Paul Reubens has died (1 Viewer)

huger ...and more retractiony
Guido, it's the thought or attempt to explain difficult, complex and annoying things that matters the most, even if you disagree wholeheartedly or partly or we have wildly disparate views on issues that are very divisive, and problematic.

You're still a very good person, Guido and I'll always view you as a friend. Over the years in many different, at-times contensious threads you and quite a few other SR posters like Terps, Widge, Elf were patient, cautious with me and did a superb job in understanding the complex nuances behind multi-layered problems and view them more broadly.
 
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Guido, it's the thought or attempt to explain difficult, complex and annoying things that matters the most, even if you disagree wholeheartedly or partly or we have wildly disparate views on issues that are very divisive, and problematic.

You're still a very good person, Guido and I'll always view you as a friend. Over the years in many different, at-times contensious threads you and quite a few other SR posters like Terps, Widge, Elf were patient, cautious with me and did a superb job in understanding the complex nuances behind multi-layered problems and view them more broadly.
gmr as a friend? brah, you should probably go lay down. you may be having a fever dream.
 
HBO doc coming soon
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"I was born in 1938 in a little house on the edge of the Mississippi River. My father worked on a steamboat," Paul Reubens tells Matt Wolf, director of the new two-part HBO documentary series, Pee-Wee as Himself.

He, of course, was not. Reubens was born in Peekskill, New York, in 1952. His father was … well, his father was a lot of things, including a founder of the Israeli Air Force, but he definitely didn't work on the steamboat.

Reubens' joke - one of the first things he says in the documentary - points to two important things that are central to Pee-Wee as Himself, an entertaining, enlightening and enjoyably confounding portrait of an enjoyably confounding artist.

First, Reubens, who died in 2023, had been constructing his own identity for decades. He spent so many years making talk show appearances and personal cameos as beloved alter ego Pee-Wee Herman that it became impossible to know who the man behind the squeaky-voiced, suit-wearing man-child was.

One of the many pleasures of Pee-Wee as Himself is getting a sense of Reubens as a separate personality, even as the possibility never quite leaves your mind that "Paul Reubens," as featured in Pee-Wee as Himself, could be every bit as fabricated as Pee-Wee Herman.

That gives Wolf the impossible task of opening one Reubens/Pee-Wee nesting doll after another looking for the Root Reubens, Pee-Wee Prime. (The process of studying and interpreting Paul Reubens could be know as "Hermaneutics," a not-quite-joke that will amuse exactly seven people.)

But second, Reubens filmed 40 hours of interviews with Wolf, and the impression conveyed by Pee-Wee as Himself is one of constant push and pull. Reubens initially wanted to make his own documentary about himself, only to be talked out of it by Wolf and friends and loved ones, and it's a decision he still hadn't made peace with at the time of filming.

"You're not supposed to control your own documentary," admits Reubens, who passed away in 2023. "You don't have perspective, really, on yourself."

Fitting words from a man whose most famous catchphrase ended with, "But what am I?"

As featured in the documentary, Reubens is constantly breaking character (with the character being "Paul Reubens," replaced by … "Paul Reubens?"), accusing Wolf of trying to steer him, of trying to build their back-and-forths toward predetermined destinations. The confrontations are almost always good-humored, perhaps another character being played.

Either way, the doc gives a version of Reubens I've never seen before, offers insights into his career that range from hilarious to heartbreaking, and will absolutely make Pee-Wee as Himself a must-watch for the multiple generations raised on and warped by all things Pee-Wee...........

 
I was watching Blow the other day and the scene with him and Bobcat Goldthwait was just crazy, them two in a serious scene together..

 

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