" I'm Stanley tucci, your host of independent lens." "Have you heard of Wayne white, a new darling of the fine art world?" " It's called Picasso's ass falling off." "[Laughter]" " I know-- not what you were expecting." "Wayne's not only redefining what it means to be an artist." "He's redefining art." "He's a creative visionary who put the "play" in pee-wee's playhouse." "He survived the indignities of Hollywood and the pretensions of the art world by following two guiding principles:" "Life can be art, and art can be funny." "Independent filmmaker Neil Berkeley catches up with Wayne as he reflects on his unpredictable career, from his rebellious beginnings to the trenches of commercial television to his surprising triumph as a fine art star." "How many of us are willing to do what it takes to follow our dreams?" "Let's face it." "The world needs more people like this modern-day dali with a banjo." "Beauty is embarrassing next." " d Yeah d d d" "Female announcer:" "This program is made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, the national endowment for the arts, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you." "Thank you." "[Birds chirping]" "[People conversing indistinctly]" " [Sighs]" "Getting old, Wayne." "[Exhales deeply]" "[Breathes deeply]" " Good evening, everybody." "Welcome to largo at the coronet." "[Cheers and applause]" " Ladies and gentlemen, Wayne white." "[Upbeat banjo music]" "[Cheers and applause] d d" "[Cheers and applause]" " Hi, everybody." "My name is Wayne white, and I make pictures, like this one." "It's called Picasso's ass falling off." "[Laughter]" "This is called [Bleep] you invasion." "[Laughter]" " Oh, man." " "Just a picture shunned by scholars." "Now it costs $10,000."" "[Laughter and applause]" "[Upbeat guitar music] d d" " d gather twilight d d sun warm, ears grow cold d d apelike in prayer d d still and gone, sister no d d distance and time d d maybe make love stay d d mother hold time d" "d milk drunk, easy mind d d d" "Pbeat njbasi d d" " Ooh, out of tune." "[Dramatic acoustic guitar music] d d" "[Laughs]" "This humble room is my studio." "For the last 12 years, this is where I've done just about everything." "These are drawings from the first season of pee-wee's playhouse, wallpaper designs." "This was right by the front door." "I designed most of the puppets on the show." "This is cool cat." "And here's my man dirty dog." ""Hey, pee-wee, what do you say?" "I'm smokin' cigarettes nearly every day."" "I wanted him to have this butt hanging out of his mouth, but they wouldn't let us." "It's a kids' show." "But the first time I thought I was an artist was, like-- man, I was a little kid." "I always thought I was an artist." "And if you don't like it, [Bleep] You." "Here I go with the "[Bleep] you"s again." "I got to stop that." "You're gonna have me saying all these "[Bleep] you"s on camera." "I'm gonna look like a real bitter ass[Bleep]." "This is a prop from the smashing pumpkins' video tonight, tonight." "This is the spaceship that they go to the moon on." "This is the--whoa." "Word painting:" "[Bleep] a." "Cheerios sculpture:" "F.U. Shack." "Palm tree frond that looks like a woman's crotch." "This is Peter Gabriel, big time video from '87." "This thing is in a very fragile state now." "It's been a long, wild ride for me." "You know, everybody's like, "choose one thing," ""and do it well, my son." "Now go."" "And I was like, "[Bleep] That," you know?" "I want to try everything I can, you know?" "I want to take this painting idea and see if you can do a puppet version of it." "I want to take the cartooning and turn it into a set." "I want to take the set and turn it back into a painting." " That's a true pioneer." "That's a true person who is never satisfied, always wants to know, "what's the next thing?" "How do I understand myself or the universe more?"" " He's a hardworking mother[Bleep]." "He's got, like, Southern work ethic ground into him hard." " Now everyone will know of my sufferings." "This is what happens when you get all proud of yourself and you're polishing your emmy." "[Makes squeaking noise]" "Oh, my emmy." "Oh." "Oh, I need a new emmy." "They gave me one." "I can't throw anything away." "Every piece of wood I cut is an interesting shape to me." "I just--I immediately fall in love with scraps and junk." "This is what makes me happy, a pile of garbage." "Oh, I've worn a lot of different hats:" "Painter, sculptor, cartoonist, puppeteer, set designer, art director, animator, illustrator." " Who did that?" "And wait a minute." "That's the same guy that did that, and that's the same guy that did that?" " [Barking]" " I mean, Wayne's stuff, kids mainlined." "He was just imprinting their brain, and they don't even know it." " Hey, get that gol' durn camera off me." "Can't you see I'm trying to take a leak?" "Go on." "Get." " There's a little, you know, Zach galifianakis, a little snuffy Smith, a little unabomber." " Yeah." " Wayne is one of those artists that has touched people in ways that they don't even know." " We're very, very lucky to have him today to present for us, so please join me in giving Wayne white a very warm welcome." "[Applause]" " And sometimes I make big pictures, like these big words I put on the side of the wolfsonian museum in Miami beach for art basel 2009." "It says, "beauty is embarrassing."" "Now, what do I mean by that, "beauty is embarrassing"?" "Hmm." "Tell you what." "I'll tell you later." "[Bluesy guitar music] d d" "[Machine whirring]" " Thank you." "Mmm, very nice." "I know why Wayne makes art." "Because he has to." "[Laughs]" "I think that's what it comes down to, really, for any artist is, it's a compulsion." "You have to." "You can't not do it." " Well, Mimi is my most important ally in the world." "She is the number one unconditional supporter of me." " I hate the beard." " d Mm-mm-mm d" "We got two beautiful kids, woodrow and Lulu, and they're both artists too." "May God have mercy on their souls." "They're very talented, both of them." "They both got it going on." " When you're an artist in a house of artists, it's hard to stand out." " I try not to give advice." "But you know what my only advice is?" " What?" " I would put in the big areas first." "That's all." "I mean, it's interesting to work from detail to large, like you do, I guess." "I'm not gonna say nothing." " You already did." " What about your composition, though?" "You make sure you got enough room for the green, right?" " Yeah." "Yeah, I want to be like my dad." "[Laughs]" " Here's a drawing Woody did when he was about two years old." "He started drawing really early." "He just developed really quick." "These are the ones I just drew beside you as you were drawing." "I was getting this real burst of energy just working with him." " Our family as a unit has the identify of, like, we're all in this together." "You know, we all know what it feels like being an artist in this society." " Yeah?" "It's a good one." "These are the thrift store paintings the way they are when I find them, of course." "And then I do my thing, and they wind up like this." "This one says, "eastern [Bleep] it."" " The very first time I showed Wayne's work, people just really didn't know what to think, because they just started laughing at some of these phrases that were on the wall." " The thing about Wayne is, he's really funny." "His ideas are really smart." " I think humor is sacred." "I really do, and it's my sacred mission." "I think humor is the most important thing we have as human beings." "It's thought as a lesser thing, but it's really our most sacred quality, and without it, we're dead." "Here's my tribute to television comedy writing:" "[Bleep] Jokes from sherman oaks." "[Laughter]" "There is a pressure to keep things fresh, yeah, not to fall into a rut and just be a one-trick pony, which a lot of people think I am, because, you know, my trademark is those word paintings," "and they think that's all I can do, and they kind of sniff at them." ""Oh, yes." "It's just a cheap trick," you know, "blah, blah, blah."" "There's a million gripes for the artist to dwell on." "It's hard." "You have your doubts constantly." " The first time I saw his work, it made me laugh." "I thought it was a howl but it's too easy, and I didn't think about it much longer than that." " The first time I saw them," "I didn't really understand what I was looking at." " At first, it was sort of a head-scratcher, like, "well, you didn't paint that whole thing." "You just painted those letters," you know." " You know, with his work, it can be easily construed as a gimmick." "The surface of it seems to appear to be novelty." " That says, "high  tight."" "That says, "[Bleep] Hounds on parade."" "I'll settle for laughter any day." "Laughter is a deep thing." "Most people don't think it is, but it is." " You know, in