Before his death from cancer in 2023, Paul Reubens spent 40 hours being interviewed by Matt Wolf. The result is the documentary Pee-wee as Himself, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday.
During the interviews, Reubens revealed that he was out for most of his 20s but went back into the closet when his career began to flourish, saying: “I hid behind an alter ego. I spent my entire adult life hiding I was a huge weed head. I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation. I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
He originally debuted the Pee-wee Herman character in 1981 when he was with the Groundlings. Several of Pee-wee’s well known voices and catchphrases were based on Guy, a painter who Reubens met while he was attending Cal Arts. According to Reubens, they fell in love and lived together. One of Pee-wee’s famous lines, “Mmmm! Chocolatey!” was based on Guy saying, “Mmmm! Buttery!” in a Yoda-like voice.
Reubens said the relationship was serious enough that he introduced Guy to his parents, but as he started getting small movie parts, he felt he had to choose between being publicly Gay and having a career. He ultimately chose to focus on his career. He said the last time he saw guy was shortly before he died from an AIDS-related illness. He confessed that he had “many, many secret relationships,” but he had decided not to publicly come out because it would affect his professional life.
The two part documentary is over three hours long (episode 1 is 99 minutes long, episode 2 is 101 minutes long) and will stream on HBO this spring. It includes interviews with Tim Burton, Laurence Fishburne, Lynne Marie Stewart, S. Epatha Merkerson, Natasha Lyonne, David Arquette, and Debi Mazar as well as Reubens’ home movies, Groundlings tapes, and early media appearances.
