Pee-wee Herman Part 2 with Jamie Loftus

In the second part of our series, pop culture historian Jamie Loftus takes us through the meteoric rise of Pee-wee Herman and the withering of Paul Reubens' world as dubious allegations surface that threaten to turn a beloved children’s character into a real life villain. Jamie tells us about his struggle to reconcile the character of Pee-wee with the real Paul Reubens, and how his longtime friendships became his sanctuary until the very end. Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of explicit materials involving minors More about Jamie Loftus: https://www.jamieloftus.xyz/ Support You're Wrong About: Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merch Sarah's other show, You Are Good Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  Feels like adults were more upset, maybe, than kids ever were.

• 0:13Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and here we are in part two of learning about Pee-wee Herman, AKA Paul Reubens. And we're, of course, learning about the character and the man with author, comedian, and podcaster extraordinaire, Jamie Loftus. I'm so happy to be bringing you part two of this episode. I loved this conversation. I feel so lucky to have been able to have it and to pass it on to you. And now, here's the show.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  But we're getting ahead of ourselves because before that, before the TV show comes Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

• 1:02Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  In 1985.

• 1:05Sarah Marshall?

  So it's fascinating that it was a movie first and then TV. I think I really thought it was the other way around.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was a movie, then TV, then a movie, and then nothing for a long time. Again, Paul has, as with everything he ever made, he was really, really involved in every part of production. But he gets into this in the documentary. A source of frustration for him is that it's starring Pee-wee Herman, but all the work is being done under the name Paul Reubens. So it's confusing. He feels like, he feels like, and again, it's like one of his things of jealousy of, this is also Tim Burton's first movie that he ever directed when he was like 28, which try not to think too hard about it.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  And the, the two of them get connected via Shelley Duvall, which is incredible.

• 1:59Sarah Marshall?

  Of course.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Uh, because she was in his short film Frankenweenie.

• 2:03Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, so Shelley and, and Paul are friends because I don't know how, but of course they are.

• 2:09Sarah Marshall?

  Of course they are. They go to the same juice place or something.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, uh, so he gets connected with Tim Burton. Tim Burton directs the movie and Paul feels that he gets most of the credit. And that his career benefits more than Paul's because it says directed by Tim Burton, written by,

• 2:29Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  You know, Paul Reubens.

• 2:30Sarah Marshall?

  Who's that?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  But no one knows who that is. Right. Because he's done, it's that like classic thing of like, he's done such a good job at becoming Pee Wee. That it becomes kind of a liability.

• 2:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  And this is something that comes up for him again and again, but off of the movie, he gets the TV show, um, that aired on Saturday mornings on CBS.

• 2:51Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Uh, from 1986 to 1990. It's the greatest kid show of all time. It's so special. And luckily people generally agree on this. It, it was almost immediately successful. It was the number two show on Saturday morning. Uh, cause it's like peak Saturday morning cartoons. It was, um, can you guess? What was the one children's show more popular than Pee Wee's Playhouse in 1987?

• 3:20Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy. This feels tough. Um, My Little Pony?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  It is the Smurfs.

• 3:27Sarah Marshall?

  Of course. Yeah. The Smurfs were huge, I guess.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I, I read a lot of the early like, uh, writing and criticism around not crying. I mean, there wasn't a lot of criticism. But part of the reason that parents really liked this, and I didn't really connect this was it was refreshing because there were jokes that were just for the parents. And every time I hear that, every time I hear like, and there's jokes for parents, I immediately and embarrassingly am like, oh, like Shrek.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I, you know?

• 3:56Sarah Marshall?

  That's, that was the point.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. But like Shrek, there's jokes for adults, but the, the real appeal of it for some TV critics was that it was not based off of existing intellectual property.

• 4:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. I mean, and if you look at eighties cartoons, it does seem like most of them were based on toys.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Care Bears, G I Joe, like Smurfs, it's all of this, like, there's this feeling in all of the TV criticism I was reading from that time that most critics and parents were like, oh my God. And the reason that was happening, and I didn't know this, is because there was a change to FCC laws in 1984. I'm pulling this from the Buffalo News. Yes. Buffalo News in 1987. Until 1984, the FCC regulated programs and commercials for young viewers. Since it stopped, there has been an onslaught of commercial oriented cartoon shows for action figures and other toys. Since deregulation, the National Coalition on Television Violence

• 5:00Speaker 01

  reports the number of war cartoons has jumped from a few hours a week to 43 hours a week. The NCTV said the increase in, is almost entirely due to toy companies using cartoons to sell various lines of war toys.

• 5:15Sarah Marshall?

  How else would we brainwash children into supporting Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. Maybe the government can do something to clean up kids TV, but if not, at least Pee Wee's Playhouse provides a worthwhile alternative to the other shows. So people are also just like, this is the one show on the Saturday morning TV block that isn't trying to sell me something.

• 5:35Sarah Marshall?

  But at least, but it's like, the bar is like, well, at least it wasn't conceived of so that it could be made into a toy.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Like, so it's very, very successful. It's the number two show. They, it has a really unusually high budget, because Paul was really adamant that they, you know, keep the production budget high. It's really the, also the only live action show on a Saturday morning block as well. Yeah, so this this continues for basically all five seasons of the show. There's also a second.

• 6:10Sarah Marshall?

  Amazing.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  There's also a second movie that comes out that I've only seen once. It's not very good. It's called Big Top Peewee. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't do great. Paul's disappointed, but ultimately it doesn't affect the success of the TV show. So we'll kind of glaze over that.

• 6:28Sarah Marshall?

  And Peewee's Big Adventure is basically like, it's a big adventure. He kind of has a hero's journey, right? He has to get his bike back.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:35Sarah Marshall?

  To travel across America.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Big Top Peewee is more based on like Pollyanna, where it's like, we gotta get the town together. It's very circus based. Like you can see why he was sad because he's pulling it from all the stuff he loved for me as a kid. But sorry, Paul, the movie was not very good.

• 6:52Sarah Marshall?

