By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)
Fans of Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse can get a special sneak peek Oct 18th at 7am PT/10 am ET for a very special live streaming event that will tease at what’s to come in Shout Factory’s release: Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Complete Series.
This collection is due to hit shelves October 21st on Amazon
This Blu-ray set will have all 45 episodes digitally remastered to highlight the wild, colourful, wacky world that’s Pee-wee’s imagination. And for fans of behind the scenes material, there’s 10 featurettes to show how this seminal television series was made. One of them includes seeing Academy Award nominated actor Laurence Fishburne recalling fond times on the set.
In the included interviews, there should also be explanations of how Pee-wee became part of the 80’s lexicon. When comedian Paul Reuben’s stand-up act, The Pee-wee Herman Show became a huge stage success, it made the step into becoming a surreal experience as a feature film, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, directed by Tim Burton before arriving on the smaller screen as a Playhouse for everyone to enjoy.
Despite the scandal that emerged in the 90’s about Reuben’s public exposure, the embarrassment he faced affected him greatly. Fellow celebrities and fans supported him at a difficult time. Appearances were few, and Reuben was very selective at when his seminal character would reappear just to remind the public that the character he made famous is not gone.
With the release of this set, the decades that’s passed has shown that even now, everyone still has a fondness for this character. What’s past is past and it’s best to remember Pee-wee for what he did best: to entertain the masses!
The Bonus Features Includes:
- OVER 4 HOURS of brand-new interviews with the cast and crew, plus never-seen, behind-the-scenes footage—all part of TEN FEATURETTES, including:
- Building the Playhouse
- Opening the Playhouse
- Writing for the Playhouse
- The Look of the Playhouse
- Music of the Playhouse
- The Cast of the Playhouse
- Puppets of the Playhouse
- Animating the Playhouse
- A Very Merry Christmas Special
- Fans and Memorabilia of the Playhouse
- These featurettes include interviews with actors Laurence Fishburne (Cowboy Curtis), S. Epatha Merkerson (Reba the mail lady), Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne) and John Paragon (Jambi the genie).
- Mark Mothersbaugh and Danny Elfman explain the music of the show and the Emmy award-winning production design team of Gary Panter, Wayne White, and Ric Heitzman explain how the sets and puppets were imagined and produced.
- Animation Supervisor of all 5 seasons of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Prudence Fenton (Liquid Television) talks about all the types of animation used in the program and animators Peter Lord and David Sproxton (Wallace & Gromit) discuss their contributions.
- Ve Neill, the multi-Oscar winning make-up artist talks about designing the make-up ‘looks’. Two of the shows writers talk about how the scripts were created.
- Other cast and crew explain, in fascinating detail, stories from the production of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. If that weren’t enough, many of the shows puppeteers and voice artists are interviewed about how the puppet characters were brought to life.
