfolds over the course of a couple of days.

At first, it's just the news that breaks.

And

CBS is quiet about it

because the show, they're no longer airing new episodes,

but they are still airing reruns.

And so the decision is: do we continue to air reruns?

At first, there's a CV CBS executive that's like, yeah, that's like, we will probably keep airing it.

But within a day, it's when his mug shot comes out that the tide changes on him significantly because he doesn't look like Pee Wee Herman.

He's got longer hair.

He's been, he hasn't been working for a couple of months.

He's a human man.

He's hanging out in Florida.

He looks like a different person.

And it seems like that had a, and that mugshot being so everywhere.

Yeah.

Is

what turns, interestingly, and again, I, I viewed this very differently.

It doesn't turn his fans against him, really.

It doesn't turn his friends, family, or most TV critics against him.

It turns the network against him.

Yeah.

CBS, after the mugshot is released, pulls reruns of the show, which only would have been running for another two months.

So it's also very like manufactured crisis.

Right.

Disney, I guess that he had like, he had a video at one of the roller coasters or some shit.

They pull that and make a big deal about it.

And there's these like

classic

Sarah Marshall canon, like two narratives that develop among TV critics, one of which I have like a couple headlines here.

There's one in the El Paso Herald Post that says, help kids separate Pee Wee Herman and actor.

And I'm like, help Paul Rubens separate Pee-Wee Herman and actor.

Also, why do your kids need to hear about any of this?

That's a big question.

Listen to how I was like, were these conversations happening?

I certainly hope not.

An elementary school child might be told that police say Rubens broke the law by touching his private parts in a movie theater, but that the allegation has to be checked out further.

She noted that a child may reply, if the police said he did it, didn't he really do it?

I would explain that this is very complicated.

It's a weird way to teach civil rights.

The point is that just because the police or media say somebody did something, that doesn't make it true.

Dr.

Alberta Serrano, a child psychiatrist who is the medical director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center, said parents should deal with children's disappointment that somebody they like is accused of doing something wrong.

If a child wonders whether he can believe in anybody, Parents can acknowledge that many people in the world do disappointing things, but that others have been reliable over a long period of time.

This is so interesting that they're like, how to talk to your child about Pee Herman?

I don't know.

And I mean, I get that it's like a very strange moment as a parent, presumably, because kids do hear stuff.

I don't really think that they're having school year conversations involving the word allegations necessarily.

No.

But, you know, that like they talk and

the TV is on and everything.

But A, from an adult perspective, which I don't think we had at the time because we were in the sort of like George Bush family values, Murphy Brown can't have a baby era of like sex is terrible and we're terrified of it.

Also, Paul Rubbins is on Murphy Brown.

He has an arc.

Anyways, see, there you go.

Fornicators.

But like,

it does feel like we're at a moment at a nation of being like particularly scared of sex and particularly puritanical.

Yeah.

But also that like, I imagine as a parent, if you have a child who's like pre-adolescent, you're like, I don't really want to have to talk about this topic and like introduce it this way because it's like not necessarily something that you can or should process depending on your age right as a fan of this show so it's like as an as adults we should have been been able to be like well if you did do it then like who fucking cares who cares right but you're forced to sort of like have all these like weird parent conversations i guess as part of it although i don't know how many people had to be having that's the other thing you're like is this for it feels like adults were more upset maybe than kids ever were it's it definitely seems that way and that was another thing that i i was learning through this because there are plenty of TV critics who stand up for him and blame CBS.

This is from the L.A.

Daily News.

Sorry, kids, but business is business.

Sure, CBS had basked gladly in the acclaim

accorded to this stylishly stylized postmartyrn's children's show because it had won like at least a dozen Emmys in its run.

It won a ton of awards.

They were like, my God, we're doing great.

Prestige.

Sure, it was Rubens, not Pee Wee, who was arrested.

Sure, there's room for debate as to whether what he is accused of doing is actually a crime, but it didn't matter.

The lesson children can take from this is that if you make a mistake or are simply accused of making a mistake, you will pay dearly.

