Word: wee
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Paul Reubens, though, the guy is within driving distance of normal. He's not the greasy, bearded freak from the infamous mug shot or the manic wad of frustration that is Pee-wee but a mellow, slyly funny 48-year-old whose oddest obvious quirk is that he's trying--and succeeding--at coming off like a 30-year-old. He has shaggy, jet-black hair with bangs, wears a horseshoe-embroidered black Guyabara and jeans and has a freakishly creaseless complexion. And he has proved his ability to pull off non-Pee-wee characters over the past few years...
...moved to Los Angeles in the '70s. "At that time comedy was king, and no one was buying me as a dramatic actor," he says. So he joined the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group of which Phil Hartman and Cassandra (Elvira) Peterson were also members, and invented Pee-wee in 1978. He did the character until 1990, the year before his arrest, when--fortunately, as it turns out--he decided to take two years off from performing and--unfortunately--grew that scary goatee. He wound up getting himself a lot more than two years...
...long disappearance and gradual, Pee-wee-free return has made him more palatable, and Reubens is eager to regain his manic pace. Two weeks ago, he taped an episode of Ally McBeal in which he tries to sue Sting for breaking up his marriage to Cheri Oteri, and last Tuesday he guested on the Tonight Show. He is going to be host of You Don't Know Jack, a game show for ABC. He talks about wanting to remake the Eddie Cantor movie Kid Millions and writing his autobiography. He's also still pushing the variety show-sitcom Meet...
...just as important as his own continued comeback--which started with his joining the Murphy Brown cast in 1995--is the one he plans for Pee-wee, a character so popular that Reubens still has unopened mailbags of fan mail, some of it addressed simply PEE-WEE, HOLLYWOOD, making him the only man with a functioning address shorter than Santa Claus'. He had publicly become Pee-wee exclusively, showing up in character even for print interviews, and having Pee-wee, not Reubens, as the name on his star on the Walk of Fame that was jackhammered up after the scandal...
Even though the gig is up, Reubens is eager to do Pee-wee again. He's co-writing the second of two Pee-wee movies he hopes to shop to studios soon; this one starts in the Playhouse before the story moves, Wizard of Oz-style, to somewhere even more messed up. The other one, The Pee-wee Herman Story, is what Reubens is calling "the adult Pee-wee movie" and has the tight-suited one making it as a pop singer, moving to Hollywood, becoming insanely famous and turning into a monster. "Pee-wee Herman winds up getting hooked...