  Love being telling the truth.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  But the show is super successful. Another one of my favorite fun facts about it is that, you know, they they would do, the king of cartoons would come and introduce the cartoon of the week, which sometimes would just be an old cartoon in the public domain. But it was also the first consistent animation gig for the creator of one of my favorite cartoons, Hey Arnold.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  There are these shorts called Penny cartoons on Peewee's Playhouse that was created by Craig Bartlett as well. So there's like this very, I feel like it's most often like the Dana Carvey show is considered like this launching point for all of these very successful creative people. But Peewee ends up launching a lot of people, including Tim Burton, the creator of Hey Arnold. He's a big part of Laurence Fishburne becoming more mainstream, successful, like all these people. You know, Phil Hartman.

• 7:49Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Cause he was like a theater guy, I feel like before that.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:53Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and I was thinking of Hey Arnold earlier because Arnold is also like a child who also has like the most incredible, cool, basically adult living space that you could possibly imagine. Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I just, because I feel like the the appeal of Arnold is kind of like. Different where he is like a child who is an adult like he is.

• 8:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  He's so mature.

• 8:16Sarah Marshall?

  He's kind of the bizarro Pee Wee.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:19Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And also that he like lives in a boarding house with his grandparents. So he's like kind of a free agent, you know, who's like, and he's like a kid about the city. It's a little bit of a noir even.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  It kind of is. Yeah. Arnold, I mean, it's also a show I loved, but he lived in the real world.

• 8:35Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. Arnold had to like deal with bureaucracy and stuff. It was exhausting.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  It's brutal. It's, oh God, the Hey Arnold Christmas episode where Mr. Wind gets reunited with his daughter after they were separated during the Vietnam War. I'm like.

• 8:49Sarah Marshall?

  Because a callous adult won't do it unless Arnold can get Nancy's Pomoni snow boots. And because for adults, everything has a price. But oh my God, yeah, it's, I, I love crying at that episode.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  It's so beautiful. Um, and yeah, I guess very different for Pee Wee, which is weird, which is why it's weird that they're connected, but, but they are.

• 9:11Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. They, they support each other, you know, they're like each other's

• 9:17Sarah Marshall?

  force soulmates, like, I don't know, what's her ass and Kylo Ren.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Oh my God, yeah. But so the show lasts for five seasons, including an incredible Christmas special. Have you seen the Pee Wee Christmas special?

• 9:33Sarah Marshall?

  No, I have not. And I can kick myself.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  You would fucking lose it for this Christmas special. Let me just.

• 9:39Sarah Marshall?

  I can't wait to lose it.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Which is why it's so funny that in retrospect, people are like, I wonder if he was involved in the queer community because listen to the list of guests on this show. It also starts with him singing a welcome song in front of these like hot Navy guys. So for moment one, you're, you're like, okay, we're, we're locked in.

• 10:04Sarah Marshall?

  I'm here.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Okay. Here are the people who are in the Christmas special that are not just Pee Wee. Joan Rivers, Dinah Shore.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Jean-Jacques Gabor, Oprah Winfrey,

• 10:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Little Richard, Katie Lang.

• 10:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Cher.

• 10:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Charo, Whoopi Goldberg.

• 10:27Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Grace Jones.

• 10:29Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Frankie Avalon.

• 10:31Sarah Marshall?

  There we go.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Annette Funicello, like, just queer icons, top to bottom. Like, ooh, it's, he, he made it to kind of bounce back from being disappointed about Big Top Peewee. And it is so worth it. It's so good.

• 10:47Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like the weirdest part of the story is because that somebody got to do what they wanted to do creatively. And that they were able to do it. And it was just on TV and people loved it.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Until.

• 11:02Sarah Marshall?

  Until, inevitably, yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Until, um, so I think one of the big important things to correct that I think is misremembered in gen- I definitely remembered it this way. Is that Paul Reubens is arrested in 1991. It is often portrayed that it was because of this arrest that the show was canceled. That is not true, even though, um, as time goes on, that would be reported more and more, even though at the time it, it's not true. Paul decided.

• 11:34Sarah Marshall?

  It's just like the brain seeking cause and effect. And then one newspaper does it. So the others copy it or something.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I, yeah, we're just, I, I, or people just don't give a shit. I don't know. But like, as a Peewee historian, I give a shit. And, uh, Paul decided to end the show after five seasons.

• 11:51Sarah Marshall?

  I love that.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  He was really burned out. He was exhausted and, um, was like, I, you know, I think that we had a good run, but I'm, I'm ready to end it. And I just love stories like that, ending a show on your own terms. It's like, oh, what a privilege. What an incredible thing to be able to do.

• 12:09Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah. And also to be able to to resist, you know, being sort of bribed to do more of it. And like, look, I know, we all know Jerry Seinfeld is terrible, but I do appreciate, as you know, I dream in Seinfeld sometimes. And like, Seinfeld is probably like, one of the only shows to have like, been ended on purpose by the people who made it when it was like, the top show in the country, which it was, you know?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:39Sarah Marshall?

  Like, you have to be able to walk away from something.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:42Sarah Marshall?

  I think. And of course, we're seeing like, the effects of, you know, and we really can really just blame studios and corporations for this mostly, but this thing of like, having something that audiences like, and then giving it to them so hard and refusing to make anything else until everyone just like, cannot stand you anymore. Movies are being made by like, the worst kind of casino gambler, which is somebody who just like, stands at the slot machine for 14 hours because they have to keep going because surely this will work out if we just keep doing it as opposed to like, you know, especially in in entertainment, which is a creative field ultimately, to sort of be like, I am the person who makes this and I, I don't, I don't have anything anymore and I don't want to do a

• 13:27Sarah Marshall?

  final season of Game of Thrones.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I think it's just rare to be able to like, have dignity as a professional creative person at all. And this feels like a rare instance of getting, like, I also think of like, Nathan for You, I'm pretty sure Insecure was ended in that way, Fleabag, where you're just like, this is all there is to the story.

• 13:47Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, the story is over.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  You can't make me make more story because you paid me too much. And I love that.

• 13:53Sarah Marshall?

  Because stories really do, like, they just end. And then you, if they're truly over, you cannot do anything more with them, I really think.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  And Peewee could have gone on forever, but it was like, he was done. He was done.

• 14:03Sarah Marshall?

