REMEMBERING PAUL REUBENS (PART 1)

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

My association with Paul Reubens, best known for his character Pee Wee Herman, actually began a year before Ruby and I first met him. In May of 1978, our clever manager Bob Lacey, seeing a window of opportunity to coattail with a certain star of the future, offered to Robin Williams that Rick and Ruby would perform at his wedding reception in Sausalito, a few miles north of San Francisco. We volunteered to do it as our wedding gift, but one of the other people who was there was a woman named Cynthia Szigeti, an improv actress with many film and tv credits to her name. She would later become my housemate for the first three years I lived in LA. She had a close friendship with Paul Reubens at the time, and, as she would tell me a few years later when I was involved in the original Pee Wee show, she called him as soon as she got back to LA and said, “Remember that music and comedy act that you and I were talking about putting together? I just saw it in an act called Rick and Ruby. You must see them soon.”

A year passed and we spent spring and a good portion of the summer of 1979 touring with Robin. A few days after we played Universal Amphitheatre in LA to 6000 people, we headlined at the late lamented Palomino Club in North Hollywood. I remember cleverly announcing to the Universal audience that we would be there, and sure enough the room was sold out. We were doing two shows that night early in July, and when we came back to our dressing room after the first show, we saw gifts for myself, Ruby, and our keyboardist Raoul. They were toy ray guns that shot out sparks, and immediately we had to know who the donor was. It was indeed Paul Reubens. He wanted to know us, he said later, and the idea of giving silly gifts worked to the point that a friendship developed quickly.

We were going to be in LA for another week, so he invited us to see him at The Groundlings Theatre on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, where he was doing the Pee Wee act as a 10-minute sketch. He was portrayed as a young comedian who was going to be trying out material in hopes of getting hired by The Comedy Store. Coming out in his soon-to-be trademark grey suit and red bow tie, he announced in his silly high pitched voice that he was going to tape his act so he can analyse it later. Except he pressed “play” rather than “record,” and coming out from his tape deck was his voice singing the nerdiest version of Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” ever heard. Thus kicked off ten minutes of mayhem that I never laughed so hard at in all my years of watching comedy. An endless supply of goofy props, mostly novelty toys, as well as pockets full of Tootsie Roll candies, one for everyone in the audience. The sheer brilliance of his character’s stupidity left me breathless and amazed that someone so clever would have an affinity for us.

It was clear to us that Paul had found his meal ticket, and in the meantime, he was getting work in voice overs and small parts in comedy films. We made sure to stay in touch with him, as our only work left with Robin was going to be a Mork and Mindy episode that was in the offing, but didn’t happen until 1981 when we had moved to LA. By mid 1980, we decided to leave San Francisco for Los Angeles, and at the same time Paul was planning to produce an entire show around the Pee Wee character, in which he would be the host of a mock kids’ show. He wanted our involvement in the show though he wasn’t sure in what capacity.

We in turn enlisted him for one of our “event” shows, Rick and Ruby’s Last Prom, which was an annual event usually done at SF’s Great American Music Hall. We would invite various comedians and other eccentrics to play more grown up versions of high school characters while we fronted the dance band. On several occasions our back up band was The Tubes. Robin most of the time played the student body president Bud Johnson, except for 1980 and 1982, when we enlisted Paul/Pee Wee play the part. It was from his involvement in the 1980 Prom that he saw what we could add to his show, which was a musical medley.

For the remainder of 1980, we would spend several weeks at a time in LA taking meetings, doing gigs, sometimes doing TV spots, but a good portion of our time was spent with Paul. We even met with him on the set of the film “Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie,” where Paul had a significant part playing a hotel clerk whose name happened to be Pee Wee Herman. I don’t remember how much we actually got done on the set, but I did get to meet LSD guru Timothy Leary, who had a small cameo in the film. Didn’t know us from Adam, but talked to us like we were old friends. I’m pretty sure that it was on that film set that we presented to Paul the idea to make the medley a salute to Sly Stone, a San Francisco native and one of the major stars of Woodstock. Paul shared the same love for Soul music that we had, so the Sly Stone medley would be our contribution.

Sly did eventually come to one of the Pee Wee shows we did at LA’s Roxy Theatre, where the HBO special was recorded, though he left as soon as the show was over, so we never got to meet him personally. There is much more to say about that HBO special, but I need another day to recollect, so we shall tell the story of the production of the Pee Wee Herman Show in part 2.

August 1st, 2023



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