Post by jdv on Jul 31, 2023 13:47:26 GMT -5
PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE literally on TV last night. Thought, "Man he looks so young" as I caught a couple of scenes.
Little did I know he'd be dead the next day from a long battle with cancer (probably not pancreatic as he apparently had it for 5 years).
I first remember seeing Reubens way back in 1981 in CHEECH & CHONG'S NICE DREAMS, although I'd actually seen him in 2 others first and just didn't register it - THE BLUES BROTHERS (the waiter who gives them champagne) and CHEECH & CHONGS NEXT MOVIE (a desk clerk).
But of course it was Tim Burton's PEE-WEE's BIG ADVENTURE in 1985 which made him a star. The sequel and kid's show PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE made him a household name (well, his character anyway).
All of that came to a crashing halt when he was caught punching the bishop in a Florida movie theater in 1991. Obviously he had more than enough money at that point to, ah, indulge in such behaviors at home, but just as obviously part of the thrill was the potential for being caught.
Now of course, short of being caught fucking a corpse in the middle of the street, this would have been laughed away. But not in '91 - it essentially ended his career.
His troubles didn't end there - in 2002 while cops were tracking down leads for the Jeffery Jones kiddie porn scandal, they executed a warrant on Reubens house finding child pornography. He was later possession of obscene material improperly depicting a child under the age of 18 in sexual conduct.
According to wiki:
"Reubens later stated that he was a collector of erotica, including films, muscle magazines, and a sizable collection of mostly homosexual vintage erotica,[1] such as photographic studies of teen nudes.
Reubens said that what the city attorney's office viewed as pornography he considered to be innocent art, and that what they described as people underage engaged in masturbation or oral copulation was, in fact, a judgmental point of view. Reubens described the nude images as people "one hundred percent not" performing sexual acts."
In 2005 he told NBC News that, "One thing I want to make very, very clear, I don’t want anyone for one second to think that I am titillated by images of children. It’s not me. You can say lots of things about me. And you might. The public may think I’m weird. They may think I’m crazy or anything that anyone wants to think about me. That’s all fine. As long as one of the things you’re not thinking about me is that I’m a pedophile. Because that’s not true.”
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He still got a few gigs even after this, notably in Tina Fey's 30 ROCK, the RENO 911 movie, and a 3rd PEE-WEE movie but oddly enough the magic was gone.
