Pee Wee's Big Adventure: Classic or dud?

We had an absolute blast.

Actually my favorite part is the bit where they're showing him all the heads and they bring out that gigantic head and he starts screaming. I could watch that about 40,000 times and not get bored, and indeed did once, when I was pretty drunk.

Actually I think that this movie is a better homage to Ed Wood than Ed Wood was. I love how in the "driving late at night sequence" with the road signs, you can actually look at the bottom of the frame and see that the signs are mounted on a sled being wheeled towards the camera, rather than the camera moving towards the signs.

CLASSIC.

Dang, I must see it again. I've only ever watched it the once! And, uh, I've never seen Beetlejuice all the way through...

And Ned? Watch frickin' Beetlejuice once all the way through. You like goth chicks, it makes no sense you wouldn't have watched the whole thing at least once by now.

*Just kidding, I wanted to add some variety to the posts

"I have been ready since first call! I AM READY... ROLL!"

Pee Wee's Big Adventure: Classic or Classic?

Seriously, this is just a great movie. Just absolutely great. Man, is this a great movie.

By this logic the Planet of the Apes movie is likeable, and yet I doubt.

Didn't top cartoonist Gary Panter do lots of set design for Pee Wee? I don't know if he was involved in any of the design for the film, though.

nick, Phil Hartman was also in the Pee Wee HBO special, which predates both the movie and the tv show, and is definitely for adults.

When I was volunteering at a library summer reading program, one of the kids looked EXACTLY like that blond boy in the Mr. Bumble cartoon.

Yeah, Gary Panter worked on the design Pee Wee's Playhouse.

luv ya and all, but that is a terrible idea

Just watched this last week at Hollywood Forever Cemetery...and Paul Reubens showed up - to my incredible shock!! He talked a little about the making of the movie and then brought out Dottie and Simone (EG Daily, Diane Salinger). Everyone picnic-ing in the crowd stood up and gave them a standing ovation. Fantastic moment.

Weirdly, in the DVD commentary (if memory serves correctly), Paul Reubens tells of writing this movie with "a couple of other guys," never mentioning that one of them was Phil Hartman, someone who really helped him launch his career, and a name that everyone recognizes. I remember thinking that was extremely odd.

Yeah, Hartman, from what I understand, was huge in the writing of this movie. (He's in it, too!) I have not listened to the commentary track that has Reubens on it. I will.

I dare you to find one person on Earth who doesn't like this movie

i'm not saying this is the funniest sequence in a film made in my lifetime but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU_78ORxVUo

"FRANCIS."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffD1RlO87O4

Every time I'm on a tour of some historic building, I always want to ask "excuse me, but when are we going to see the basement?"

This movie has at least two of the best Texas jokes of all time.

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJEwrw4VEls

And this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cHLoHou8uY

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qazaaq0msA

I have started telling people this is my favorite movie; it really probably is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh6a21aqOC4

Saw this last night at a public park screening and was blown away by how much I enjoyed it. I don't think I've thought about this movie since I was a kid. The crowd did the clapping and singing along to the "Heart of Texas" joke and I about lost it at that point. What a great movie!

I credit this film's excellence to the writing of Phil Hartman, and to a lesser extent Paul Ruebens. Incidentally, it is the only Tim Burton-directed film I have ever wholeheartedly enjoyed.

The writing is wonderful, and the cinematography is beyond great! I've got to find a DVD so I can watch it with commentary.

It's funny that Phil Hartman actually shows up, near the end of the movie, says a line, and is on screen long enough for you to say "Hey! It's Phil Hartman!"

Completely love everything about this movie. And I've always wanted to know what Amazing Larry's backstory is.

The psycho convict guy was hilarious. And having Pee Wee save every single animal in that store was brilliant. And of course the end of the movie is just the best meta film trick ever done in any movie ever. I was sitting on a hill with the movie screen down below and when that final shot of him riding his bike across the drive-in screen was shown, the illusion it created was MAGICAL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yfJQUoxN3U

i'm going to watch the fuck out of this tonight

C'mon, am. Let's talk about your big "but."

so great how Elfman got the Simpsons gig on the back of this. the Breakfast Machine tune is so proto-Simpsons Theme and so amazing.

It's like you're unraveling a big cable-knit sweater, and someone just keep knitting, and knitting, and knitting, and knitting . . .

Actually my favorite part is the bit where they're showing him all the heads and they bring out that gigantic head and he starts screaming.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kRuD6zV4Fqs/TAA_IagjnxI/AAAAAAAADeY/7YaLLgtaQv0/s400/ishot-700.jpg

I remember Randy Newman saying once about Elfman, not long after this, "He has a distinct sensibility. It's Nino Rota's."

IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SHARE WITH THE REST OF US AMAZING LARRY??

― chaki, Thursday, April 17, 2003 5:57 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so great how Elfman got the Simpsons gig on the back of this. the Breakfast Machine tune is so proto-Simpsons Theme and so amazing.

― piscesx, Tuesday, March 25, 2014 11:26 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was it this film particularly, or his work with burton on several films?

i watched the deleted scenes, and once I did it was pretty obvious how the film was missing some connective narrative tissue. which matters a lot less in a film like this, of course, as it would matter in a detective movie or melodrama or something like that. road movies and comedies are both famous for being episodic, and this movie is episodic to the max. there's even stuff in the first third of the film that's clearly supposed to set up later stuff that just never arrives. and there's a consistent sense of something even more subversive trying to ooze its way out and failing. (though after not having seen the whole thing for probably 20 years, I did notice a few double-entendre references to reubens' gayness.) stuff like that prevents this from being top-shelf for me but it is consistently hilarious + inventive.

listening to the audio commentary does lend some credibility to the rumors that tim burton is aspies. he's halting and inarticulate, he arrives at the threshold of saying something interesting but then backs down, mumbling or giggling or stuttering. and he says, tellingly, that the hardest part of making the switch from animated to live action is that he had to communicate with more people, something he said was very trying.

i mean much of the character (if he's even a "character" rather than a kind of walking gag a la Monsieur Hulot) of Pee-wee is an amalgam of a number of gay/camp motifs, so there's that. but occasionally the film seems to be working just a bit harder to wink at the audience.

xxp yeah according to the Songs In The Key Of Springfield CD Groening came to Elfman having seen Pee Wee as "i knew he'd be perfect". interestingly he gave Elfman “flavor tapes including The Jetsons' theme, selections from Nino Rota’s Juliet of the Spirits, a Remington Electric shaver jingle by Frank Zappa, some easy listening music by Esquivel, and a teach your parrot to talk record.. Elfman gave a listen and said, ‘I know exactly what you’re looking for.’"

And then he said, "Eh, fuck it, I'll just rewrite the Jetsons theme."

it's funny that this film works so well, considering how weird it is. it's not just episodic; the episodes don't build on each other and seem arranged more or less randomly, pee wee doesn't really grow or change as a character, and the villain is only on the screen for like five minutes. and yet it's totally wonderful and satisfying, and feels new with every watch. it kind of feels like pee wee's adventures could just go on indefinitely, and i like that.

the screenplay does make the necessary nods to pee-wee growing and changing. it concludes with him more-or-less accepting the romantic overtures of dotty (?), and before that he manages to apologize to her for being selfish and not mindful of her.

which in another film would signal that he's entered the threshold to adulthood or something. but of course he remains a largely asexual man-child, albeit one who occasionally sends buried hints of his gayness (of course you could argue that such hints exist kind of separate from the diegesis).

of course the central "problem" set up by the screenplay is the missing bike, that (along with Pee-wee himself) gives the film its needed coherence and sense of (stuttering) forward movement.

but it certainly doesn't labor very hard to be a "classical" screenplay, and I think Burton's use of cell animation, stop motion, etc. --and the highly citational(?) style/approach--just kind of heightens the sense of disconnectedness (or what the kiddies today would call "randomness").

i actually think a lot of conceits in the film worked even better in the TV series. indeed as J.D. picks up on I think sometimes "big adventure" feels like a film straining to be a TV series.

On Criterion in December!

https://www.criterion.com/films/34870-pee-wee-s-big-adventure

Awesome news! That was more or less leaked yesterday, but super cool to get confirmation.

A true tribute to Reubens to interview a terf on his canonising blu-ray.

Ayoade? Looks like he's doing the interviewing (of Burton) rather than the reverse but that did leap out.

At a customer site today where two older engineers asked the younger IT guy if on his recent trip to Texas, he visited the basement of the Alamo. He didn’t get the ref and when explained, said, “oh I never saw that movie”

To educate the youth

Allegedly the red bike, or a replica, is now on display at the actual Alamo.

IS THIS SOMETHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH THE REST OF US, AMAZING LARRY?!

Funny that this is the first Burton on Criterion. Seems like Ed Wood would be a natural.

Now that you mention it, yeah. Maybe next time?

I find myself going back to Sleepy Hollow more than any other Burton movie, although I do love Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Also this announcement buries the lede: I Know Where I'm Going! on Blu/4K!

Ed Wood is with Disney (via Touchstone & Hollywood Pictures) who aren't great at licensing niche titles unless the director gets involved.

scariest movie ever? snakes, mean jean, clown bike EMTs arggghhhh

I read upthread (a true mishmash of things) and stumbled across this post. I apparently was the only one to respond and as I said then, I don't know what to think. I STILL don't know. It might be one of the most morbid/amazing/unsettling things I've ever read!

Separately, this post:

Weirdly, in the DVD commentary (if memory serves correctly), Paul Reubens tells of writing this movie with "a couple of other guys," never mentioning that one of them was Phil Hartman, someone who really helped him launch his career, and a name that everyone recognizes. I remember thinking that was extremely odd.

I guess this was partially answered by the documentary; then again, since I assume it was recorded after Hartman's death, maybe he didn't want to dwell on things too much.

I think their relationship was rocky. Hartman basically calling Reubens a deviant in a tv interview probably didn’t help things!

scariest movie ever? snakes, mean jean, clown bike EMTs arggghhhh

The audience reaction to Mean Jean back in '86 remains one of my very favourite theatrical experiences.

guys...

tell 'em Mean Jean sent ya!