Ep. 153: Pee-Wee As Himself with Director/Executive Producer Matt Wolf

Ep. 153: Pee-Wee As Himself with Director/Executive Producer Matt Wolf

Pee-wee as Himself

Directed & Executive Produced by Matt Wolf

2025, 2 Episodes - 195 minutes

Premieres May 23rd on HBO Max

Pee-wee as Himself is the definitive story of the artist and performer Paul Reubens and his indelible alter ego Pee-wee Herman. Rubens’ first film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and his children’s television series Pee-wee’s Playhouse were cultural touchstones of the 1980s. However, when Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure, the strict separation he created between himself and his alter ego backfired.

Prior to his recent death, Reubens spoke in-depth about the kaleidoscopic influences that inspired his groundbreaking work, and the personal tribulations he faced to persevere as an artist. As somebody who lost control of his personal narrative in the media, Reubens found himself at odds with the documentary process. But at the end of his life, he took a leap of faith, and decided that the film should be finished.

Matt Wolf is a filmmaker in New York. His award-winning documentaries have played widely in festivals and have been distributed internationally in theaters and on television. Matt’s latest two-part film Pee-wee as Himself, about the artist and performer Paul Reubens, premiered opening night of Sundance 2025 and will air on HBO May 23rd.

Matt’s features include Wild Combination about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, Teenage about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, Recorder about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years, and Spaceship Earth about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. Matt produced the Emmy-nominated film The Stroll about the history of New York’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of transgender sex workers. The film won numerous awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and a Peabody.

About Matt Wolf

Matt has made a number of short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, The Face of AIDS about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement, and Another Hayride about the self-help guru Louise Hay, which was released by the New York Times’ Op-Docs and PBS’ POV series.

The Criterion Channel recently presented a survey of Matt’s films. In addition to filmmaking, Matt is a writer. His artist book Input compiles hundreds of images from an enormous television archive, and he publishes on Substack. Matt also organizes film screenings and public events, and he was a Curator of Film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

http://mattwolf.info

Credits

Stephen Bluhm - Sound Engineer/Episode Editor

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.stephenbluhm.fun⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Rich Wexler

Producer/Interviewer

⁠⁠⁠http://www.vintageannalsarchive.com

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