Pee-wee Exposes Himself (Again)

Paul Reubens breaks silence on porno-theater arrest in new magazine interview

By Joal Ryan Jul 29, 1999 4:40 PMTags
Back before President Clinton made, um, intern relations acceptable cocktail discussion, Pee-wee Herman's misadventure in a Florida porno theater was shocking stuff.

That was then, this is now--and the defrocked Herman, now billed simply as Paul Reubens, is finally opening up about, um, opening up.

"I didn't know [the scandal] would be as huge as it was, but I knew it would be a big deal," Reubens says in the new Vanity Fair. It is the actor's first interview on the indecent-exposure arrest that formally ended his kiddie career as Pee-wee and made him a walking, talking human punchline.

"Jeffrey Dahmer's story broke the same time as my story, and for a week I was leading the news, followed by Dahmer eating people, boring holes into their heads and turning them into zombies," he tells the magazine's Bruce Handy. "It was just so bizarre."

Reubens was busted on July 26, 1991, at an adult theater in Sarasota, Florida, on charges of exposing himself and (allegedly) really enjoying himself during the show. He eventually pleaded no contest to the exposure charge and got slapped with community service and a $50 fine. But the damage was done--mainly in the form of his police booking shot, a stark, grainy image reproduced around the world.

"I was really angry that I didn't smile in that picture," Reubens says. "I mean, I still can't really look at that picture, because it's so real to me."

At the time of his arrest, Reubens was coming off a five-year run as the star of CBS' Saturday morning kids' show, Pee-wee's Playhouse. He'd also starred in two movies as Pee-wee, Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Big Top Pee-wee (1988). The ultra-adult scandal didn't jibe with the childlike character--but Reubens says that wasn't his concern.

"I didn't feel like this is the wrong thing to do," he says in the interview. "The show was so over in my mind. In my mind, I wasn't sitting in the theater in my bow tie and suit."

Reubens admits he went into "shock" during the heat of the scandal, hid out at the New Jersey estate of billionaire heiress Doris Duke, but "never contemplated anything like suicide."

"But I see how one could."

Now 46, Reubens will next be seen as the Spleen in the un-superhero comedy, Mystery Men, opening August 6. Other post-Pee-wee credits include: Batman Returns and TV's Murphy Brown.