User:Wildroot/Pee-wee

Cast

 * Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman: A strange man who acts like a child. He sports a tuxedo with a red bow tie and clean-cut hair. He is very obsessive over his bicycle, traveling across America in search of it.
 * Elizabeth Daily as Dottie: She has a major crush on Pee-wee, though Pee-wee declines to be her boyfriend. Pee-wee thinks of himself as "a loner, a rebel". Dottie helps run a bike shop.
 * Mark Holton as Francis Buxton: A fellow man-child like Pee-wee. He is obese and very spoiled. He offers to buy Pee-wee's bike for a large amount of money, but Pee-wee refuses. Francis hires someone to steal the bike before it is purchased by Warner Brothers.
 * Diane Salinger as Simone: A waitress that Pee-wee meets in Texas. She develops an attraction towards Pee-wee and yearns to live in France. Her violent boyfriend Andy flunked French in High School, and therefore dislikes France. At the end of the film, Simone is dating a French man named Pierre.
 * Judd Omen as Mickey Morelli: A convict Pee-wee meets on his way to Texas. Mickey is a fugitive on the run from the law because he cut off a "do not remove under the penalty of law" mattress tag. He also has a bad temper and abandons Pee-wee in "the middle of nowhere" for his safety. However, Pee-wee ends up inviting Mickey to his movie.

Writers Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol cameo as a reporter and photographer. Cassandra Peterson appears as "Biker Mama". James Brolin portrays Pee-wee Herman and Morgan Fairchild is Dottie for the scene when Warner Bros. turns Pee-wee's life in a full-length film. Dee Snider and Milton Berle cameo as themselves.


 * Reubens had a bit part in Nightmare.

Production

 * Burton won the job after creating an innovative 30-minute cartoon film for Disney, Frankenweenie. Though it missed distribution with Disney's Pinocchio due to a PG rating, Pee-wee's producers saw it and...."They called me in to meet Pee-wee and the writers. I had seen Pee-wee's show at the Roxy (a Los Angeles club) and was a real fan, but I was a little worried about going into a film with such an established character. I didn't see what I could add of my own. that set up a basis of trust and rapport. We both like a lot of the same things, like gadgetry and toys, and we hit it off. It was tremendous!"


 * Filming locations included Glendale, California, Pomona, Santa Monica, Burbank, Cabazon, and San Antonio, Texas.


 * Burton, a fan of Oingo Boingo (as the group rechristened itself in 1979), surprised Elfman by asking if he would be interested in writing the music for Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Burton's first movie. "Though I never took it seriously as a potential job," recalls Elfman, "I thought it would be hip to do a meeting." The meeting led to Elfman's first great score -- playful, lyrical, full-bodied -- and launched his movie career.


 * Out of the blue in 1984, he was asked to compose the music for PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, the first feature starring the comedian Pee Wee Herman. "They called me in and the first thing I asked them was 'Why me?" said Elfman. "They told me they wanted an orchestra score, and I told them I had no experience with orchestra and I didn't really know how to write music." Director Tim Burton, however, felt that Elfman had the capabilities he was looking for. "We talked about musical styles, and who my influences were," Elfman said. "I think that's what did it. Everything I said was just dead on with what they had in mind - a little bit of Bernard Herrmann, a little bit of Nino Rota, and those two were my two big film music influences. When I was younger I dreamed of writing music in that style, but I didn't ever think I'd get a chance to do it." After a week of studio decision-making, Elfman was told he had the job. Rather than being excited at achieving this goal, though, Elfman was petrified. "I thought I'd finally blundered my way into something that I wouldn't be able to fulfil, " he said. "But I finally figured I'd give it my best shot. If worse comes to worse, I'd fail miserably and go back to my nice comfortable place in rock and roll." Through the course of scoring PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, Elfman and his Oingo Boingo associate, Steve Bartek (who Assisted him as an arranger), learned the technical side of timing, working with click-tracks to synchronize music and image, and other fine points of film scoring technique. "To my surprise," said Elfman, "what I thought was an enormously complex, technical job turned out to be - I won't say it wasn't time consuming and difficult - real easy." The first thing Elfman did to prepare himself for writing symphonic film music was to discard everything he had learned during his experience in the rock field. "I've always been very critical of rock artists turned film composers," said Elfman, "and I didn't want to fall into their category. I took the attitude of forgetting everything I'd done with the band, and going back to myself as a teenager, watching and loving films. Even though I spent a lot of years in rock 'n' roll, it would be just as likely that I'd have the music to Fellini's CASANOVA or Bernard Herrmann's - JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH going on in my mind." Elfman re-learned to write music while scoring PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. Initially he had in mind simply to play his compositions on keyboard and record them on tape, having associate Steve Bartek put it into writing for the orchestra to read. "Then I thought, wait a minute, that's bullshit, that's how a rock 'n' roller does a film score," Elfman said. "So I made myself start putting notes on paper, which I hadn't done in a long time. I found that by the end of the score I was writing everything out. I had a real good music editor named Bob Badamay working with me, and he helped me a lot with the "technical side." Elfman's score for PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (he called it a cross between Nino Rota and Hollywood- 1950s: "going for that overly dramatic type of musical style where there aren't many subtleties") was performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, and quickly led to further assignments in films and television, including a continuing association with Burton. Elfman scored Burton's 1986 ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode, "The Jar" remaking the 1962 original, which Elfman's big influence, Bernard Herrmann, had composed. "'The Jar' was really great because I got to write for a small ensemble, which I've always wanted to do," said Elfman. "I always emulated and admired how Bernard Herrmann would take a small ensemble and do all kinds of interesting things with it on the old TWILIGHT ZONE."

Release
Pee-wee's Big Adventure was released in the United States on August 9, 1985 in 829 theaters, earning $4,545,847 in its opening weekend. The film eventually grossed $40.94 million in US totals.

Was given a limited release on July 26, 1985. Released on August 9 behind Back to the Future and Summer Rental. Remained with a consistent #3 position for a further six weeks.

Based on 32 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of the critics enjoyed the film with an average score of 7.4/10.

By comparison, Metacritic calculated an average score of 47/100, based on 13 reviews collected.

Time magazine: "His big mystery lies in his strange appeal for adolescents. Is he yet another vehicle through which they can sentimentalize their childhoods? Is he just the latest grotesque fad? Is he to the Reagan era what Pinky Lee was to Eisenhower's? Impossible to say. But fair warning: this movie could induce terminal boredom in adults and rot the minds of the young."


 * http://www.timburtoncollective.com/articles/pw1.html
 * http://www.timburtoncollective.com/articles/pw5.html