

How Pee-wee Herman stays forever ageless in 'Big Holiday'

Bryan Alexander
Pee-wee (Paul Reubens) leaves his comfortable town in 'Pee-wee's Big Holiday.'

For keeping youthful on the big screen, we'll have whatever Pee-wee Herman is having.

More than 30 years after he appeared in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the boy in a man's body looks ageless in his new outing, Pee-wee's Big Holiday (an original movie that premieres Friday on Netflix and in theaters in 10 cities, including Los Angeles and Yonkers, N.Y.).

Paul Reubens, who dons Pee-wee's famed red bow tie and glen-plaid suit once again at age 63, concedes moviegoers will be impressed, even quizzical.

Pee-wee's big friendship with Joe Manganiello

"I'd be looking at Pee-wee Herman going, 'I cannot tell what they did, but he can't look like that,' " Reubens says. "I'm going to certainly have to cop to a lot of Hollywood magic for how I look in this movie. This is not a secret."

It's bigger than any Hollywood vanity. Director John Lee says one of his primary concerns was ensuring that Pee-wee in 2016 would still look like Pee-wee from his '80s heyday.

"It was like, how do we maintain Pee-wee as a child, with the innocence?" Lee says. "When I heard (the producers) were going to spend a lot of money keeping Pee-wee looking like he's from another time, I was pleased."

Reubens also insisted on it.

"As much as Pee-wee Herman was a little hard to explain 30 years ago, when I was 30 years younger, it doesn't work in my mind conceptually to see what I really look like now," Reubens says. "I couldn't pull off a Pee-wee movie now if we had no process to rely on."

First, Reubens worked to get into lean Pee-wee shape for the film. It helped that he looks youthful in person.

"I do have good genes as far as my appearance goes," Reubens says. "When I go to my high school reunion, I'm toward the lower end of the aging spectrum."

But movie cameras are unforgiving.

A scene from 1985's 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure.'

There was plenty of makeup, which Reubens calls "the most important" factor. The U.K.'s Daily Mail published photos of Reubens on the set with tape hidden on his neck, pulling his facial skin back to look tighter. Scenes were painstakingly lit for maximum benefit.

"The difference between people getting their picture taken in a restaurant and a (Pee-wee) scene in the restaurant is we spent six hours professionally lighting with makeup," Reubens says.

Sneak peek: Pee-wee Herman is back in 'Big Holiday'

Finally, filmmakers did extensive digital retouching during editing. Lee says the "meticulous" work involved going through each shot essentially "frame by frame" while stopping short of making Pee-wee look "cartoony" or with blurred-out expressions.

"We wanted to find the balance — Pee-wee is such a clown character, we needed all those expressions," Lee says. "We de-age him and spent a lot of money to do it in very subtle ways."

The work was so effective that it even fooled the director. Lee sometimes wondered whether scenes had been altered at all.

"Then we'd do a look before and after and we'd see what we really did," Lee says.  The change was dramatic: "Paul would cry for the rest of the day."