Even if the judicial system eventually supports Rubens' claims, disputing the police version of

what went on in the theater and he's found not guilty, the arrest ensures he'll never again be found innocent.

And innocence was a big part of Pee-Wee's charm.

So he essentially blames the network for buying buying into the narrative, which I think is, and the media for buying into the narrative.

Yeah.

Of like, we must immediately distance ourselves from this person because that sort of, that communicates,

yeah, like a worse outcome than what had happened so far legally.

Yeah.

And this is, I mean, this is completely devastating for Paul because this is also tacitly outing him.

Yeah.

And in the worst way possible, or one of them.

In the worst way, it's his worst nightmare.

His friends are extremely supportive.

They basically get him out of Florida in disguise.

They're reassuring.

They're like, we're going to turn this around.

It's okay.

But immediately, he is like, he says in the documentary, the public has a memory like a steel trap.

So don't kid yourself or me about how it works.

30 years later, I still feel those effects all the time.

And

he's right.

Like that, that was still how people, and still is how some people talk about him.

Yeah.

Well, and the way that I remember my dad describing it with his great grasp of current events was that the guy who played Pee Wee Herman was arrested for,

in reality, doing what he was accused of in an adult theater, but in my dad's version, doing it like at a kids' movie, and there were kids everywhere.

Because I think that was like not just my dad, but the sort of like homophobia of the time and of the time before of like, if you're outed as gay, then that also, you know, and of course of today, growingly,

that means you're also at as someone who's unsafe to be around children or to even make media for them.

And that, you know, if you have any kind of allegedly deviant sexuality, then like it's all equally dangerous.

And that sort of what we were, what we were still teaching kids as well at that time.

And still.

And still, I mean, there's so much, I think that like the, unfortunately, the timing of this documentary, and also unfortunately for Paul, because it doesn't seem like he wanted this,

his life to really exist within this narrative.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, it does, where it's like

we're seeing that so frequently with any queer entertainer right now, particularly if they're out.

It's getting harder and harder to maintain a platform as a queer creator.

And I mean, a parallel to this, of course, is Norm McDonald getting fired from Saturday Night Live, to my understanding, because he made too many O.J.

Simpson jokes on weekend update.

And McDonald Meyer golfed with O.J.

Simpson, so you can't do that.

So it's like exhausting.

You know, you

will

spong your name out of our records and stop showing your show if you're accused of doing something

that's like a bit of a sex scandal, but you can kill your wife, obviously.

Right.

I mean, that's just a day at the park.

That's, I did, I did not know that.

That's so fucked up.

Yeah.

And that, you know, and maybe NBC has a different story, but

I don't believe it.

Yeah.

But I also just wanted to talk about like the media narratives.

This was existing alongside.

Obviously, there's still a lot of queer panic in the early 90s, but the specific queer panic that we are looking at here and the story that you see beside this, not in conversation with it.

First of all, this is like not funny, but like, here's this.

Bill Cosby did defend Paul.

And I was like, we don't need you.

We don't need you.

It is wild to see Bill Cosby.

Bill Cosby

is among Rubens defenders.

They are judging a man without the right of due process.

I was like, well, I wonder why that's on your mind.

Totally different reasons.

But the other story.

And then Alan Dershowitz takes the floor.

But the other story that you see alongside this one, just because of timing, is Jeffrey Dahmer.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

And the silence of the lambs is in theaters.

Yeah.

Like queer panic is very, very high right now.

And you'll often, there were a few different examples I saw of Paul Rubens and Jeffrey Dahmer mentioned in the same sentence.

And

this will happen to Paul again in the early 2000s, where it is just a hyper-conflation of like Paul, obviously, even if he did what he was accused of, which it sounds like he didn't,

didn't hurt anybody.

But he's being held alongside a serial killer.

Like,

and it's, it's done very matter-of-factly.

And he is right to say that this irreparably damages his career.

Yeah.

But his fans still love him.

There are, I didn't know this, but there were protests outside of CBS.

They're here.

They're queer.

They're also afraid of what people are going to say about them and comparing them to serial killers.

