“Paging Mr. Herman.”

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure was way back in 1985. The follow-up, Big Top Pee-Wee, was a lackluster sequel that never really needed to happen. But the first one, that was pure gold.

“I know you are, but what am I?”

For years, people have been asking Paul Reubens when Pee-Wee is coming back to the big screen. And for years, Reubens has been yanking our chain.

Reubens admits to outright lying in interviews on the subject. Back in 2007, he teased about a Pee-Wee movie, but later acknowledged that he made the whole thing up.

“Well, here’s the thing,” he told Jimmy Kimmel, “I totally, during interviews, a lot of the time, lie. I make stuff up. The first time it ever happened, someone said ‘What are you doing next?’ And I said, ‘I’m building Pee-Wee Land.’ And it got printed and I started getting phone calls from investors. I made up on your show, and in a couple of other interviews, I was doing a Pee-Wee movie. So now everyone’s going, ‘When’s the movie coming out?’ And there’s isn’t a movie. It’s a little bit awkward.”

“But what? Everyone I know has a big ‘But.’ C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about *your* big ‘But’.”

Now, once again, Reubens is swearing up and down that a Pee-Wee movie is imminent. He dropped it on us again in a recent Rolling Stone interview,

“There’s going to be a big announcement any minute now,” Reubens promised. “It’s been months and months of being right on the verge of being announced… I thought something was going to go public yesterday, actually, and that you’d be the first person I’d be talking about this with. But I’m thinking there will be something made public very soon. It’s going to get made shortly after the new year. I wish I could tell you about it right now, because…I mean, it’s amazing. It’s going to be amazing. It think it first got leaked four years ago or so that the movie was going to be made, and ever since then it’s just been stalling and stalling. So I’m really ready for this to happen. But I’m not kidding: It’s very imminent.”

It got “leaked”? Don’t you mean, “I told everybody”?

We’ll see if this one’s the real deal. Maybe Reubens does this to gauge interest. If he can stir up enough dust one of these times, perhaps he can get a studio to bankroll the thing.

I hope it works.

“Be sure and tell ‘em Large Marge sent ya!”