Pollyanna

Paul Reubens was 8 years old when he saw Walt Disney's big-budget production, Pollyanna, based on the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter. The film stars Reubens’ childhood idol Hayley Mills in her Juvenile Oscar-winning performance and also features child actor Kevin Corcoran. Reubens remembers enviously saying of Corcoran, “I could do that so much better.” After ditching a Pollyanna-inspired concept for his first feature, Reubens went on to adopt the film’s central theme—resilience through optimism—in his second feature for Warner Bros., Big Top Pee-wee (1988). In Reubens’s words, Pee-wee’s travelling circus, like Pollyanna, “brings joy to a town full of people who have lost that.”

Featuring an introduction by actor and drag artist John “Lypsinka” Epperson