Paul Reubens was an actor and comedian whose childlike alter ego, Pee-wee Herman, became a cult figure from the 1980s until his death in 2023. As a new HBO documentary re-examines his life, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) presents Paul Reubens Selects, with his own screen adventures showing alongside some favourite movies – including three appearances from Marilyn.
Some Like It Hot (September 6-10)
“Paul Reubens’ college-era experiments with drag were undoubtedly influenced by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis chewing up the scenery in stockings, wigs, and pumps opposite Reubens’ screen idol Marilyn Monroe. Billy Wilder’s 1959 prohibition era crime-comedy, Some Like It Hot, is perfect screwball entertainment, ranked first on the American Film Institute’s ‘100 Years…100 Laughs’ list from 2000. Wilder said that once Monroe let go of her inhibitions, ‘she was phenomenal, one of the great comediennes.'”
All About Eve (September 8-11)
“Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s classic is the age-old tale of a diva of the theatre whose spotlight is usurped by an ambitious ingénue … With its acidic turns of phrase and venomous banter, All About Eve is a reference point for generations of queer cinephiles.”
The Misfits (September 8-9)
“Marilyn Monroe’s final, and finest, performance soars in this devastating romance, directed by John Huston and written by Monroe’s then-husband Arthur Miller. With a perilous rodeo as its centrepiece, The Misfits portrays a quartet of broken loners, desperate to find purpose and redemption, with Monroe at the heart of their journey. ‘I think you’re the saddest girl I’ve ever met,’ says Clark Gable. Alongside the unforgettable trio of actors stirring around her—Gable, Eli Wallach, and Montgomery Clift—Monroe ascends to supreme silver screen icon in this intoxicating film.” (Featuring an introduction by Reubens’ goddaughter, the costume designer Elida Berry-Donat, on September 9.)
BAM previously hosted a 14-film retrospective, Marilyn!, in 2011…
“BAMcinématek’s 14-film tribute to cinema’s most iconic blonde reminds us why we couldn’t take our eyes off her: She generates a charisma, often sexual but sometimes beyond sex, so uncontainable and unclassifiable that it eclipses everything else around her. Sharing about two minutes with formidable veterans George Sanders and Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950), Monroe, as Miss Caswell, ‘a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art,’ refuses to be stung by their poisoned barbs, artfully deploying action—raising an eyebrow, walking with a slight wiggle, parting her mouth just so—to make her point heard … The most moving of her May-December romances is unquestionably the one her fragile, recent divorcée shares with Clark Gable’s mustang-wrangler in her last film, The Misfits (1961).” – Melissa Anderson, Village Voice
“Monroe’s exaggerated, Betty Boop sensuality finds perhaps its most comfortable home in this comedy of sexual manners. So does her crack comic timing … But the biggest gift she brings to Some Like It Hot is her heart-melting vulnerability and apparent sincerity, which turned what could easily have been just another cross-dressing farce into the American Film Institute’s best movie comedy of all time and one of Out magazine’s 50 essential gay films.” – The L Magazine
“I don’t see a star movie career continuing for much longer if she hadn’t died in 1962 … I can just about picture Monroe circa 1982, maybe living as Norma Jeane again, not worried about her weight, wearing glasses and a cardigan sweater, talking about acting with her Strasberg studio kids and leading a semi-reclusive but happy life in some modest East Side apartment. I’m probably just being sentimental about her. But if that’s true, I’m hardly the first to succumb to that urge, nor will I be the last.” – Dan Callahan, AltScreen
The Marilyn Report 