Episode
7
Criterion Spine #0
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Tim Burton, 1985 · with Jesse Thorn
"The regular world still has something special for someone who is weird."
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When Pee-wee Herman's beloved bicycle is stolen, he sets off on a cross-country quest to get it back. It's a simple premise for what is anything but a simple movie: in his feature directorial debut, Tim Burton turns a kids' comedy into something closer to an art film, full of strangers who feel slightly off, landscapes that look slightly wrong, and a hero convinced of his own importance. The result is one of the strangest, most singular studio comedies ever made — and also one of the most beloved.
Jesse Thorn is the founder of Maximum Fun and host of Bullseye, distributed by NPR. He has spent two decades championing the earnest, the offbeat, and the deeply sincere in American pop culture — which makes him the ideal guide to Pee-wee Herman.
Spoiler-free context and starting points.