Well, what's interesting is Paul's queerness doesn't really come into the equation here.

It's more,

it's interesting that there are these protests outside of CPS for Pee Wee, not for Paul.

It's, and there's, there's families, there's kids, there's adult fans of the show that are like, bring back Pee Wee.

I love that.

I had no idea that that happened.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah, it was, I mean, there were thousands of calls and fan mail that he received.

I think if the public had had their way,

the show would have been back on.

It seems like the network was really outnumbered.

Which is interesting because then, because of the network just being able to override that, we then,

you know, until we go back and look at it more deeply, can easily remember something as like, we can easily look back and remember it as if the American people spoke with the same voice as CBS executives, which in fact they so rarely do.

Exactly.

Yeah, the public reception.

I mean, I had no idea that

I always thought the whole world turned turned on him right that wasn't even true it was just the people with power turned on him yeah and he and it doesn't take that many it turns out and i feel like yeah the public memory is so short that we are very quick to conflate the people with power turned on you to everybody turning on you it's like all of the resources turned on him basically yeah there are a few moments for him like there is i again another thing i didn't know is that this all happens in i think like july

that september he appears as pee wee at the VMAs for like 30 seconds, just, and people are losing it.

They're so happy he's there.

All he says is heard any good jokes lately and then presents something.

And it seems like there might be a road back for him, but it's very unclear.

In his personal life, he becomes really good friends with Debbie Mazar,

who's like a character actor who I'm always like, what is she most famous for?

And you could say good fellas but um I think of her as yeah

hot girl and good fellas but she's I feel like she's just like her and younger too she's I really like

oh well she's like she's in Empire Records iconically I feel like she's one of those people who's been iconic in like 30 different movies when you add it all up so she she and Paul become really close at this time they're close friends till his death and it's it's At this time where he's obviously he's very depressed,

he's like in the house house most of the time.

There's like the windows are blacked out for several weeks to avoid paparazzi.

And he really relies on his friends.

And that I think is like an element of the back half of his life is he became very invested in friendships.

I think similar to John Waters, like he was obsessed with.

making sure he gave everyone really thoughtful birthday messages, which is just one of the most, the best qualities in a person.

I wish I were better at it.

I know.

I tell myself that if you can get like a really thoughtful gift together at any other time of the year, then that kind of balances out.

But I don't know.

But yeah, it's and also like continuous with the show, you know, where it's like, it seems like if there's something that you learn by example from it, it's to invest in community.

No, absolutely.

And he, I think, like, after having, I think just like, honestly, the youthful like rivalries and all this stuff, he really, he really sinks himself into

good friendships because also all of his friendships are tested by this.

And the friends who stand by him are

his, basically become his family.

There is a lot of disappointment and still hurt, it sounds like, based on how he talks in the documentary, on his peers who make fun of him.

There is a former Peewee's Playhouse producer that sort of, you know, denounces him after this happens.

Phil Hartman makes jokes at his expense.

Sam Kinnison says he should be executed.

Like, oh, get it together, Sam Kinnison.

I mean, just, you know, Kevin Nealon, Soupy Sales, Jim Carrey, like, there's all of these his peers.

Because you become material suddenly.

Exactly.

And Paul, I would say he neither forgives nor forgets in these situations.

And so the friends who stick by him,

he really does everything he can to care for them.

He becomes really good friends with David Arquette, which becomes important later in his life.

Did you know David Arquette is Bozo?

No.

Well, guess what, Sarah?

David Arquette is Bozo.

What iteration of Bozo?

What's Bozo?

The current one.

My friend saw him as Bozo last weekend.

What?

He's around.

This is huge.

David Arquette is Bozo is one of my favorite sentences.

To be clear,

Bozo is like an eternal being who is played by different people at different times, basically?

Yes.

So I

was weirdly very, I don't know.

I think it's because it's connected to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, which is like in not my neighborhood, but I performed there a lot.

And there was this big story

like last year, maybe a couple of years ago, where David Arquette.

and Billy Corgan were trying to buy the rights to Bozo the Clown because you can't just perform as Bozo.

