Paul Reubens has left the Earth, riding a sporty red-and-white bicycle into that Puppetland from whose bourn no traveler returns, but leaving us with his great creation and alter ego: Pee-wee Herman.
As an actor with many, diverse credits — he was most recently seen onscreen in “What We Do in the Shadows,” “The Conners” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Mosaic” and was Emmy-nominated as a guest actor for a recurring role on “Murphy Brown” — there was more to Reubens, who died Sunday at age 70, than Pee-wee.
But there was no more to Pee-wee than Reubens, who thought him up, lived inside him and made him run. (Though I suppose, in some sense, Pee-wee might have told Reubens where he wanted to run.)
Pee-wee was a local celebrity before he was catapulted to national celebration via “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985 — which also gave director Tim Burton his first feature — and television’s “ Pee-wee’s Playhouse “ the following year. (My own familiarity with Reubens began when he starred in my friend Randy Akerson’s California Institute of the Arts film thesis, “The Beat Scene,” as an angsty beatnik who would run out into streets at night to find a dark corner to scream in.)