the art world, funny isn't taken seriously." "People want more than just a joke." " There's two beer cans right here." "The guys who built this, they had to stay there all night." ""Entertainment" is a dirty word in the art world." "You're not supposed to entertain people." "You're supposed to question their core values and make them reevaluate their lives and give them a deep insight into blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, [Bleep] Blah." " There is insecurity in the art world that real pleasure or that what we call fun is not serious, you know, that it's not intellectual." " You know, everybody looks down on comedy, the oscars and, you know, my mom, you know, everybody." " This is the ditch-digging part of art." "A lot of art is ditch digging." "Most people want things to be easy." "It's never easy." "Nobody would give me reviews here in L.A." "I would go out of town and get all this notice, but people in L.A. were slow to notice me." " One of my first thoughts was, like," ""wow, these are really funky updates of ed ruscha, and he's kind of the L.A. word master." " Well, L.A. has this big hang-up about ed ruscha." "You know, everybody wants to compare me to ed [Bleep] ruscha all the time." " Ruscha is kind of a giant oak tree, and when I saw Wayne's work, my first thought was, like," ""oh, this is a young kid who loves ruscha and is doing something with it." " And so anytime you get near the sacred cow of him, you know, it's like, "[Bleep] You." ""Back off." "Ed's our man, and you're just an imitator."" "There it is a couple of days later." ""Hoozy thinky iz?"" " [Laughs]" "Made it, ma, cover of the Nashville scene." "Hey, we should do lbj." " [Laughs] Lbj." " Yeah, that's a good one." "Let's do it." "He's on my mind." "Now that I've got a reputation in the art world, it's time to show some new sides that I can do." "He's kind of crossing over from youth into the classic lbj face from the '60s." "His head is pretty squarish." "I think a lot of people just think of me as the thrift store word guy." "I think that's getting at his essence, don't you?" " Yeah." " I'm just kind of letting my hair down, I think, and just doing exactly what I want to do." "Hey, y'all, wait a minute, now." "Ahh!" "Makes no sense, you know, as far as, like, a career." "I'm lyndon Johnson." "I want your vote for the congress of Texas." "They didn't seem too excited." "See?" "That's what I get at home." "They're so sick of me now." ""Oh, another thing he did."" "Regardless of all that, I just want to do it for myself." "It'll be totally different than what anything anybody is really doing in L.A. right now, and it'll be a side of me that they haven't seen and..." "I'm just as insecure as anybody in a lot of ways." "Everybody's insecure." "But there has to be this other kind of faith in yourself, and I always take this big cosmic view." "Man, you're only gonna be alive, if you're lucky, 80, 90 years, and then that's it." "That's all you get." "So why not?" "What does it [Bleep] matter?" "I can do anything I want to do, you know?" "[Bleep], man, get on it." "Let's go." "Time's running out." "[Upbeat rock music] d d" " d yeah, yeah, yeah d d d d yeah, yeah, yeah d d d d yeah, yeah, yeah d" "[Bouncy music] d d d yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah d d d d yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah d d d" "[Birds chirping]" "[Upbeat twangy guitar music]" " Where does it all start?" "Well, I'll tell you where it all starts." "It all starts for me in north Alabama in a place called sand Mountain." "Technically where my mama and daddy are from was where the word "hillbilly" was first coined, so if I can't use it, I don't know who could." "[Whistling]" "[Dog barks]" "Shut up." "This is my favorite part of Tennessee right here." "It's beautiful out here." "It's so beautiful, it hurts my feelings." "This is my ideal." "It's why I'm attracted to landscape in the first place." "I'm trying to kind of get a piece of this in my art." "[Chickens clucking]" "It's funny too, 'cause when I left the South," "I became the southerner." ""I'm from the South, everybody." ""Yeah, that's me, from the South." ""Remember me:" "Wayne, South, Wayne, South." "Get it."" "I never knew I was so Southern until I left." " Willis white." " Billie June white." " I'm his father." " And I'm his mother." "Wayne is different." "He's--he's a different child." "It's just exceptional what kind of talent he has." "We're so, so proud of him." " He always wanted to draw." "That's about all he ever wanted to do." " Wayne was drawing before he could sit along good." "You wouldn't believe it." "It was just fabulous the way that child did." " We'd buy him big old thick tablets, and he'd just sit down and just draw till he drew up all the pages." "Then he'd turn over and draw the other side." " My earliest memories are of drawing or of people watching me draw or people reacting to my drawings." "I guess that's why I look at art as entertainment, because I always used it to entertain myself." "So, you know, I always talk about you being an influence on me." " Me?" "I'm a freak on decorating." "I love to decorate." "Can't get enough." " This is her latest creation:" "The hope wall." "I like this, these stars and the letters." " And see, that's hoping my grandchildren will be-  that's hoping that they'll turn out good." "Then there's the risque humor." ""We do not serve women." "You must bring your own."" "You know, yeah." "Here's a frightening clown that lives in the corner." "He's offering children drugs, as you can see." "A little pinch of this, children." "Yes, he's a good guy." "Mimi, my wife, pointed out that my mama's house was definitely a direct link to pee-wee's playhouse." "The minute she pointed it out, it was obvious." "Here's my big grade, first grade, and that's miss stoddard, who I was in love with." "She was only probably about 23, 24 years old, and she's the one who got me in front of the class and told everybody I was gonna be an artist one day." " She said, "have you all noticed how Wayne draws?"" "And we said, "well, yeah, but we didn't think anything about it."" "And she was just amazed about it." " Mama was the first artist, and I was their first son." "And my sister, she was the first badass." "[Laughter]" "Oh, she was the one that told me I was gonna die one day and made sure I was clear on the concept." "[Laughter]" " As a little boy, he liked to play soldiers, and he had a big imagination." "He always had imaginary friends that he would talk to." "And he spent a lot of time just walking around talking to them, and I just remember him being very playful, and he got a little crotchety as he grew older, but he was a fun little boy." "[Ominous music] d d" " We had a very, very severe car wreck when Wayne was growing up." " We were going down to Alabama for Thanksgiving." "These hillbillies, like, pkew, head-on." " They were just right in our face before we saw them." "We was on their side of the road right in the middle of that curb, hit us head-on." "Didn't have seat belts in the cars then." " After that happened, it was rough." "It was not so good." " I had a brain injury, and I haven't gotten over it yet." " She was in the intensive care for, I'd say, over two months." "You were a little slow with everything." "Your reactions wasn't what they used to be." " And I wasn't able to walk, talk, or do anything." " I mean, it's the worst nightmare, something like that." "It was like-- it just ripped me out of my childhood." "I'm still sort of sorting it out, what it meant to me." " Together we rarely talked about it, but I'm sure it had to impact the way he made art and the way he saw the world." " I got a real harsh taste of how horrible the world could be." "So maybe that did drive me further into a fantasy thing." " I couldn't have made it without Willis." "I..." "I just-- I don't know." "He was just my rock." "He took care of the children." "He had the children to take care of, get them off to school." " I do realize he made a lot of sacrifices, and it was really hard on him." "I think that really put the clamp down on him emotionally." "I don't think he was ever the same after that either." " In matter, don't know what I would have done without him." " He was, like, this golden God to me." "He was my hero." "He was, like, you know, the star athlete." "Any game he played, he was nearly always the standout, and everybody really loved him, and, you know, they called him Willie." "[Bluesy guitar music] d d" " When I was growing up in the country, there wasn't nothing to do but sports." "And I played football." "Then after football," "I'd go right into basketball." "At the end of basketball," "I'd play baseball till school was out." "Then we'd have teams in the summer and played baseball all summer." " He's got a champion mentality." "You