If you’ve been closely following the career of Pee-wee Herman performer Paul Reubens (and shame on you if you haven’t been), then you know he’s been crowing about the fact that he’s got a new, Judd Apatow-produced Pee-wee movie in the works. It was almost two years ago when he first broke word that the movie was happening, and then he let everybody know he had turned in the first draft of the script a year after that. While news of a new Pee-wee movie was initially a cause for celebration, after two years of talk one has to begin wondering if this thing is really happening or not. If Apatow and company are really on board and looking to make this movie, then why is it taking so long to get things together?
Reubens has been talking again, this time to ComingSoon, and he says he can explain the wait. “I actually wasn’t supposed to talk about it initially,” Reubens admits, “I was talking about it in this very veiled, secret way going, ‘Oh, I wish I could talk about it.’…It got leaked about six months to a year before it was supposed to.” I guess we can chalk that up to Pee-wee’s trademark giddy enthusiasm, but what’s the real scoop when it comes to this movie? Are we actually going to see it anytime soon?
“That’s any minute, supposedly,” he explained. “…It’s going great. We have a meeting this coming week. We just did a very quick little rewrite on it. As far as I know it’s getting shot very soon.”
So, first an announcement, then an announcement of a script being written a year later, and then word that shooting will soon start a year after that…Reubens appears to believe that slow and steady does indeed win the race. He’s so confident about this new Pee-Wee movie’s chances, as a matter of fact, that he even took the opportunity to start hyping up the projects he’s going to be working on after it’s over. Reubens gushed, “Right after [the new film] I’m following it up with two incredible projects. I would give anything to be able to brag to you right now and drop some names.” While no names were dropped, ComingSoon seems to have gotten some indication that at least one of the projects is reality TV-based.
What can we take away from all this talk? Are Pee-wee’s new projects proof that the new feature film looks so promising that everyone is lining up to get into the Pee-wee business, or are they just proof that Reubens is something of a shameless self-promoter? As with all things, chances are the truth lies somewhere in the middle.