  And he's Peewee. So, you know.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  No one can replace him. Because, and I know that because many have tried.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  And when you think about it, this is very clear because the show ends at the end of 1990.

• 14:20Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  And Paul, who was never estranged from his family, but hadn't been able to spend a lot of time with them since becoming very famous for like basically 10 straight years.

• 14:32Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Goes back to Florida to spend time with his family. And it is while he is spending time with his family in the, I think the summer of 1991, that he is arrested in Sarasota. This is like the most famous incident. And so I want to just get into exactly why. I mean, it's obvious. He was arrested at a gay porn theater in Sarasota, possibly the same one he was arrested at when he was 18 years old.

• 15:03Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  But he is arrested, of course, as Paul Reubens, but the public doesn't really know who Paul Reubens is. They know who Pee-wee Herman is.

• 15:12Sarah Marshall?

  Right. He's the man who doesn't exist.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Right. But now, all of a sudden, Paul Reubens does exist and everyone's mad at him. So what exactly happened here is, and I do appreciate that the residents of Sarasota are like, no, hold on, because he is arrested allegedly, which he denies, and I believe him, that he was exposed or like jerking off in a porn theater, essentially.

• 15:44Sarah Marshall?

  Which, to be clear, like even if a person does do that, it is kind of the best place to do it. Yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Who fucking cares? Like he wasn't, even if he did do it, he wasn't the only person to do it that hour. And also, if this were a straight porn theater, it would be a very different conversation, obviously.

• 16:01Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  So there's already this like homophobic witch hunt aspect to it. But the way they explain it is just so fucking weird because they're saying there are no fewer than three Sarasota undercover cops in this porn theater.

• 16:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. What's the story there?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  In the middle of the day, the two movies showing were called Nancy Nurse and Turn Up the Heat. And they were just waiting to see someone jerking off. Like, it's very unclear. Also, at the time, Paul, like Paul denies that he, he doesn't deny being at the theater, but he was like, I wasn't jerking off in the theater. And there was, if it had gone to trial, which it didn't, his lawyer said that they had footage of, like, security footage of Paul in the lobby at the time that these three cops were, for some reason, looking for people jerking off at a theater, which should be illegal. Like, it's, it's so fucking weird.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And I was like, following this story like day to day, because it unfolds over the course of a couple of days. At first, it's just the news that breaks. And CBS is quiet about it at, because the show, they're no longer airing new episodes, but they are still airing reruns. And so the decision is, do we continue to air reruns? At first, there's a CBS executive that's like, yeah, that's like, we will probably keep airing it. But within a day, it's when his mugshot comes out, that the tide changes on him significantly, because he doesn't look like Pee Wee Herman. He's got longer hair. He's been, he hasn't been working for a couple of months. He's a human man.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  He's hanging out in Florida. He looks like a different person. And it seems like that had a, in that mugshot being so everywhere. Yeah. Is what turns. Interestingly, and again, I, I viewed this very differently. It doesn't turn his fans against him, really. It doesn't turn his friends, family, or most TV critics against him. It turns the network against him. Yeah. CBS, after the mugshot is released, pulls reruns of the show, which only would have been running for another two months. So it's also very like manufactured crisis. Right.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Disney, I guess that he had, like, he had a video at one of the roller coasters or some shit. They pull that and make a big deal about it. And there's these, like, classic Sarah Marshall canon, like, two narratives that develop among TV critics, one of which I have like a couple headlines here. There's one in the El Paso Herald post that says, help kids separate Pee Wee Herman and actor. And I'm like, help Paul Reubens separate Pee Wee Herman and actor Mike.

• 18:58Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Also, why do your kids need to hear about any of this? That's a big question.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Listen to how, I was like, were these conversations happening? I certainly hope not. An elementary school child might be told that police say Reubens broke the law by touching his private parts in a movie theater, but that the allegation has to be checked out further. She noted that a child may reply, if the police said he did it, didn't he really do it? I would explain that this is very complicated.

• 19:24Sarah Marshall?

  It's a weird way to take civil rights.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  The point is that just because the police or media say somebody did something, that doesn't make it true. Dr. Alberto Serrano, a child psychiatrist, who is the medical director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center, said parents should deal with children's disappointment that somebody they like is accused of doing something wrong. If a child wonders whether he can believe in anybody, parents can acknowledge that many people in the world do disappointing things, but that others have been reliable over a long period of time.

• 19:55Sarah Marshall?

  This is so interesting that they're like, how to talk to your child about Pee Wee Herman? I don't know. And I mean, I get that it's like a very strange moment as a parent presumably because kids do hear stuff. I don't really think that they're having school year conversations involving the word allegations necessarily.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 20:12Sarah Marshall?

  But, you know, that like they talk and the TV is on and everything. But A, from an adult perspective, which I don't think we had at the time because we were in the sort of like George Bush family values, Murphy Brown can't have a baby era of like, sex is terrible and we're terrified of it.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Also, Paul Reubens is on Murphy Brown. He has a heart. Anyways.

• 20:34Sarah Marshall?

  See?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:35Sarah Marshall?

  There you go, fornicators. But like, it does feel like we're at a moment at a nation of being like particularly scared of sex and particularly puritanical.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Sarah Marshall?

  But also that like, I imagine as a parent, if you have a child who's like pre adolescent, you're like, I don't really want. To have to talk about this topic and like introduce it this way because it's like not necessarily something that you can or should process depending on your age.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:03Sarah Marshall?

  As a fan of this show. So it's like as an, as adults, we should have been, been able to be like, well, if you did do it, then like, who fucking cares?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Who cares? Right.

• 21:11Sarah Marshall?

  But you're forced to sort of like have all these like weird parent conversations, I guess, as part of it. Although I don't know how many people had to be having.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  That's the other thing. You're like, is this for anyone?

• 21:22Sarah Marshall?

  It feels like adults were more upset maybe than kids ever were.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  It's, it definitely seems that way. And that was another thing that I, I was learning through this because there are plenty of TV critics who stand up for him and blame CBS. This is from the LA Daily News. Sorry, kids, but business is business. Sure, CBS had basked gladly in the acclaim accorded, accorded to this stylishly stylized post martyr children's show because it had won like at least a dozen Emmys in its run. It won a ton of awards.

• 21:52Sarah Marshall?

  They were like, my God, we're doing great. Prestige.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Sure. It was Reubens, not Peewee who was arrested. Sure, there's room for debate as to whether what he is accused of doing is actually a crime, but it didn't matter. The lesson children can take from this is that if you make a mistake or are simply accused of making a mistake, you will pay dearly. Even if the judicial system eventually supports Reubens' claims disputing the police version of what, of what went on in the theater and he's found not guilty, the arrest ensures he'll never again be found innocent. And innocence was a big part of Peewee's charm.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  So he essentially blames the network for buying into the narrative, which I think is in, in the media for buying into the narrative.

• 22:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Of like, we must immediately distance ourselves from this person because that's sort of, that communicates, yeah, like a worse outcome than what had happened so far legally.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is completely devastating for Paul because this is also tacitly outing him.

• 22:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And in the worst way possible, or one of them.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  In the worst way, it's, it's his worst nightmare. His friends are extremely supportive. They basically get him out of Florida in disguise.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  They're reassuring. They're like, we're going to turn this around. It's okay. But immediately he is like, he says in the documentary, the public has a memory like a steel trap. So don't kid yourself or me about how it works. 30 years later, I still feel those effects all the time. And. He's right. Like that, that was still how people and still is how some people talk about him.

• 23:25Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, and the way that I remember my dad describing it with his great grasp of current events was that the guy who played Pee Wee Herman was arrested for, in reality, doing what he was accused of in an adult theater, but in my dad's version, doing it like at a kids movie and there were kids everywhere. Cause I think that was like, not just my dad, but the sort of like homophobia of the time and of the time before of like, if you're outed as gay, then that also, you know, and of course of today, growingly, that means you're also outed as someone who's unsafe to be around children or to even make media for them. And that, you know, if you

• 24:04Sarah Marshall?

  have any kind of allegedly deviant sexuality, then like, it's all equally dangerous. And that sort of what we're, what we were still teaching kids as well at that time and still.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  And still, I mean, there's so much, I think that like the, unfortunately, the timing of this documentary, and also unfortunately for Paul, because it doesn't seem like he wanted this, his life to really exist within this narrative.

• 24:30Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  But unfortunately it does where it's like, we're seeing that so frequently with any queer entertainer right now, particularly if they're out, it's getting harder and harder to maintain a platform as a queer creator because.

• 24:45Sarah Marshall?

  And I mean, a parallel to this, of course, is Norm MacDonald getting fired from Saturday Night Live, to my understanding, because he made too many OJ Simpson jokes on Weekend Update.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 24:56Sarah Marshall?

  Donald Meyer golfed with OJ Simpson. So you can't do that. So it's like.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Exhausting.

• 25:01Sarah Marshall?

  You know, you will sponge your name out of our, our records and stop showing your show if you're accused of doing something. Uh, that's like a bit of a sex scandal, but you can kill your wife, obviously.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, that's just a day at the park. There that's I did not know that. That's so fucked.

• 25:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And that, you know, and maybe NBC has a different story, but.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't believe it.

• 25:30Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  But I also just wanted to talk about like the media narratives. This was existing alongside. Obviously there's still a lot of queer panic in the early nineties, but the specific queer panic that we're looking at here and the story that you see beside this, not in conversation with it. First of all, this is like, not funny, but like, here's this. Bill Cosby did defend Paul and I was like, we don't need you. We don't need you. It is wild to see Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby, uh, is among Reubens defenders. They are judging a man without the right of due process. I was like, well, I wonder why that's on your mind. Uh, totally different reasons. But the, the other story.

• 26:12Sarah Marshall?

  And then Alan Dershowitz takes the floor.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  But there, the other story that you see alongside this one, just because of timing, is Jeffrey Dahmer.

• 26:25Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God. Yeah. Jesus Christ. And the Silence of the Lambs is in theaters.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Like queer panic is very, very high right now. And you'll often, there were a few different examples I saw of Paul Reubens and Jeffrey Dahmer mentioned in the same sentence. And, uh, this will happen to Paul again in the early 2000s where it is just a hyper conflation of like Paul, obviously, even if he did what he was accused of, which it sounds like he didn't, didn't hurt anybody, but he's being held alongside a serial killer. Like, and, and it's, it's done very matter of factly. And he is right to say that this irreparably damages his career.

• 27:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  But his fans still love him. There are, uh, I, I didn't know this, but there were protests outside of CBS.

• 27:21Sarah Marshall?

  They're here, they're queer. They're also afraid of what people are gonna say about them and comparing them to serial killers.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Well, what's interesting is Paul's queerness doesn't really come into the equation here. It's more, it's, it's interesting that there are these protests outside of CBS for Peewee, not for Paul.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It's there's, there's families, there's kids, there's adult fans of the show that are like, bring back Peewee.

• 27:48Sarah Marshall?

  I love that. I had no idea that that happened.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Isn't that nice? Yeah, it was. I mean, there were thousands of calls and fan mail that he received. I think if the public had had their way, the show would have been back on. It seems like the, the network was really outnumbered.

• 28:04Sarah Marshall?

  Which is interesting because then, because of the network just being able to override that, we then, you know, until we go back and, and look at it more deeply, can easily remember something as like, we can easily look back and remember it as if the American people spoke with the same voice as CBS executives, which in fact, they so rarely do.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. The, the public reception, I mean, I had no idea that I, I, I always thought the whole world turned on him. That wasn't even true. It was just the people with power turned on him.

• 28:35Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And he, and it doesn't take that many, it turns out.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  And I feel like, yeah, the public memory is so short that we are very quick to conflate the people with power turned on you to everybody turning you. It's like all of the resources turned on him, basically.

• 28:49Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  There are a few moments for him, like there is, I, again, another thing I didn't know is that this all happens in, I think, like July. That September, he appears as Peewee at the VMAs for like 30 seconds, just, and people are losing it. They're so happy he's there. All he says is, heard any good jokes lately? And then presents something. And it seems like there might be a road back for him, but it's very unclear. In his personal life, he becomes really good friends with Debbie Mazzar, who's like a character actor, who I'm always like, what is she most famous for? And you could say Goodfellas, but.