know, he's the senior bowling champion of Tennessee, but he's still competing hard and still going for the gold, you know?" "He's not a fist-pumping kind of guy." " I got them scared now." "They're falling before I get up there." "He spent a lot of time in a bowling alley to not turn out to be a bowler." "I guess he got sick of it." "I just thought it was a natural thing for a boy to want to do, you know, but he didn't really want to." " To sort of give up on it on my part was kind of to give up on a bond with him, yeah." "The only place I was going was three or four nights a week to the bowling alley with my daddy, and, of course, I had to sit there." "I couldn't run around." "So I brought me a big old stack of notebook paper and pencils, and I drew." " [Laughs] I guess." " Yes." "Whoo." " This is the Southern daddy shame ray redneck puppet." "At least since adolescence," "I've been sort of reacting against things, and coming from the South, I reacted against the South and its string of authority figures." "He's the--you know, he's the good classic Southern authority figure type guy from my childhood, a certain type of man that's sort of fading away." "You look like a woman with that hair." "That is the shame ray that different Southern authority figures can give you." " I have known guys like that." "My father is an excellent example," "Wayne's father even more so because of his silence and his stoic quality." " I got to mow that yard." "I got my beans coming in, my "'maters."" "Somebody standing here saying he's got to paint me." "[Bleep] Damn." "That's him, all right." "When I was hitting puberty, I would go out way deep, deep, deep, deep in the woods and strip naked and run around." "[Laughing]" "Sometimes the dogs would follow me out there." "The dogs would be, "ooh, boy."" "They loved it." ""He's naked like us." "Let's go."" "And I'd be out there with the dogs howling and sniffing around." "Just--I was compelled to do it." "You know, it was a complete sap-rising urge." " Growing up in hixson, Tennessee, you could live your entire life there and never look at a work of art." "Art was something that you bought at K-Mart." "My mother got her art at K-Mart." "I used to--I remember one day going with her to buy a painting at K-Mart which hung in our house for many years, and then when we moved, it didn't fit the wall very well, so she threw it away, threw it in the trash." "That's art." "[Upbeat bluesy rock music] d d" " Most of everything that he did and learned was--probably a lot of that was self-taught." "I mean, there wasn't a lot of influence in that little town." " I think artists in that community had been seen as curious, and I think the better the artist was, the more curious they became." " I really couldn't talk to him about art, I don't guess, because I didn't understand it that much, but we didn't really know how to relate to him about it," "I don't guess." " So my high school teacher, the one time he did try to directly kind of help me," "I'd done these Salvador dali drawings." "He showed them to my principal, b.E. Edwards, this real old-school Southern hard-ass." "He sits me down, and he goes," ""your art teacher gave me some of your drawings you did,"" "and he pulls the surrealist drawings out, and he goes," ""those do not look like the drawings of a red-blooded American boy."" "I was full-time on rebellious for three years solid, 10th through 12th." "I mean, that was my full-time job." "I disgusted him with my hair and my art." " It was hard sometimes, because he did get into some big trouble." "He got arrested a couple times." " What was that bad thing you got into, Wayne?" "What was that?" " I stole that mailbox that time and got arrested." " Oh, yeah." " All the Southern daddy shame rays in my life were disgusted." "There was a lot of disgust going on back then." "I mean, literally." "It was just like, "ugh."" "They just, "ugh."" "But then it turned into defiance." ""Oh, yeah?" ""I'm glad I'm disgusting you." "[Bleep] You," you know?" "Just the defiance grew and grew and grew." "I was dying to get out." "I was dying to, like, yeah, get away from that whole place." "d Happy Birthday, Mr. president d" "These are, like, junk sculpture marionettes made out of found objects, mostly, like, sticks and a hammer and a coconut shell." "Kind of looks like Michelle pfeiffer." "Odd cutout pieces of junk that I had laying around:" "Pencils, styrofoam, wire." "I love sticks." "I'm always finding them on the ground and picking them up and playing with them." "So this just kind of, like, was a spontaneous application of my stick collection." "I started making these just out of the blue." "I wasn't quite sure what I was doing." "I really love making them." "That's all I know right now." "Hee, heh-heh, heh-heh." "Right in the middle of the '70s," "I enrolled at middle Tennessee state university..." "Where I pursued my education in braless hippie chicks." "[Laughter]" "This place changed my life completely." "It was my first time away from home." "It was my first exposure to art and culture." "So this is where the barn was, and it was two big roofs and the two big giant silos over here." "And right here was the painting studio." "And this is where I worked a lot right here." "d Ya-LA-LA d" "Only imagine me up in the air, because it was the second floor." "It was very much the era of the country hippie when I arrived here in '75." " And we did a lot of party stuff, you know, that kids may do in college that don't have better sense." " God, we did so many crazy things together." " So this was my first band of artists." "Did you say you're some kind of artist, I hear you say?" "We're the people that are tired of being pushed around." "Whether we were making snowy monuments to doggy love or painting crazy cars," "I learned that art could be a 24-7 lifestyle." "I learned that art could be fun." "It could be a big part of your life that never stopped." " No holds barred, and if you got an idea to do some crazy performance, you just did it." " My name is scary Bobby." "We really lived it." "We really did, because it was fun." "We had finally found fellow weirdos that shared our enthusiasm." "We were all, like, small-town kids that finally found kindred spirits." "What's the world like, mama?" " We were just goofing around, having fun." " This was--this is a very important place for me." " It's so nice to finally meet you." " It's nice to meet you." " I've heard a lot about you, and, of course," "I've enjoyed your work." "We used to watch pee-wee's playhouse every Saturday morning." " He's the voice of the pig..." " Oh, my goodness." " The pet pig." " Yeah, yeah." " Vance, wasn't it?" " Vance the pig." " I enjoy your art too." "I mean, that's just fantastic." "I love what you do." " Thanks." " That's really cool." " Thanks." "My prediction:" "It's gonna be enchantment." "There's gonna be a magical carpet ride to another time and place." "There's gonna be the fulfillment of fantasies all over chattanooga tonight, and I'm gonna be doing that." "I'm gonna inspire and amuse in that order." "Hi." " Excuse me." "Could I have you sign this for me, please?" " Sure." "Here we go." "Thanks, David." "To anybody?" " I would like you to do it "to Sandra stoddard, my first grade teacher."" " Oh, my God." "[Laughter]" " How are you?" " Holy smokes." " "To Mrs. stoddard, thank you for starting all of this!" "Love, Wayne."" "But as I told him, that isn't true." "He has a God-given talent, and it was quite evident at the very beginning of school, so he's lived up to my prediction." " The incomparable hixson boy, Wayne white." "[Cheers and applause]" " Thanks for coming, everybody." "Right off the bat, I want to introduce you to some names I recognize:" "My mama and daddy, Willis and Billie..." "[Cheers and applause]" "And my first grade teacher, Sandra stoddard, right here." "[Cheers and applause]" "In the fall of 1980," "I packed my 1970 light green Ford Maverick, and I moved to New York City, and let me tell you, if there was ever a culture shock, it's a boy from chattanooga moving to Manhattan and living above the pink pussycat boutique" "on west 4th street." "[Upbeat banjo music] d d d when I was young and in my prime d d I left my home in Caroline d" "My daddy, he gets a little teared up at these things, which always surprised me, because my whole life, he's been, like..." "Under wraps." "d I've got those blue Ridge Mountain blues d" "And as he gets older, some of masks start coming off, you know?" "d My bag is packed for travel d d and I'm scratching gravel d" "He goes to the show, and it hits him, all this stuff that I do and have done." "d d d I'm gonna stay right by my pa d d I'm gonna do right by my ma d" "Even though they didn't quite understand me growing up, they did the best they could." "I didn't want to be understood, to tell you the truth." "d