You got it.

You gotta buy it.

You gotta franchise it.

And so they had, they were like really trying to buy the rights to Bozo so that David Arquette could be Bozo, and they did it.

And now David Arquette is Bozo, and sometimes he's around town playing Bozo.

That's just kind of what he's up to right now.

Just doing Bozo, you know?

For the next couple of years,

Paul very much, like, his career is never as big as it was in the late 80s again.

But he continues to work and do really, like, like

he does a lot of smaller iconic roles.

He's in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That's how he meets David Arquette.

He plays the penguin's father in Batman Returns with Tim Burton again.

So he kind of falls into his friends who stood by him and works with them.

And that's how he's able to.

He has an arc on Murphy Brown.

He appears a lot on Joan River Show.

And this is kind of how he continues through the 90s.

And then so into the early 2000s, by the early 2000s, he is starting to step out more.

It seems like the public is like, we miss Pee-Wee.

They re-release Pee-Wee on DVD.

It's being shown on Adult Swim.

People are like, maybe it's time.

Maybe it's time for more Paul.

He hosts this game show on NBC

as a character.

I don't know.

I can send you a clip of it, but he he plays a character named Troy Stevens, and people are like, hmm, okay.

He's in the movie Blow.

I remember that weirdly.

That's the first thing I remember seeing him in.

I've never seen Blow.

It's not that good.

But like, people like that.

And then he starts talking about coming back as Pee Wee.

He talks about these.

few scripts that never come to pass.

He has an idea for something that I was like, oh man, I wish he'd gotten to do that.

He wanted to do basically a like black comedy mockumentary about how Pee Wee came to be and had the script since the 80s.

And he said that it's not dissimilar to Valley of the Dolls.

I was like, what do you

mean?

He has one that is like a Wizard of Oz kind of journey thing.

He has all of these ideas.

And he starts being like, what if Pee-Wee came back, you guys?

And everyone was like, we would love that.

We would love that.

But

that does not happen.

And this I don't remember at all, even though it's the peewee

indiscretion public narrative that I was alive for.

But, you know, he's doing basically just mostly sitcom bit parts until late 2002

when he is in the middle of doing a bit part in an Elton John music video.

His house is raided by the LAPD.

This was not something that I was familiar with until I think he passed.

Like I definitely knew, everyone knew about the porn theater narrative, which, by the way, I should say, foreclosure for that, he pleaded no contest,

paid a $50 fine, was technically like, you know, they said if it had gone to trial, he would have been found innocent because there was that footage of him in the fucking lobby.

Oh my God.

But the public didn't forget.

So the first thing doesn't even go to trial.

He pleads no contest.

Of course not.

Yeah.

I would apply to this.

There was more children's education centered on this as a lesson in innocent until proven guilty.

We can bring that up more in the curriculums.

But man, yeah.

And of course, that part of the story is the part we don't know.

Yeah, right.

But in late 2002, this is the one that I think really kind of breaks his spirit for some time.

And it's on his mind for the rest of his life.

His house is raided by the LAPD because there were

reports of child pornography at his home.

The story that this is presented alongside is Jeffrey Jones.

These two,

they're presented as, again, equal offenses.

So I'm just going to read from the original report so you can hear how it was reported.

A year-old pornography investigation has led to the filing of criminal charges against two Hollywood actors, Paul Rubens and Jeffrey Jones.

Rubens was charged with one misdemeanor count of possessing materials depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual conduct.

He surrendered to authorities Friday and was released on $20,000 bail.

Jeffrey Jones was charged with hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose for sexually explicit photos, a felony, as well as misdemeanor possession of child pornography.

So these charges are very different in their severity.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Jones and Paul Rubens, it sounds like they had met the story.

The story is honestly unclear.

But with regards to Paul, I think it definitely hurts him that Jeffrey Jones committed a felony.

He committed child abuse.

Paul's is much harder to kind of pin down.

And yeah.

