Pee-wee’s Bike Found in Alamo Basement!

In this episode, Dan and the team test drive one of the most iconic props in movie history—the screen-used Pee-wee’s Big Adventure bike! From its candy-apple red frame to the lion head handlebars, every inch of this legendary ride tells a story. But the real twist? Life imitated art when Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman) set out to reclaim this and the rest of the 14 bikes used during the making of the film.

Dan breaks down the unique features that prove this is the real deal, reveals behind-the-scenes secrets from the production, and shares the almost unbelievable story of how the real history mirrors Pee-wee’s own cinematic adventure.

🛠️ Was this THE hero bike?
🚨 Where did the others end up?
❤️ Why did it matter so much to Reubens—and what does it tell us about legacy, fandom, and the power of props?

Subscribe for more stories from behind the scenes of Hollywood history, and don’t forget to comment with your favorite Pee-wee moment! 🗣️

#PeeWeesBigAdventure #DanLanigan #MovieProps #PaulReubens #FilmHistory #HollywoodTreasure #ScreenUsed #PropStore #BikeAdventure #80sMovies #BehindTheScenes

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✅ Expert analysis from historians, VFX artists & collectors 🔬
✅ Never-before-seen details & secrets behind Hollywood’s most treasured artifacts 🎞️

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Pee Herman’s Big Adventure. Martin’s favorite film. Yes, the French version, the French version, which is called in France, it’s Pee Herman’s nonexistent adventure.. And they say France culture. Hey, you guys loved the movie, you know, good for you, you know? Good for you? It was a huge success here in the United States, and it did not do well anywhere else. Anywhere else because it is a very American movie. Well, it’s all about how possessions are the most important things in your life. He doesn’t care about people, he doesn’t care about the girl who loves him, He just ignores her completely, he just wants his bike back. It’s my soul, the bike. You are what you drive. and in Europe, you are what you drink. So, the European version would be a bottle of wine lost by some guy. The problem with that is that once he drinks it, the wine’s gone. You can ride the bike all you want, and you still have the That’s the difference between the Europeans. This is Kafka meets Kmart. I mean, for anyone who’s seen the movie, this was probably one of the most iconic props. The whole movie is this prop. This is the McGuffin. Yeah, this is the whole point of the movie. But, who steals his bike anyway? His nemesis, Francis, and he pays somebody to steal it. But then he thinks that’s a little too hot. So he has it ditched. Amazing storytelling. Paul Rubens had done the Pee show on HBO. He got hired by Warner Brothers to make a peewee movie. Then while he was on the Warner Brothers lot walking around, he saw a bunch of people on bikes. One of the studio people gifted him a bike. It sparked something in his imagination and he was inspired to base the entire film around this bike that he had gotten. So this is the bike that Warner Brothers gave him? No, this is not the bike. This is a similar bike. They sourced 14 bikes and then started to add all of these extra details So were all these things that were added in the overall design of the bike, the decision of Tim Burton? Or was it Paul Rubens that made that decision? Good question. Maybe somebody knows? Yeah, I would imagine it’s a collaboration between Paul Rubens and Tim Burton. Tim Burton, this was his first feature. And Paul Rubens was the one that had been commissioned to make the movie. So he probably had a lot of say in how this was developed. And the the art director, too. Somebody must be held responsible for this. The art director from your favorite film, David Snyder. David Snyder was the art director for Blade Runner. And then he was the art director for Pee-wee, so Blade Runner is responsible for this. No. No, Blade Runner is not responsible, but the person who is has some responsibility to Blade Runner has responsibility to this. Yes. And this fin looks almost to be the exact same shape as the fin on the Sand Worm that That we saw. That’s right! There’s actually a few different fins. This piece here this is a delta super rocket ray. It’s it’s a headlamp. They sourced a bunch of these. This is the only one that I’ve seen that only has one fin here. The other ones have two fins. Also, you have different bikes, like you can clearly see there’s and at certain points, there’s stuff missing on the bike as the movie goes through.. The art department modified these to give them these spinning propellers. All the other ones I’ve seen, there’s another fin right here. There is something missing on this bike, which is the license plate. Yes. So the license plate is not on this bike, and I don’t know if this version ever had the license plate. This is intriguing to me, right? This is this is clearly like a 1980s toy, right? Do you guys know what the toy is? Yeah, it’s it’s basically a siren that you would put on a bike. Did it have the lion on there? Yes, the lion had had a red light. A light on the forehead. This isn’t put together? The lion and the thing came as a unit.? a cool little radar on the other side. and you you can see that version of it with the the red light on it in some of the promo photos before they finished the prop version. So I could find this piece if I wanted to. yes. You could find, I think, any of these of these pieces. So these wouldn’t be that difficult to I think the saddle bags were made custom, right? Maybe based on something, but but they custom made them. These look like f and this is Yeah, I I don’t know. I don’t know about that piece. But as a as a fan who wanted to build a repka or someone that wanted to build a phake, it would be pretty easy because it’s all, for the most part, this bike, this style bike, the peewee bike is beloved. So there’s a ton of people that have made replicas of this. The tires are flat. I’ve never blown them up, so I’ve had them in this position on these these uh stands that I’ve had built so that there’s no weight on the tires. And the brakes on purpose? Somebody who didn’t like the movie. Somebody like the movie the brakes. So, Dan, where did you get this thing? So, uh I purchased this through Joe Madalena. He attempted to sell this bike in his auction and it got pulled. But he offered it to me direct. He was like, oh yeah, I got this Pewee bike. It’s great. You know, blah, blah, blah, told me a little bit about its history, came from another collector and and then I did some of my research and and the reason this bike was pulled from the auction was that Paul Rubens had contacted propos in history and said, you can’t sell the bike. I want it back. You know, he was a collector himself. this is a piece that I feel very