No work, no worries anymore d d I've got those blue Ridge Mountain blues d" "It makes me realize that it's just his style to be who he is, and he does the best he can." "Bye." "Good night, y'all." "Thanks for coming." " Love you." " Love you too." "Thanks, daddy." " Well, we'll see y'all in the morning." " All right, thanks for coming." " Okay." " He can't really, you know, express himself emotionally, but it's all there." "d I see a window with a light d" "He's a stoic guy." "What can I say?" "d I see two heads of snowy white d" " He's proud." "He's proud of his son." "d d d where is my wandering boy tonight d d I've got those blue Ridge Mountain blues d d and I'll stand right here and say d d every day I'm counting till I climb that Mountain d" "d on those blue Ridge far away d d d" "That's a sad song." "Early on, New York was tough." "I had some work in high times magazine, but mostly it was just hustling, handing out xeroxed comics and trying to make a name for myself." "Get your free comics." "I was about to pack it all up and head back to Tennessee when I remembered I was supposed to put on a puppet show." "It was called "rootless," and it was at this art gallery called small walls." "So I go to the gallery, and my girlfriend at the time didn't show up, but Mimi did." " I was feeling pretty cynical about dating." "Plus, I was really focused on my career." " Yeah, Mimi was a star in the comics world, way more successful than I was." " So my friend asked if I wanted to go to a puppet show, and I said, "yeah, right." ""Maybe I'll meet someone." "Hah!" "Then after the show, this skinny guy pops up from behind the stage, and I thought," ""that's what I want!"" " Oh, man, she had me from the start." "Here was this cute comic book star, and she liked me!" "I couldn't believe it." "Plus, she had her [Bleep] together." "She had work, and she had lots of stuff." " Yeah, I had nice things, and I could cook, so I lured him into my lair." " She had a color TV and a vcr!" "Oh, man, I was in heaven!" " Come." "Come enjoy hot cooked meals, television, and a real bed!" " I was in high cotton, I'll tell ya, all that and a brilliant artist for a girlfriend." "What more could you want?" " And here we are 27 years later." "The invention and the originality and the freshness and the energy of it really dazzled me, and I was looking-- that's really what I was looking for was, like, someone to dazzle me." "I could see right away that he had incredible talent." " And, of course, I am a sucker for talent myself." "She had already created the famous valley girls' guide to life and launched a whole cultural phenomena with that." "She was making all the money, and I wasn't making any money." " We moved in almost right away, which was a first for me." "I had never lived with any boyfriend before that." " It didn't look good, and my friends teased me about it that I was, like, sponging off another woman and stuff, and I had to prove to everybody that I could pull my own weight" "and was worthy of her attentions." " It was just one of those things where, you know, we just knew." " We feel in love." "We had so much fun together." "That was the big turning point there." "I decided I was gonna stay." "[Wailing rock guitar music] d d" " Well, what was happening back then was the east village scene." " You'd see Andy warhol almost every day." "d d" " Jean-Michel basquiat." " That's when graffiti started, around the early '80s." "There was a whole world of underground cartoonists and cartoonists in general in New York." " The world's first abstract expressionist comic book." "By the time I was to the last page," "I knew I had to be a part of this world." " The east village culture was the "kicking against mainstream" culture, and we like music that sounds irritating, dissonant." "Everything had a sharper vibe, and everything looked like ruins, a bombed-out Berlin." " It was a big visual explosion." "Music videos just had started." "Visually it was quite exciting." " Hello." "It's me, pee-wee Herman." "For the next 60 seconds, mtv will conduct a test of its own emergency comedy system." "The sound you hear is just a test." "Please stand by." "Ahhhhh...." "Ahh-ahhh-ha." " I remember walking in." "It was a giant beehive of a room." "Everybody's working on crazy puppet heads and models, and models are hanging from the ceiling, and half-finished miniature worlds are everywhere." "I mean, it was classic." "You're just like, "wow, this is amazing." "Wow, this is, like, fun land."" "The minute I saw the scene, I was like, "yeah, man." ""I got to get in on this." "This is my thing."" " So I started in, like, April of 1986, and I interviewed every creative and film person in New York and probably 400 people, and Wayne white had the perfect sensibility for pee-wee." " I was like, "oh, it's all coming together" ""with those thing, all these years" ""of those stupid puppet shows done at keg parties" ""and galleries and my painting and the cartooning." "It's all here." "It's all in there."" "I went to work the next day." "Here's the visual granddaddies of pee-wee's playhouse:" "Gary panter, Rick heitzman, and me." " They all were always in their, like, little journals and sketchbooks sketching up a storm, extremely prolific." " They weren't available for socializing, because they were working day and night." " We just drew." "I mean, we all three just loved to draw, so it was just, like, I mean, what could be better?" "Make up stuff that this wacky guy would live-- you know, how he would live." " It was a dream job:" "Sitting in a room smoking weed, drawing funny pictures." "Oh, it was the best." " Oh, I think, back then, it was a big lovefest." "All those guys were like the brothers they all never had or something." " I was put in charge of the puppets, stuff like floory and dirty dog." "I didn't know [Bleep] about building puppets." "You know, I just did it my own crazy, funky, homemade way." "Like, to build dirty dog, I got an oven mitt and just glued foam rubber around the oven mitt." "And I carved Randy out of a solid piece of white pine." "And his head weighed about 15 pounds." "And it would keep turning around on set, on camera." "It would start moving, and it had a mind of its own." "It would go, like, exorcist." "It would go all the way around..." ""Cut." "What's wrong?"" "It's like, "I don't know what's wrong?"" "I knew exac-- I knew what was wrong." "I didn't know what I was doing is what was wrong." " Randy was made a couple of times or two or three times, and Randy would fall apart." " Yeah, you got a block of pine and a pocketknife?" "You know, that was another little lesson I learned." "Sometimes you've got to make it up as you go along." "You know what I mean?" " For what they were paying and getting out of Wayne," "I thought, "they look great."" " Again, my m.O.:" "On-the-job training." "You know, it was like, "can you make the puppets?"" ""Yeah, sure." "I can make puppets, yeah."" "And so one day, Paul is there, and he's going, like," ""well, do you do voices?" "Do you perform?"" "I go, "yeah, I do my own stupid puppet show stuff."" "He goes, "okay, let's hear." "Let's..."" "And that's where I auditioned for the puppets." "And oddly enough, I got the job, and I became Randy." "Yeah, Randy." "Hey, remember the time I almost set the playhouse on fire?" "That was a close one." "And then I did dirty dog." "d Hey, everybody, gather round d d to hear a truly groovy funky sound d" "I was flower number three, one of my feminine roles." "I harmonized with Rick and Alison on that." "We were the three flowers sitting there like ass[Bleep]." "Presenting..." " Presenting..." " Presenting..." "It was just, like, the littlest voice." " His royal majesty..." "All:" "The king of cartoons." " We'd sit there all day doing that." "What a job." "[Laughs]" "That whole first season was crazy." " It was a joke." "They rented an empty loft in New York City on the fifth floor." " We were literally in a sweatshop." " The sewing machines had just been thrown out." "There was no air-conditioning." " It didn't even have the right amount of electricity." "It had never had a stage in it, and plus, every 15 feet, there was a column." " All day long, we would have to stop for sound problems." " Paul was in a dressing room the size of, you know, the handicap stall in a men's bathroom." " We would be down all the time sitting in the dark 'cause the generators would blow out." " Every time I did Randy," "I had to get out on a diving board hanging out over the set, laying on my stomach, trying to marionette this crude piece of folk art." " It was a nightmare." "It was a nightmare for them." "It was a nightmare for Paul." " I literally slept in pee-wee's bunk bed." " Like, it seemed kind of like a John waters movie, almost, of, like, designer frenzy." " Almost everyone on that show was doing their