Interview: Matt Wolf On 'Pee-wee As Himself'

The director talks about the challenges of making a documentary about a guarded subject who also unfortunately died before filming could be finished.

With the two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself, Matt Wolf proves, yet again, that celebrity-focused films are not all disposable fluff. They just need great filmmakers like Wolf (or Morgan Neville, Davis Guggenheim, Lana Wilson, Reginald Hudlin, R.J. Cutler, Susan Lacy, Ryan White, Asif Kapadia, among others) to tell great stories and consciously avoid tropes, as they would with any of their subjects.

The subject of Pee-wee as Himself brought unique benefits, such as the complexity of Paul Reubens’s dual artistic identity, with his true self hidden behind his hugely popular comedic alter-ego, Pee-wee Herman. The film also presented unique challenges in that complexity, as well as the misfortune of unexpectedly losing Reubens to cancer before his planned participation had concluded.

Ahead of the documentary’s release on HBO Max, I got on a Zoom call with Wolf to discuss the making of Pee-wee as Himself and why it stands out in its genre. Our complete conversation can be found below with minor edits for clarity.

What made you want to make a film about Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, at this time? You didn’t know he was dying and that we were running out of time with him, so how did the project begin, and why now?

Paul was my dream subject. Everybody asks a documentary filmmaker who they want to make a film about, and I would say him. And basically, I had made outreach efforts several times with no response. Then, finally, I read an article in a trade magazine saying that the Safdie brothers were working with Paul on his long-rumored dark Pee-wee film.

I know them, so I reached out and expressed that he was my dream subject, and it was not true that they were working together, but fortuitously, my producer Emma Koskoff was old friends with Paul. He had approached her saying, “I want to make a documentary; I don't know how to go about doing this,” and she said, “Well why don't you approach the Safdies?” given this news was out there, and they all kind of match made Paul and I.

Then we had a Zoom in which Paul said exactly what he says at the beginning of the film, that he wants to make the film himself, everybody's advising him against it, and he doesn't know why. I said, “Well, I'm here to introduce you to me to direct the film; why don't we get to know each other and maybe conceive of a way to do this?”

So he had already been actively trying to make a documentary?

Yeah, he was meeting with directors. He wanted there to be a documentary. He was also pursuing writing a book. He was ready to tell his story, but very wary of the documentary process or the idea that a documentary filmmaker could come in with final cut and use his life story as the raw material for their work.

That was always confounding to Paul, and he wanted to be very involved. He wanted it to be a collaborative process. Ultimately, he wanted to have a lot of control over the telling of his story.

And that does happen a lot with these kinds of documentaries. I noticed that he had an executive producer credit. I assume that was agreed on before he passed?

I had final cut, and he would have meaningful consultation. That's pretty commonplace nowadays. But it's pretty ambiguous as to what that means. I think I was always clear that this wasn't a puff piece, but it also wasn't a hit piece. And that I would work with Paul and involve him on a day-to-day level to tell him what's up and what I'm up to. To give him insight into how I'm seeing his story. I'm a very transparent person with everybody I make films with, so that didn't bother me.

But I think it became clearer that documentaries are made in post-production. A lot of these conversations that I was having with Paul was educating him about the process and explaining that documentaries aren't scripted. We try to capture as much as possible and then craft the story from that. So, as much as I could tell him what my ideas were for the story, I wouldn't know until I had a cut of the film, and I would show that cut of the film to him.

That was very anxiety-provoking for Paul, the idea that I'd run off and go do my thing. It resulted in a power struggle between us because I was pretty adamant that I would maintain my editorial control and integrity as an independent documentary filmmaker, and he was somebody who had lost control of his personal narrative in the media, so he was rightfully concerned about that all happening again.

Did you have an idea of what you wanted the film to be going in, and did that change because of his death?

Well, I knew that Paul wanted to, in his own words, set the record straight about his arrests, overcome those controversies, which are without a doubt an unfortunate footnote to his career. But I wanted to make a portrait of an artist. And to veer away from some of the tropes of celebrity documentary biopics that are out there, with other famous people singing platitudes and the performance of introspection that viewers are now very skeptical and critical of.

I told Paul that. I said, “If you like films that I've made, you've gotta let me do my thing and make a portrait of you. That involves being complicated. People expect that you are complex, and you can portray a simple kind of flattened version of yourself, or you can share your authentic self with the world, and I think people will appreciate that.”

He made the decision early on that he wanted to come out in the documentary. And I'm gay and have made films about other gay artists, and I think that was a point of connection and also a point of alienation for him because I'm from a different generation and didn't have to grapple with some of the things that he did. I think he was concerned that I would overly focus on that. Even more so than the arrests, which were not my point of entry or main interest in doing the documentary.

So, it was an ongoing debate, but it was something he was committed to doing, and together we found a way for him to do it on his own terms, and I was proud of him. But he knew he needed to address his arrests. He knew he wanted to discuss his sexuality. He was ambivalent about being a documentary subject, but he understood that people wanted to know Paul.

But in the end, he didn’t get to set the record straight. As you say in the film, he died before you could interview him about the arrests.

I think he did in the sense that he was able to address his arrests, but I don't think when you say “set the record straight,” it means to defend yourself. I think it means to give the full context of what happened to him factually in his life, but also who he was internally as an artist and as a person, and the choices he made personally to bring us the artwork that is so beloved. There were a lot of sacrifices involved in that.

Paul made a conscious decision, as you see in the film, to separate himself from his alter-ego and to only appear in a public way as Pee-wee, because he wanted people to believe that Pee-wee was a real person. So he led this anonymous, very private life. He was closeted, and in a sense that served him very well professionally. Until it really didn't, when he was arrested. I think that to set the record straight is to explain why he lived anonymously. It was for artistic and professional reasons and to help people understand how devastating it was for him when that careful calibration he created collapsed.

In terms of presenting the facts around the arrest, that was sort of my job to do because once presented with the facts, it would clearly vindicate Paul from wrongdoing. And there was a lot of misinformation out there. So, in terms of what Paul's ultimate goal was, I think on a superficial level it was to overcome the arrest, and on a deeper level it was to be known. In terms of what I wanted to do, I wanted to create a portrait with complexity and nuance that reappraised the significance of his art and made viewers question their own attachment to controversy.

Was it still difficult to get through that section of the film where he doesn't really appear? He’s kind of absent, and then you explain it in the titles why. There’s more where others are talking about him than before that. I assume that wasn’t your original intent because you had planned to interview him about that.

Paul died a week before we were scheduled to do the final interview. I, of course, had no awareness that he was terminally ill or really ill at all until the final conversation we had. Paul wanted to address those things; that's why he recorded audio the day before he died.

When I went into the edit, I was pretty worried that the film might seem lopsided because Paul wasn't able to address in the same level of granular detail these controversies in his life, but he had, I realized, discussed the arrests in sort of anecdotal or digressive ways over the course of our 40 hour interview. And he had been kind of interviewed on the record about his second arrest, and I was able to allow other people to flesh out his story.

To bring Paul back for final words — both very poignant words from the day before he died, but also deeper, more profound reflections on what he tried to accomplish as an artist in the world — I felt very fortunate that I had the material to bring him back at the end in a way that's very emotionally compelling. But that was an editorial concern for me because, in some respect, even though I interviewed Paul for 40 hours, there is an incompleteness to that. Because of his death.

Did you ever want to talk to him — or did you talk to him — about the Phil Hartman fallout? The only side we get is Hartman’s, and he’s also gone now.

There's all sorts of stuff I wish I had gotten. But as documentary filmmakers, we always miss things. Either if we're filming verité [and] there are things we can't be present for, or in an interview, there are limits to what you can accomplish. There are limits to what you can know about another person. You can get closer and closer and closer, and there are boundaries.

There are always things one wishes they can have, but the job of a documentary filmmaker is to make meaning out of the material they do have. I had an embarrassment of riches and was also able to help tell the story directly through archival material or in the anecdotes of others.

Is it tough for you as a documentary filmmaker to feel your subject doesn’t trust you? Or to feel that they still think they’re in control?

Yeah, it was really hard. I wanted to do everything in my power to earn Paul's trust. I always say to people I'm making films about, “I don't think trust should be expected, it has to be earned.” I did everything I could to earn Paul's trust, and I had to come to terms with the fact that Paul, for very specific and real reasons, was not necessarily a trusting person. He said that himself.

People move through the world with baggage or trauma or issues that limit the level at which they're able to trust, but it doesn't mean they're not able to connect. I was able to move through a process — granted with difficulty and struggle — but I was able to move through a process with Paul in which he was able to share himself despite his reservations.

Part of how we dealt with it was by discussing those directly in a sort of meta way in the film. And that I think was cathartic for Paul and important for him to articulate and say, “This isn't my nature; it isn't my nature to reveal all aspects of myself.” But he was committed to doing that. I had to accept the limits of his trust and the limits of my ability to control the process and just go with what was happening at hand.

How different was this film to make compared to previous projects?

It was really different because I've made a lot of films about deceased subjects. And Paul was alive. That was incredible to have access to the mind, imagination, and personality of somebody as singular and influential as him, and it was also difficult because of his will and his agency and his confrontational style and his desire for control that he was always transparent about.

Unfortunately, after Paul passed away, this film became more like other films I had made. It was as if I were dealing with a monumental archive in a kind of discovered interview, except that I had conducted that interview myself. So my process became pretty similar to how I make my other films, but through a very unfortunate term of events.

This is more a compliment than a question, but I was very impressed with the restraint you showed in featuring other famous people talking about Paul. I’m sure Laurence Fishburne, Natasha Lyonne, and others had soundbites that could have been easily inserted throughout the documentary, but you only include people when they’re part of and relevant to the story.

Because Paul is more compelling than anybody in the telling of his story. I had really extraordinary editorial freedom with this film. People really let me do my thing because of how complex the whole process had been. People gave me that trust, and I wanted the film, the primacy of the film, to be from Paul's point of view. His point of view was obviously the most compelling.

I was looking for contrasting perspective or additional context where I could find it, and I wanted to show the consolation of personalities who gravitated around Pee-wee and Paul's world. But the more Paul, the merrier, was everybody's attitude. I think the problem with a lot of these documentaries is that people speak about somebody else, but you don't have a sense of who they are. When I have additional interviewees or subjects in a film, they have to feel like three-dimensional humans that you understand the nature of their relationship with Paul.

There are a lot of other people actually in the film. It's just such a long film, it doesn't feel like it. But you have a sense of who those people are and how they relate to Paul in the trajectory of his life. I was pretty particular about who I chose, and I did interview other people who weren't included in the film, but the goal was always to prioritize Paul telling his own story.

Given the negative attitude toward celebrity documentaries overall lately, was that a concern while making the film? Did you make an effort to do something different?

I always said to Paul, “I don't want to make a celebrity documentary. Everybody's exhausted by them, and they're kind of throwaways sometimes.” There are good celebrity documentaries. It's interesting, early in my career, an executive said to me, “People want to see things that they already know about. They want to hear more about what they already know. They don’t want to hear about things that they know nothing about.” Which I thought at the time was incredibly cynical, but I recognize now, as an older person, that that is true. For better or worse.

Paul was a unique subject in that a large amount of people know who Pee-wee Herman is, but they know nothing about Paul, so it's the best of both worlds. You have the entry point of people knowing who this subject is, but he is a completely different, unfamiliar, and unknown person. It's sort of like in my wheelhouse. I don't know if I'm ever going to make another film about someone who has this much public interest. It just happened to be such a me subject and a me world that also happened to be mainstream.

I think people I work with and people who watch my films will see that it really was a synthesis of a lot of things I've done. It's not really a departure, even though Pee-wee is a known entity. Paul wasn't. I often make films about unconventional visionaries who beg for reappraisal. Paul was that. In some ways, he was hidden in plain sight, even though he had had such an enduring and deep impact on so many people.

In the film, Paul says he only liked one of your films. Did he tell you which?

He liked two. The reason he decided to work together was because of my first film [Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell]. I think that film really moved Paul. It's about an experimental musician who aspired to be a part of mainstream pop music but died prematurely of AIDS. The film brings his story to life and is really a love story between him and his boyfriend at that time.

I think there's a world in which Paul would have become an experimental underground performer. Where he wouldn't have become a mainstream pop culture figure. I can't speak for Paul in any way, but I know that that aspect or time in his life was a very special time for him, and that there is something kind of dreamy about that artistic period in his life. He responded to the dreaminess of that film artistically and I think he connected emotionally to Arthur Russell's music and the filmmaking, and that's why he decided to work with me.