With the 2019 Academy Awards mere hours away, we thought we’d take a look back at one of the strangest team-ups in Oscar history: When Pee-Wee Herman met Robocop during the 1988 ceremony.
Yeah, we don’t know what this was all about either.
During the 60th annual Academy Awards, Pee-Wee (aka Paul Reubens) was on hand to present the award for Best Live Action Short Film when he was interrupted by ED-209, the hulking monstrous robotic foe from the original Robocop — a film that was a massive hit in 1987. So to stop the mechanical menace, Robocop (most definitely not Peter Weller in the suit or providing the character’s voice). It was bizarre and glorious.
The thing is, this is, um, hardly the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to Reubens during , or Robocop for that matter seeing how he is currently being used by KFC to sell fried chicken. One thing that hasn’t changed in the past 31 years of Oscars telecasts is how the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences stops the show dead with attempts at comedy like what you see above. (If only they’d jettison material like this and give out the awards in a much more economical fashion the show would be way more bearable). That said, as lovers of strange science fiction ephemera, this footage is an absolutely wonderful snapshot of when two 1980s pop culture titans got together for a bit of well-rehearsed nonsense. It’s a beautiful thing.
Our Sci-Fi Sunday posts celebrate the weirdest and most wondrous moments in science fiction history.