job for the first time." " Tempers were flaring." "There was a lot of coke burnouts." " It's like getting a job playing in a sandbox but they won't let you out and they beat you." " It wasn't like a Hollywood production at all." "It was like a downtown New York art project, and that's what gave it its power and its edge." " It violated every working code, but because it was so creative and so much fun," "I didn't care." " The minute it aired, everybody just freaked over it." "[Upbeat bouncy music] d d" " Ahh!" " d Come on in and pull yourself up a chair d" " Oh, I was a giant fan of pee-wee's playhouse." "I loved it." "I'd get up on Saturday mornings to watch it." " It was a genius show." "They did an amazing job on it." " I thought, "man, if this can work," ""if something this great can actually make it on TV, there's hope for us all."" " I loved how completely off-the-wall it was, how it just went anywhere." "It woke people up around the country." "They saw something fresh." "They saw something that related to the culture." " We were just trying to" "I use the term "blow their minds."" "I just, like-- I want to do something that people will talk about." "I want to do something that people are gonna remember." " The pee-wee's playhouse show was the psychedelic hippie show that the hippies wanted to make." " The whole idea was just to make something that people wouldn't forget." " The shocking thing was, is, it was, like, a really successful TV show, and it changed things, and it was attracting not just little kids, like it was meant to do, but it attracted kids of all ages." "There was a whole big thing with college kids staying up to watch pee-wee's playhouse." " It was big in the '80s." "It changed TV in its own humble way." " d At pee-wee's playhouse d" " [Chuckling]" " The thing that triggered me that I really realized that it was a huge hit-- and it's an odd little thing-- is, I had a sister-in-law that lived in New York, in rural New York, and she said that she got up" "and went to a bar that was open at 7:00 in the morning, and the bar was full of people watching pee-wee's playhouse." " And then the second season, we all moved the production to L.A." "Paul got out of New York as fast as he could." "He hated working there." "Yep, a lot of memories in this old house." "But you know what I say?" "I say, "[Bleep] It." "I'm going to California."" "Ahh!" "[Upbeat acoustic guitar music] d d" "Here we are in New Jersey." "Good-bye, Manhattan." "d d" " The experience was quite different in L.A." " It became a Hollywood production." "It became a professional production, as it should be done, of course." " Everybody's salary doubled." "I think, in L.A., they had no idea how-- how ripped off we were." " We moved into a sound stage, and the sets were made by a professional set production place." "The puppets were made by professional puppet makers." "You know, the whole system was applied to it." " It just made it simpler." "You're a place that's meant for what you're doing, as opposed to you're doing something somewhere where every single problem, the answer is," ""you're not supposed to be doing this here."" " You definitely-- there was definitely a change of the guards." "You saw, you know, like, responsible people on the set, you know?" "Instead of, like, the animal house crew, you know, you definitely were with whoever the conservative fraternity was, you know, from the same movie." " Yeah, well, we lost the desperate struggle." "It became, like, easy." "I mean, it was, like, fun coming out here and wearing sunglasses and telling other people what to do." "It was like, "yeah, now we're, like, big shots."" "I was digging on the Hollywood myth." "It was a big lark, days at the beach." " All those new yorkers came too, and they're mostly still here, you know." "Wayne and Mimi became Californians." " That was, like, the free and easiest time of my adult life, and we were living it up." "You know, we thought we were, at least." "You know, I love being married to an artist with a sense of humor." "We often collaborate." "We came up with this gem together:" ""Heinies n' shooters with hotties at Hooters."" "[Laughter]" "That's some high-tone poetry right there, boys." "[Laughter]" "[Light jazzy music] d d" "Unfortunately, pee-wee's playhouse ended in 1990." " He had been offered two more seasons, and he had declined." " And that was it." "There wasn't gonna be any more." " The playhouse will always be here for everyone to play in forever and ever and ever." "On that, you have my word." " I knew, while I was doing it, it was the best job I would ever have in my life." " You knew that you were making something that you hadn't seen before." " It was in many ways a dream job." "You know, it was, like, a fun job." "You got to be artistically fulfilled, live in your inner child." "The group of people that we wound up with that created the show were like this family." "It was like a big group of artists who really liked each other." " That's Alice." " And I remember when..." "I mean, I just-- I get sentimental about them." "It was just--they were great." " We were a group of people that felt like we were making art and we were doing something serious and something important." "If you're an artist, it doesn't get any better than that, really." "There's--I can't think of a better situation that we could have had." " Beautiful." "It's the whole pastoral fantasy that I have when I come down here, you know:" "Rolling hills, green trees, now a rainbow." "It's all too good." "I mean, it's picture-perfect, you know?" "Tennessee has always been my little escape hatch." "Whenever the stress is too much," "I just fantasize about moving to Mike's land and living as a hermit." "Look, our rainbow is still there leading us on." "I love it." "I love the sky and the trees." "This was my early art education too." "We had to come out here and draw the landscape." "In this house right here, the yellow house, this is where I did my first puppet show, called "punk and juicy," in 1978 with Mike Quinn, and that started my illustrious career with puppets." "Yeah, right there." "I was at a keg party." "[Engine grinding]" "I never thought about puppets ever." "I never played with them as a kid, never liked them as a kid, never gave them two thoughts, except for that one day in Mike's dodge dart." " It used to be the caney fork baptist church van." "[Engine turning over]" "Painted the DNA on it, because I went through a phase of DNA being God and all this stuff." " And I looked in the backseat and saw all those [Bleep] hand puppets." "That's when it started, right from that one day." "I mean, there's so many things in my life that I can pinpoint to a certain moment, you know?" " And then a wind came, you know, and blew a locust tree right over the top of it." "And then I thought, "well, heck, let's just cut the top off of it."" "Oh, good, Wayne." "You're just in time." "[Upbeat banjo music] d d" " I've never met anybody that didn't like Michael." "He can be a little surprising at first, I think." "You know, you've seen his car." "That's--kind of makes you wonder what kind of person would drive that." "d d" " He's got a genius for the moment, and people respond to him in amazing ways." " People just always get to his core quickly, I think, and see that he's a great person." "d d" " Okay, you guys, hold on, no kidding." "Watch your face." "Watch your face." "Watch your face." "Watch your face." "Here's a big one." "Watch out." "Watch your face." "Here comes a hill." "Hold on." "Here we go." "Hold on." "Hold on." "Ahh!" "We're not gonna make it." " [Laughs]" "[Bluesy guitar music]" "So I'm here at webb school in bell buckle, Tennessee, with my friend Mike Quinn, and we're gonna make a giant puppet of the founder of webb school, old sawney webb." "And hopefully we're gonna parade it around out here in the field somewhere." "This is the art department of the webb school." "This is Mike's domain." "So-- - okay, what you got?" "Sawney is this giant Southern daddy, and he is our icon that we, "sawney says." ""Sawney says." "Hey, sawney said it."" "Well, how many would be?" "Four?" "Four to make pant legs?" " So it's gonna be a psychedelic sawney." " [Laughs] Yeah, psychedelic sawney." "Shh, don't say that." "[Light music] d d" " I like to improvise." "I'm building the head shape." "They don't have a big budget to do this, and we only have two days to do it, so we'll see what happens." "Just cut little tabs of cardboard that'll attach these." " Right now?" " Yeah." " Okay." " Hot glue and cardboard makes the world go round." " Yeah, I'm having a flashback right now." " [Laughs]" " It's great." " I like the limited resources kind of thing too." "I like to use what's available." "It's a real spark for creativity." "Long time, like, 19--I thought it was Mrs. cabobble's caboose." " I think