So as he explains it, as his lawyers explain it,

and as David Arquette, aka Bozo explains Bozo himself and we must trust Bozo and I want to be like careful with how I talk about this because I know that

and I know your listeners know this but I don't mean to minimize any of this but I feel it does come back to a homophobic witch hunt for Paul for years he and David Arquette aka Bozo were like Paul was really into collecting vintage pop culture stuff and so what they would often do is go to flea markets, go to whatever, places where you could get boxes of old magazines.

And he would buy boxes of old magazines.

And he had a lot of old magazines at his house.

And it was the investigation involved the LAPD in an incredible use of their time, as always.

Again, yeah, and to continue our theme.

Goes through over 30,000 photos, bits of footage, all of this stuff.

After months and months of this, they find two images that are considered questionable,

both of which are determined to not actually

be photos

of underage people.

Okay.

And it was very unlikely that Paul had ever even accessed it because it was deep in these boxes of stuff.

So

this is a far more complicated thing, like the 1991 thing is pretty fucking cut and dry.

Like,

this is a more severe accusation um

but just from what i've been able to gather it it's there's there's nothing to it and and paul is is devastated and basically it's an attempt to sort of comb through everything in the hopes of finding something and ultimately finally saying well i guess we didn't but we but we sure did try but it's too late like the dam and the damage is done and then being connected to somebody who very manifestly did it and wasn't an abuser, yeah.

And had a like pretty clear intent and also, as you said, actually took it out of that realm into actual child abuse.

And again, to sort of be like connected

or sort of positioned as if there is a connection between you and someone who is

demonstrably very dangerous when

it's, you know, despite attempts, nobody has uncovered that information about you.

No.

And yeah, I would not, I would, I would go, I would not seek out public life at that point either.

I'll just say it, Peewee innocent.

Peewee innocent.

Peewee is innocent.

But this breaks him.

It affects his life in every single way because now he is being accused of, I mean, because he was a former children's entertainer and now he's being framed as an abuser of children.

Yeah.

He's really close with, he had the same assistant for

40 years about

and is a huge part, was a huge part of her child's life and had to, like, could only be supervised with her for years.

So, so this,

it just like, it, it seems like it really breaks his spirit.

This does go to trial.

And what happens, and I'm sure you have examples of this.

I wish I had more time to do a little bit more research on the history of just obscenity laws.

Yeah.

What ends up happening is he is sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor account of, quote, possessing obscene materials of minors engaged in sexual conduct

based off of these two pictures deep in boxes in his house, which he still objects to, and his lawyers still object to because he was like, they were not photos of underage people and I had never accessed the material.

But that is what he ends up pleading guilty to, which means that he has to register as a sex offender.

And again, like, I understand if people find that objectionable, but I would also, again, point out that

there's such a difference.

You know, intent, I think, is

meaningfully, at least in theory, such a big part of any functioning legal system, including this one.

And there's such a world of difference between seeking out images depicting minors in such a context and buying publications,

especially at quantity, that you don't have the capacity to, before you purchase, go through and evaluate, or really anyway,

a lot of the time of determining that everything was produced ethically and, you know, is on the up and up and that everyone is over 18.

This is famously a problem with Tracy Lords' career because she made

so many porn movies before I feel like an old person saying porn movies.

I don't know.

But she acted in a lot of porn before she turned 18.

And so retroactively, all of that became, I think, technically child pornography, but nobody involved in making it,

well, probably, I mean, you know, I'm sure people, I'm sure there were whisperers, but she had forged materials.

She had, you know, had an age that she was pretending to be.

It's just what happened.

It's how things went.

And so retroactively, things fall into a different category once people know what they know than they seem to initially.

So just to say that it's nothing about his intent, I think, very clearly was proved by the case or what he had in his house.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, again, it's like, if you feel differently,

that's totally, I mean,

I think it's such a difficult thing to talk about because everyone's going to react to the story differently.

It's very personal.

But pursuing less detail is not the answer.

And I think in a state of fear, we can be persuaded to

want, you know, to consent to having less information, but we always need more.

And what I think is indisputable is that there were very political reasons for doing this.

It was done by a recently elected city attorney named Rocky Decadilla, who had stated that child welfare was one of his big issues.

