It was Paul Reubens‘ second flip at bat.
The actor, then 35, had already rocketed to fame as Pee-wee Herman, the bicycle-obsessed man-child from 1985’s Pee-wee’s Huge Journey — the characteristic debut from Tim Burton, who’s again in cinemas this weekend with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
For his sophomore outing, 1988’s Huge High Pee-wee, Reubens relocated his alter ego from suburbia to a pastoral setting, the place Pee-wee cared for speaking animals whereas engaged on cutting-edge agricultural experiments like sizzling canine bushes.
Burton didn’t return to direct; as a substitute it was Randal Kleiser behind the digicam, again at Paramount for the primary time since directing the studio’s 1978 smash, Grease.
“I had a ball making that film,” says Penelope Ann Miller, who performed Pee-wee’s fiancé Winnie, on THR‘s It Occurred in Hollywood podcast. “I cherished Winnie, the prude little faculty trainer, who wouldn’t let him contact her and cherished egg salad, and he hated egg salad.”
The primary movie dabbled in romance — who might neglect the lovelorn Dottie (Elizabeth Day by day)? — however Pee-wee skirted away from issues of the center, uttering the legendary line, “You don’t wanna get blended up with a man like me. I’m a loner, Dottie. A insurgent.”
Not so in Huge High Pee-wee, for which Reubens wrote himself two love pursuits. It was with the second, the Italian aerialist performed by Valeria Golino, that he envisioned a second for the document books: The longest kiss in cinematic historical past. It was timed to beat the all-time document: a three-minute, five-second lip-lock between Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey in 1941’s You’re within the Military Now.
“They needed to time it,” recollects Miller of the Huge High kiss, which beat Military Now by one second. “After which I see them, and I take the egg salad sandwich [I made for Pee-wee] and throw it within the river.”
However the marathon smooch was not successful with check audiences, who acquired “fidgety,” producer Debra Hill instructed the Washington Submit forward of the movie’s opening.
“Rumors flew that the petulant Pee-wee — or maybe the recalcitrant Reubens — may boycott the image’s July 21 premiere at Mann’s Chinese language Theatre in addition to the set up of his very personal star on Hollywood Boulevard if the kiss have been curtailed,” the Submit reported.
Ultimately, the kiss was reduce all the way down to only a minute and a half — nonetheless lengthy, however nowhere near a document. Reubens’ Stroll of Fame ceremony proceeded as scheduled and he did present as much as the premiere the next day. “He rode in on an elephant,” Miller says. “It was fairly the massive to do.”
However Huge High Pee-wee bombed, incomes simply $15 million ($38 million at this time) towards a $20 million finances, ending Reubens’ big-screen run till 2016’s Pee-wee’s Huge Vacation for Netflix. His kids’s present, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, ran efficiently from 1986 to 1990 on CBS — till his 1991 arrest at an grownup theater in Sarasota, Florida, sensationally derailed his profession.
Reubens died in 2023 at age 70. His life and profession would be the topic of a tribute evening at Hollywood Eternally Cemetery on Sept. 14, the place the centerpiece will likely be a screening of Pee-wee’s Huge Journey.
For extra on the making of Huge High Pee-wee, hearken to the complete episode of It Occurred in Hollywood.