RUDD: It’s one of the most specific, inventive, amazing movies ever!

REUBENS: I didn’t write it as a kids’ movie. I wrote it to have a wide range. I still have kids who come up to me and say, “That moment when Large Marge turned around—I still can’t watch!’ It’s like the people in my generation who, if you mention Walt Disney, will within 30 seconds start reliving scenes of the wicked stepmother from Sleeping Beauty [1959]. There were just things in Disney movies that probably were too scary for kids . . .

RUDD: Big Adventure was Tim Burton’s first film, right? That seems like a match made in heaven.

REUBENS: Tim went to CalArts, strangely enough, but he was there after me and we didn’t know each other. I turned in the script of the movie with a list of about 200 directors I had gotten out of a directors’ book who I thought were good. The studio then settled on one director who wasn’t on my list and that I thought was absolutely wrong. I made a stupid stink to my manager about it, and my manager said, “Are you crazy? You have a green-light approved movie if you go with this guy they are asking for.” I said, “I’m sorry. It’s not the right guy. I spent 15 years getting to this point. I gotta have the right director. Someone who can put their own stamp on it.” So I went to a party, and somebody at the party had just seen Frankenweenie [1984], Tim Burton’s short film that he made for Disney. Shelley Duvall was in Frankenweenie, and I knew Shelley, and so I called Shelley and she said, “Oh my god, Paul, you and he are so perfect together.” When I screened the short film the next day, I knew in the first six shots that I wanted him to do it. It was absolutely incredible. It was the biggest piece of luck early on in my career that I could have had. We were completely simpatico. He was 26 years old at the time. My friends would come on the set and go, “Which one’s the director?” And I’d point him out, and they’d go, “Come on, no. Where? Which one’s the director?”

RUDD: Did you ever hate the character and want to move on without ever going back?

REUBENS: I never really thought that the character was over with. I’ve been so widely quoted as saying it’s over, and I’m never doing it, and it’s dead and all that. But I never said any of that. After five seasons of the CBS show, I was so exhausted. I needed a nice big break from the character, and I took it. I’ve wanted to redo it for a long time, but the timing was never really right. And I have been doing other work as an actor, which is exciting. And I feel like I’ve finally found that balance as an actor of working on other people’s films and on this one at the same time. I never really had that at the peak of Pee-wee Herman. I didn’t have time to do anything other than Pee-wee. I feel really good about the film script. We did a -roundtable -reading recently, and I’m very excited. In the series we never left the playhouse. But in the film we go completely out of the playhouse. It’s all the puppets, particularly those giant clunky puppets that should never be out of the -playhouse, on a full-on road-trip epic adventure. There’s something funny about that right off the bat. I mean, Chairry should never be out of the playhouse!