20 Movies: Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

Pee-wee Herman loves his incredible red bicycle more than anything else in the world, and he will not sell it to his envious and spoiled neighbor, Francis, not for a million-trillion dollars. But while Pee-wee is going about his day, his bike is stolen. Lost and desperate, when a psychic tells him that his beloved bike is being kept in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-wee sets off on an epic journey to recover it, and nothing… NOTHING… will stand in his way.

After a few weeks off for the holidays, and also because of the end of America as we know it, I'm back again to posting about my 20 most influential movies. 

The result of a social media trend-game, the idea was that you choose 20 movies that greatly influenced you, and then you post the poster of each one, one per day, for 20 days. No reviews, no explanations, just the posters. 

So I did that, but I also wanted to talk about them a little bit...

Everyone knows Pee Wee Herman, and this movie is why. Featuring a character that was created and portrayed by the late Paul Reubens, Pee-wee Herman began as a stage act that in 1981 became an HBO special. After toning down the adult innuendo that was a hallmark of the stage show, in 1985, the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure was released, and the world was forever changed. The song Tequila, by the Champs, was forever changed.

This film was basically the Bible for my friends, Brooks Johnson, Justin Miller, and I for our 4th grade year, and “I know you are, but what am I” was our holy scripture. We quoted it endlessly. So it makes sense that it would occupy the eleventh spot on my list of twenty most influential movies.

There is nothing that avowed loner and rebel Pee-Wee Herman loves more than his bike, a heavily accessorized dream-ride that was built specifically for him by the genius bicycle-smith and his friend, Dottie. This bike is the envy of all who happen to see him cruise by, singing happily or intentionally performing tricks.

Those envious bystanders includes his neighbor, and worst enemy, Francis Buxton. Deciding that today was the day to make a positive change, Francis takes the initiative, because after all, his father always said "Everything's negotiable," and so he offers to buy Pee-Wee’s bike.

But he is thoroughly rebuffed.

And that is when Francis declares that Pee-Wee Herman will regret this day.

Francis’ vow proves to be prophetic, as while Pee-wee is busy enjoying a day of shopping out at the local shops, his bike is stolen.

Gasp! Horror of horrors!

As the police are obviously no help, Pee-Wee takes the law into his own hands, confronting Francis in the bath. These two titans tussle, a veritable tsunami of grappling ensues, no holds barred, and no quarter given, with water splashing all over the Buxton family's bathroom tiles, until finally, the pair are separated by the family butler/bodyguard. Francis’ father explains that the Bustons are not thieves, and sends Pee-Wee home.

Undaunted, Pee-wee turns to the local radio station, and despite not actually having the money, offers a $10,000 reward for the return of his bike. It is a clever ruse, as obviously the person who brings the bike back to him will also be the one responsible for stealing the bike, and thus, they do not deserve a reward.

It is at this point where we learn that despite claiming otherwise, the Buxtons actually are in fact thieves, as sitting in the study of his father's mansion, alongside Pee-wee's bike, we see Francis as he hears Pee-wee over the radio. Panicking at the relentlessness of Pee-Wee’s search, Francis instructs a local tough to take the bike away. Far away.

Pee-wee, meanwhile, frustrated by his inability to locate his beloved bike, especially once his attempts at community engagement come up empty, he only has one option left… to dance with the devil by the pale moonlight, so he turns to the dark powers of the occult. A psychic informs Pee-Wee that he will find his bike hidden within the shadowy confines of the Alamo’s basement.

Pee-wee immediately sets out on the road to San Antonio.

While on the way to Texas, Pee-Wee makes several new friends, like the escaped convict, Mickey, and Large Marge, the ghost of a long-dead truck driver. At a truck stop, where Pee-wee discovers his wallet is missing, which means that he must pay for his meal by washing dishes, he befriends Simone.

A waitress with dreams of visiting Paris, Simone has a big but… and that "but" is her boyfriend Andy, a very large man who believes Europe is set up to make stupid Americans feel stupid. Pee-Wee and Simone watch the sun rise together from the jaws of a roadside dinosaur. They speak of dreams, and for a brief moment, their worlds are complete. But then Andy arrives, enraged over Pee-wee and Simone's familiarity, and Pee-Wee must hop a train in order to escape from Andy’s jealous wrath. Unfortunately, an overly-exuberant hobo-troubadour forces Pee-Wee to leap blindly from the train.