And at this point, Paul Rubens was a, you know, proven to be a viable public punching bag.

Like this was, this was an easy win for this city attorney.

And so

I have a lot of cynicism about it.

And it

was extremely difficult and painful for for him not to mention that after this he ends up his father who is in the idf his father's dying paul goes down to florida and is his caretaker for the end of his life which uh makes me cry i didn't know that he did that and i was like oh we're we're like the same yeah but his dad is actively dying as this obscenity case is going on oh my god and so he has to go back to his father passes away when he has to fly back to la for a couple of days to deal with this And so he's just at an extreme low.

And for the first time, he really like he makes a big, a public appearance as himself to defend himself.

Because in 1991, he goes on the VMAs as Pee Wee.

But here it's like the crime he's being accused of is severe that he needs to show up as Paul Rubens.

And he does.

And he is emphatic of his innocence.

He is asked directly, I think on CNN.

He says, emphatically, no, I was not in possession.

I feel feel like I live in a country where I can collect what I want to collect as long as I'm not hurting anyone or exploiting children, which I am not.

So he publicly defends himself, but the damage is done for the next, again, 10 years or so.

This haunts him.

Towards the end of his life, he has a

late career resurgence in the

mostly because of now there's this like, you know, the Judd Appetows of the world who grew up watching Pee Wee are now making movies and want to to make movies with him.

I think Judd Appetow, Paul Russ, like that whole kind of like

Gen X comedy guy, they all want to work with Pee Wee and they want Pee Wee to get out of the house, basically, because, you know, Paul's very introverted.

That's the thing about kids.

They grow up and they make movies.

And don't we love that?

And so, with the help of sort of that cohort,

he brings Pee-Wee's Playhouse to Broadway in 2011 with a lot of the original cast.

It goes super well.

He's very encouraged by it.

There was a one last Pee Wee movie that is okay that came out in 2016 on Netflix, which is so it's like a sort of big return to pop culture.

The movie isn't a big hit.

It's not great, but he's back, you know, like he's he's fully back.

And that, but, but even that, like, keep in mind, this is 12 years after the obscenity case.

So there are large chunks of time where he is mainly, it seems like focused on his friends and his family.

And then the last thing of mention is this documentary that he worked on or that he didn't.

Well, it's complicated.

It's directed by Matt Wolf, who is a queer filmmaker who grew up as a peewee kid and it was like his big dream to make this documentary about him.

Okay, so this documentary sort of starts taking shape, I think,

like around 2020-ish.

Matt Wolf is sending messages.

He's like, hey, what if you did?

Like,

he writes apart a whole section of this because this documentary was in production

right up until and after Paul Rubens died.

And just to like really pull into focus how private he was, no one knew he was sick.

He was struggling with cancer for the last six years of his life, the entire production of this documentary.

The director found out that he had died from the news.

He had no idea.

There's this

incredible quote from Paul that is like, the key to keeping a secret is to tell nobody.

And

he was really good at that because

he was sick for the last half decade of his life, which explains and doesn't explain.

I think some of it's just who he is, how he acts through this documentary.

It's his first time, obviously, publicly stating he's gay.

The director doesn't realize that this documentary is almost certain to come out once Paul isn't there.

Yeah, basically, he and the director have this very complicated, drawn-out relationship where Paul, as he always has been, is obsessed with control and is really threatened by losing control of how he's perceived, which, given his history, could not make more sense.

But he's basically feuding with this documentary director who loves him the entire time because he's not comfortable with giving the creative reigns or his narrative over to someone else because he's never shared any of this before.

No one knew that his relationship with Guy existed.

No one knew that he didn't drag.

No one knew any of this.

And yet he documented it all.

Yeah.

It was all in these boxes, right?

Like Matt Wolf wrote an essay about making this because you can see, you should watch the documentary.

Paul is, can be very combative.

He sometimes kind of bullies Matt and he's like, why should I listen to you?

I've watched all your documentaries and I only liked one and it was only sort of.

And I was like, whoa, I would walk into traffic.

