10 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’

When Warner Bros. approached Paul Reubens about making a feature film for his Pee-wee Herman character, there where all sorts of directions he could have taken the character. Initially, Reubens wanted Pee-wee to star in a remake of Pollyanna, the 1960 Disney film starring Hayley Mills about an incredibly optimistic little girl. In the end, Reubens noticed WB employees riding bikes all over the lot and was inspired to make Pee-wee’s Big Adventure a bike-centric story instead.

Saturday Night Live legend Phil Hartman was a friend of Reubens’ from their Groundlings improv days (Groundlings was where Reubens developed the Pee-wee Herman character). Reubens and Hartman teamed up with Michael Varhol to write the Big Adventure script, and Hartman has a cameo in the movie as a reporter.

Of all Tim Burton’s frequent collaborators — Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, costume designer Colleen Atwood — no one has worked with him more consistently than composer Danny Elfman. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was their first collaboration, and since then, Elfman has composed the music for every Burton movie to date except two: Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd. This was also Elfman’s second movie score ever, after the 1980 film Forbidden Zone, directed by his brother. He’s since composed music for 101 total projects.

Even though he’s a fairly recognizable dude, you almost certainly missed Burton’s cameo in the film. But when Pee-wee is despondent in the alley after fruitlessly interrogating his friends about the bike’s whereabouts, he gets accosted in the rain by some thugs. Burton’s the thug who gets in Pee-wee’s face.

The actress who plays Dottie, Elizabeth Daily, has been the voice of a number of iconic animated characters. Like, for example, Tommy Pickles on Rugrats. Like Buttercup on Powerpull Girls. She even took over for the voice of Babe in Babe: Pig in the City.

There is no better supporting performance in this film than Jan Hooks as the tour guide at the Alamo. She’s so sweet and simple and incrediblu enthusiastic about her job. But watch the above scene with the knowledge that Hooks improvised her dialogue. Who knew Hooks was so knowledgeable about adobe!

The setting for the drive-in movie scene at the end was Studio Drive-in in Culver City, CA. In 1978, it served as the setting for the drive-in scene in Grease.

There are a LOT of actors in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure who show up in other Tim Burton movies (and other Pee-wee Herman properties too). But my favorite is Simmy Bow, who plays the guy in the truck stop after Large Marge drops Pee-wee off. Truck Stop Guy tells the story of Large Marge’s death and hauntings in the most onimous voice. A voice that came in handy a few years later when Burton directed Beetlejuice and cast Bow to play the janitor in the afterlife. “That’s death for the dead,” he explained to Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, about a room for exorcised ghosts. Chilling.

Speaking of people who were in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and then other Tim Burton movies, both Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger (who played Simone in Big Adventure) were cast as Mr. and Mrs. Cobblepot, a.k.a. the Penguin’s parents, in Batman Returns.

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was a cult hit and thus never destined to be #1 at the box-office. Certainly not in the same summer that Back to the Future was dominating everything in sight. Still, the film was remarkably consistent, spending six consecutive weeks at #3, en route to a $40 million performance. A cult hit it began, and a cult hit it remained for over 30 years.