To his immense good fortune, Pee-wee finds that he has landed outside of San Antonio. But that good fortune is soon dashed, as it is here in San Antonio that Pee-wee learns a terrible truth about one of this country’s most famous landmarks, one that is not taught in any classroom.

Bikeless, and stuck at a bus station, after a brief interlude celebrating the state of Texas with some locals, Pee-Wee encounters Andy once again, and must disguise himself as a Bull Rider at the local rodeo in order to escape him. But despite nearly setting a World Record, Pee-Wee is sadly unprepared for the perils of bull riding and injures himself. Luckily, his injuries are transient, and when he awakens, Pee-Wee remembers the Alamo.

Eventually, Pee-Wee’s need to use the phone leads him to a roadside biker bar. Wowing the outlaws with the incredible gift of dance, he is given a motorcycle for his journey.

He crashes immediately.

Awakening in a hospital, Pee-Wee sees his beloved bike on television, a gift to Kevin's older brother, Wayne. Soon enough, Pee-Wee is bluffing his way onto the Warner Bros Studio lot by gloming onto Milton Berle‘s entourage, a man famous for having a very large penis. Escaping from the Warner Bros Studio lot with his beloved bike, all while wrecking havoc on the various going-ons within the studio in the process, Pee-Wee’s good conscience ultimately betrays him. He is unwilling to let innocent animals burn in a pet store fire, not even snakes, even if it means getting caught by the police. Arrested, and brought before the Head of Warner Bros Studio so that he can answer for his crimes against Hollywood, the studio President instead sees a story that will touch the hearts of millions.

Warner Bros buys the rights to Pee-Wee‘s life, and makes a blockbuster movie out of it. Starring James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild, it is the story of a secret agent named P.W. Herman who must regain his stolen bike before the Russians can find the hidden microfiche. But once Pee-wee says hello to his friends in attendance at the drive-in premiere, he and Dottie decide to take off.

After all, he doesn’t need to see the film… he lived it.

There’s so much to love about this film.

This is Tim Burton’s best film, hands down. It was also his first feature film, and it is a dazzling debut, a comic masterpiece. Written by Reubens, Michael Varhol, and the late great Phil Hartman, it’s a classic 3 Act road movie tale that mixes showbiz satire with a surrealist fantasy, all while being packed full of the kind of ridiculous one-off detours, digressions, and great gags that make the movie iconic.

According to legend, the first draft of the screenplay was basically a remake of the 1960 Walt Disney film, Pollyanna—the story of an orphan with a positive attitude in a negative world—before it ended up as an oddball homage to Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica’s famous 1948 film, Bicycle Thieves—the story of a cash-strapped father searching desperately through the crowded streets of Rome for his stolen bike despite the efforts of a cruel world to stymie his efforts–and we are all the better for it.

An absurdly flamboyant, incredibly earnest, just plain happily weird fairytale, it is a live action loony tune that loops ideas of happiness and fulfillment, classism, and the power of friendship together into a surrealist hodge-podge road trip meets the classic hero’s journey, all as it travels through a crazy-quilt world of urban legends, nonsense Americana, niche silliness, and the kind of plain old strange encounters that make up the world of everyday outsiders you can find squatting along the highways and byways of the wide open spaces of America.

What makes Pee-wee’s Big Adventure great is not just that it’s funny and fun, but that, while it obviously doesn’t take itself seriously, it still respects its world. While Pee-wee is at the center of the jokes, a nearly nonstop stream of them, those jokes are never aimed at him, they’re never at his expense, or at the expense of any of the others he meets. Because, while there may be a lot of things about Pee-wee you don't know anything about, things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand, things you shouldn't understand, it's clear throughout the whole film that Pee-wee Herman is not the ridiculous one, the world is, he's just trying to survive in it.

It’s hard for me to imagine the kind of person who wouldn’t like this movie, but I’m sure I wouldn't want to know them. Everything about this film is a simply a good time. I love it.

If you haven’t seen it… first of all, wow. Secondly, you should change that.