For those hording toilet paper

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

I can recall those little HBO guides back when I was a child over my grandmother’s house in the late 80s (prior to Rueben’s unfortunate arrest for indecent exposure) reading about a small review of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure in one of them. In these guides, the articles (more like just your basic synopsis with accompanying parenthesis featuring what these films contain (MV for Mild Violence, in the case of this film)) are really not all that significant and you still see a form of them in hotel rooms that carry HBO. But I saw the review for Pee Wee and decided to watch the film. What still resonates with me is the idea that here is a child fantasy brought to life in the form of an adult (using the term loosely) with a home, front yard, back yard, and bicycle fashioned in the way that seemed so fantastic when viewed through the lens of an 8-year old. Then the ensuing trip to the Alamo (told to the child-man through the made-up-on-the-spot charlatan, crystal ball posted on the table, the clairvoyant garb, the whole nine yards, with the dark stormy night walk in the alley as an addition) again plays on the grand adventure that often is the fantasy of many a kid (and adult), going through experiences, meeting a number of “unique” individuals, and seeing sights like the aforementioned Alamo, a diner where the patrons still remember Large Marge (whose ghost Pee Wee meets, listening to her tell her own story, not knowing he was riding in the rig with Marge) and remain spooked by her presence, the Dinosaur statue, a rodeo, Warner Brothers Studios, and a biker bar. So Pee Wee gets his bike stolen by a portly spoiled brat (who is the same age as Pee Wee, but just as juvenile if not more so). He is led on a wild goose chase after the damn bike when Francis (Mark Holton; probably remembered from Teen Wolf and as John Wayne Gacy in Gacy) decides he must get rid of it due to local press regarding it, and thus the trip to Warner Brothers Studio takes shape. The road trip is a series of "danger scenarios" where Pee Wee must evade the snarling, mute, intimidating, brutish hick boyfriend of a waitress who decides to forgo all and go to Paris (Pee Wee suggests that she follow her heart), avoid bikers wanting to wring his neck for knocking over their motorcycles by dancing to "Tequila", and the Warners Lot security as they chase after him for commandeering his own bike on the set of a child movie (while dressed as a nun!).

There are moments that come back to me that I recall as questionable even as a child like how Pee Wee must have some sort of inheritance because he seems to have a lot of stuff without paying for them. The elaborate set up for his breakfast as if something out of À nous la liberté or Modern Times with Pee Wee having a number of toys and child-hood devices contributing to the makings of bacon, eggs, and pancake in the shape of a face for him to chat with…only he doesn’t even eat his breakfast so the whole sequence was for naught!

 

 

Something I found very interesting was the homoerotic content that I can’t help but believe is intentional. Like how Pee Wee has no romantic interest whatsoever in Dottie (Elizabeth Daily) yet she pines for him to the point of embarrassing herself. It reminds me of the girl or guy who just can’t get a clue that the one they desire aren’t interested in that specific sexual orientation. Pee Wee tells her there are things she doesn’t know about and couldn’t possibly understand. Later on Pee Wee meets an escaped con on the run (“Arrivederci, baby!”) named Mickey (Judd Omen), and pretends to be his gal when the police pull them over. The Mickey/Pee Wee scenes have that sexual tension that is almost palpable. Of course, once Mickey drops Pee Wee off in the middle of nowhere at night (for his own good because he’s a “loner, a rebel”), this is soon also abandoned. There’s even a moment where one of the cops asks Pee Wee, while dressed as Mickey’s gal, to step out of the car so he could see him in that cute outfit of his!

I continue to find myself watching this on occasion when it comes on. HBO continues to show it even to this day (I watched it on HBO Family, Saturday afternoon), and I can’t help but chuckle and get a kick out of Tim Burton’s visual treatments of clowns (Holton dressed as the Devil while destroying Pee Wee’s bike in a cauldron was especially neat) and his view of Americana in a different way (the bars, diner, rodeo, bike store, movie studio, and suburbia and how they look a little different when Pee Wee appears), not to mention the number of great faces that appear (like Carmen Filpi as Hobo Jack, gum-chewing Jan Hooks as the enthusiastic Alamo guide, and Simmy Bow as the bar patron who gives Pee Wee the news about Large Marge), it’s easy to see why I do.