Pee Wee’s Big Adventure 1985
Pee-Wee Herman as funmaster and prankster of wild joy. Pee-Wee Herman as one who looks at the desolate moment and dares to cackle his goofy laugh of joy. Pee-Wee Herman as joy-finder. Pee-Wee Herman as joy-giver.
Did I imagine Pee-Wee that way when I saw his craziness on the big screen at age 10? No, but those just may be the right answers for us to toss back to Pee-Wee Herman when he bats his eyes and asks us, “I know you are, but what am I?”
I’m sure I enjoyed this Tim Burton-directed (!) Big Adventure when I saw it all those years ago, but the lingering impression from that time was honestly that Pee-Wee was strange, unhinged, and uncategorizable. This means that the memory ball of this film, if the Inside Out emotions were to touch it, would be mainly colored purple for fear. My chance to encounter Pee-Wee all over again happened a week ago when one of our children chose this as the watch of the weekend.
How does our experience of a movie, or any art for that matter, change when we see it through the eyes of those watching along with us? Especially interesting for me here is the question of how my experience of a movie like this one changed when I watched it with children. I think this film is a fascinating test of that question, as the character of Pee-Wee Herman IS in fact an adult who seems to experience the world with the wonder and joys of a child. Further still, he was played by a grown-up actor who was once a child and who gave this performance out of the memory of what being a child was like.
Whether due to the presence of children watching the screen with me or not, this viewing ended with a sense of joy more than fear. This time I appreciated what was joyful in Pee-Wee Herman and his adventures. Along with that appreciation, I looked at Pee-Wee’s journey in this film and saw how Pee-Wee’s joy overcame certain things that were making him miserable.
From the early scenes of the movie, we see how Pee-Wee’s eye-popping red-and-white bicycle is at the very center of his joy. He protects, treasures, and adores this bike as one would a dear child. If we have ever loved any hobby or possession in our lives, we will have some idea of what kind of delight belongs to Pee-Wee when he rides and looks at his bike. We will also grasp the kind of sadness that comes rushing in when that bike is stolen and resold by a heartless rich neighbor named Francis. Joy in a possession is one thing, but we wonder at this point if Pee-Wee will ultimately learn to find joy in and give joy to people as much as he does with his bicycle. We take some pleasure in identifying with his joy in this bicycle, but we hope that deeper and purer joys are still to come.
As the film goes on, Pee-Wee’s initial joy is threatened by several things. The theft of the bicycle, of course, is the first thing that robs his joy. This is followed soon after by Pee-Wee storming Francis’s indoor giant bathtub, which in a way is a fight for justice but in another way an angry outburst that’s an invitation to misery and fisticuffs. Pee-Wee then calls a basement meeting during which he seems to want to organize a crew to solve the mystery of the stolen bike. He invites almost everyone he knows, but instead of organizing a useful plan Pee-Wee tires out his audience with an endless series of minute crime-scene details. These details, sadly, seem to come from a place of mental exhaustion and self-pity. He puts an exclamation point on this disastrous gathering when he exclaims to his friend Dottie, “I don’t want your help! I don’t need the police and I don’t need you! I don’t need anybody!”
What help does Pee-Wee seek out in the next scene? He courts further depression by enquiring of a medium whose advice to him about his stolen bike is inspired by a glance at Pee-Wee’s wallet and the words on a wall across the street. (Though the medium’s advice sets Pee-Wee on the road to the town where he encounters his bike, she can still be seen as a money-grubbing character who was ultimately wrong about the real location of the bike.) I view the desperate asking of the medium as Pee-Wee’s rejection of his real friends’ help and a desperate attempt to get something, anything in the universe to work in his favor.
As the film goes on and we see Pee-Wee learning from his journey to find the lost bike, we see him begin to put more value on the people he meets and to regain his sense of play and joy. He is able to help and encourage a lonely waitress who is stuck in an abusive boyfriend relationship, and at this point is able to gently push out of her nest toward freedom. The point where we know he is regaining this sense of play and joy is when he does his legendary Tequila dance in front of an angry mob of bikers…let me get in just one more dance, he seems to be saying, and just maybe you will catch my crazy joy as I do this.
The climax of Pee-Wee’s return to being able to find and give joy comes not exactly at the moment he recovers his bike, though surely the moment of the great bike escape is pure joy for us viewers. The climax in fact comes after that, at the moment that he celebrates his good news with an explosion of play and joy at the drive-in movie theater that is showing the Hollywood story of his adventure. Here we see Pee-Wee delighted that he has his bike back, but even more delighted to share his story with all of the friends who are gathered to watch with him. This group of friends includes some enemies as well, and this fact makes the celebration all the more joyful. I am reminded by this scene that Jesus’s exhortation to “love your enemies” is in many ways an invitation to joy. Granted, Pee-Wee’s final moment with Francis is not exactly a love-your-enemies moment. However, that Francis moment is balanced out by the moment at the drive-in when Pee-Wee throws a great wad of candy into the air above the biker gang who had once wanted to kill him.
The previous time Pee-Wee had invited his friends to a gathering, he had invited them to a feast of misery and confusion. This time he has invited them to a feast of playful and wild joy. Pee-Wee Herman, by the end of this film, has learned that joy that has been found must be given and must be shared.
