Pee-Wee Herman is Back. Check Your Local Porn Shop

The Pee-Wee Herman Show is back. Paul Reubens, who created Pee-Wee and played him on stage, TV and film between 1980 and 1991, is bringing his goofy-geeky man-child to the Los Angeles stage for a limited live-performance run at Club Nokia next month. “It’s going to be really, really good! I swear!” Reubens said, wearing Pee-Wee’s signature gray suit and bow tie, at a press conference today.

The full-scale stage performance, produced by Tony Award-winner Scott Sanders (Elaine Stritch: At Liberty) and directed by Alex Timbers (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) will revive the character Reubens first brought to life on stage in a comedy act and then spun into HBO’s The Pee-wee Herman Show in 1980. That show gave rise to two feature films, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and Big Top Pee-Wee (1988), and the CBS children’s program, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1986-1991).

After Reubens’ arrest in 1991 for indecent exposure and the subsequent media frenzy, CBS pulled Pee-Wee’s Playhouse off the air. Over the years, Reubens has tried to resurrect the character and the show. In fact, this production is the first step in his dream of a full-scale Pee-Wee comeback. “I want to make a big, giant, epic adventure movie based on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, ” Reubens said. “This [stage] show is what I did originally to have a career, so why not [do it again]?”