Pee-wee's Big Adventure

Paul Reubens said that he, Phil Hartman, and Michael Varhol had never written a screenplay prior to this film. They purchased a book by Syd Field on how to write screenplays and did exactly what the book said. As a result, this movie is sometimes used in screenwriting classes because it fits the screenwriting paradigm perfectly - the film is 90 minutes long and the script is 90 pages long. The first act ends at Page 30 / 30-minute mark, the second act ends at Page 60 / 60-minute mark, etc.

While making breakfast, when Abraham Lincoln flips the fifth and final pancake which sticks to the ceiling, you can see the pancake hit the ceiling and bounce to the side, revealing that the filmmakers simply dropped pancakes on the floor then inverted the shot.

There are at least 2 fullscreen versions of the film. An open matte version that shows off more vertical picture than the theatrical widescreen (the earliest VHS releases are this way), and a pan-and-scan cropped version, cropped from the theatrical widescreen.

Featured in At the Movies: The Worst Films of 1985 (1986)