A great documentary is entertaining, engaging, and enlightening. With foul-mouthed former RV salesman Jack Rebney as its subject, Ben Steinbauer's Winnebago Man is entertaining and engaging by default. The real surprise is how it's enlightening: Steinbauer uses the viral video phenomenon as a springboard to explore the effects of Internet celebrity on those who were dragged into the limelight unwillingly, and he approaches the idea in a reflective manner that reveals how we sometimes have little control over our own public image.
Occasionally side-splitting and frequently poignant, Winnebago Man offers a thoughtful portrait of a reclusive curmudgeon who can't quite find the right words to effectively communicate his frustrations with the modern world, but whose colorful use of profanity has the power to bring people together in cathartic laughter.
July 1989: Jack Rebney and a small video crew were producing a promotional video for Winnebago recreational vehicles when the summer heat began to take its toll on everyone involved. Perhaps the person affected most by the mounting stress and rising mercury was Rebney, whose impassioned, hilariously obscene tirades were captured on camera when the crew left the tape rolling between takes. By the time the collection of outtakes leaked, it was already too late -- Rebney's reputation as "The Angriest Man in the World" was cemented. Soon the tape began circulating on the underground video market, eventually finding its way to a young filmmaker named Ben Steinbauer, whose obsession with it grew each time he fired up the VCR. A few years later, someone uploaded the clip to YouTube, and before long the whole world was in on the joke. Now, the more Steinbauer watched the video, the more curious he became about the irritable pitchman with the pointed tongue. Determined to track down Rebney -- if he hadn't yet suffered a fatal heart attack -- Steinbauer hired a private detective and turned his former obsession into a full-time quest. Upon locating Rebney, Steinbauer is taken aback by the serene posturing of his once-temperamental subject. Little does the befuddled filmmaker realize that things are only getting started, and that his repeated attempts to break through to Rebney will soon lead them both down a path neither ever pictured himself walking.
The challenge of forming a feature-length documentary around a five-minute video clip might be enough to leave even Michael Moore tongue-tied; fortunately, University of Texas film studies instructor Steinbauer recognizes this limitation, taking the opportunity to reflect on the modern concept of celebrity, and the prospect that Rebney may have been so humiliated by the video that he purposefully attempted to disappear from society. A montage of memorable viral video clips serves as a playful entry point for exploring the darker side of Internet fame as experienced by Ghyslain Raza (aka "The Star Wars Kid") -- whose case resulted in the coining of the term "cyber bullying" -- and Alexsey Vayner, whose leaked resumé video made him the laughing stock of the Internet. A subsequent interview with media expert Douglas Rushkoff (who coined the term "viral video") turns the mirror back on the viewer, and a conversation with The Show With No Name co-hosts Charlie Sotelo and Cinco Barnes offers a keen assessment of our voyeuristic tendencies.
But while these ruminations are all extremely thought-provoking and perfectly relevant to the subject at hand, this minor detour never allows the focus to shift away from the object of Steinbauer's obsession for very long, and when the filmmaker engages the crew who worked with Rebney on the video, frank discussions about that troubled production lead to a startling revelation regarding the malicious intent behind the assembly of the outtakes reel. Later, when Steinbauer does manage to establish contact with the elusive Rebney, the mystery deepens and things really start to get interesting.
A complex man who initially appears to be nothing like the short-fused, obscenity-spouting salesman from the popular video, Rebney claims to have absolutely no interest in capitalizing on his newfound fame, and refuses to divulge any personal information whatsoever. But later, after his initial meeting with Steinbauer, Rebney gradually starts to open up, offering candid insight into his career and opinions while still keeping the details of his personal life a closely guarded secret. While this could well have been a deal-breaker for most documentaries, Steinbauer persists, seeking out Rebney's best friend, Keith, to gain added insight into his subject, yet doing so in a way that feels neither underhanded nor invasive. Later, when the trio attends a Found Footage Festival in San Francisco, Rebney's overwhelming sense of humiliation gives way to an illuminating moment of self-realization regarding his cynical, preconceived notions about the YouTube generation he once looked upon with nothing but disdain. It's one of those natural, unguarded moments that couldn't have been scripted better, completing the portrait with the perfect final brush stroke while simultaneously setting up one final gag that reminds us just why the infamous video struck such a universal chord in the first place.