• 29:32Sarah Marshall?

  I think of her as, yeah, hot girl in Goodfellas, but she's, I feel like she's just like.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I love her younger, too. She's, I really like her.

• 29:39Sarah Marshall?

  Well, oh, well, she's, she's in Empire Records, iconically. I feel like she's one of those people who's been iconic in like 30 different movies when you add it all up.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  So she, she and Paul become really close at this time. They're close friends till his death. And it's, it's at this time where he's, obviously he's very depressed.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  He's like in the house. Most of the time there's like the windows are blacked out for several weeks to avoid paparazzi. And he really relies on his friends. And that I think is like an element of the back half of his life is he became very invested in friendships. I think similar to John Waters, like he was obsessed with making sure he gave everyone really thoughtful birthday messages, which is just one of the most, the best qualities in a person. I wish I were better at it.

• 30:28Sarah Marshall?

  I know. I tell myself that if you can get like a really thoughtful gift together at any other time of the year, then that kind of balances out. But I don't know. But yeah, it's and also like continuous with the show, you know, where it's like, it seems like if there's something that you learn by example from it, it's to invest in community.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. And he, I think, like, after having, I think, just like honestly, the youthful, like rivalries and all this stuff, he really, he really sinks himself into good friendships. Because also, all of his friendships are tested by this. And the friends who stand by him are his, basically become his, his family. There is a lot of disappointment and still hurt, it sounds like, based on how he talks in the documentary, on his peers who make fun of him. There is a former Pee Wee's Playhouse producer that sort of, you know, denounces him after this happens. Phil Hartman makes jokes at his expense. Sam Kinison says he should be executed. Like,

• 31:33Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, get it together, Sam Kinison.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I mean, just, you know, Kevin Nealon, Soupy Sales, Jim Carrey, like, there's all of these, his peers.

• 31:43Sarah Marshall?

  Because you become material, suddenly.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. And Paul, I would say he neither forgives nor forgets in these situations. And so the friends who stick by him, he Really does everything he can to to care for them. He becomes really good friends with David Arquette, which becomes important later in his life. Did you know David Arquette is Bozo?

• 32:08Sarah Marshall?

  No.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Well, guess what, Sarah? David Arquette is Bozo.

• 32:11Sarah Marshall?

  Which, what iteration of Bozo? What's Bozo?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  The current one. My friend saw him as Bozo last weekend.

• 32:19Sarah Marshall?

  What?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  He's around.

• 32:20Sarah Marshall?

  This is huge.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  David Arquette is Bozo is one of my favorite sentences.

• 32:25Sarah Marshall?

  To be clear, is it like Bozo is like an eternal being who like is played by different people at different times, basically?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yes. So I was

• 32:34Sarah Marshall?

  Eternal clown.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  I was weirdly very, I don't know. I think it's because it's connected to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, which is like in not my neighborhood, but I performed there a lot. And there was this big story like last year, maybe a couple of years ago, where David Arquette and Billy Corgan were trying to buy the rights to Bozo the Clown, because you can't just perform as Bozo. You got it. You gotta buy.

• 32:59Sarah Marshall?

  You gotta franchise it.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  And so they had, they were like really trying to buy the rights to Bozo so that David Arquette could be Bozo. And they did it. And now David Arquette is Bozo. And sometimes he's around town playing Bozo. That's just kind of what he's up to right now.

• 33:17Sarah Marshall?

  Just doing Bozo, you know?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  For the next couple of years, Paul, Paul very much like his career is never as big as it was in the late eighties again, but he continues to work and do really like, he does a lot of smaller iconic roles. He's in the original Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. That's how he meets David Arquette. He plays the Penguin's father in Batman Returns with Tim Burton again. So he, he kind of falls into his friends who stood by him and works with them. And that's how he's able to, he has an arc on Murphy Brown. He appears a lot on Joan Rivers' show. And this is kind of how he continues through the nineties. And then

• 34:04Speaker 01

  so into the early 2000s, by the early 2000s, he is starting to step out more. It seems like the public is like, we miss Pee Wee. They, they re-release Pee Wee on DVD. It's being shown on Adult Swim. People are like, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time for more Paul. He hosts this game show on NBC.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  As a character? I don't know. I can send you a clip of it, but he plays a character named Troy Stevens. And people were like, hmm, okay, he's in the movie Blow.

• 34:35Sarah Marshall?

  I remember that weirdly. That's the first thing I remember seeing him in.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I've never seen Blow.

• 34:39Sarah Marshall?

  It's not that good.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  But like I, people like that. And then he starts talking about coming back as Peewee. He talks about these few scripts that never come to pass. He has an idea for something that I was like, oh, man, I wish he'd gotten to do that. He wanted to do basically a like black comedy mockumentary about how Peewee came to be. And had the script since the eighties. And he said that it, it's not dissimilar to Valley of the Dolls. I was like, what do you mean? He has one that is like a Wizard of Oz kind of journey thing. He has all of these ideas and he starts being like, what if Peewee came back, you guys? And everyone was like, we would love that. We would love that.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  But that does not happen. And this I don't remember at all, even though it's the Peewee indiscretion public narrative that I was alive for. But you know, he's, he's doing basically just mostly sitcom bit parts until late 2002. When he is in the middle of doing a bit part in an Elton John music video. That his house is raided by the LAPD. This was not something that I was familiar with until I think he passed. Like, I definitely knew, everyone knew about the porn theater narrative. Which, by the way, I should say, foreclosure for that. He pleaded no contest, pay like paid a $50 fine.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Was technically like, you know, they said if it had gone to trial, he would have been found innocent because there was that footage of him in the fucking lobby.

• 36:21Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my god.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  But the public didn't forget. So the first thing doesn't even go to trial. He pleads no contest.

• 36:27Sarah Marshall?

  Of course not. Yeah. I would have liked to this, there was more children's education centered on this as a lesson and innocent until proven guilty. We can bring that up more in the curriculums. But man, yeah. And of course, that part of the story is the part we don't know.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. But in late 2002, this is, this is the one that I think really kind of breaks his spirit for some time. And it's on his mind for the rest of his life. His house is raided by the LAPD because there were reports of child pornography at his home. The story that this is presented alongside is Jeffrey Jones. These two, they're presented as, again, equal offenses.

