A short animated film featuring the final performance of Paul Reubens, best known for his role as Pee-wee Herman, screened April 14 during the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival in Morgan Hill as part of the festival’s LGBTQ+ day of programming.
“The Crown with a Shadow & the Search for Self,” directed by J.B. Ghuman Jr., is a mixed-media animated short that follows Oliver, a pink skunk fish destined to become queen of the sea, undergoing a miraculous transformation.
Reubens voiced the title character. Famed transgender actors Amanda Lepore and Krylon SuperStar also appear in the film. Reubens died in July 2023 after battling cancer.
Ghuman, Lepore and SuperStar attended the screening and participated in a question-and-answer session moderated by festival director Mattie Scariot. The film was intended to be shown in 3D, but a technical issue with projection filters forced organizers to screen a 2D version instead.
The screening and panel were hosted by the Morgan Hill Community Playhouse.
Ghuman said the project grew out of his work teaching art therapy in South Central Los Angeles.
“I noticed a lot of the kids had opinions on gender and identity,” he said, “and I went down this rabbit hole on how gender is diverse in the natural world.”
That research, he said, led him to explore how identity across the animal kingdom is “extremely varied and very natural,” and eventually deepened into questions of consciousness and sense of self. He encountered the hermaphroditic Pink Skunk Fish and was inspired by the creature’s natural gender-swapping ability.
Ghuman said he and Reubens developed the concept beginning in 2021 and also worked together on a feature-length script, which Ghuman is currently developing. Reubens had been diagnosed with terminal throat cancer by the time the film was completed.
Ghuman described him as bringing an unmistakable “swagger” to the role even while seriously ill.
“He was really sick,” Ghuman said. “He had just gotten his terminal cancer diagnosis. But you can feel his spirit throughout it.”
Ghuman said he believed that including Reubens in the work would expand its reach to an audience that would not typically be exposed to trans people and trans stories. He reflected on Reubens’ own journey of self-discovery as a closeted gay man, a fact that was only revealed posthumously in his 2025 documentary.
“I had known Peewee was gay for a long time, and a lot of our connection was him being like, ‘Dude, just be yourself,’” Ghuman said, encouraging the audience to watch Reubens’s documentary. “It’s intrepid, layered, and he’s extremely vulnerable, extremely honest. It’s beautiful, you will see a side of Paul that myself and anyone who knew him sees.”
Lepore, who narrates the film, said the story of transformation resonated with her personally.
“It was a really beautiful story about transformation,” she said. “I identified with it, of course, because I am very much about transformation and freedom.”
SuperStar, who voices the film’s “Deity of Dopeness,” said she was drawn to the project because of how it portrays the transgender experience.
“Anytime the trans experience is displayed in a positive and creative way, I want to be involved,” she said, “because it is a positive and creative thing to be able to live your authentic truth.”
Both Lepore and SuperStar used the Q&A to encourage audiences to educate themselves about transgender history and gender diversity.
“Trans people have been around forever,” Lepore said. “The bottom line is just to be respectful to each other. We all bleed, we all have to eat. What you are doesn’t matter in the long run, it really doesn’t.”
Ghuman said he is developing a full 4D feature-length version of the work, including wind effects and kinetic “waterbed”-like effects. He has also adapted the story into a children’s book, “The Crown with the Shadow,” available in print and as an audiobook narrated by Lepore.
The Poppy Jasper International Film Festival features LGBTQ+ programming as a cornerstone of its annual schedule, with an entire day of the festival set aside for films for queer stories and filmmakers.
“We need these stories,” Scariot told the audience. “We need you to be here. The impact you have just being here and believing in us is changing so much.”
The screening was followed by a live performance by a local drag troupe, the Queens of Campbell, and an awards ceremony in which two local artists presented Lepore with handcrafted works created in her honor.
