‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ Gets 40th Anniversary Salute at Netflix Is a Joke

It was an “I know you’re bittersweet, but what am I?” evening. The annual Netflix Is a Joke festival kicked off Monday night at L.A.’s Greek Theatre with a “Pee-wee’s Playhouse 40th Anniversary” show , featuring comics and musicians paying tribute to a Saturday morning kids’ show — or was it — that they grew up on or, in some cases, worked on.

The main musical attractions were the B-52s, Devo, Danny Elfman and Puddles Pity Party, taking turns fronting a 10-piece big band led by Mark Mothersbaugh — and with Fred Armisen on drums — that nimbly navigated between exotica and some fairly fierce garage-rock. The comics performing, many of whom skewed toward the younger side of the Netflix-comedy-special scale, included Sheng Wang, Michael Carbonaro, Julio Torres and Patti Harrison.

Original stars of the show were in short supply, with several key cast members having passed on — including Paul Reubens, who died three years ago, and Phil Hartman and Lynne Marie Stewart, who died in 1998 and 2025, respectively. “To Miss Yvonne and Captain Carl, we love you, and we wish you were here. We love you so much,” said host Patton Oswalt, as images of Stewart and Hartman appeared on the overhead screen.

But the appearances of several key props — and, perhaps more importantly, several original puppeteers — helped lend sentiment to the night. After putting in duties operating non-human characters from Chairry to Mr. Window to Globey to red-headed Randy, puppeteers Alison Mork, Ric Heitzman, Kevin Carlson and Wayne White were brought out, along with “Playhouse” writer and voice actor George McGrath (who penned the script for the event). The sold-out house gave these O.G. behind-the-scenes operatives a heartfelt standing ovation about as extended as any heard at the Greek in recent years.

And there were three more guests from the original show: Natasha Lyonne, Diane Yang Kirk and Shaun Weiss, who played rambunctious kids in a season 1 episode (so rambunctious that legend has it Reubens didn’t want them back). Not everyone in the audience believed that Lyonne really was the tot seen on screen and wasn’t just being brought in for a bit — although there was a bit, as Oswalt interviewed them under their original character names to ask what they were up to today.

Although the program was a tribute to the TV series starring Paul Reuben as Pee-wee Herman and not the feature films with the same character, there was an occasional moment of crossover into the Pee-wee cinematic universe. Said Oswalt near the top of the show, “Pee-wee Herman has been such a part of my life ever since I was at the Tysons Corner seven-plex watching a movie one Saturday afternoon. The movie ended — I don’t remember what the movie was — and a guy came out and said, ‘Anyone who wants to stay, we’re gonna be previewing a new movie. We’re just gonna be showing it.’ No announcement, no trailer. We all stayed, and they showed ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.’ And it cracked my brain, and it is a massive reason why I do and love the kind of comedy that I love.”

The most significant bit of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” crossover came when Elfman came out to join the band in playing the instrumental theme from that first Pee-wee feature film. And then, as a bonus, he sang the title tune of “The Forbidden Zone,” a midnight movie directed by his brother, Richard Elfman, which had no connection to the Herman universe apart from how it fatefully led to his discovery by Reubens.

“Before there was ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse,’ there was a little movie called ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,’” Elfman explained. “This was the very first time I ever got to write for orchestra. I’m so grateful to Paul Reubens, now, 110 films later. Thank you, Paul. So, a little story to tell you:The reason why Paul called me is that he was the fan of a movie that my brother made back in the ’70s called ‘Forbidden Zone.’ And he heard the music and he wrote my name down, and five, six years later, he hadn’t forgotten it, amazingly. I haven’t performed this song in 47 years. So it’s unlikely that I won’t screw it up pretty badly.”

Also being revived for the first time in who knows how long was the “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” theme song, originally sung by Cyndi Lauper under a pseudonym for the TV series, resurrected on this night by the B-52s’ Kate Pierson.