Tag: Paul Reubens

April 16, 2014 / / Main Slate Archive

 

Like a wave of fresh, spring air following one of the rottenest winters on record, PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE wafts into the Brattle like a warm rain, green grass, fun and flowers. Its bright candy colors are sure to wake you from your long black-and-white hibernation. Its non-stop frivolity will cause you to skip and run and jump. It is food for the soul, and what fool is going to turn that down after all the rain and hail, cold and snow of Old Man Winter, 2014.

What a gift the Brattle is giving us!

August 28, 2006 / / Film Notes

Written by Christine Bamberger

USA, 1985. 90 min. Warner Brothers/ Aspen Film Society. Cast: Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger, Milton Berle. Music: Danny Elfman; Cinematography: Victor Kemper; Production Design: David Snyder; Produced by: Richard Abramson, William McEuen; Written by: Phil Hartman, Paul Reubens, Michael Varhol; Directed by: Tim Burton.

Living high up a mountain in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire in the late 1980s, I had no cable and absolutely miserable television reception, which meant that I began listening in earnest to National Public Radio and took to watching a few of the shows available on the two network channels I was able to get. Though I adored the quirky Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and The Wonder Years, I also watched a few shows to which I probably would not have been drawn had my selection been more diverse–I developed a Who’s the Boss? habit, once it was syndicated. Oddest of all was the show I’d occasionally switch to on Saturday mornings, when I was just returning from a grocery run and starting to put things away in the kitchen. Pee-wee’s Playhouse turned out to be a sort of cross between a live-action Warner Brothers cartoon–both fun for kids and zinging much of its humor straight over their heads–and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.