Paul Reubens Lived in a Real-Life Pee-wee’s Playhouse

The new documentary premiering May 23 on Max, Pee-wee As Himself, sets out to show the man behind the iconic TV character. But the line between person and persona is blurry. Case in point: Pee-wee Herman’s seemingly endless collection of toys. Many came from Paul Reubenz’s own cache of kitschy ephemera. “I used to hang out with him sometimes, and he already was collecting stuff to use for the show,” his collaborator John Moody said at the Los Angeles premiere of Pee-wee As Himself. Moody was Mailman Mike in the original Pee-wee Herman Show and wrote on Playhouse. He said many of the objets d’art from Chez Pee-wee in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure came from Reubens himself. And the collecting only got more unhinged when Reubens moved into his Hollywood Hills home.

Fans first got a look inside Reubens’s home a year after the star’s death, when it was put on the market for $5 million. The mid-century-modern masterpiece was like a classy, grown-up version of his TV playhouse. Reubens lived in the home from 1985 until his death, filling it with collections of art, vintage toys, and endless mini-collections. “When he first moved into his house, it was just boxes on the floor up there,” Moody said. “He would pull stuff out of the box and go, ‘This is my collection of this,’ and he would show me things like pictures of alligator farms. He just loved that kind of stuff.”  

Seemingly everyone who met Reubens had a favorite tchotchke from his massive collection. “Most of the time, we would just sit at the Formica table in his kitchen,” said comedian Josh Meyers, “and there would be a fake cup of coffee on the table that looked like it had spilled. It was all very random, Pee-wee-centric stuff.” Alison Mork (who voiced Chairry on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse) recalled a portrait of Jesus with eyes that followed you around the room. Both Meyers and Mork had fond memories of the giant lava lamp in Reubens’s house, though the two couldn’t agree on the size. Mork said it was “the size of a small child,” while Meyers said it was at least six feet tall.

But what documentarian Matt Wolf remembers best was how well Reubens took care of the local wildlife. “Paul’s house was this sort of natural wonder that he created on the perimeter of Griffith Park,” he said. “Every day, he would spread seeds and corn and attract dozens of deer and black crows who would rest on a crooked tree branch that frames the Hollywood sign. There were coyotes and wolves and skunks. It really was a fantasy world.” Reubens’s final resting place, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, is also an oasis for wildlife in the city of Los Angeles. His grave is now visited by peacocks, swans, cats with Instagrams, and punk-rock ducks. It’s like the pet-shop scene in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure all over again.

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