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    At press time, SHOOT got word that director Larry Williams had died. He had apparently collapsed while walking his dog near the family’s Pasadena home on Monday evening (5/31). Williams and his wife, Leslie Libman, co-directed commercials through bicoastal Coppos Films….Two antirunaway production bills offering tax incentives to producers who film in California have cleared another hurdle in the State Assembly. At press time, both proposed measures were passed out of the California Assembly’s Appropriations Committee. Earlier the legislation gained a go-ahead from the Assembly’s Tax & Revenue Committee. Stay tuned….Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials, Hollywood, has signed director Walter Santucci who’s perhaps best known in the independent animation community for his "Evil Cat" cartoons which have appeared in Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival, as well as Manga Entertainment’s General Chaos animation tour…..Executive producer Matt Grayson has exited Mad River Post/Santa Monica…. Burbank-headquartered, publicly traded Four Media Co. (4MC) has bought London-based postproduction facility TVI Limited from Carlton Communications Plc for $10.1 million in cash. The acquisition expands 4MC’s international reach. TVI’s capabilities include editing, film transfer, sound editing and mixing, and DVD and CD-ROM authoring. 4MC is parent to such shops as Riot and POP, Santa Monica, and Encore Hollywood….Morty’s Digitorial, New York, has been relaunched under the name Slingshot Edit and Post. The company partners are president/editor Morty Ashkinos, VP/editor Bruce Ashkinos and executive producer Steve Ashkinos. The creative staff is rounded out by editors Jim Rubino and Jeffrey Bair; along with online/effects editor Kim Flood….

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    Category:Street Talk



    How “Pee-wee as Himself” Documentary Came Together After Paul Reubens’ Death

    Friday, May 23, 2025

    Paul Reubens did not tell his director that he was dying.

    On July 31, 2023, the news of Reubens' death came as a shock to documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf, who had spent a year trying to convince him to make the ambitious two-part documentary "Pee-wee as Himself," now streaming on HBO Max, and over 40 hours interviewing him on camera.

    But in 2023, the project was in danger of falling apart: The two had been at an impasse for a while over the issue of creative control and they'd finally found a way forward. He had one last interview scheduled, set for the first week of August. Then the texts started coming in. Wolf sat there shaking.

    They'd spoken about everything — Reubens' childhood, his complicated relationship with fame, his ambitions, his commitment to his alter-ego Pee-wee Herman, his sexuality, his arrest — except the fact that he'd been battling cancer for the past six years. But after the initial shock, a renewed purpose set in.

    "I went to work the day after Paul died. I started to read the 1,500-page transcript of our interview through the night and was struck by the significance and meaning that came by understanding that he was privately contemplating mortality," Wolf said. "I was aware that this was an extraordinary situation that was part of the story of the film and that the stakes were the highest I had ever experienced."

    For the next year, Wolf would wake up and say to himself, "You cannot drop the ball. Rise to the occasion." It was, he said, "the most challenging and involved and emotional process of filmmaking that I've ever gone through and maybe that I'll ever go through again."

    The most resistant interview subject
    Reubens wanted to direct his own documentary. He'd always... Read More

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