After a successful five-year run on Saturday mornings with CBS' Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Reubens was busted in 1991 for fapping at an adult movie theater, and buried under a barrage of negative press. Reubens earned himself a long vacation from showbiz after taking a bow for a debauched MTV Music Video Awards crowd. But in 2001 the paleface took a rap for possession of obscene material involving minors in the same scandal that took down Beetlejuice and Tim Burton fave Jeffrey Jones. Reubens walked away from the carnage largely unscathed, sentenced to just three years probation, pleading an appreciation
for vintage erotica. He was able to dig himself out of a hole and get back in circulation in the 2000s with a new movie and plans for another "dark Pee-Wee" movie involving alcohol, drug addiction and electroshock therapy, in the event the real Reubens' life just isn't dark enough. How did Reubens manage to salvage his career? Could the answer lie in a nefarious negotiation Reubens and his agent made with the Prince of Darkness? Our factcheckers say: Yes!
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