• 37:16Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  So I'm just going to read from the original report so you can hear how it was reported.

• 37:21Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  A year old pornography investigation has led to the filing of criminal charges against two Hollywood actors, Paul Reubens and Jeffrey Jones. Reubens was charged with one misdemeanor count of possessing materials depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual conduct. He surrendered to authorities Friday and was released on $20,000 bail. Jeffrey Jones was charged with hiring a 14 year old boy to pose for sexually explicit photos of felony, as well as misdemeanor possession of child pornography. So these charges are very different in their severity.

• 38:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Jeffrey Jones and Paul Reubens, it sounds like they had met. The story, the story is honestly unclear, but with regards to Paul, I think it definitely hurts him that Jeffrey Jones committed a felony. He committed child abuse.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Paul's is much harder to kind of pin down.

• 38:22Sarah Marshall?

  And yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  So as he explains it, as his lawyers explain it, and as David Arquette, AKA Bozo, explains it.

• 38:32Sarah Marshall?

  As Bozo himself.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And we must trust Bozo. And I want to be like careful with how I talk about this because I know that, I know your listeners know this, but I don't mean to minimize any of this. But I feel it does come back to a homophobic witch hunt for Paul. For years, he and David Arquette, AKA Bozo, were like Paul was really into collecting vintage pop culture stuff. And so what they would often do is go to flea markets, go to whatever, places where you could get boxes of old magazines. And he would buy boxes of old magazines and he had a lot of old magazines at his house. And it was, uh, the investigation involved the LAPD

• 39:17Speaker 01

  in an incredible use of their time, as always.

• 39:20Sarah Marshall?

  Once again, yeah, to continue our theme.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Goes through over 30,000 photos, bits of footage, all of this stuff. After months and months of this, they find two images that are considered questionable, both of which are determined to not actually be photos of underage people.

• 39:45Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  And was very unlikely that Paul had ever even accessed it because it was deep in these boxes of stuff. So this is a far more complicated, like the 1991 thing is pretty fucking cut and dry. Like, yeah, that this is a more severe accusation.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  But just from what I've been able to gather, it, it's, there's, there's nothing to it. And, and Paul is, is devastated.

• 40:12Sarah Marshall?

  And basically it's an attempt to sort of comb through everything in the hopes of finding something. And ultimately, finally. Saying, well, I guess we didn't, but we, but we sure did try.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  But it's too late, like the dan- and the damage is done.

• 40:25Sarah Marshall?

  And then being connected to somebody who very manifestly did it and

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Was an abuser, yeah.

• 40:32Sarah Marshall?

  And had a like, pretty clear intent. And also, as you said, actually took it out of that realm into actual child abuse. And again, to sort of be like, connected or sort of positioned as if there is a connection between you and someone who is demonstrably very dangerous when

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:51Sarah Marshall?

  There it's, you know, despite attempts, nobody has uncovered that information about you.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:57Sarah Marshall?

  And yeah, I would not, I would, I would go, I would not seek out public life at that point either.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  I'll just say it, Pee Wee innocent, Pee Wee innocent.

• 41:07Sarah Marshall?

  Pee Wee is innocent.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  But this breaks him. It affects his life in every single way because now he is being accused of, because he was a former children's entertainer and now he's being framed as an abuser of children.

• 41:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  He's really close with, he had the same assistant for 40 years about. And is a huge part, was a huge part of her child's life and had to, like, could only be supervised with her for years. So, so this, it, it just like, it, it seems like it really breaks his spirit. This does go to trial. And what happens, and I, I'm sure you have examples of this. I, I wish I had more time to do a little bit more research on the history of just obscenity laws.

• 41:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  What ends up happening is he is sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor account of, quote, possessing obscene materials of minors engaged in sexual conduct.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Based off of these two pictures deep in boxes in his house, which he still objects to. And his lawyers still object to, because he was like, they, they were not photos of underage people and I had never accessed the material. But that is what he ends up pleading guilty to, which means. That he has to register as a sex offender.

• 42:28Sarah Marshall?

  And again, like, I understand if people find that objectionable, but I would also, again, point out that, like, there's such a difference, you know, intent, I think, is meaningfully, at least in theory, such a big part of any functioning legal system, including this one. And there's such a world of difference between seeking out images depicting minors in such a context and buying publications, especially quantity, that you don't have the capacity to, before you purchase, go through and evaluate, or really, anyway, a lot of the time, of determining that everything was produced ethically and, you know, is

• 43:10Sarah Marshall?

  on the up and up and that everyone is over 18. This is famously a problem with Tracy Lord's career because she made so many porn movies before, I feel like an old person saying porn movies, I don't know. But she acted in a lot of porn before she turned 18. And so, retroactively, all of that became, I think, technically, child pornography, but nobody involved in making it, well, probably, I mean, you know, I'm sure people, I'm sure there were whispers. But she had forged materials, she had, you know, had an age that she was pretending to be. It's just what happened. It's how things went. And so, retroactively, things fall into a different category. Once people know what they know, than they seem to initially. So just to say that it's, nothing about his

• 43:55Sarah Marshall?

  intent, I think, very clearly was proved by the case or what he had in his house.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, again, it's like, if you feel differently, that's total, I mean, I, it's such a, I think, like, it's such a difficult thing to talk about because everyone's gonna react to the story differently. It's very personal.

• 44:14Sarah Marshall?

