Barbie director Greta Gerwig calls Pee Wees Big Adventure a stone cold

‘Barbie’ director Greta Gerwig calls ‘Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure’ a ‘stone-cold classic’ at AFI Fest screening

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Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig takes part in AFI Fest 2023

Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for AFI

In Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, starring Paul Reubens, there is a scene in which the title character goes on a vagabond adventure. He jumps on a train to sit side by side with a grizzled, toothless man named Hobo Jack, and they sing camp songs until Pee-Wee suddenly becomes angry. Disgust radiates from his face and he makes the rash decision to jump from the moving train and fall into the dirt below. The scene lasts a full 53 seconds.

“It’s such a committed, incredibly short joke that takes so much effort, and I think it’s deeply embedded in me,” Greta Gerwig explained from the podium at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Thursday night while watching a screening of Tim Burton’s “1985” opened film as part of the AFI Fest. The blockbuster Barbie director appeared as part of her guest directing gig for the Los Angeles-based festival, which commissioned her to curate a selection of films to be screened this year.

These five films include “All That Jazz” by Bob Fosse with Roy Scheider, Jessica Lange and Ann Reinking, “An American in Paris” by Vincente Minnelli with Gene Kelly, “A Question of Life and Death” by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as well as “Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders with Bruno Ganz and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” with Reubens, who died on July 31st, in the leading role.

Gerwig presented both “A Matter of Life and Death” and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” tonight. Gerwig, dressed in a Gucci red devoré velvet set with a monogrammed jacquard print, called the train scene “brilliant” before revealing that her relationship with the film is personal. “As a writer and director, when you look back and look at the things you loved, you realize it was always great. It’s so funny and special and inventive that it makes you believe in comedy and cinema and how profound that kind of silliness is.”

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Her appearance at the festival was a homecoming, having screened her previous films “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” there in previous years. Gerwig was also a member of the short film jury in 2010. But her appearance this year is particularly significant as she comes off the back of the huge success of “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The Warner Bros. release has become a cultural phenomenon, grossing over $1.4 billion.

She mentioned Barbie in her introduction, saying that when she began working on the film she was thinking about “those wonderful comedic treats” featured in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and how “man “Providing access to something that doesn’t exist.” She said she loved the film as a child without understanding all the reasons behind it.

“I didn’t know why it was so brilliant and so beautiful. I just loved it and it gave me joy and made me feel free,” Gerwig continued. “And it was something that gave me permission to experience the truth that you can only achieve by moving into the ridiculous, which Paul knew as a performer. And he knew it in the same way as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

She called both Reubens and Burton “geniuses” and the film “a stone-cold classic.” Gerwig was welcomed to the podium by AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale, who highlighted the importance of the film’s screening at TCL Chinese, as the famed theater hosted the world premiere of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985.

“That also makes this a very special evening,” Gazzale continued, as he revealed that three members of the film’s creative team were in the theater, including co-writer Michael Varhol, an actor who played Child No. 2 on a bicycle , Brett Fellman and “the one and only” Diane Salinger, who plays Simone. She received enthusiastic applause and as it ended she said she knew Reubens was looking down on tonight’s festivities.

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After her remarks, Gerwig, who was introduced by AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale, went to another room in the complex to introduce “A Matter of Life and Death.” The 1946 film by the filmmaking team Powell and Pressburger revolves around a British war pilot who avoids death and then has to fight for his life in a heavenly court.

Gerwig’s comments in this theater focused less on the ridiculous and more on the power of cinema. “They give me a feeling of freedom,” she said of the feeling she feels watching her films. “I feel like every time I watch a Powell and Pressburger film it’s an adrenaline rush and a reminder that films can be anything you want them to be and you can do anything you want them to be. “When the lights go out, anything is possible.”