Paul Reubens and Jasbir (JB) Singh Ghuman became friends when the Pee-wee Herman actor saw Ghuman’s 2010 filmSporkand got in touch to compliment it. Ghuman was already a fan of Reubens, because he, like so many who grew up in the ’80s, and many since, adored Pee-wee.

Years later, Ghuman was teaching an art therapy class to kids in South Central Los Angeles. He could relate to them, he told at audience at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival, because “I grew up very urban, very swagger — like I was a B-Boy from Overtown, Miami, like, super, super low income.”

But he’s also a proudly queer mixed-media artist who was disappointed by what he saw as his students’ narrow views on gender. So he decided to make a film that he thought might open their minds, and sought to enlist Reubens because he knew his students loved Pee-wee Herman. He wanted to reach an LGBTQ+ audience, but also people with conservative views on gender.

“I was hoping that with Paul — because they’re all like Pee-wee heads — I could get this audience to come in that is of our community, but also outside our community. Because I really feel like the message has to go to people who were like, ‘I would never!’ And then hopefully I can achieve some sort of progression,” Ghuman explained.

Reubens said yes to what turned out to be his last film. Ghuman’s bold and adventurous “The Crown with a Shadow and the Search for Self” is probably unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

The endlessly inventive short is 3D and mostly animated, but has an ’80s or ’90s analog feel, with frequent glow-in-the-dark aesthetics. One artistic conceit is that the story has been recorded over an old wedding video on VHS. (Ghuman used his mother’s real-life wedding video.)

The short follows Oliver, a pink skunk clownfish voiced by Reubens. Pink skunk clownfish — in the film and in real life — are all born male, but have the ability to turn female. Within a community of the fish, the leader is female, but if she dies, the largest breeding male changes sex to become the new female.

Ghuman saw the fish as a fun metaphor for the idea that gender can be complicated, and fluid.

Reubens is far from the only famous name in the cast: Ghuman also reached out to the Spice Girls’ Geri Halliwell, who he didn’t previously know, to voice Oliver’s mom, and to transgender model, singer and performance artist Amanda Lepore to be the narrator. Tatum O’Neal voices a character named Razor, and trans actress-singer-model Krylon Superstar is The Deity of Dopeness. All are fantastic.

Both Lepore and Krylon were in attendance with Ghuman when he played the film last week at the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse forPoppy Jasper.

Source: Drudge Report