It has been 41 years since Tim Burton released his first movie, and it featured an iconic cult character who delivered one of the most hilarious quotes in movie history. By 1985, Burton was moving up the ranks in Hollywood, which included making a short stop-motion film called Vincent and a live-action short film called Frankenweenie. Disney fired Burton for making a film as dark as Frankenweenie, which they felt would scare kids, but that is the short that got Burton’s foot in the door for his first feature-length film. Paul Reubens saw Frankenweenie, and he chose Burton to direct a spin-off movie about his popular cult character, Pee-wee Herman.
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On August 9, 1985, Burton’s debut movie hit theaters. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure starred Reubens as his cult-favorite character as he set out on an adventure to find his stolen bicycle.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Helped Popularize One Hilarious Quote
Pee-wee Herman, a Paul Reubens-created childlike character, debuted in the 1970s, when he introduced it as a member of The Groundlings in 1977. After making an appearance in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie in 1980, the character received an HBO special in 1981. The stage show with Reubens playing Pee-wee became so popular that it gave Reubens a chance to bring the character to the big screen. Since this was based on Reubens’ character, he had the stroke to choose the director, and he chose Burton. Together, they created what was almost a cartoon come to life on the big screen.
The movie opens with a scene where Pee-wee Herman is cleaning his beloved bicycle. However, when Pee-wee begins to ride off, his neighbor, a manchild named Francis (Mark Holton), approaches him and says it is his birthday, and his dad said he can have anything he wants. He wants Pee-wee’s bicycle, which Pee-wee denies him. This then leads to a sophomoric sling of insults between the two, where Pee-wee delivers not one, but two different lines that became instantly quotable in the 1980s.
Francis asked Pee-wee to guess what he wanted, and Pee-wee responded, “A new brain?” When Pee-wee said he wouldn’t sell his bicycle for “100 billion million trillion dollars,” Francis said that he was crazy. This is when Pee-wee delivered one of the most popular quotes from the 1980s, “I know you are, but what am I?” The two then began to go back and forth, with Pee-wee constantly referring to everything with that one juvenile question. When Francis whines, “Pee-wee,” he then responds with what is arguably his second-best catchphrase: “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
This one scene set up the entire movie and introduced anyone who had no idea who Pee-wee Herman was to the character that would become one of the most beloved in television history. That is because, one year after the success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, CBS hired Reubens to create Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which ran for five seasons, a show that helped introduce the world to Laurence Fishburne, Phil Hartman, and Natasha Lyonne.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Remains an Iconically Bizarre Experience 41 Years Later
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was a box office success, making $40.9 million at the box office on a $7 million budget. It helped Reubens get his television show and led to Burton getting to make movies like Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Batman, launching his career as a director. The success came down to Reubens disappearing into the role as the childlike lead character, and there was a lot going on in this movie that remains shocking for a studio to have allowed.
Reubens cut loose here. There was the famous scene where Pee-wee Herman danced on the bar top to the Champs’ song “Tequila” that remains popular today, even to people who never saw this scene in the movie. The sweet romantic story between Pee-wee and Dottie (Elizabeth Daily) was pure and innocent, and the appearance of people like Twisted Sister was enough to help Pee-wee’s Big Adventure cross over to become an even bigger success on home video.
On top of the television series that followed, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure also had two sequels. Big Top Pee-wee came out in 1988, but Burton rejected the offer to return since he was making Beetlejuice. Without Burton, the movie lost something and only has a 30% Rotten Tomatoes score. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday came out in 2016, 31 years after Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and it was praised by critics with an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score, but didn’t quite hit the same level as the original movie, which has become not only a cult favorite but also a touchstone in the lives of an entire generation of movie fans.
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Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures
