Although I’ve seen it many times and thought about it often, I couldn’t initially come up with anything other than a series of hilariously strange situations.
Then it struck me. Nearly every crazy plot twist in the movie deals with a widely exaggerated fear that we all have that rests deep within our psyche. These fears appear in various forms. Pee-wee actually experiences them in this surreal world that the movie creates for us. But the main character faces all of these fears with the same responses over and over. He responds with charity, charm, a light touch, and persistence toward the goal.
As I thought about it, I realized: That’s a very deep and profound message. In fact, it’s a retelling of the hero’s journey, a cinematic version of “The Odyssey” with a clownish and childish exterior. This is what makes the movie great.
Start with the main premise. Pee-wee wakes in the morning with a series of gizmos that are supposed to prepare his breakfast for him. Nothing works quite right. The pancake flipper throws pancakes on the ceiling. Other machines go haywire. Even the watering tool for the front yard blasts water all over the neighborhood. Pee-wee laughs at it all because he considers life to be delightful.
Even from the outset, then, we’re presented with a strange anxiety that we all have that all the products that have been made for us will suddenly stop working. Whether it’s the electricity going out or the washing machine breaking or the phone dying, we do worry always and often about this possibility.
Then we move to his beloved bicycle. He adores it with a mad love. He has hidden it in a secret spot to keep it from being stolen because he knows that everyone wants his bike. He polishes it, checks its operations, speaks to it in affectionate tones, heads out to go downtown, parks the bike, and wraps it in the biggest chain ever to keep it secure. When he returns, he finds that it has been stolen. This shatters his worldview.
He goes on a mad search for the guilty party, vaguely feeling as if it’s someone he knows. His investigations rope in all his friends from whom he demands every scrap of information. Everyone feels awful for him, but no one can figure it out or otherwise help.
So it is in all our lives: We all profoundly fear the loss of something we truly love and worry that we‘ll be betrayed by those closest to us. It’s a dark fear, perhaps the darkest. It doesn’t matter what it is: It could be a dog, our passport, our car keys, our spouse, our job, or our reputation. We worry that we’ll wake up and find it missing, perhaps even taken by someone within our social circles, even by someone we otherwise trust.
Then it strikes him. Maybe it’s the porky rich kid in town who kept trying to pay him for the bike. This revelation takes him straight to the guy’s big house, where he tries to get the kid to cough up the truth. But the kid and his father swear that it wasn’t them. Not entirely satisfied, Pee-wee looks elsewhere.
Pee-wee doesn’t take this loss easily but persistently sets out on the big adventure. He’s misdirected by a fortune teller to go to the Alamo in Texas. She steals his wallet and sends him on a preposterous hunt. And so too do we worry about being scammed in our naivete to follow the advice of a soothsayer to our doom.
On the way to Texas, he has to deal with many other hidden anxieties. He’s stopped by a policeman while driving with a convict, which is terrifying. He drives at night around crazy curves, falls off a cliff, and lands in a dark jungle full of dangerous animals. He has no money and has to pay for his food by washing dishes.
So on it goes. At one point, he’s in a town and sees that the pet store is on fire. He begins to rescue animals one by one. He does the right thing, but he’s also human and faces a choice of which to rescue first. He grabs the most sympathetic animals first: the dogs, cats, monkeys, rabbits, and so on. He keeps passing by the fish and the snakes. After many rounds of rescue, he finally gives in and grabs not just the fish but also the snakes, which causes him to pass out.
Here we go again. He faced his worst fear and did the right thing. So it is when he stops in a diner. He gets along well with the waitress, but his attempt to help her is misinterpreted by her boyfriend, who tries to beat him up.
You see where I’m going with this? These are all life circumstances that inhabit our darkest anxieties. Each time, Pee-wee faces them squarely and with the best possible humor while shaking off the upset. In this way, he’s a hero, but he never thinks of himself as one.
Famously, he gets into a scrap with a motorcycle gang. We’ve all seen them on the road with scary outfits and swaggering ways, complete with knives and guns. As is typical with this film, everything is exaggerated. The gang drives him out of the bar, but he accidentally causes all their motorcycles to tumble to the ground. They drag him back in and plot his final demise.
Finally, he gets to the Alamo only to find that there’s no basement in which he can find his bike. But before knowing that, he has to suffer through a very long guided tour of the place with a crowd of interested people. Yes, we all know the feeling of being trapped in a boring guided tour with no escape. Our hero deals with anxieties large and small.
After the tour guide makes fun of him, everyone else joins in the jeers. The crowd is laughing uproariously at how dumb he is. Public humiliation. Another box checked!
Riding a bus back, the answer to his great question passes him by on the highway, his own bike on the way to somewhere. But he misses it because he wasn’t paying attention. There we go again: the sense that we all have that the answer is in front of us but we can’t see it.
The most poignant example of terror turned to hilarity concerns a local legend of “Large Marge,” who was involved in a terrible car wreck years earlier and supposedly haunts locals by driving around in an 18-wheeler. She picks up Pee-wee, and he reports this to the locals, who immediately begin retelling the story with a caricatured high dudgeon. This little plot device might be the most memorable for reasons anyone who has seen the film can instantly recall. Talk about scary!
Eventually, he finds his way to Hollywood, where the bike is being used as a prop in an absurd show. He steals it back and has to make his way through set after set before he’s free.
The legend of his adventure spreads, and eventually, there’s a feature film about him, which he then watches at the drive-in. He has a bit part in the film itself, which, of course, he flubs because of performance anxiety. He laughs uproariously. Meanwhile, he brings all his friends popcorn and sodas while charming viewers with banter.
There it is: self-effacing, charitable, funny, but also courageous in pursuit of justice. In short, it’s a story of heroism in the face of a blizzard of tests. He overcomes fear with determination and goodness. We could use more of that in our world. Much more.