Like Matt Wolf, spiritually strong.

I would not have survived that.

Change your name, move to another country.

Yeah.

Right.

But he's very, he's very irritated that he cannot have the control over this documentary.

He tells Matt Wolf, I don't want to be depicted as a gay icon, but I do want to come out in the documentary.

He's very particular about how he wants his story framed in a way that is unfortunately kind of impossible.

Right.

Eventually, by the time the documentary is done, he's being a pill about signing the release.

So he's done about 40 hours of interviews, but he still is holding on to maybe I won't let you air it.

Wow.

He and the director have a falling out.

He and Paul stop speaking for five months.

It seems like the documentary is not going to happen.

And then Paul sends him a happy 40th birthday text because

even

the like pettiest thing in the world will not stop the birthday text from coming from Paul Rubens, which I think is so beautiful.

Yeah.

And then at that point, Paul says,

okay, I'm ready to talk.

After five months,

he says to Matt Wolf, I might not be able to stay as involved as I hoped, but I know you'll make the film we discussed.

I'm sorry that I was so emotional these past few years.

It's so sad.

I'm sorry if I did things that upset you.

You didn't do anything wrong.

I trust you.

And he died the next day.

Wow.

Wow.

And so the last thing I wanted to share about our friend Paul is,

or sorry, I don't know that he died shortly after.

But the day before he died, he never gave another interview.

They never finished the interviews that Matt Wolf wanted to do.

But Paul recorded a video on his phone at his house the day before he died.

And I wish I could give you a hug, Sarah.

I'm so sad.

But I think it's just best listened to.

Yeah.

More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am

and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn't.

The moment I heard somebody label me as,

I'm just going to say it, a pedophile.

I knew it was going to change

everything moving forward

and backwards.

I wanted to talk about and have some understanding

of what it's like to be labeled a pariah,

to have people scared of you or unsure of you

or untrusting,

or to look at what your intentions are.

through some kind of filter that's not true.

I wanted people to understand

that occasionally where there is smoke, there isn't always fire.

I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career,

everything I did and wrote, was based in love

and my desire to entertain and bring glee

and creativity

to young people and to everyone.

And that's it.

What can be said is that at the end of his life, Paul was in a good relationship.

He was surrounded by his friends.

He always had his community.

He was never alone.

But this is that footage just came out a couple weeks ago.

How people found out he passed at the time was from an Instagram post that his, I think his assistant posted.

And his message at the time was, please accept my apology for not going public with what I've been facing the last six years.

I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans, and supporters.

I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.

And I don't know, but I think that the message that he sends Matt Wolf is so telling of like where he was at the end of his life and what was on his mind.

And

it makes me

really

sad for him in some ways, but also like he lived a really rich life in spite of

how terribly he was treated sometimes by the media, by other people.

I don't know.

That just really struck me.

And I love him.

And I love him too now.

That's Paul Rubens.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing everything.

I do.

It is.

I don't know.

Like now, unfortunately, more relevant than ever that if you have queer people in any sector, but certainly working with children, working to, you know, do what he said, to sort of

work from a place of love and entertainment and creativity and whimsy, that you will be the one who is more frequently accused of being dangerous to children than people who actually are.

Yeah.

I don't know, like any life is.

is complicated and there's often great things lying right next to awful things that you can't really imagine going through.

But I feel like, I think what sticks out to me of what you've told me is that you have someone who was so well known and so beloved, but also unable to, I don't know, maybe more able to express his true self through a character than in his actual life.

And

having those outlets, at least for the time that we have them, is, you know, the creativity and the sort of worlds we create through this discomfort in our own lives can be so beautiful and give so much to the people who grow up with them and who need them.

But also, there's still, I don't know, to me, that core sadness of

just, for whatever reason, needing to live in sex secrecy until the very end and also being encouraged to do that at various intervals by the world.

You put it so beautifully.

And I think of like how many

seminal

creators of children's work were closeted queer people.

I think of my favorite, I mean, my my favorite artists as kids was like Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, Arnold Lobel,

all queer men that

Tommy DePaula.

