Re: [MOPO] PEE WEE'S BIG COMEBACK

[Simon Oram]

There's no accounting for taste! Nomis Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone. From: Michael Greenwood Sent: Wednesday, 17 February 2016 22:49 To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Reply To: Michael Greenwood Subject: Re: [MOPO] PEE WEE'S BIG COMEBACK Stop me if you've heard this one before but Adrian doesn't like Pee Wee Herman!!!  He's certainly no Steve Martin or Richard Pryor but he's better than Chevy Chase.  C'mon!! Plus, there were,like, six times as many people in the Pythons...hardly fair. M From: MoPo List <mopo-l@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU> on behalf of Adrian Cowdry <00000029edc23ec7-dmarc-requ...@listserv.american.edu> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:10 PM To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Subject: Re: [MOPO] PEE WEE'S BIG COMEBACK   I saw Billy Connolly live four weeks ago - this is about the eighth time for me - Connolly is a comic god - his genius is that he is all about observation. Connolly has Parkinsons disease and also has had prostate cancer - both diagnosis on the same day - and yet he made us laugh about it. Paul Ruebens is unfunny he cannot compare to the likes of the Pythons, Ronnie Barker, Billy Connolly, Lee Evans all Brits or Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Steve Martin and the like all of the same era as Pee Wee. Pee Wee's great adventure was an embarresment...I saw it first time around in the US and all I saw was a creepy little guy taking cinema goers money. And now he is making some sort of come back - - it all comes down to a matter of taste - I predict his new film will do no business in Europe. Steve Carrel has to be one of the latest great talents on cinema screens and transcends international humour - he is a comic who deeserves his plaudits. We can all pick out favourites...Pee Wee is way down on the scale and is so unfunny... Believe me we have some who are just as bad in the UK - Frank Skinner for example - another one who thinks he is funny and possibly the worst is Russell Brand - he's about as funny as a fart in a space suit! This Never Happened to the Other Fella.... Adrian Cowdry jboh...@aol.com -----Original Message----- From: Alan Adler <m...@charter.net> To: MoPo-L <MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU> Sent: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 19:39 Subject: Re: [MOPO] PEE WEE'S BIG COMEBACK Back in the late 1970’s I apprenticed the troupe and was a manager for the Groundlings Theater in LA on Friday nights. Paul Reubens initiated a new character - a naive kid who just got off the bus - who in the storyline eventually evolved into a comic. All of LA was mythic and eye-opening to this character and he had a way of making you see the fairy tale of it all through his eyes. This was the first appearance of Pee-Wee and on successive Friday nights he would appear and hone the character - change things here or there - draw in the audience more and more - Until he finally put together Pee-Wee’s Playhouse - the stage production - with other members of the Groundlings group - truly brilliant comic talents. The movies were fun, I thought - But, all I can say is that in person in those early days and through the development of Pee-Wee’s stage show - I have seen few things funnier or laughed at fewer things harder that I did that show. Rubens would come out tossing candy to everyone, dancing on his tip toes, engaging the audience. I don’t know what it was - but he definitely tapped something both mythic and absurd - a wonderful and unusual combination. Paul was always a very kind and gentle person, even quiet, and it was a shame he hit the Hollywood Babylon skids as he did. We all have our feet of clay - But in the old days - when it was fresh and never seen before - his act was nothing short of scream out loud riotous - you literally couldn’t get the air out of your lungs fast enough. Jeez, I’d love to see something that funny once again! Alan To unsubscribe from the MoPo-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.american.edu/scripts/wa-american.exe?SUBED1=MoPo-L&A=1 To unsubscribe from the MoPo-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.american.edu/scripts/wa-american.exe?SUBED1=MoPo-L&A=1 To unsubscribe from the MoPo-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.american.edu/scripts/wa-american.exe?SUBED1=MoPo-L&A=1 To unsubscribe from the MoPo-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.american.edu/scripts/wa-american.exe?SUBED1=MoPo-L&A=1