Winnebago Man (Doc 2009)
Director: Ben Steinbauer
This is about Jack Rebney, an unwitting star of underground VHS tapes and, inevitably, YouTube. While it is the simple tale of a man (Steinbauer) who merely wants to meet the guy demonstrating Winnebago RVs in a 1988 industrial film, it turns into a cautionary tale of notoriety and the eternal Internet.
While the film was being shot, Rebney frequently flubbed lines or was plagued by recalcitrant machinery. He complained loudly and obscenely, and the crew never stopped filming. These outbursts were compiled into a reel, which then got handed around on VHS and copied many times over. Rebney became a sensation without his knowledge, as “The Angriest Man in the World,” or the “Angry RV Guy,” etc.
Then, as the saying goes, it “went viral” on YouTube. Steinbauer tracked Rebney down to find out where he was and what he was doing, and what he thought of the pehnomenon.
Rebney was, and may yet be, living near Mt. Shasta in an isolated cabin, now blind and with a pit bull named Buddha as his only companion. He never spoke to Steinbauer of his early life, and only reluctantly let slip that he had been a producer at CBS News in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles before he made the video for Winnebago. And, he takes pains to show Steinbauer that the finished RV video is coherent and professional despite his harangues.
He is a private man, with only one friend, and if I may indulge in some cheap psychology, a load of personal pain which he has tried to escape. His notoriety only drove him further within himself, and reinforced all his prejudices.
So, we learn little about why he is the way he is, or how he got that way. He comes off as a bit pompous, using excessively erudite words to communicate, and continues to lard his speech with basic obscenities far less interesting than his standard upscale vocabulary.
Steinbauer persuades him to travel to San Francisco to attend a festival of so-called “found footage,” which has featured Rebney’s reel for years, and in fact there is a Rebney cult. It soon becomes obvious that he warms to the attention, and regains his comic timing instantly when addressing the crowd.
Now, he has a homepage, and a Facebook page, and T-shirts. I wish him well.
The film is interesting, and in some way illuminating. Rebney is a genuine character who was thrust into the world’s attention, and has mixed feelings about it.
One more thing: never put anything on the goddamned Internet that will embarrass you in 20 years.
B