There is a saying within the leisure trade: “It is all about who you recognize.” Movie, tv, and theater are extremely collaborative mediums, and so whereas artists are all the time searching for people who find themselves proficient, it additionally helps if the individuals behind a manufacturing know they’ll work with you in a group surroundings earlier than you get employed. In different phrases, individuals prefer to work with individuals they know are good to work with.
So sure, it is true that Laurence Fishburne already had an “in” with Paul Reubens by the point “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was going into manufacturing, however they did not meet whereas performing collectively on a earlier mission. They did not meet at a elaborate Hollywood occasion both.
No, they met by way of a lighting man.
“Laurence [Fishburne]” I knew already,” Reubens instructed The Los Angeles Occasions in 2014. “We did forged Laurence in New York, however — that is such an odd story — I had a highschool child who was the comply with spot operator on the ‘Pee-wee Herman Present’ on the Groundlings, and his finest good friend was Laurence Fishburne, they had been each at Hollywood Excessive Faculty.”
“Laurence had already executed ‘Apocalypse Now,’ however I solely knew him because the sidekick to my comply with spot operator,” Reubens reminisced, earlier than remembering an previous nervousness. “And I’d all the time be, ‘Are they up too late?'”
(Possibly if Reubens knew every thing that occurred on the set of “Apocalypse Now,” and the lie Fishburne instructed to get forged in it, he would not have frightened fairly a lot about little issues like curfews.)