comfortable owning, I don’t think there’s any connection to Paul Rubin’s owning it. I don’t think he owned all the bikes, the studio paid for him. You had other people that had him, people got them as gifts. There were a bunch of bikes. So I feel I feel very comfortable about that, but it is a piece that Paul Rubens wanted back at one point. I mean, he based the the whole story in this bike off the bike that he was given, so surely he would have kept at least one of them though, yeah. He had at least one that he loaned to the Hollywood Museum that the one that had has been there for many years have any others come out from him? I don’t think so. Do you know of any? Just recently, there’s been two that have sold publicly in auction. One of them was a replica bike with production pieces on it. The other one was the stump version of the bike, which would have been used for the swinging on the vine scene that I guess had a slightly different model to it and was made by the stunt man So does it screen match to the film? Can we make sure that it is from the movie? Well, I went through the film around the time that I got it and I did not I was not able to screen match it. But I am not as good of a screen matcher as this gentleman right here. Because of the possibility that things were changed out and different parts were put on at different times, I can’t tell if this exact like the frame of the bike was used in certain shots, but there are some things that I can possibly match, like I mentioned this. There’s only one shot in the film where you see a bike that doesn’t have this front fin on it. If we can look at that and see if other things match to that, then I would say that this is that bike from that scene. There’s a lot to screen match on this thing, right? All the weird damage on the line, the, but the damage could have happened later.. you could see maybe there’s some damage similar patterns, right? There are some obvious things that you can initially say, oh, it’s not the one from this scene. For instance, the saddlebags, these do not open. This this is just uh this latch is just screwed on there and this doesn’t open, but they did have ones that open. when he takes the pulls the chain out of the bike. I’m gonna pull open my uh my device, my iPad and uh s pull up some photos. Oh, so this is the only one that has that little guy, basically. This is this. The placement of the screws inside the fin look correct. Yeah, you looking at individual elements, it’s hard to tell what’s what. See, this got two different mirrors also. Did everyone has two different sized mirrors? Yeah, they’re two different size mirrors. And it’s got the Mickey Mouse. What direction is Mickey? The swirl. It’s the wrong direction. Would it be? Well, I mean this be this direction? Yeah, when you replaced a wheel, there’s no direction to the wheel. You could have flipped it. That’s the right direction for here. See, the line starts here and goes around. Lines that would be here. here, let me see the picture. Yeah, but it’s a different pattern, too. It would be about wait. No, it’s not? It’d be like look look how tight that is comparison to this., it’s right there. There’s a there’s a piece of thing right there on you see this, you see this here? yeah, that’s this is this is that. That’s that. It’s it’s on this side, but the wheel the wheel I mean, if they took these things apart and put them back together, so they just it’s just there’s no there’s no reason as what they put together. these wheels don’t have a forward or backward. Maybe we should turn the bike around turn the bike around. Let me lift the bike by yourself we yeah. and then we we’ll switch these guys. No, actually, no, I’m not gonna lift, let me tell you let me take this is rot this. on this.. I I’ll stabilize it. you guys just want by the you hold the thing on the bottom. You want to take it off? because you guys take it up, we need to take it off. Take it off. I’ll switch these guys. uhante. All right. see the front one or the back one first. All right, do it, perfect.. This one right? T towards Here we go. Yeah, we got it. Is that locked in? Okay. Yeah. So you match this little guy. What’s the rotation that it was in? It’s great, great like this. This this kind of blocks it, but in in the movie, it’s facing this part is facing down right here, so you can see this rust, you can see these rust pieces, these these three here. Oh, look, there’s a there’s a hole there’s a piece of metal here to tie it to they spoke here. with that. understand from this angle. Now, normally, you wouldn’t be seeing this bar, that’s why it’s not on camera, but you have this going on right here. You have the holes right there. You’ve got this right here. See if it has the little connector here. Is there’s two holes that connect the spoke. It’s a piece of metal. connecting to the spoke? I don’t see it, but it could just not might be behind here because in in the shot, it’s like this. there could be right there. And now see if you can see the if the wheel is in the right position by looking at the, there it is. So the this is the actual wheel and piece. So now, what we have to look at, is this the back wheel? It’s a back wheel.’s it’s flipped around. So, this is a wheel where we we match we screen matched green matched wheel, but not the rest. This is matched in design, and it’s the only one seen in the film, but doesn’t mean it’s necessarily this one. It’s cool that the wheel you know, the one thing that’s interesting is if you screen match that wheel, right? And the color, the red is similar to the rest. Considering this bike changes so much in the film and that they, you know, reportedly took these things apart, put them back together multiple times, the fact that we were able to match the specific part is pretty impressive. It definitely shows that this bike parts of this bike came from production. I don’t have any doubt that this is from production. In my mind, this is real simply because I’m looking at the wear and tear in it. And it’s like it has a history of wear and tear. This is a bike that’s when did this movie come out? 1885? 85. So it’s 40 years ago. So there’s 40 years of damage on this. I mean, the the weird part is that Paul Rubens Was acting like Pee-wee Herman and wanted to get his bike back. Yeah, that’s true. Well it was bikes. Bikes, right? All of them. It’s very much life imitating his own art. Yeah. I mean, I knew he was a collector. I met him once and he was a big collector of art. I mean, I heard he was a cool guy. Yeah, no, he was very sweet when I met him. He was nice. So, and that makes you, Francis, because you had Paul Rubens come after you. I didn’t steal his bike! I bought a bike from a person who I believe owned it, you know? There’s no need to be embarrassed about buying the bike. There is a reason to be embarrassed about having the bike. Oh, you won’t let that go, will ya?