  But pursuing less detail is not, is not the answer. And I think in a state of fear, we can be persuaded to want, you know, to consent to having less information, but we always need more.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  And what I think is indisputable is that there were very political reasons for doing this. It was done by a recently elected city attorney named Rocky Decidia, who had stated that child welfare was one of his big issues. And at this point, Paul Reubens was a, you know, proven to be a viable public punching bag. Like, this was, this was an easy win for this city attorney. And so- I have a lot of cynicism about it and it was extremely difficult and painful for him not to mention that after this, he ends up, his father, who is in the IDF, his father's dying, Paul goes down to Florida and is his caretaker for the end of his life, which makes me cry.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I didn't know that he did that. And I was like, we're like, the same. But his dad is actively dying as this obscenity case is going on. And so he has to go back to, his father passes away when he has to fly back to LA for a couple of days to deal with this. And so he's just at an extreme low. And for the first time, he really like, he makes a big, a public appearance as himself to defend himself. Because in 1991, he goes on the VMAs as Peewee. But here, it's like, the crime he's being accused of is severe that he needs to show up as Paul Reubens. And he does. And he is emphatic of his innocence. He is asked

• 45:54Speaker 01

  directly, I think on CNN, he says emphatically, no, I was not in possession. I feel like I live in a country where I can collect what I want to collect, as long as I'm not hurting anyone or exploiting children, which I am not. So he publicly defends himself, but the damage is done for the next, again, 10 years or so. This haunts him. Towards the end of his life, he has a late career resurgence in the, mostly because of now there's this, like, you know, the Judd Apatows of the world who grew up watching Peewee are now making movies and want to make movies with him. I think Judd Apatow, Paul Rust, like, that

• 46:33Speaker 01

  whole kind of like, Gen X comedy guy, they all want to work with Peewee. And they want Peewee to get out of the house, basically, because, you know, Paul's very introverted. That's the thing about kids. They grow up and they make movies. And don't we love that? And so with the help of sort of that cohort, he brings Peewee's Playhouse to Broadway in 2011 with a lot of the original cast. It goes super well. He's very encouraged by it. There was a one last Pee Wee movie that is okay, that came out in 2016 on Netflix, which is so it's like a sort of big return to pop

• 47:14Speaker 01

  culture. The movie isn't a big hit. It's not great, but he's back, you know, like he's, he's fully back and that, but, but even that, like, keep in mind, this is 12 years after the obscenity case. So there are large chunks of time where he is mainly, it seems like focused on his friends and his family. And then the last thing of mention is this documentary that he worked on, or that he didn't, well, it's complicated, is directed by Matt Wolfe, who is a queer filmmaker who grew up as a Pee Wee kid, and it was like his big dream to make this documentary about him.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so this documentary sort of starts taking shape, I think, like around 2020 ish. Matt Wolfe is sending messages. He's like, hey, what if you did it? Like, he writes apart a whole section of this because this documentary was in production right up until and after Paul Reubens died. And just to like really pull into focus how private he was, no one knew he was sick. He was struggling with cancer for the last six years of his life, the entire production of

• 48:35Speaker 01

  this documentary. The director found out that he had died from the news. He had no idea. There's this incredible quote from Paul that is like, the key to keeping a secret is to tell nobody.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  And he was really good at that because he, he, he was sick for the last, you know, half decade of his life, which explains and doesn't explain, I think some of it's just who he is, how he acts through this documentary. It's his first time, obviously, publicly stating he's gay. The director doesn't realize that this documentary is almost certain to come out once Paul isn't there. Yeah. Basically, he and the director have this very complicated, drawn out relationship where Paul, as he always has been, is obsessed with control and is really threatened by losing control of how he's perceived, which,

• 49:35Speaker 01

  given his history, could not make more sense. But he's basically feuding with this documentary director who loves him the entire time because he's not comfortable with giving the creative reins or his narrative over to someone else because he's never shared any of this before. No one knew that his relationship with Guy existed. No one knew that he did drag. No one knew any of this. And yet he documented it all. Yeah. It was all in these boxes, right? Like Matt Wolfe wrote an essay about making this because you can see, you should watch the documentary. Paul is, can be very combative. He sometimes kind of bullies Matt and he's like, why should I listen to you? I've watched all your documentaries and I only liked one and it was only sort of. And I was like,

• 50:19Speaker 01

  whoa, I would walk into traffic. Like Matt Wolfe, spiritually strong, I would not have survived that. Change your name, move to another country. Yeah, right. But he's very, he's very irritated that he cannot have the control over this documentary. He tells Matt Wolfe, I don't want to be depicted as a gay icon, but I do want to come out in the documentary. He's very particular about how he wants his story framed in a way that is unfortunately kind of impossible, right? Eventually, by the time the documentary is done, he's being a pill about signing the release. So he's done about 40 hours of interviews, but he's still is holding on to, maybe I won't let you air it. Wow.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  He and the director have a falling out. He and Paul stopped speaking for five months. It seems like the documentary is not going to happen. And then Paul sends him a happy 40th birthday text because even the like pettiest thing in the world will not stop the birthday text from coming from Paul Reubens, which I think is so beautiful. Yeah. And then at that point, Paul says, okay, I'm ready to talk after five months. He says to Matt Wolfe, I might not be able to stay as involved as I hoped, but I know you'll make the film we discussed. I'm sorry that I was so emotional these past few years.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  It's so sad. I'm sorry if I did things that upset you. You didn't do anything wrong. I trust you. And he died the next day. Wow. Wow. And so the last thing I wanted to share about our friend Paul is, or sorry, I don't, I don't know that he died shortly after. Mm hmm. But the day before he died, he never gave another interview. They never finished the interviews that Matt Wolfe wanted to do. But Paul recorded a video on his phone at his house the day before he died. And I wish I could give you a hug, Sarah. It's so sad. But I think it's just best listened to. Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was to let people see who I really am and how painful and difficult it was to be labeled something that I wasn't. The moment I heard somebody labeled me as, I'm just gonna say it, a pedophile, I knew it's gonna change everything moving forward and backwards. I wanted to talk about and have some understanding of what it's like to be labeled a pariah,

• 53:13Speaker 02

  to have people scared of you or unsure of you or untrusting, or to look at what your intentions are through some kind of filter that's not true. I wanted people to understand that occasionally where there is smoke, there isn't always fire.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  I wanted somehow for people to understand that my whole career, everything I did and wrote was based in love and my desire to entertain and bring glee and creativity to young people and to everyone.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  And that's it.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  What Kimby said is that at the end of his life, Paul was in a good relationship. He was surrounded by his friends. He always had his community. He was never alone. But this is that that footage just came out a couple of weeks ago. How people found out he passed at the time was from an Instagram post that his, I think his assistant posted and his message at the time was, please accept my apology for not going public with what I've been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  And I don't know, but I think that the message that he sends Matt Wolfe is so telling of like where he was at the end of his life and what was on his mind. And it makes me really sad for him in some ways, but also like, he lived a really rich life in spite of how terribly he was treated sometimes by the media, by other people. I don't know. That just really struck me. And, and I love him.

