Pee-wee's Big Adventure


Pee-wee's Big Adventure is a 1985 American adventure comedy film directed by Tim Burton in his full-length film directing debut and starring Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman with supporting roles provided by E. G. Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger, and Judd Omen. Reubens also co-wrote the script with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol. Described as a "parody" or "farce version" of the 1948 Italian classic Bicycle Thieves, it is the tale of Pee-wee Herman's nationwide search for his stolen bicycle.
After the success of The Pee-wee Herman Show, Reubens began writing the script to Pee-wee's Big Adventure when he was hired by the Warner Bros. film studio. The producers and Reubens hired Burton to direct when they were impressed with his work on the short films Vincent and Frankenweenie. Filming took place in both California and Texas.
The film was released on August 9, 1985, grossing over $40 million in North America. It eventually developed into a cult film and has since accumulated positive feedback. The film was nominated for a Young Artist Award and spawned two sequels, Big Top Pee-wee and Pee-wee's Big Holiday. Its financial success, followed by the equally successful Beetlejuice in 1988, prompted Warner Bros. to hire Burton as the director for the 1989 film Batman.

Plot

Pee-wee Herman has a heavily accessorized bicycle that he treasures and that his neighbor and enemy, Francis Buxton, covets. A bike shop employee, Dottie, has a crush on Pee-wee, but he does not reciprocate it. Pee-wee's bike is stolen while he is shopping at a mall. The police tell Pee-wee that they cannot help him find his bike. Pee-wee thinks Francis took it, and confronts him. Francis' father convinces Pee-wee that Francis did not steal the bike. Pee-wee then offers a $10,000 reward for his bike. Francis, who did indeed pay to have a friend steal the bike, is frightened by Pee-wee's relentlessness and then pays to have it sent away. After holding an unsuccessful meeting to locate the bike, Pee-wee angrily rejects Dottie's offers of help. Desperate, he visits "Madam Ruby", a phony psychic. Ruby, inspired by the Al and Moe's Bargain Basement shop across the street, tells Pee-wee that his bike is in the basement of the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. Pee-wee hitchhikes to Texas, getting rides from a fugitive named Mickey and from Large Marge, the ghost of a deceased truck driver.
At a truck stop, Pee-wee discovers his wallet is missing and pays for his meal by washing dishes. He befriends Simone, a waitress who dreams of visiting Paris. As they watch the sunrise at a dinosaur museum, Pee-wee encourages her to follow her dreams, but Simone tells him about her jealous and large boyfriend, Andy, who disapproves. Andy arrives and tries to attack Pee-wee, who escapes onto a moving train and meets Hobo Jack. Pee-wee eventually arrives at the Alamo, but learns at the end of a guided tour that the building does not have a basement. At a bus station, Pee-wee encounters Simone, who tells him that she and Andy broke up and she is on her way to Paris. She tells Pee-wee not to give up finding his bike. Pee-wee calls Dottie at the bike shop and apologizes for his behavior. Andy spots Pee-wee and resumes his attack. Pee-wee evades Andy at a rodeo by disguising himself as a rodeo bull rider. Forced to ride for real, Pee-wee does well but receives a concussion.
Pee-wee enters a biker bar to make a phone call, but the outlaw motorcycle club threatens to kill him after he accidentally knocks over their motorcycles. Pee-wee makes a last request, dancing to the song "Tequila". His dance wins over the bikers, who give him a motorcycle for his journey, which he crashes immediately afterwards. Pee-wee wakes up in a hospital and learns from a television news report that his bike is being used as a prop in a movie starring a bratty child named Kevin Morton. Pee-wee sneaks into Warner Bros. Studios and takes the bike. He is chased by security across the studio lot and through several sets before escaping.
Later, Pee-wee discovers a burning pet shop and rescues the animals. Although the firefighters declare Pee-wee a hero, the police arrest him for his disruption at the studios. The president of Warner Bros., Terry Hawthorne, decides to drop the charges and return Pee-Wee's bike, in exchange for the rights to adapt his story into a movie.
Later at a drive-in theater, Pee-wee and Dottie attend the premiere of the resulting movie, a James Bond-style film starring James Brolin as "P.W. Herman" and Morgan Fairchild as Dottie. The two must retrieve a sport bike called the X-1, which contains an important microfilm and has been stolen by the Soviets. Pee-wee has a cameo appearance as a hotel bellhop, though his voice has been dubbed. At the drive-in, Pee-wee gives refreshments to all the people he met along his journey. Pee-wee also encounters Francis, who tells reporters that he is Pee-wee's best friend who taught him how to ride. Francis claims to be knowledgeable about Pee-wee's bike, but accidentally catapults himself into the air using one of the bicycle's gadgets. As Pee-wee leaves the drive-in, Dottie asks why he is not staying for the rest of the movie. Pee-wee answers, "I don't have to see it, Dottie. I lived it." He and Dottie then ride off together at the movie screen in silhouette.

Cast

Michael Varhol, who co-wrote the script with Reubens and Hartman, cameos as a photographer. Director Tim Burton has an uncredited cameo as the street thug who confronts Pee-wee in a rainy back-alley. Other minor roles include Ed Herlihy as Mr. Buxton and Cassandra Peterson as the Biker Mama of Satan's Helpers. James Brolin portrays "P.W. Herman" and Morgan Fairchild is Dottie in the in-movie production about Pee-wee's life. Heavy metal band Twisted Sister, and veteran comedy star Milton Berle cameo as themselves.
The film contains numerous "conceptual continuity" links to other Tim Burton films and other productions:
The success of The Pee-wee Herman Show prompted Warner Bros. to hire Paul Reubens to write a script for a full-length Pee-wee Herman film. Reubens' original idea was to do a remake of Pollyanna with Pee-wee Herman in the Hayley Mills role. Reubens claims that Pollyanna is his favorite film. Halfway through writing the script, Reubens noticed everyone at Warner Bros. had a bike to get around the backlot, and so he requested one of his own. This inspired Reubens to start on a new script.
Having left Walt Disney Productions and with Frankenweenie receiving positive reviews within film studios, Tim Burton was looking for a full-length film to direct. When Reubens and the producers of Pee-wee's Big Adventure saw Burton's work on Vincent and Frankenweenie, they decided to hire Burton for their film. Burton felt he connected with Reubens' personality and the humor of the Pee-wee Herman Show. After hiring Burton to direct, Reubens, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol reworked the script again. The team purchased Syd Field's Screenplay and wrote the script as faithful as to what the book advised. "It’s a 90-minute film, it’s a 90-page script," Reubens explained. "On page 30 I lose my bike, on page 60 I find it. It's literally exactly what they said to do in the book...There should be like a MacGuffin kind of a thing, something you’re looking for, and I was like, 'Okay, my bike.'"
Filming locations included Glendale, Pomona, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Burbank, Cabazon, Port Hueneme, California, and San Antonio, Texas. Burton and Reubens had tensions with Warner Bros. studio executives over the shooting schedule. Burton hired CalArts classmate Rick Heinrichs for scenes involving stop-motion animation. Large Marge's claymation transformation was created by The Chiodo Brothers.

Soundtrack

To compose the film score, Burton brought in Danny Elfman, who had previously composed the music for Forbidden Zone and who was at the time lead singer/songwriter of the new wave band Oingo Boingo. He relished the opportunity to compose an orchestral score rather than a pop score and wanted it to be taken as the work of a composer rather than the dabbling of a pop musician. Elfman already had the main title theme written before he signed on.
Elfman's original score draws inspiration from film composers Nino Rota and Bernard Herrmann, with the main title music paying homage to Rota's "Carlotta's Galop" from Fellini's 8½, and the tracks "Stolen Bike" and "Clown Dream" paying homage to music from Herrmann's scores for Psycho and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad respectively. "Studio Chase" pays homage to Miss Gulch's theme in The Wizard of Oz.
In 1986 Varèse Sarabande released an album on record, cassette and compact disc featuring cues from the movie and 1986's Back to School, also scored by Elfman. While both films had their original scores recorded in Hollywood, the album recording was made in London and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Coleman. In 2010 many of the original tracks were subsequently released by Warner Bros. Records as part of The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box.
This was the first major studio film for Elfman as composer, and he would go on to collaborate on nearly all of Burton's films, excluding Ed Wood, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
"Clown Dream" is also used in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. It is also often used as the opening music during Primus concerts.
The film also features "Burn in Hell" by Twisted Sister and "Tequila" by The Champs.

Reception

Pee-wee's Big Adventure opened on August 9, 1985 in the United States in 829 theaters, accumulating $4,545,847 over its opening weekend. The film went on to gross $40,940,662 domestically.

Critical response

Pee-wee's Big Adventure received generally positive reviews at the time of the film's release, before eventually developing into a cult film. As of May 2020, Rotten Tomatoes reported that 87% of 46 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.85/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure brings Paul Reubens' famous character to the big screen intact, along with enough inspired silliness to dazzle children of all ages". By comparison, Metacritic calculated an average score of 47 from 14 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The film was nominated with a Young Artist Award for Best Family Motion Picture.
Christopher Null gave positive feedback, calling it "Burton's strangest film." Variety compared Paul Reubens to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, while Empire called the film "a one-comic masterpiece" and "a dazzling debut" for Burton. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com explained "Everything about Pee-wee's Big Adventure, from its toy-box colors to its superb, hyper-animated Danny Elfman score to the butch-waxed hairdo and wooden-puppet walk of its star and mastermind is pure pleasure." Burton was offered the opportunity to direct Big Top Pee-wee, but had no interest and was already working on his own pet project, Beetlejuice. Positive reviews of Beetlejuice and the financial success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure prompted Warner Bros. to offer Burton the director's helm for Batman.
Roger Ebert never officially reviewed Pee-wee's Big Adventure but in 1987 it topped his list of Guilty Pleasures and he did mention it in his review of Big Top Pee-wee, saying the sequel was not as magical as the first. The second paragraph of that review contrasted the two films explaining what he liked in Big Adventure that he didn't like in Big Top. Gene Siskel, however, gave Pee-wee's Big Adventure, a rare zero star rating in his print review, writing that he had enjoyed Herman's guest spots on Late Night with David Letterman but "Obviously, Pee-Wee is tolerable only in Pee-Wee doses... You have to be a lot funnier on the big screen than on the tube to sustain a feature-length story." Siskel included the film in his unranked year-end list of the worst movies of 1985. Vincent Canby of The New York Times was also negative, writing that apart from a couple of scenes it was "the most barren comedy I've seen in years, maybe ever." In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington wrote, "The wrong crowd will find these antics infantile and offensive. The right one will have a howling good time." David Ansen of Newsweek described the film as "Mattel Surrealism, a toy-store fantasia in primary colors and '50s decor. Whoever proposed teaming up Pee-wee with 26-year-old director Tim Burton knew what they were doing... Together they've conspired to make a true original — a live-action cartoon brash enough to appeal to little kids and yet so knee-deep in irony that its faux naivete looks as chic as the latest retrofashions."

Home video

released Pee-wee's Big Adventure on DVD in May 2000. The release included audio commentary by Tim Burton, Paul Reubens and Danny Elfman as well as deleted scenes.