PHOTO COURTESY CARTOON NETWORK Now syndicated, "Pee-wee's Playhouse," created by Paul Reubens, has begun airing during the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block.

Get ready for the return of Cowboy Curtis, Miss Yvonne, Chairry, Conkey, Jambi the Genie and the one and only Pee-wee Herman. The Playhouse is back and as whacky as ever.

Nearly 20 years after regularly appearing on Saturday mornings on CBS, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" has made its triumphant return to the airways in syndication during the late-night "Adult Swim" time slot on Cartoon Network.

ehind the scenes, the show's re-emergence has been in the works for a while, thanks to its star and creator Paul Reubens, who had been pitching it to various networks.

"I'd been trying to get the show on. For the last year, I've been working on this," explained Reubens in an interview with the Tribune from New York City where he was preparing for an appearance on Conan O'Brien later that day.

"The Cartoon Network was approached and 'Adult Swim' immediately went 'yes, great idea.' We had a deal in lightening speed time for show business. Sometimes those things can drag on and on and on (but) within a couple of weeks, there was a deal."

Resurrecting Pee-wee has been a goal of Reubens' for awhile.

"It's been my dream for a number of years to have the show back on TV," he said. "I'm completely proud of the show. There's nothing about the show that I'm not proud of. I worked with amazing people that collaborated on it with me. We took it very seriously and I felt like it was a very ambitious thing to pull off and when I look at it now, 20 years later, I'm still amazed by it ... and I think it holds up pretty well."

Featuring some of television's whackiest characters, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" is unlike any other show. There's characters like Chairy, the big green chair with arms, eyes and a mouth and Randy, the marionette bully who pops in to cause trouble, Globey, the talking globe and even Cowboy Curtis, played by a young Laurence Fishburne. The late Phil Hartman is Captain Carl, a ship's captain who swings by to visit the playhouse.

Other than a random, old school cartoon thrown in for good measure in every episode, you never know what you're gonna get with each "Pee-wee's Playhouse" episode.

"I think the show originally pushed buttons where people felt like it was nostalgia a little bit because it was, in my mind, a homage to the shows that I grew up with like 'Howdy Doody,' and 'The Mickey Mouse Club,' and 'Captain Kangaroo'," Reubens said. "I feel like it's sort of a throwback in a certain way. When the world was a little simpler and it was maybe a little easier to be a kid."

"Does that sound way too intense?" he asked with a laugh.

Another big reason for the shows uniqueness was the flexibility provided by CBS. Back in 1988, television networks weren't as open to allowing such artistic freedom for a show like "Pee-wee's Playhouse."

"That's a very unusual situation," Reubens explained. "It's not unusual to have somebody tell you that you can have complete freedom, or that they're not gonna breathe down your neck, but it never happens like that. You sign a contract and then you hand it back and they hand you notes.

"CBS was not like that at all. CBS said to me, 'do what you want.' They were a hundred percent supportive."

Being lucky enough to be in a room with the writers of the show was a treat in itself, according to Reubens.

"I have often said that there was nothing funnier during that show, than being in the writing room with the other writers and having somebody, myself or somebody else, come up with an idea that we would all look at each other and immediately could see a 6-year-old falling off the couch with laughter. It was fun to think of what would crack up a kid," he said.

Reubens is no stranger to Hollywood, and neither is his alter-ego Pee-wee, who has been in two films, the Tim Burton directed "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," and the follow up flick,"Big Top Pee-wee."

Today, a movie version of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" is in the works and is expected to begin filming in early 2007.

"(It's) gonna be almost entirely out of the playhouse with all those big clunky characters that you would never expect to see out of the playhouse, out on the road looking for what happened to the King of Cartoons," Reubens said.

Although a director hasn't been named, Reubens has sent a call out to Burton and he's trying to round up everyone who originally participated in the television show.

Aside from his role as Pee-wee, Reubens has appeared in numerous other films, including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "The Blues Brothers," "Meatballs II," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and "Mystery Men." He also played opposite Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in the 2001 film "Blow."

Reubens just finished filming his part in the upcoming movie "Reno 911: Miami," but his character remains hush-hush for now.

"I shouldn't really give that away because it's kind of a big surprise," he said. "If you're familiar with the show, I play a relative of somebody who has been on the show many times and always talks about this relative, but we've never seen the person before."

More than 14 years after Reubens turned his good friend David Arquette into a vampire in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the two find themselves working together again on a horror film. This time Arquette is behind the camera in "The Tripper," a film featuring himself as well as his wife Courteney Cox and Reubens.

"This is his directorial debut and he got a lot of people, friends of his, to be in it," Reubens said. "It's about a bunch of kids who go to an outdoor music festival and I play the promoter of the festival. I'm scared of scary movies and I don't know whether I'll see it or not."

Being on the set of the movie wasn't any less scary than having to watch it, according to Reubens.

"To be honest with you, being on the set was a little frightening also," said Reubens who recalled a moment when he was on the set, watching a scene as it was being filmed. "This guy came running down this path, being chased by somebody else ... this other guy came and ripped open his chest and pulled out some guts and held them up in the air. I almost threw up. It was really bizarre."

Always busy, Reubens has recently taken the time to sit back and enjoy the television show he worked so hard to create as it airs in the wee hours of the night.

"It's exciting just to know that it's on and that somebody can be tuning in on purpose, or just switching channels and just find it, is pretty exciting to me," he said. "I think the shows look great."

Originally published July 28, 2006