As Satisfaction Month 2025 will get underway, it is troublesome to know easy methods to really feel. With information tales about members of the U.S. authorities passing anti-trans legal guidelines or bolstering anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment popping up on a near-daily foundation, the apparent response is for queer folks and their allies to be louder and prouder than ever. However that is simpler mentioned than finished, particularly when incidents like actor Jonathan Joss’ demise as the results of an alleged hate crime are a stark reminder that the mere act of present can nonetheless be sufficient to get queer folks killed.
The query of easy methods to stay as a queer individual, whether or not your life is continually below a microscope or not, lies on the coronary heart of “Pee-wee as Himself.” Director Matt Wolf’s two-part documentary concerning the life and occasions of the late and, it ought to go with out saying, nice Paul Reubens has been garnering common reward since making its world premiere at this yr’s Sundance Movie Pageant, so it was solely to be anticipated that Warner Bros. Discovery would roll it out on streaming simply in time for Satisfaction Month. WBD CEO David Zaslav and his regime might not know easy methods to title a streaming service, however they positive as heck know easy methods to manipulate a marginalized group for his or her profit. (Do not suppose we forgot about that “Our Flag Means Loss of life” stunt renewal you pulled for Satisfaction 2022.)
In fact, simply because its streaming rollout was a calculated technique does not make “Pee-wee as Himself” any much less impactful and vital than it’s. That is why it is gratifying to see the movie is rating amongst HBO Max’s high 10 most-streamed TV exhibits as of June 4, 2025, as reported by FlixPatrol. (Once more, it is actually a two-part documentary function and never a sequence, however we’ll take the win all the identical.)
Pee-wee as Himself is crucial viewing for Satisfaction 2025
How do you make an intimate, insightful documentary about an artist who intentionally went out of their approach to hold their private life out of the limelight? Reubens famously spent extra time showing in-character on speak exhibits, attending film premieres, and even co-starring in different movies (like “Cheech and Chong’s Subsequent Film,” as Wolf’s documentary recounts) as his beloved man-child alter ego, Pee-wee Herman, fairly than himself. In a must-read piece he wrote for Vulture, Wolf revealed in larger depth simply how difficult it was to make the movie — a lot much less get his topic to speak about his sexuality and love life on-camera — because of Reubens’ self-confessed want to keep up strict management of his narrative always.
So, fairly than resisting the tide, Wolf deftly went with the circulate and made Reubens’ hesitancy to speak about himself the main target of the movie virtually as a lot because the precise occasions of his life. “Pee-wee as Himself” additionally makes its painfully apparent the place Reubens’ evasiveness got here from: As a homosexual man who, by his personal admission, was as out and proud as one might be, he elected to go “again into the closet” and deliberately keep away from having romantic relationships of any variety with a view to hold the general public’s eyes fastened squarely on his profession (and, for a very long time, his Pee-wee persona with it). And the 2 events he misplaced management of his narrative? He was arrested on both patently absurd or completely false grounds not-so-secretly fueled by homophobia and suffered drastically for it.
I will not spoil the conclusion to Wolf and Reubens’ power-struggle over who is basically accountable for shaping “Pee-wee as Himself” (although, honest warning, there is a sturdy probability you may end up shedding a tear by the point the credit begin rolling). I am going to merely say Wolf succeeds in portray a gorgeous, richly sophisticated portrait of a one-of-a-kind soul right here and, in doing so, permits Reubens to impart one final present to the group of weirdos and outsiders who cherished him a lot in life.
As for the truth that Reubens did not stay to see the film himself? Properly, as Pee-wee as soon as put it, “I haven’t got to see it, Dottie. I lived it.”