it was-- it was cabobble's caboose." " Hi, boys and girls." "I'm glad to see you today." "Come on in." "[Train horn tooting]" " That was my first real professional puppet and set design job." "The local pbs station in Nashville, wdcn, they want to do a kids' show, 15-minute show, no commercials, that taught first graders music." " d Cabobble's caboose d" "It was a nice little set with, like, four or five puppets." "There was hambone the dog, who was an early cousin of dirty dog from pee-wee's playhouse." "There was Monica the moose and a talking stove." "I mean, I had complete freedom." "I got my old friend Mike Quinn a job as a character named p.T. Pickens." " Oh, hi, Mrs. cabobble." " Hi." "Professor pickens, how are you today?" " Oh, just fine, Mrs. cabobble." "You could tell that Wayne was sneaking in all of these heavy art icons into a kiddie show." " I've got a surprise for you right here in our wonderful music box." " Oh, yeah, and a music box, where Alison had to sit like this forever, and then she comes up and does this creepy smile to the children." " Our music box has some instruments for us to play today, and they're very easy to play." " It was my little weirdo joke, you know, and I had dived into it with that spirit all the whole time, and it was weird." " They showed it for 16 years." "The kids loved it." " The thing I learned from Mike at mtsu was that art was a lifestyle." "It wasn't something you just did for money, although I certainly opted for that." "It was was something you just do as part of your life." "It's open for everybody." " Everything he did was art." "I mean, if he was driving down the road and saw mylar on the median, he'd stop the car, go out and get it, and come home and make something out of it." " Only with Mike will I use rainbow peace flags." "I do owe a lot of my success to Mike." "Mike's the guy who got me doing puppets." " The creation of Wayne white myth." " The beard hairs, like, go on loose like this so there's slack in the middle." "Just follow that line there and that line there." "This is the most fun part right here, doing the final painting." "Mike and I's past diverged, obviously, when I moved to New York and he stayed behind in Tennessee." " There they go." "There was a time when I personally made a conscious decision to not pursue the path that Wayne was taking." "I did not have that gumption." " Theyotd aka choice to go to the big city or to stay in the country, and they took different choices, but they still have similar..." "Structure." " He decided to do the pastoral life." " I don't know if it was uswara of being swallowed by the big city, that I really didn't think I would have the success, or that I was afraid of the success" "I mean, honestly-- and the things that it entangled you with." "You do have to sacrifice some aspects to pursue a career like that." "Likehere we are now, myself." "I like this business, you know." "I've been to Wayne's place." "I like Wayne's place." "You know, they're both really nice existences." "They're really good places to be." " Yeah." "Well, I don't have a van the tof that I can ride through the woods, though." " Yeah, you're just waiting on that tree to fall on your truck, you know?" " I knew I wasn't gonna stay." "That's not even an alternative fantasy of mine." "I would have always thought,"wf what if?" "What if?"" "[Gunshot]" " Yeah!" "Whoo!" "Bird, pie." "Well, the mannerisms of lyndon are all crude, you know, grabbing his crotch, scratching his ass, loping around, big lopes." "He used to sit at a table and reach over people and grab food and slurp and slop and eat with this mouth open, a big old country boy tyrant." "He was a slacker." "He was a teenage layabout on the farm." "He didn't do any farmwork." "He was a big, blustery, fat-ass nerd." "You know, it's a certain type that I just know." "It's very in-your-face and visceral, you know." "You know, I should put, like, cheap cologne all over this thing." "It should have a smell to it also." "[Laughs]" "Up till this time, I'd been pampered working on this hit show and working as a performer and three emmys by now also." "I had rose-colored glasses on." "[Light rock music]" "But if you really want to impress the ladies, you got to do the rock videos." "Yeah, smashing pumpkins' tonight, tonight." "I actually made this, painted it all." "That's what got me my trip to the mtv video awards in 1997, where I was ignored like a leprous nerd." "[Laughs]" "That was the worst night of my life, those video awards." "What a crock of [Bleep]." "I'm sorry." "That's too bitter, isn't it?" "d d" " There aren't that many great production designer/ artists/creative thinkers out there, and so when you find someone good, like Wayne, you go back to him." " That was my first project with Jonathan and Valerie and went on to do several others with them..." "[Dog barking]" "Like the snapple commercials with the bottles..." " [Whistling a sprightly tune]" " And the old spice commercial, and that's when I painted this 60-foot-long schooner sailboat." "I kept working in kids' TV." "I did a show called shining time station." "Ringo starr was the tiny little conductor that lived in the wall." "I did a show called riders in the sky for CBS." " Good morning, Wayne." " Good morning, Doug." " It's great to see you." "A Tennessee boy makes good in the wild and wacky wonderful world of Hollywood." " It was like pee-wee goes west, practically, as far as the decor." "It was, like, cowboy kitsch." " This is the most beautiful thing that has ever been seen in Hollywood thanks to Wayne white," "Tennessee genius." " Unfortunately, the show was a disaster." "It was a giant bomb." "There was a lot of bad feelings around it." "Everybody was mad at each other." " [Bleep] Are you doing, Wayne, you sucker?" "Man, you [Bleep] me with this set." "I hate you." " It was a lesson, you know?" "That's what happens in Hollywood too." " You come in with your dickhead drawings." "I never see you." "You're always hiding out." "You're getting too much money for too little work." "I ought to kill you." "I don't ever want to see you again." " And that was my first taste of how things could go horribly wrong." "I was supposedly hot property, because I was of this generation." "Of course, everybody wanted to find the next Matt groening and the next Simpsons, 'cause the Simpsons had broke big." "I had done a five-minute puppet film for mtv's liquid television series." "It was a thing called bill and Willis." "And it was just, like, all over town for 2 1/2, 3 years." "I did a lot of pitching." "I was just in and out of these offices everywhere," "CBS, abc, nbc, nickelodeon, cartoon network." "It was a real "banging your head up against the wall"" "kind of thing." "I hated that." "Oh, God." "That was the worst ever." "And, of course, I like to talk about my old days in showbiz with my paintings:" ""All that fake laughin' for nothin'."" "[Laughter]" "How many times do I sit in a meeting with some producer and he's going, "yeah, it's gonna be just like pee-wee," ""you know?" ""It's gonna have, like, a pee-wee set." ""He's gonna have a talking dog, and the kids are gonna come in," ""and it's gonna be crazy, and there's gonna be [Bleep] coming down from the sky."" "And I'm sitting there going, "ha-ha-ha-ha, that's great." "You're gonna pay me, right?"" "[Laughter]" " You know, I remember coming out to California for the first time." "You already are apprehensive about what it's gonna be like, and then you get out here, and it's even worse than you think, and it's even more intense than you think, and it's" "the business is filthier, you know, when it's for real." " There's a lot of ego, greed, stupidity, and insanity, and that's a really bad combination." " He felt like he had to pursue Hollywood because that's where he had to make his livelihood." "And it was a lot of pressure on him." " I mean, I don't have enough money to sit around and enjoy it." "I got to keep making that money, you know." "I don't have "'f' you" money." "[Laughs]" "I wish I did, because I would just say, "[Bleep] You," to everybody and go enjoy it, but I can't." "I mean, isn't that the-- that's the American dream." ""[...] You."" "[Laughs]" "Basically, it is." "That's what the American dream is about: "'F' you" money." "I would work myself into exhaustion." "I got a job in beakman's world that same year." "I was, like, this one-man animation department for the show." "That doesn't work." "You can't be a one-man animation department." "It'll kill you." " He really was like a slave in that place." " I did this series for the Disney channel, circle time." "That was another project that spiraled me into craziness." "I did an offspring video, she's got issues." "That [Bleep] place drove me crazy." "And I got overworked and overworked and overworked, by the time I finished that offspring