Pee-wee's Playhouse

"I'd had the stage show originally, so I was much more interested in doing something closer to that, something live-action. So when they suggested doing a cartoon, I said "I'm not really interested in that; let's do a real kid's show." I was a big Howdy-Doody freak growing up — I was actually on one show when I was a kid, in the audience — and was more interested in doing something like that. Howdy-Doody, Captain Kangaroo, a lot of the local kids shows that were on a long time ago — those were the influences."

"I've never agreed with people when they've said that last part, actually. When we were doing the midnight show back in the early Eighties, we'd do a kid's matinee show as well. I never felt like anything was changed, really. It was a bit slicker. It was made for Saturday-morning TV. But it wasn't like the character changed. Everything was like a toilet joke, but it wasn't like we gave the censors a lot to worry about. When you're writing a show for six-year-olds, you know, pee-pee and poo-poo…that's your bread and butter."

"But if you're a kid and you understand a joke that may have been quote-unquote risqué or an innuendo that might have made it in to a Playhouse episode, then you learned it from your parents or the schoolyard. I didn't teach them that."

"I was involved in pretty much every aspect of it. I'd hired the design team and came up with conception of stuff overall. I mean, someone designed and built Chairy, obviously, but it was my idea."

"The magic screen was originally about the size of a double-door entrance…it was gigantic! [Laughs] I think the door was a different color, too. But yeah, I was involved in every minute detail."

"I worked really closely with [series composer and Devo founder] Mark Mothersbaugh on the music for every episode, but the theme was a little different. It's essentially in two parts: there's the actual theme and the music that leads up to the theme. You know, that Martin Denny-esque lounge music as you watch the beaver gnaw on the wood, and everything sort of winds around as you eventually end up at the playhouse's door. Mark, the director of our first season Stephen R. Johnson and I talked a lot about the feeling that bit of music was supposed to evoke — the words "dream-like" and "hypnotic" were used a lot. I wanted kids to feel like they were being drawn into this world."

"You might find this hard to believe, but I got virtually no feedback the whole time we were making the show! In the ensuing years, since we stopped making it, I've met hundreds of fans, from little kids to grown-ups who watched it as kids when the show was originally on. But I was so busy with the making of it that I just didn't have much of life outside of the show. I was very rarely in situations where I'd meet fans. It was staggering when I finally did start to hear all that stuff, because I just didn't have an outside picture of it all."

"What I think a lot of people didn't realize was, this wasn't a goof on kids' shows. I felt like it was a mission and this was what I was supposed to do; I considered it important work. I always sort of thought that this would have a positive effect on kids. And they picked up on that, I think. [Pause] I've spent a lot of time rewatching these episodes during the restoration process for this set, and I'm still really proud of what we all did."