Trivia / Big Top Pee-wee

• B-Team Sequel: Tim Burton turned down the chance to direct, as he was transitioning from completing Beetlejuice to beginning pre-production on Batman (1989).
• The Cast Showoff: The musical number Pee-wee sings in his dream at the beginning of the movie really is performed by Paul Reubens himself, who it turned out had a surprisingly good singing voice when out of character.
• Creator Killer:
  • This was the second to last film produced by Richard Abramson; he never did another film after the 80's ended.
  • This film also began a slow death for Paul Reubens' career as Pee-wee's Playhouse stopped making episodes in 1990. Not helping matters was Paul Reubens' infamous nudie theater incident the year after. It would be a quarter-century before Netflix revived Pee-wee Herman on a visible basis, making this film something of a Franchise Killer on top of it all.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Paul Reubens' porcine co-star clearly did not enjoy being cradled on its back in one particular scene between Pee-wee and Vance, and Ruebens himself received some nasty bruises from the pig's panicked flailing.
• Real-Life Relative: Two townsfolk, Herman and Honey, are played by Milton and Judy Rubenfeld, Paul Ruebens' real-life parents. Incidentally, "Herman Herman" and "Honey Herman" are also the names of Pee-wee's [fictional] parents, according to Ruebens' himself.
• Romance on the Set: This happened between Valeria Golino (Gina) and Benicio del Toro (Duke the Dog-Faced Boy), who remained together for four years.
• What Could Have Been: This movie would have originally had closer ties to Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The reason Pee-wee ran away to a rural town was because he had become a celebrity after the spy movie from the end of the first film was released and wanted to escape his fans. This was removed due to the Channel Hop between the two films and only briefly hinted at in the opening dream sequence, where Pee-wee takes flight to the countryside to get away from throngs of adoring fans of his singing.

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