video," "I was out of my mind." "I had driven myself nutty, crazy." " You need to know when to say, "I need help,"" "and Wayne liked to do it all himself." " I didn't realize how hard of work it was and how it was going to bruise my brain like a piece of fruit." " I took to calling him "the thing in the basement,"" "because he--you know, he grew this long, grizzled beard, and he was just doing nothing but animating on this computer downstairs for weeks at a time." " I would just be exhausted and just out of my mind." " That would make me kind of crazy, because I would worry about his health." " It was mental." "It would finally crack." "I got very depressed and incapacitated." "That's when I started on the happy pills, the antidepressants." "Eventually...." "Psssh, psssh!" "Doing!" " Wayne's got his video camera on, and he's finally making that video of the house that he's been threatening to all this time." "I'm assuming he's gonna bring it with him." "Oh, are" "oh, my God." "Are you gonna bring the camera with you?" " Mm-hmm." " Oh, yeah, he is." "Good." "Now I'll have to look at myself saying," ""are you gonna bring the camera with you?"" "About five times while we're in New York." "I couldn't have done any of this without Mimi." "She's, like, the grown-up in our relationship." " Well, I learned everything from her." "She's created an amazing home life for me." " Say, "hi, daddy."" " She does so many things that both buoy and support him that it wouldn't surprise me to hear somebody go, like," ""oh, she's the brains behind the whole thing."" " I think she affords him the ability to do what he does." " The winner." " Mimi is sort of the glue that kind of keeps everybody moving." "She's sort of the center of the universe that, like, kind of keeps all the planets in orbit." "That goes for the kids as well as Wayne." " She was very serious about being a good mother and a good nurturer to our kids, and yeah, that took up her time that normally would have gone into artwork, so she has paid a price." "Her career as an artist did have to kind of be put on the back burner a little bit." " And here we go." "There's-- there's the first episode," "Simpsons roasting on an open fire." "Writer:" "Mimi pond." " It's painful to sort of, like, watch it fall away, and you wonder if you're ever gonna do anything ever again, and it's really frustrating." "There was a point at which I felt absolutely invisible." " Hey, what are you looking at?" "I was like, "how badly do I want this career as a opposed to experiencing my children's childhood?"" "And that was important to me." " I see you." " It's hard to be a mom." "It really is." " The compensation is, is, we've raised these two incredible kids, and we've had a lot of happiness." " Those letters seem very nice." " Yes, aren't they?" " She's never questioned any of my moves artistically, always supported them." "Plus, she's smarter than I am." " The handful of artists that I know that have been wildly prolific have this sort of secret backup of this family that's always been there for them, and it certainly is in spades in the white family." " He's already, like, driven himself crazy most of the time, so I'm just there to go, "it's okay."" "[Laughs]" ""There, there." "It'll be all right."" "[Laughs]" "[Children speaking indistinctly]" "[Light guitar music] d d" " d I could sleep d d I could sleep d d I could sleep d d I could sleep d d when I lived alone d d is there a ghost in my house d d d d when I lived alone d" "d is there a ghost in my house d d my house d" " Yeah, here they come." " Yup." " Oh, my God." " [Screams]" "[All speaking indistinctly] d d" " d when I lived alone d d is there a ghost in my house d d d d when I lived alone d d is there a ghost in my house d d my house d" " What do you like about puppets?" " I like the fact that they come alive." "They're animated." "You could draw a character, build a character, and it lives outside of your imagination and goes into the world, so that's a thrill." "I mean, it's all coming true right now." "It's great." "d d" "[People speaking indistinctly]" " Here we go." "Stand by." "And places, please." "Places down on the floor." "Rolling." " I had to really knock my head up against the wall hard to realize things in Hollywood, and that's the way Hollywood is, man." "It's tough, and I can't whine about it, because I knew the rules going in." "Then I came to the realization that I didn't want to work in Hollywood." "It wasn't worth it to me." "And the fire went out completely on that." "So that's when I started thinking about painting more." "I just took a break from the whole thing and reassessed my whole drive and what I really wanted." "I wanted to work by myself in a studio." "That's what the whole one-man animation thing was about." "But see, it was all wrongheaded." "And I'd do, like, civil war battles." "I did the battle of lookout Mountain." "I did steamboats coming down the Tennessee river." "Here's one called de soto in Alabama and young George Washington's dream and for some reason, this is about two wolfmen fighting in a room with historical paintings hanging in it." "I'm not sure what that means." "[Laughter]" "Wolfmen--I don't know." "[Laughter]" "The historical scenes were becoming more surreal." "I was starting to put weird things in them." "It was all in the spirit of absurdity." "My message was just, I wanted to have fun." "Here it is." "This is one of the original word paintings that I did." "It was on paper." "This was when I was still doing realist paintings." "This is the first time I put words in them." "Unfortunately it's a sign that has fallen down in the woods mysteriously." "And it says, "a cowardly robot in a 1930s desert sunset."" "I mean, what the [Bleep] does that mean, right?" "So I started buying these thrift store paintings just for the frames." "And right before I kicked it out, I thought," ""hmm, you know, maybe I should just use the landscape that's already in there."" "[Laughter]" ""It would save a lot of time."" "[Laughter and applause]" "Thus was born my first word painting:" "Human [Bleep]ing knowledge." "[Laughter]" "I thought nothing of it." "I thought, "this is just a gag, you know." ""This is funny." "Ha-ha." "Look at this."" "People would come by the studio, and I would try to show them my latest opus, and they would be more interested in this word painting on the thrift store painting." "More so than any painting I'd every done." "I mean, it was night and day, you know?" "It was weird." "Before I knew it, I'd done 10 or 15 of them, and I decided to take them down to a local coffee shop called Fred 62." " When I designed the place, I left the walls empty, and I thought to myself," ""someone's gonna come in the door with something really cool."" " I started selling them right off the walls." "You know, I'd go down there and have to reach over the table where people were eating and take it down and put up a new one." "You know, "excuse me." "Excuse me." "[Bleep] You."" "You know, 'cause they never close that place." " Generally speaking, if you're showing in a coffee shop, you're not gonna end up on a white-walled gallery, but it--it happens." " So then there's this packet, and it has this name "w." "White" on it." "I'm like..." "So I opened it up, and there's no--there's no names on any of the slides." "There's no address." "There's no phone number." "There's nothing." "So I hold it up, and I'm looking at it, and I said, "this is the guy that has those paintings in Fred 62."" " And he was really excited about them, that there was this buzz about them at Fred's." "You know, people were talking about them and stuff, complete surprise to me." " They're so cool visually." "They're so ingenious that they work on that level, and then when you actually read them, they're either pointed or funny or both." " But at first, I was-- you know," "I was just too much of a snob to think it was worth looking at for long." "It was actually-- you know, it was" "I had the problem, it was too fun." " It's kind of, like, this sense of relief." "Like, I can go in, and I can actually kind of have a good time in a gallery." " And then, you know, months went by, and I saw it somewhere else, and I'm like," ""oh there's more there."" "Then I started to think a lot more about it." "I think he's really a poet as well as a painter in the use of his language." " I keep a notebook just of phrases:" ""Pot, cheetos, Dr. pepper," ""more than a feeling by Boston, the invisible people I've been trying to impress my whole life."" "You know, my mission is to bring humor into fine art, and that sounds kind of silly, I know, but I really do." "I want to bring humor, and I mean real humor, funny stuff, not art-world funny, real-world funny." "And if you agree with me," "I think you're gonna come up against some resistance, 'cause there's a lot of