![]() ![]() ![]() Asked what he does to unwind, he says, “Gee, I don’t know. “I forget that is old-school until I see somebody look at me like ‘What is that?’ And I want to say, ‘Oh, this is paper,’ ” he says, drawing out the last word the way an archaeologist might the name of an extinct species.Ī WORKAHOLIC, Reubens says he has little time for movies, television, or even hobbies these days. HE HAS turned many a friend on to his favorite iPhone app, Google Translate, which allows him to instantaneously communicate with L.A.’s Spanish speakers.ĭESPITE HIS embrace of futuristic technology such as translation apps and Skype, Reubens is having a hard time retiring pen and paper. The latest edition was sent to about 4,000 recipients. SOMEWHAT OBSESSED with holiday cards, Reubens has mailed out a custom creation each December since the mid-80s. “People were telling me about the site, and I was just thinking, Oh, you know what? I better not know about this.” ONCE AN avid collector of everything from lamps to fake food, Reubens says he put an end to acquisition as a hobby around 1995, with the advent of eBay. Tough security ensured that kids never saw him chain-smoking-a habit he’s since kicked-in costume. SENSITIVE TO his impressionable Pee-wee’s Playhouse audience, Reubens was careful to script in positive habits like teeth brushing. Reubens never heard back.ĪFTER STINTS at Boston University and California Institute of the Arts, Reubens joined the L.A.-based Groundlings, where his duties included painting the backstage area with green textured lacquer-an improbable prize he won during one of many appearances on The Gong Show. HE WROTE fan mail only once as a child, when he was five or six-to Walt Disney. After the family relocated to Florida, Milton opened a lamp store with Reubens’s mother, Judy, an elementary-school teacher. HIS FATHER, Milton, was one of the founding pilots of the Israeli Air Force and took part in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War before buying a Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Oneonta, New York. ![]() and Barnum & Bailey circus-Reubens credits the lively childhood backdrop, complete with human-cannonball neighbors, with helping inspire the whimsical world of Pee-wee. RAISED IN Sarasota, Florida-then the winter home of the Ringling Bros. (The character became nothing less than an icon of the age of irony when Pee-wee’s Playhouse ruled Saturday mornings, from 1986 to 1990.) In anticipation of Pee-wee’s triumphant return, the Emmy-nominated, scandal-surviving, and determinedly private Reubens offers a rare glimpse of the man behind the red bow tie and tiny gray suit. But while George Lucas retired from his science-fiction empire, Paul Reubens, the 63-year-old writer, producer, and actor behind Pee-wee’s precocious man-child, wrote round the clock to personally return his character-born in 1977, when Reubens hooked up with the improv troupe the Groundlings-to audiences. And the second, Pee-wee Herman, will make a long-awaited comeback in Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, premiering on Netflix this month. The first pop-culture institution, Star Wars, returned to theaters last Christmas. In the span of six months, two beloved franchises born out of the late 1970s are being rebooted for the fans still smitten four decades later. ![]()
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