Rob Zombie And Pee-Wee Herman's Connection Explained

Before Paul Reubens' death at the age of 70, the actor's long career found him crossing paths with a number of notable celebrities, including Grammy-nominated heavy metal artist and renowned filmmaker Rob Zombie. Unfortunately, the interaction between the two didn't involve cutting an album together, nor did Pee-wee Herman show up in "House of 1,000 Corpses" or its sequels. While their surprising connection is work-related, it isn't what many people would probably expect.

Before Zombie rose to fame as the infamous rock star and director, his humble beginnings included working on the production of Reubens' popular program "Pee-wee's Playhouse." "It was a cool job to have," Zombie said in an interview with Westword.com. "But I was probably nineteen years old. It was everything from delivering stuff to doin' little crap work around the set. I don't even know if I was a P.A. Whatever is just below a P.A. I'm not even sure it counts as below a P.A., but that was my job." 

While the position probably wasn't ideal, Zombie looked back on the experience fondly, especially when it came to how much he enjoyed the work of Reubens and the others on the show. "Besides being a fan of Pee Wee Herman, Phil Hartman was on the show," Zombie said. "William Marshall, Blacula, was the King of Cartoons. There were all kinds of people I really liked on the show. So it was pretty exciting."

Rob Zombie's time as a lower-rung production assistant on Pee-wee's Playhouse, like most P.A. gigs, entailed doing a lot of tasks that, while they seem meaningless, are very necessary to keep any shoot going smoothly. So Zombie didn't have much time to socialize, especially with the man playing Pee-wee Herman — except for one moment when he helped the show's star with a very urgent problem.

With Paul Reubens so wrapped up in his work as the show's star and Rob Zombie constantly rushing around doing various tasks, their paths didn't cross enough for them to have more than one notable interaction. When Zombie was a guest on the podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience," he discussed the early parts of his career when his work on "Pee-wee's Playhouse" came up. While he talked about the position and being a fan of the people involved, he also revealed what went down when he finally spoke to Reubens. Zombie told Rogan, "The only interaction I ever had with anybody was Paul Reubens and I was standing there and he walked by and he goes, 'Where's the bathroom?' I was like, 'It's right there.' That was it."

While some may write this encounter off as meaningless, others should recognize it as Zombie doing his job, and he will always have the memory of the time he assisted Pee-wee Herman in his time of need.