Tommy DePaula of a similar generation that I think also what Peewee was, that Paul was experiencing.

I still can't

separate it.

Yeah.

was generational, where even though by the time he died,

it was not easy, but easy er and quite different to live as an out-queer person as it would have been when he was the same age.

I feel like he was still, because of the media narratives that existed around him, he was treated with the same level of homophobia that existed in 1991 forever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

the narrative around him was so persistent.

And it didn't grow or really re-evaluate in the way that you would, that he deserved for it to.

Yeah.

And so, like, all of those quotes that he has about, like,

you know, he was kind of frozen in time in this,

in this weird way.

And, um,

it's heartbreaking.

I mean, that I, I just, I think that all of the fans of his work ultimately lost a lot of other creative creativity from him because it wasn't possible.

It wasn't accepted.

And

I don't know.

Yeah.

I, I, I,

don't know.

Yeah, he deserved better.

He deserved better.

And he still managed to do so much.

It's like, I think Peewee is like one of the greatest comedic creations in the history of the world.

And you can feel his influence in so much.

And I don't know.

I just, I just love him.

The secret word is Paul Rubens forever.

What we've learned is is that we just, we love, we love Paul Rubens.

See, I'm doing it too.

We do.

And we love Pee-Wee Herman.

And I don't know, I think artists, art kind of shows, especially when we're young, shows us how many different ways life can be and how

much more there is to the world than what the people in our community are willing or able to show us.

And

I feel like you're

much like the Holy Spirit carrying Paul Rubens within you now in whatever you do.

I mean, watching the documentary, I'm like, I don't know if he would have liked me, but I like him so much.

I don't care.

The Julie and Julia effect.

You're like, I don't care.

I don't even care if you like me because you've inspired me for my whole life and you can't even take it back now.

So, ha ha.

It's true.

What are you going to do?

So, yeah,

that's the story of Paul.

Long may he live.

Jamie, you do so much great stuff.

Tell us about some of that stuff.

Oh boy,

you can, my book just came out in paperback, Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.

I have several podcasts, one of which is currently on hiatus.

But 16th Minute of Fame is where every week I interview a past main character of the internet.

It is a show very inspired by this, as are so many things I've done.

Because

all our shows are holding hands.

You're just a brilliant ray of light and it is

the, I don't know, my way of trying to let internet characters of the day say their piece,

reflect on what it's like to be overexposed.

And then there's the Bechtel cast where we talk about movies every week.

And there's also, I am the producer of a show called We the Unhoused that is bi-weekly.

My friend Theo Henderson hosts it.

It is one of the only podcasts, I think possibly the only podcast that is about issues that affect the unhoused told by currently or formerly unhoused people.

So if you are curious about that, which you should be, you should check it out.

It's a great show.

Thank you

for doing what you do.

And yeah, everybody, read Raw Dog if you haven't yet.

Get a nice paperback.

It's such a good gift.

Just give it to everybody.

Fold it up.

Fuck it up.

That's what it's for.

It's a travelogue.

It's a feelings book.

It's a food book.

It's a funny book.

It's a book that'll make you cry.

It's everything you want from a book.

It's the Jane Era of hot dog books.

I don't know what to tell you.

Thankfully, there's just the one.

It's whatever you want it to be.

I love you, Sarah.

I love you, Jamie.

You're the best.

You're going to go do another show right now.

That's how you do it.

And you are...

amazing and thank you for telling me the story and if you weren't so busy i would have you on the show 25 times a year i mean I could always just quit my job, you know?

Yeah.

I'm always on the brink.

Just let me know.

Come live on this couch with me.

And that was our episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much to Jamie Loftus for guesting and for sharing this story and her dedication and love to this subject and to anything else that she explores in her work.

You can find her at 16th Minute, The Bech Delcast, My Year in Mensa, so many other great shows.

Ghost Church is another one.

We are a very ghosty show.

And boy does she do great work with ghosts and the living too.

And of course, you can read her book, Raw Dog, now out in paperback.

Thank you, of course, to Miranda Zickler for editing and producing, and thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing.