Actor Paul Reubens has played notable characters in films like "Blow" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," but his biggest role has been his recurring character Pee Wee Herman. Back on television in syndication with his show 'Pee Wee's Playhouse," Reubens recently took the time to speak to The Culture Shock Thursday, July 13, 2006, while in the Big Apple preparing for an appearance on Conan O'Brien later that evening.

Hey Paul, what’s going on?

Hi, how are you?

Pretty good. Where are you at today?

I am in New York City.

Do you live out there?

No, I live in Los Angeles.

I’m out in Montana in Big Sky country.

I’ve been to Whitefish.

That’s a nice area.

Yeah.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great. I’m just doing a couple of phone interviews and then I’m jumping into a little party outfit and going to do Conan O’Brien.

Nice. When are you gonna be on that?

Um. Tonight.

Cool. Let’s get right into it. How exciting is it to have ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ back on the air in syndication?

Oh, it’s incredibly exciting. It’s been my dream for a number of years to have the show back on TV. I’m just gearing up to do a film version of that kids show where we never left the playhouse in the show that’s starting to re-air on ‘Adult Swim.’ There’s a movie version now in the works that’s gonna be almost entirely out of the playhouse with all those big clunky characters that you would never expect to see out of the playhouse, out on the road looking for what happened to the king of cartoons.

Nice. Are you going to bring anybody back from the past, like Tim Burton, to collaborate on that?

There isn’t a director attached to it. I have a call out to Tim Burton about it that just went out last week and I’ve been on the road since then. So, yeah, there isn’t a director attached to it yet, it’s just getting the financing put together now. I hope the whole original cast will be back for sure. I hope to start shooting it January or February of this coming year.

How were you initially approached by the idea of bringing back the character on these classic shows for ‘Adult Swim?’

How was I approached?

Yeah, how did you find out about it or how did this all come to pass?

Well, I’d been trying to get the show on, for the last year I’ve been working on this. I have someone that I work with who put out phone calls and e-mails and was helping me look for a home for the show and we were very close to going with somebody different, which really did not seem right, and at the last minute, several months ago, I just pulled the plug and went ‘this just doesn’t seem like the right place. Let’s keep looking.’ I think like two or three days after that, the Cartoon Network was approached and they, ‘Adult Swim’ immediately went ‘yes, great idea,’ and we had a deal, like in lightening speed time for show business. Sometimes those things can drag on and on and on. Within a couple of weeks, I think, there was a deal. It started on Monday as you know and it’s entirely thrilling and I couldn’t name a more perfect place for the show to be right now. I’m thrilled about it.

They talk about the ‘Adult Swim’ as that 18-34 age group and I’m 30 years old, so I’m right in the middle of all of that. I’m sure that many people in that category are just like me and grew up watching your show and your movies and consider you an icon. How proud are you of what you’ve accomplished as far as having an impact on the lives of so many people?

I can hardly believe that. It seems like a dream when you say that to me. I’ve heard a little bit of that before, so it’s always thrilling. It’s always amazing to me. I’m completely proud of the show. There’s nothing about the show that I’m not proud of. With the huge amount of work. I worked with amazing people that collaborated on it with me. All my friends that were in the show and people that became friends over the years from the show. We took it very seriously and I felt like it was a very ambitious thing to pull off and when I look at it now 20 years later, I’m still amazed by it and I still feel proud of it and I think it holds up pretty well.

Yeah. For instance, the other day I told my mom that I was going to talk to you and she was like ‘oh man.’ She just knew it. She remembered that time back then and that it was such a large portion of my life at the time. It was Pee Wee Herman. It was the greatest thing. It is awesome for me to see that back.

I gotta tell you. To me, I was so busy at the height of my Pee Wee Herman days and particularly producing, directing, writing and starring in the show, wearing like four or five hats and doing four or five full time jobs. I was so busy, I never really heard much feedback about it then. So, to have it come back twenty years later and the only work I’m doing on it now is promotion and talking to people about it, which is hardly work. I’m not insanely busy like I was where I was never at a party. I was never around anybody giving me any feedback. Twenty years later to hear what you just said, I cannot tell you how much that means to me. Really. It’s just so enormously gratifying to hear that people were touched by it or still are moved by it. It sounds corny, but it’s incredible because I never really got that much of that when it was really all happening originally just ‘cause I was so busy. I never really … when it came out on video the first time, a number of years after it had originally aired, was the beginning of that, of what I’m talking about for me where I would actually be somewhere and somebody would come up to me and go, ‘I have two little kids and here they are and tell Pee Wee what you think of the show,’ or I would talk to a mother or father about their kids liking the show or hear from people who had watched it when they were kids. It’s all kind of new. That portion of it. The feedback portion is really kind of new for me and enormously gratifying for me.

My dad used to have these white, loud, ‘70s era disco shoes and I would put them on and jump on a table and dance to ‘Tequila.’ It was great!

Any photographs of that laying around?

I hope not (laughs).

I have a pretty good collection that I’ve collected over the years of people who’ve sent me photographs of them dressed as Pee Wee either as kids or adults on Halloween or whatever. It’s really funny.

Nice. What is it about the Pee Wee character and the insane backdrop of this show that appeals to so many people?

Personally I think the show originally pushed buttons where people felt like it was nostalgia a little bit because it was, in my mind, a homage to the shows that I grew up with like ‘Howdy Doody,’ and ‘The Mickey Mouse Club,’ and ‘Captain Kangaroo,’ so I feel like it’s sort of a throwback in a certain way. When the world was a little simpler and it was maybe a little easier to be a kid. You had a little less pressure of living in a simpler world maybe. Does that all sound way too intense? (laughs).

No. Not at all. I agree with that.

Also, to me, it never hurt that the show was very fast paced and very colorful. I really, in my mind, tried to design as much of it as possible, or conceive as much as possible as like almost hypnotic. That it would just really draw kids in and be an entire world that you could get lost in for a half an hour.

How much fun was it for you coming up with show ideas and characters and backdrops?

I have often said that there was nothing funnier during that show, than being in the writing room with the other writers and having somebody, myself or somebody else, come up with an idea that we would all look at each other and immediately could see a six year old falling off the couch with laughter. That to me was always the most gratifying thing about it. It was so much fun to be writing for young kids. It was fun to think of what would crack up a kid.

What was the process like when you all got together? How would you come up with story ideas?

It was actually different the first year from the rest of the years. The first year, I sat in a room with four or five other writers and we co-wrote all 13 scripts together. Then after that, I supervised the writing and I had people write scripts. I hired duos, writing duos, or single people that I knew, even a couple of people that worked on the show kind of approached me about writing. So, the scripts were done differently after the first year. They were more like, either me or someone else would come up with an idea and I would give it to somebody to write and they would bring it back and I would either rewrite it or change it. They were done differently after the first year. The first year was a lot of fun because we were all together. They’re more collaborative in a way.

Back then, the television scenery was a little different. Did you have the full cooperation of CBS as far as allowing you guys to do whatever you wanted?

Absolutely. And, boy, you probably can imagine that that’s a very unusual situation. It’s not unusual to have somebody tell you that you can have complete freedom, or that they’re not gonna breathe down your neck, but it never happens like that. You sign a contract and then you hand it back and they hand you notes. CBS was not like that at all. CBS said to me, ‘do what you want. We want it to be your show and for you to be happy and we will not interfere,’ and they absolutely did that. They absolutely did not interfere. They were a hundred percent supportive. I think in five years in five seasons on the show, they maybe told me five things that they asked me to do and I did a couple of them and said ‘I don’t agree with the rest of it,’ and they said ‘fine.’ I’ve made the analogy a couple of times that it’s almost like, here’s somebody at the end of five years worth at a show saying they still love the network and that they still respect the people, is kind of like as unusual as building a huge home somewhere and still liking the contract at the end. It’s really … that’s a big compliment and even though it sounds a little backhanded, it’s not intended like that. They were incredible, CBS. I would go back and do that again in one second.

Tell me about some things you have coming up. I read that you’re doing ‘Reno 911: Miami.’ What’s that like? What’s your part in that?

You know, I shouldn’t really give that away because it’s kind of a big surprise. If you’re familiar with the show, I play a relative of somebody who has been on the show many times and always talks about this relative, but we’ve never seen the person before. It’s a little bit of a surprise and I’m in the very, very last scene of the movie. It was a great placement and I had met those people several years ago and didn’t realize that they were the same people that did ‘Reno 911,’ which amazed me because I’ve been in that situation quite often where people go, ‘I didn’t realize that was you in whatever,’ you know. I don’t often times not recognize people. I’m pretty good at that. At going, wow, that’s you, I see, wow, what a change. But, I was talking to the people that created ‘Reno 911,’  had a show called ‘Viva Variety’ which I used to really like and I was talking to them about the show and they said and I finally said ‘what was your connection to it?’ and they said ‘Well, we were the two stars of it.’ I’ve been in situations a million times over the last twenty years where I’ve been talking to somebody and they go ‘well, have you written anything that I would know?’ and I go ‘well, I co-wrote ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’’ … wait, I’m setting this up wrong. I’ve been in lots of situations where people go, ‘well what did you have to do with ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’?’ or ‘what did you do on ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’?’ and I go ‘I’m Pee Wee.’ And they go ‘oh, my god. Wow. You are.’ So it’s always shocking to me to do that to somebody else because I don’t do that really. But these people, I was totally thrown off by. Anyway, they asked me to do an episode of the TV series, ‘Reno 911’ which should be airing pretty soon, although I don’t know the date of it. I play a character called The Whisperer and they asked me to do their movie. They’re doing another movie that I was supposed to do yesterday, but I’m in New York and I couldn’t change the schedule here and they couldn’t change their shooting schedule. They’re doing a ping pong movie called ‘Balls of Fury’ that I was going to be in. I just finished doing a slasher film. A bloody scary … my friend David Arquette who I turned into a vampire in the film version of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ he co-wrote a scary movie with someone he collaborated with and this is his directorial debut and he got a lot of people, friends of his, to be in it. It’s about a bunch of kids who go to an outdoor music festival and I play the promoter of the music festival and I’m scared by scary movies and I don’t know whether I’ll see it or not (laughs).

It’s a lot easier to be on the set than to watch the final product?

To be honest with you, being on the set was a little frightening also. I was on the set, my first day on the set, I wasn’t actually working. I came a day early because I wanted to talk to the director about a couple of things to develop the character and I went down to the set to show him a costume and they said, ‘oh, he’ll talk to you in one minute. We’re just about ready to do a take of this scene.’ I stood there and all of a sudden they went ‘ok, roll, action.’ This guy came running down this path, being chased by somebody else. The guy who was running first tripped and fell and this other guy came and ripped open his chest and pulled out some guts and held them up in the air. I was only about twenty feet away and I looked at it and went, ‘those are real guts.’ I almost threw up, (laughs). It was really bizarre. Even though you know it’s pretend, it’s kind of freaky.

Have you had a chance to just sit back at night and watch any of these episodes as they’ve aired and looked at them from the outside?

Yeah. I’ve seen it every night this week.

How do you feel about that?

First of all, just to be able to look at my watch or set an alarm for 11 o’clock is exciting to me. Just to not go over to a collection of DVDs and throw one on, but to actually, I think you used the expression ‘appointment television.’ Was that you?

I don’t think so.

I’m sorry. Right before I spoke to you somebody else said something to me, it was kind of like appointment television when it was on Saturday mornings. It’s like that for me now. I’m like, ‘wow, 11 o’clock, I’m gonna be on.’ So, it’s exciting just to know that it’s on and that somebody can be tuning in on purpose or just switching channels and just find it, is pretty exciting to me. I think the shows look great. They really hold up well in my opinion. I don’t know what you would expect me to say other than that. I’m a little close to it. But in honesty to me they look great.

Then you have people like me who have Tivo or whatever and I just set it up to record it and the next day it’s right there waiting for me.

That’s fantastic. Tivo. What a brilliant invention.

(laughs). Yes it is. Well Paul, thanks for talking to me, I appreciate it. I’m so excited to see the show back on the air and I’m excited for you and all that’s coming up.

Well, thank you very much. I’ve enjoyed talking to you too.

Alright, man. Well, good luck on Conan tonight. I’ll be tuning in for that.

Or, you’ll be Tivo’ing it for tomorrow.

Exactly. (laughs).

Alright Patrick, take care.

You too.

Bye.