people in the art world with sticks up their butts, and if you meet somebody like that, all you got to do is say," ""I'll smash this painting over your [Bleep] head."" "[Laughter]" " I saw Wayne's first New York show, and it was" "I was astonished." "It really just blew me away, and I had to find out more about it and him." "This is called sexy paintings by sexy painters for sexy people, and I always loved that there's little teeny ghosts of the red underpaintings, which, you know, indicate very classically trained painting skills." "There's nothing amateurish about anything that he does, and this is seriously skilled work." "I've done this only a few times in my life, thankfully, but I battled my way in to meet him." " You know, out comes the drawings, and comes the this, and out comes the that, and it's like, where did he come from?" " After seeing all that Wayne had in the studio that day, it was so clear." "You know, right away, I knew that we had to do this book." " It's one those days, a visit, and your life changes." " The title of the book is maybe now I'll get the respect i so richly deserve." " Bam." "It happened immediately." "I mean, it was, like, on it." " Bang, I'm in the art world, just like that, just like that." "[Laughter]" "[Quirky music] d d" "Now, I've been doing these paintings since 1878." "[Laughter]" "I've done approximately 859,372." "When you do that many versions of the same thing, you tend to get a little burnt out." "And I've been thinking lately about puppets, about coming full circle back to my puppet land." "And it all started two years ago down at rice university in Houston with the biggest puppet I ever made." "[Upbeat twangy guitar music] d d" ""Big 'lectric fan" ""to keep me cool while I sleep."" "Ladies and gentlemen, the world's largest George Jones head." " d Well, a big 'lectric fan d d to keep me cool while I sleep d" " Well, I was originally inspired to do this piece when I was invited here in June, and, of course, it was 102 degrees, and I had this George Jones song stuck in my head," "ragged but right." "The colossal country music legend sleeps it off in the hot Houston night, while the fan says," ""I'm dreaming, dreaming, dreaming." ""Oh, I'm not dreaming." "I'm bragging."" "[Laughter]" "You know, bragging'..." "[Laughter]" "It is a vulgar and pernicious thing to do." "I'm telling you right now." "It's not important that I've won one, two, three emmys for pee-wee's playhouse." "It's not important at all that I've won the best art direction for the smashing pumpkins' tonight, tonight." ""Look at this [Bleep]." "It's worth a lot of money."" "Not bad." ""Just leave the awards on the kitchen table." "I'm back here painting a [Bleep] masterpiece."" "[Laughs]" "That's pretty good, huh?" "[Laughs]" " I think when you're an artist, you're in this struggle, because you want to put yourself out there." "You're doing this thing that's ultimately very self-centered and narcissistic, right?" "Like, "look at me." "I'm good."" " You know, there's that part of me that's," ""shame, shame, shame on you for getting up there" ""and being the center of attention," ""you big show-off." "Who the--who's he think he is?"" "You know?" " So because you're an artist, you're also full of self-doubt, self-loathing, worrying, neurosis, all that stuff, so you're torn." "You want to put your stuff out there just because of the exuberance of being creative, and then you feel bad about yourself." "So I see that in Wayne's work." " The "who's he think he is?" Phantom is always in my head, always, even though I'm looking around and going," ""well, who's even saying that to you anymore, Wayne?" ""Your parents are both applauding you." ""They're not saying that." ""All these other ass[Bleep], your coaches and teachers," ""they're all dead." "They don't-- or they don't know who you are."" "It's like, "who is this 'who's he think he is?" "' Phantom still haunting you, you know?"" "I don't know." " I keep telling him how lucky he is." "How many people get to experience a midlife sudden career change" " I've--I know." "I am lucky." " I tell him how lucky we are all the time." "We've been incredibly lucky." " I had a second chance that hardly anybody ever gets, man." "It's like, who said," ""there's no second acts in American life,"" "f." "Scott Fitzgerald?" "[...] You, f." "Scott Fitzgerald." "[Laughs]" " Well, for me, I feel incredibly proud, and I'm incredibly glad." " It doesn't seem like that much time has passed." "He's managed to put this thing together, you know, and so I'm wondering now, what next?" "What next?" " I didn't quite know where I was going or what I wanted to do." "I was kind of figuring it out as I went along." "I just kind of follow my heart and my gut." "This is exactly it." "It's what I've wanted since I was three years old, to sit in the room and draw pictures." " I think the future for Wayne is recognition for the fact that he was a founding father of the current state of pop art." " And Wayne is a wonderful puzzle." "It's like one of those puzzles you'll never finish, because there's always more pieces to kind of consider." " I'm satisfied, yeah." "I do have a lot of satisfaction." "I'm too neurotic to enjoy it for very long." " I'm working on my graphic novel that I sold about a year and a half ago." "You know, I'm writing." "I'm working." "I'm drawing." "So I'm back." "I'm really thrilled for his success, and I'm really happy to finally get, you know, the respect I so richly deserve." "[Laughs]" "I just have a feeling it's all up from here, you know?" "I--you know, and I try not to overthink it and look too far into the future." "What if this happens, or what if that happens?" " I do that." " That's his job." "I can't--you know, it's got to be, like, one day at a time for me." " I see myself as, hopefully, in museums across the world, hopefully, surrounded by grandchildren." " We never had any idea that he'd ever go this far, but we knew that was all he was gonna ever do, because that's all he ever wanted to do." "But he wanted it bad enough, and he went out and did it." "[Engine thrumming]" " Onward and upwards." " I hope Wayne is happy." "I--I hope everything goes well for him, but I hope he's happy." "I just want him to be happy." "He's got his art, and that's his life." "[Upbeat music]" " Beauty is embarrassing." "Now, what do I mean by that?" "Beauty is a many-pronged thing, you know?" "It has many sides to it." "When we see something beautiful, truly beautiful, we're in awe, and raw emotion comes to the surface." "We're also humbled by it." "We're not worthy." "That emotional vulnerability, that insecurity, those are both embarrassing situations." ""If only I could make something that beautiful,"" "or, "if only I was that beautiful."" "So we're sort of embarrassed for ourselves when we're struck by true beauty." "Artists and creative people are people who make beauty." "Now, that's the bottom line." "I mean, that's what we do." "We make beauty." "I've been trying to make beauty my whole life, and just to even say that is embarrassing, but I have." "So, ladies and gentlemen," "I owe you a very big debt of gratitude, 'cause this is a rare and special time for me right now." "You let me stand up here and show you all my beautiful things, and I didn't get embarrassed once." "Follow your heart and your pleasure in art." "Don't do what you think is gonna be making you money or what your parents want you to do or what that beautiful girl or guy thinks you should be doing." "Do what you love." "It's gonna lead to where you want to go." "Go out there and make the world more beautiful." "I know you can." "My name is Wayne white." "Thank you." "[Cheers and applause]" "[Upbeat music] d d" "[Upbeat banjo music]" " d I'm just a country, country boy d" " Can you tune that?" " Not really." " "C." "C." "C."" "Play your "c."" " Which one is it?" " I don't know." "You tell me." "Where's your "c" string?" " I'm not sure." " Don't you know any-[Bleep]-thing about the banjo?" "[Bleep] Damn it, Wayne." " No." " I know "g," "c," "e," "a."" "I mean, "g," "c," "e," "a."" "I know those things." "I know the dang strings." "You don't know your strings?" " No." " [Bleep]." "You play that thing." " I know." "I know." "I play it like a monkey plays a coconut." "I know nothing." " "G," "g," "c"" " I know that's the middle "g."" " You know." " I know that's the middle "g."" " Okay, play a "c."" " I'm not--is that-- - play a chord "c," then." "Connect with independent lens online at:" "You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter." "Watch videos and explore interactive features." "There's always more to every program on our website." "This program is made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting, the national endowment for the arts, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you." "Thank you."