In the months before his death, Paul Reubens participated in over 40 hours of interviews for the HBO documentary Pee-wee As Himself, where he came out as gay, discussed his scandals, and revealed his struggles with self-acceptance and fame. “I had many, many secret relationships,” Reubens says in the doc, which premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival. “I was secretive about my sexuality even to my friends [out of] self-hatred or self-preservation,” he added. “I was conflicted about sexuality. But fame was way more complicated.”
In an audio recording Reubens sent to director Matt Wolf during his last days, he lamented his arrest for indecent exposure in 1991 and in 2002 for possession of obscene material. “More than anything, the reason I wanted to make a documentary was for people to see who I really am, and how painful and dreadful it was to be labeled something I wasn’t. To be labeled a pariah; to have people be scared of you, or untrusting.”
