The ‘Pee-wee as Himself’ Director on How to Gain Paul Reubens’ Trust

In the opening sequence of Matt Wolf’s HBO documentary series, “Pee-wee as Himself,” the late artist and performer Paul Reubens ponders the question of who should have control in a documentary about celebrities.

“Turns out you’re not really supposed to make your own documentary,” he says to the camera. “You’re not supposed to control your own documentary. You’re supposed to (make) people feel, a lot of people, okay, everyone except me, that as the subject of a documentary you really don’t have control. Take a hit. What is the word I am looking for? What does everyone tell me that I don’t have with me?

“Perspective,” Wolf says off-camera. Reubens, who originally wanted to direct “Pee-wee as Himself,” disagrees. “You and I are going to argue (about this) for a long, long time. Waiting for this documentary to be finished. Mark my words.

Wolf and Reubens’ controversial relationship is captured throughout the two-part documentary that chronicles Reubens’ career. In the 1980s, he starred as his alter ego, Pee-wee, in several films and in a Saturday morning television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” But Reubens’ image as a beloved childhood hero was seriously tarnished in 1991 when he was arrested for indecent exposure at an adult movie theater, and again in 2002 when he was charged with misdemeanor possession of obscene material.

“I don’t want it to feel like a legacy film,” Reubens tells Wolf. “That’s not it. I really want to set the record straight on a few things, and that’s about it.

Unbeknownst to Wolf, Reubens was battling cancer throughout the documentary’s production. The performer died in 2023 before the film was completed.

Variety spoke with Wolf about “Pee-wee as Himself” ahead of the Sundance world premiere on January 23.

Establishing trust between a director and a subject is a key part of making a good documentary. But Reubens made it clear that he doesn’t necessarily trust you. What was that like for you as a documentarian?

When I encounter a subject, I usually say up front: “I don’t expect confidence. I would like to win it. And I definitely said that with Paul and wanted to build his confidence. My goal was to support him. I came to this project with a lot of affection but always with the autonomy of a filmmaker who wanted to portray an artist. The number of conversations Paul and I had probably amounted to several hundred hours of constant dialogue about what this film would be, how the process would unfold, and what Paul’s role in that process would be. So it was about trying to gain Paul’s trust, but at some point I had to accept that Paul, by his own admission, was not necessarily a trustworthy person, and I understood why . He was someone who had lost control of his personal narrative in the media. It therefore seems logical and natural to me that he would be reluctant towards the documentary process and that it would be an unconventional path.

He died before the final version of the film was completed, but he served as executive producer of the documentary. Was he supposed to have the final cut?

I went into the film with the final cut, and Paul came into the film with meaningful consultation. This is an arrangement that is becoming more and more common in our field, but the nuance of which is very vague. I didn’t want to make a hit song and I didn’t want to make it a bloated song either. I wanted to show Paul in all his complexity, and I told him: “It’s good to be complicated. Being simple is beneath you. I want to embrace your complexity, and I think you should too. He was okay with that. But as it became clear that documentaries are made in post-production, it created a lot of anxiety for Paul and for me because I wanted to be able to do what I do with integrity. So there was a real power struggle between us, but ultimately, it was me who made the final cut of this film.

Reubens only informed you that he was suffering from cancer a few days before his death. Has he ever seen a version of a film?

Paul watched the montage for 40 minutes before he died. I showed him this edit to try to give him confidence that this document reflected the type of film we had been discussing. I had no idea that Paul was sick or had cancer. I spoke to Paul about two weeks before he died. He gave me his blessing to continue the project. I could tell something was wrong or affecting his health, but I had no idea how serious it was. But we had a private, meaningful conversation in which I felt confident moving forward on the film, and he expressed that he was confident I would make the kind of film we had discussed. And then he died.

Reubens’ second arrest in 2002 is not addressed in any of your 40 hours of interviews. The film relies heavily on other people to tell this part of its story. Was this a difficulty during editing?

This last interview was to take place a week after his death. So he intended to do this last interview. But yes, I was afraid that the film, to some extent, would be unbalanced – that it would be so present at the beginning and then absent at the end. But on the day Paul died, I began reading the 1,500-page transcript of our 40-hour interview. I realized how much we had covered, especially his first arrest and how it had affected him. I was fortunate that there was an interview with him regarding Stone Phillips’ second arrest, so I was able to include his voice. So yeah, it was a challenge when putting together the edit to make sure it felt present throughout, even though we didn’t get to shoot that final interview.