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Beauty Is Embarrassing is a funny, irreverent, joyful and inspiring documentary featuring the life and current times of one of America's most important artists, Wayne White.

Raised in the mountains of Tennessee, Wayne White started his career as a cartoonist in New York City. He quickly found success as one of the creators of the TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which led to more work designing some of the most arresting and iconic images in pop culture. Most recently, his word paintings, which feature pithy and often sarcastic text statements crafted onto vintage landscape paintings, have made him a darling of the fine art world.

Beauty Is Embarrassing chronicles the vaulted highs and the crushing lows of a commercial artist struggling to find peace and balance between his work and his art. Acting as his own narrator, Wayne guides us through his life using moments from his latest creation: a hilarious, biographical one-man show. The pieces are drawn from performances at venues in Tennessee, New York and Los Angeles including the famous Roseland Ballroom and the Largo Theater.

Whether he’s parading a twenty foot tall puppet through the Tennessee hillside, romping around the Hollywood Hills dressed in his LBJ puppet suit, relaxing in his studio pickin’ his banjo, or watching his children grow up much too soon, Wayne White always seems to have a youthful grin and a desperate drive to create art and objects. It is an infectious quality that will inspire everyone to find their pleasure in life and pursue it at all costs.

At its core, Beauty Is Embarrassing is a reminder that we should all follow our passion. It is those creative impulses that will lead us to where we need to go.

For over 30 years, Wayne White has made an indelible mark on the creative world. As a designer, painter, puppeteer, sculptor, and musician, White created images and ideas that are an integral part of the pop culture lexicon, including his infamous word paintings featuring pithy phrases such as “I Blame LA” finely crafted onto vintage landscape reproductions. To this day, White gets up every morning to do the only thing his body and mind were made to do…create; whether anyone acknowledges it, or not. “I believe humor is sacred. Humor is one of the most important things we have,” says White in the film.

Part biography, part live performance, part raucous comedy, Beauty Is Embarrassing tells the inspiring story of this one-of-a-kind visual artist and raconteur. First time filmmaker Neil Berkeley traveled with White through Houston, Miami, New York, Chattanooga, Nashville and Los Angeles, retracing White’s steps from childhood to present day, while covering his creative process and prolific career including his work as an underground cartoonist, his big break as a designer, puppeteer and voice-over actor on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, for which he won three Emmys, as well as his eventual Hollywood crash and finally, his reemergence as a fine artist.

The film features new interviews with Matt Groening, Mark Mothersbaugh, Todd Oldham, Mimi Pond, and Paul Reubens and includes never-before-seen behind the scenes footage from the making of Pee-wee’s Playhouse.