• 55:18Sarah Marshall?

  And I love him too now.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  That's Paul Reubens.

• 55:21Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you. Thank you for sharing everything I do. It is,

• 55:28Sarah Marshall?

  I don't know, like now unfortunately more relevant than ever that if you have queer people in any sector, but certainly working with children, working to, you know, do what he said to sort of work from a place of love and entertainment and creativity and whimsy, that you will be the one who is more frequently accused of being dangerous to children than people who actually are.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:52Sarah Marshall?

  I don't know, like any life is is complicated and there's often great things lying right next to awful things that you can't really imagine going through. But I feel like, I think what sticks out to me of what you've told me is that you have someone who was so well known and so beloved, but also unable to, I don't know, maybe more able to express his true self through a character than in his actual life. And having those outlets, at least for the time that we have them, is, you know, the creativity and the the sort of worlds we create through this discomfort in our own lives can be so beautiful and give so much to the people who grew up with them and

• 56:34Sarah Marshall?

  who need them. But also, it's, there's still, I don't know, to me, that core sadness of, of just, for whatever reason, needing to live in sex secrecy until the very end, and also being encouraged to do that at various intervals by the world.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  You put it so beautifully. And I think of like, how many seminal creators of children's work were closeted queer people. I think of my favorite, I mean, my favorite artists as kids was like Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, Arnold Lobel, all queer men that

• 57:08Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, Tommy DePaola.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Tommy DePaola, of of a similar generation that I think also what Pee Wee was, that Paul was experiencing, I still can't separate it, was generational, where even though by the time he died, it was not easy, but easier and quite different to live as an out queer person as it would have been when he was the same age. I feel like he was still, because of the media narratives that existed around him, he was treated with the same level of homophobia that existed in 1991 forever.

• 57:47Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  And

• 57:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  the narrative around him was so persistent.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  And it didn't grow or really reevaluate in the way that you would, that he deserved for it too. Yeah. And so like all of those quotes that he has about like, you know, he was kind of frozen in time in this, in this weird way. And it's heartbreaking. I mean, that I just, I think that all of the fans of his work ultimately lost a lot of other creative creativity from him because it wasn't possible. It wasn't accepted. And I don't know. Yeah, I, I,

• 58:31Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he deserved better. He deserved better. And he still managed to do so much. It's like, I think Peewee is like one of the greatest comedic creations in the history of the world. And you can feel his influence in so much. And I don't know, I just, I just love him. The secret word is Paul Reubens forever.

• 58:59Sarah Marshall?

  What we've learned is that we just, we love, we love Paul Reubens. See, I'm doing it too.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  We do.

• 59:04Sarah Marshall?

  And we love Peewee Herman. And I don't know, I think artists, art kind of shows, especially when we're young, shows us how many different ways life can be and how, how much more there is to the world than what the people in our community are willing or able to show us.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Sarah Marshall?

  And I feel like you're much like the Holy Spirit and carrying Paul Reubens within you now and whatever you do.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, watching the documentary, I'm like, I don't know if he would have liked me, but I like him so much. I don't care.

• 59:38Sarah Marshall?

  The Julian Julia effect. You're like, I don't care. I don't even care if you like me because you've inspired me for my whole life and you can't even take it back now. So ha ha.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  It's true. What are you gonna do? So yeah, that, that's, that's the story of Paul. Long may he live.

• 59:55Sarah Marshall?

  Jamie, you do so much great stuff. Tell us about some of that stuff.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. You can, my book just came out in paperback, Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs. They, I have several podcasts, one of which is currently on hiatus, but 16th Minute of Fame is where every week we, I interview a past main character of the internet. It is a show very inspired by this, as are so many things I've done, because.

• 1:00:27Sarah Marshall?

  All our shows are holding hands.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  You're just a brilliant ray of light and it is the, I don't know, my way of trying to let internet characters of the day say their piece.

• 1:00:40Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Reflect on what it's like to be overexposed. And then there's the Bechdel Cast, where we talk about movies every week. And there's also, I am the producer of a show called We the Unhoused, that is biweekly. My friend Theo Henderson hosts it. It is one of the only podcasts, I think, possibly the only podcast that is about issues that affect the unhoused, told by currently or formerly unhoused people. So if you are curious about that, which you should be, you should check it out. It's a great show.

• 1:01:14Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you just for, for doing what you do. And yeah, everybody, read Raw Dog if you haven't yet. Get a nice paperback. It's actually a good gift. Just give it to everybody.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Fold it up, fuck it up. That's what it's for.

• 1:01:27Sarah Marshall?

  It's a travelogue, it's a feelings book, it's a food book, it's a funny book, it's a book that'll make you cry. It's everything you want from a book. It's the Jane Eyre of hot dog books. I don't know what to tell you.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Thankfully, there's just the one. It's whatever you want it to be. I love you, Sarah.

• 1:01:45Sarah Marshall?

  I love you, Jamie. You're the best. You're gonna go do another show right now.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  So are you.

• 1:01:50Sarah Marshall?

  And you're amazing. And thank you for telling me the story. And if you weren't so busy, I would have you on the show 25 times a year.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I could always just quit my job, you know?

• 1:02:02Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  I'm always, I'm always on the brink. Just let me know.

• 1:02:05Sarah Marshall?

  Just come, come live on this couch with me.

• 1:02:18Sarah Marshall?

  And that was our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much to Jamie Loftus for guesting and for sharing this story and her dedication and love to this subject and to anything else that she explores in her work. You can find her at 16th Minute, The Bechdel Cast, My Year in Mensa, so many other great shows. Ghost Church is another one. We are a very ghosty show and Boi de Shido great work with ghosts and the living too. And of course, you can read her book Raw Dog, now out in paperback. Thank you, of course, to Miranda Zickler for editing and producing, and thank

• 1:03:03Sarah Marshall?

  you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing.