Paul Reubens Tears Up Recalling Hospital Go to to See Ex Who Died of AIDS

Paul Reubens reveals the person behind his most well-known function, Pee-Wee Herman, within the new documentary collection Pee-wee as Himself. 

The 2-part doc, directed by Matt Wolf and proven to Park Metropolis, Utah, and first proven to audiences on Jan. 23 on the Sundance Movie Competition, consists of on-camera interviews with Reubens about how he hid the truth that he was homosexual. The actor, who died from most cancers in July 2023 at age 70, particulars one particular relationship specifically. 

Throughout a celebration at his alma mater California Institute of the Arts, Reubens met a person named Man. “I appeared throughout the room and noticed somebody and fell in love immediately, simply went, ‘That’s him, that’s the man,’ ” Reubens remembers in his interview. “I definitely wasn’t planning on that.”

Man, “a painter who was extraordinarily creative and intensely humorous,” he says, moved with Reubens right into a Los Angeles residence the place they started “taking part in home.” A lot of Man’s mannerisms, he provides, made their approach into Reubens’ eventual Pee-wee Herman persona. 

“I misplaced my whole persona and myself in being with any individual else and a part of a duo,” he remembers. “Once we break up up, I simply made a aware resolution: ‘I’m not doing this once more.’ I not solely wasn’t going to be brazenly homosexual, however I wasn’t going to be in a relationship. I used to be going to advance my profession as a result of I might management that.”

After being “as out as you will be” as a younger grownup, says Reubens, “I went again within the closet. My profession would have completely suffered if I used to be brazenly homosexual, so I went to nice lengths for a lot of, a few years to maintain it a secret.”

Years after splitting up however staying in contact, Reubens visited Man in New York — when his ex was affected by HIV/AIDS. “I knew he was sick,” he says. “I’m an actor, and he was any individual extraordinarily vital to me. And so I simply tried actually exhausting to be regular.”

At that time Man was “at loss of life’s door,” he says, tearing up on digital camera. “And he in all probability died inside a pair hours of that point.”

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Dropping buddies to AIDS within the Eighties was “so intense,” Reubens provides. “It had actual influence on me, like, it scared the heck out of me.”

Pee-Wee as Himself, which can stream on HBO this spring, additionally covers the 2 scandals that affected Reubens after the success of Pee-wee’s Massive Journey and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Though the actor participates in a number of on-camera interviews with Wolf, the documentary reveals that he stopped cooperating with the manufacturing, as an alternative sending in audio on what turned out to be the day earlier than he died. 

“My complete profession, all the pieces I did and wrote was primarily based in love and my want to entertain and convey glee and creativity,” mentioned Reubens in that message.