Paul Reubens’ big adventure

Paul Reubens has survived a great fall, said Bill Zehme in Playboy. Nearly two decades after the actor better known as Pee-wee Herman was charged with masturbating inside an X-rated movie theater in Florida, Reubens, 58, is still trying to rebuild his reputation.

Before his arrest in 1991, he says, most people assumed the nerdy children’s character he created was a real person, which only magnified the furor when his mug shot hit the papers. “I had never been seen out of character before. Suddenly I went from being just Pee-wee Herman to that scary mug shot. Charles Manson-y, somebody called it.” Even his own friends in show business cracked jokes about him as a seedy pervert. “That was really painful. I was shocked people would kick me when I’m down.”

Deeply shamed, Reubens went into a prolonged, self-imposed exile, emerging only recently in order to revive Pee-wee for an upcoming Broadway show. No matter how well it goes over, he knows, “I’m always going to retain this reputation of being a pervert. But it doesn’t matter. Everything happened for a reason. It’s a journey, and I will not accept a s---ty ending.”

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