This essay by Mark Harris deserves a way better title, but it’s about the new Paul Reubens documentary, Paul Reubens decision to go back in the closet and the history of the closet.

“Early in the biographical documentary Pee-wee as Himself, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the actor Paul Reubens makes a statement about his sexual identity that even in 2025 feels jarring to hear. As he discusses his years as a budding performance artist, he reveals for the first time that, soon after leaving California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s, he began a romantic relationship with an attractive artist named Guy. They moved in together and started to build a life; Reubens introduced Guy to his parents. And then he came to feel that he was losing his identity. The relationship ended and, soon after, Reubens, who would later come to be better known as Pee-wee Herman, made a decision that would shape the rest of his life — a professional choice with a great personal cost: ‘I was as out as you could be,’ he says. ‘And then I went back in the closet.'”

Read here.