Pee-wee's Big Adventure

Pee-wee Herman has a heavily accessorized bicycle that he treasures and that his neighbor and enemy, Francis Buxton, covets. Dottie, an employee at a bike shop, has a crush on Pee-wee, but he does not reciprocate. As Pee-wee goes on a shopping spree, his bike is stolen, but the police regard the theft as too minor and common to deal with. Pee-wee assumes Francis took it, and confronts him, but Francis' father convinces Pee-wee that Francis was at home when the bike was stolen. Pee-wee offers a $10,000 reward for the bike. Francis, who did indeed pay to have someone steal the bike, is disturbed by Pee-wee's relentlessness and pays to have the bike sent away. That evening, Pee-wee holds an unsuccessful evidentiary meeting of friends and neighbors to find the bike, then rejects offers of help. He then visits a phony psychic who tells Pee-wee that his bike is in the basement of the Alamo Mission in San Antonio.

Pee-wee hitchhikes to Texas, getting rides from a fugitive convict named Mickey, and from Large Marge, the ghost of a truck driver. At a truck stop, Pee-wee finds his wallet is missing (having left it with the psychic in his haste), and pays for his meal by washing dishes. He befriends Simone, a waitress who dreams of visiting Paris. As they watch the sun rise from within a roadside dinosaur statue, he encourages her to follow her dreams, but Simone tells him about her boyfriend, Andy, who disapproves. Andy himself appears and tries to attack Pee-wee, who escapes onto a moving train. Pee-wee arrives at the Alamo, but learns at the end of a guided tour that the building does not have a basement.

At a bus station, Pee-wee encounters Simone, who tells him she broke up with Andy and is on her way to Paris. She tells Pee-wee not to give up searching for his bike. Pee-wee calls Dottie at the bike shop and apologizes for his behavior. Andy spots Pee-wee and resumes chasing him. Pee-wee evades Andy at a rodeo by disguising himself as a bull rider. Forced to ride a bull, Pee-wee nearly sets a world record, but is knocked out. He visits a biker bar to make a phone call, and a biker gang threatens to kill him after he accidentally knocks over their motorcycles. He wins them over by dancing to the song "Tequila" in a pair of platform shoes, and they give him a motorcycle for his journey, which he crashes immediately.

He awakens in a hospital and sees a television news report in which his bike is being used as a prop in a film. Pee-wee sneaks into Warner Bros. Studios with Milton Berle in Burbank and grabs the bike. Security guards chase him across the studio lot and through several active sets before he escapes. Having escaped the lot, Pee-wee discovers a burning pet shop and rescues the animals. The firefighters declare Pee-wee a hero, but the police arrest Pee-wee for his intrusion at the studio. They return Pee-wee to the studio to face Warner Bros. president Terry Hawthorne. After Pee-wee pleads his case that the bike belongs to him, Hawthorne decides to drop the charges and return Pee-wee's bike in exchange for the rights to adapt his story into a film starring James Brolin as "P.W. Herman" and Morgan Fairchild as Dottie. In the film, the characters must retrieve their stolen motorbike – which contains an important microfilm – from the Soviets. Pee-wee has a cameo role as a hotel bellhop, though his voice has been dubbed.

Seeing the film at a drive-in theater, Pee-wee gives refreshments to the different people he met along his journey, then joins Dottie at their bikes. He also encounters Francis, who tells reporters he is Pee-wee's best friend and that he taught Pee-wee how to ride. Francis claims to be knowledgeable about Pee-wee's bike, but sets off one of the bicycle's gadgets, catapulting himself into the air. Pee-wee decides to depart with Dottie, claiming to have already "lived" the adventure on screen.

Michael Varhol, who co-wrote the script with Reubens and Hartman, cameos as a photographer. Director Tim Burton has an uncredited cameo[6] as the street thug who confronts Pee-wee in a rainy back alley. James Brolin portrays P.W. Herman and Morgan Fairchild is Dottie in the film-within-a-film production about Pee-wee's life. Heavy metal band Twisted Sister and veteran comedy star Milton Berle cameo as themselves, with the latter being uncredited.

