A ‘Shocked And Saddened’ Tim Burton Paid A Moving Tribute To His ‘Pee-wee’ Star Paul Reubens

What’s better than Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Not much. Tim Burton’s feature debut is basically perfect cinema, absolutely lousy with great jokes concocted in part by co-writer/star Paul Reubens, who had rebranded a risqué character he’d been doing in night clubs and a Cheech and Chong movie for the kids. After news broke on Monday of Reuben’s passing at age 70, tributes inevitably poured in. One was from Burton himself.

Burton posted a picture on Instagram taken on the set of Big Adventure, showing Burton smiling at something off-screen while Reubens sat perched on his character’s beloved bicycle.

“Shocked and saddened,” Burton wrote in the caption. “I’ll never forget how Paul helped me at the beginning of my career. It would not have happened without his support. He was a great artist. I’ll miss him.”

At the time of filming, Burton was a former Disney animator breaking into live-action. He was supposed to direct a very dark comedy called After Hours, but he wound up turning it over to no less than Martin Scorsese when he expressed interest in making it. The result Burton had a hit debut and two very different filmmakers each made one of their best films.

For Burton, Big Adventure’s box office success — and later cultdom on home video — paved the way for Beetlejuice, which paved the way for the 1989 Batman, etc. For Reubens, it led to one of the greatest, oddest children’s shows in history.

Reubens and Burton reunited twice. Reubens briefly played the Penguin’s father in Batman Returns and voiced the character Lock in the Burton-written The Nightmare Before Christmas.