The film contains numerous "conceptual continuity" links to other Tim Burton films and other productions:

• Several cast members from The Pee-wee Herman Show (who went on to appear in Pee-wee's Playhouse) have cameo roles. John Moody (Mailman Mike in The Pee-wee Herman Show) appears as the bus clerk in the film-studio sequence, Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne) plays the Mother Superior, John Paragon (Jambi the Genie) plays the high-voiced studio extra in red armor of whom Pee-wee asks directions and the reporter interviewing Francis in the final scene at the drive-in is played by Phil Hartman (Cap'n Carl).
• Jan Hooks (Tina) was a fellow member of the Groundlings comedy troupe with Reubens, Hartman and Paragon, and went on to costar on Saturday Night Live with Hartman. She also had a cameo role as a publicist in Burton's Batman Returns (1992).
• Reubens and Diane Salinger (Simone) were reunited in the opening sequence of Burton's Batman Returns, in which they portrayed the parents of the Penguin. They appeared together again in Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016).

One of the prop bicycles used in the film on display at Bicycle Heaven

The success of The Pee-wee Herman Show prompted Warner Bros. to hire Paul Reubens to write a script for a full-length Pee-wee Herman film. His original concept was a remake of Pollyanna (1960), Reubens's favorite film, with Pee-wee Herman in the Hayley Mills role. While writing the script, Reubens noticed that many at Warner Bros. rode bicycles around the backlot and requested one of his own. This inspired Reubens to start a new script.[7]

Having left Walt Disney Productions and with Frankenweenie (1984) receiving positive reviews within film studios, Tim Burton was seeking a full-length film to direct. When Reubens and the producers of Pee-wee's Big Adventure saw Burton's work on Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie, they decided to hire him.[8] Burton felt that he connected with Reubens's personality and the humor of the Pee-wee Herman Show.[9] After hiring Burton, Reubens, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol revised the script.[10] They read Syd Field's 1979 book Screenplay and wrote the script according to the book's advice. "It's a 90-minute film, it's a 90-page script," Reubens explained. "On page 30 I lose my bike, on page 60 I find it. It's literally exactly what they said to do in the book...There should be like a MacGuffin kind of a thing, something you're looking for, and I was like, 'Okay, my bike.'"[11]

Filming locations included Glendale, Pomona, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Burbank, Cabazon (at the Cabazon Dinosaurs[12]) and Port Hueneme in California, as well as San Antonio, Texas.[13][14][15] Burton and Reubens clashed with Warner Bros. studio executives over the shooting schedule.[16] Burton hired CalArts classmate Rick Heinrichs for scenes involving stop-motion animation.[16] Large Marge's claymation transformation was created by the Chiodo Brothers.

Burton brought in Danny Elfman, the lead singer/songwriter of Oingo Boingo who had composed the music for Forbidden Zone (1982), to compose the film's score.[17] Elfman was hesitant at first given his lack of scoring experience,[18] but had written the main title theme by the time that he signed on.[19]

Elfman's original score draws inspiration from film composers Nino Rota[20] and Bernard Herrmann.[lower-alpha 1] The main title music pays homage to Rota's "Carlotta's Galop" from Fellini's 8½ (1963) and the tracks "Stolen Bike" and "Clown Dream" pay homage to Herrmann's scores for Psycho (1960) and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), respectively. "Studio Chase" pays homage to Miss Gulch's theme from The Wizard of Oz (1939).

In 1988, record label Varèse Sarabande released an album featuring cues from Pee-wee's Big Adventure and those from another Elfman-scored film, Back to School (1986). While the scores for both films were recorded in Hollywood, the album was recorded in London and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Coleman.[21] In 2010, many of the original tracks were released by Warner Bros. Records as part of The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box.

Elfman went on to score nearly all of Burton's films,[22] excluding Ed Wood (1994), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016).

"Clown Dream" is also featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto V and is often played as the opening music during Primus concerts.

The film also features "Burn in Hell" by Twisted Sister[23] and "Tequila" by the Champs.[24]

Pee-wee's Big Adventure opened on August 9, 1985, in the United States in 829 theaters, accumulating $4,545,847 over its opening weekend. It went on to gross $40,940,662 domestically.[3]

Warner Home Video released Pee-wee's Big Adventure on DVD in May 2000, with audio commentary by Tim Burton, Paul Reubens and Danny Elfman (the latter on a separate track, alongside an isolated score) and some deleted scenes.[42] The film was released on Blu-ray disc in 2011.[43]

• Burton, Tim (2006). Salisbury, Mark (ed.). Burton on Burton. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0571229260.

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