Blogorium Review: Winnebago Man

Editorial Introduction: Maybe there should be a new category of documentaries, called "personal essays" or something to that effect: over the last ten years or so, we've seen more documentaries where the creative force behind the film becomes the subject of their own investigation. Documentaries like Super Size Me, Religulous, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Bowling for Columbine, Best Worst Movie, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Don't You Forget About Me, and now Winnebago Man certainly qualify (in varying degrees) as documentaries told from a considerably more subjective viewpoint than, say, films by the Maysles brothers.

Winnebago Man is a well made documentary that suffers from one major problem: in the end, it's very difficult to answer the "so what?" question. During undergraduate, I was continually faced with writing papers where the stakes weren't clear enough, and more often than not, the best argument against the topics in question were "so what?" This is not to say Winnebago Man isn't worth watching, or that writer/director/producer Ben Steinbauer didn't set out to make a movie that feels superfluous, but I have a hard time giving the film an unequivocal recommendation.

Steinbauer's documentary, about Jack Rebney, the "angriest RV Salesman on Earth": in 1989, Rebney was filming an industrial video for Winnebago RV's, and due to the heat, humidity, and flies in rural Iowa, coupled with an inability to remember his lines, Rebney unleashed a litany of expletives and blowups. The crew edited these outtakes, showed them to Winnebago, and Rebney was fired. That should have been the end of the story, but videotapes of the outtakes started circulating, and five years ago they made their way to Youtube*, turning Rebney into a short-fused joke. Steinbauer, who had seen the tape, wanted to know what happened to the man behind the profanity, what he thought about the tape / Youtube, and how he would approach his audience.

The answer, it turns out, is that Rebney is living a reclusive life in Northern California, doesn't care much for the tape and even less for the people he perceives to be its audience (Jack describes his expectations of "room temperature IQ's" and even when they aren't, he professes he can't understand why intelligent people would watch the Winnebago video). Rebney initially dupes Steinbauer into believing he's a kindly old man who put that anger behind him, but then admits it was all a charade**, and decides he'd like to ask Steinbauer to provide him with a platform for his political, philosophical, and cultural positions. When the director assumes Rebney means his audience on Youtube, the curmudgeon bristles and becomes combative, and Steinbauer leaves, reaches out to his friend Keith Gordon, and eventually coaxes Jack into attending a special Found Film Festival as the Guest of Honor.

Winnebago Man reminds me most of Best Worst Movie - a comparison that, strangely, I haven't seen anywhere - and I'll deal with comparing the films in greater depth tomorrow, but Steinbauer starts the documentary strong with a history of viral videos, including their pre-internet incarnations through events like the Found Footage Festival. His personal involvement in the narrative of Winnebago Man is going to remind audiences of Michael Moore, and to that end I'm willing to overlook some of the "recreations" (like footage of Steinbauer talking to Jack over the phone after their first encounter).

In fact, Steinbauer is as much of a character in Winnebago Man as Rebney, and his constant involvement in prodding the reclusive ex-newsman into opening up or addressing his fans hurts the film the most. Rebney's disinterest in being more of the story leaves the documentary spinning its wheels for far too long, and the exasperated Steinbauer doesn't have much to work with when his subject is wholly disinterested.

Another component that really doesn't help Winnebago Man is that it's very easy to forget that Steinbauer spent three years getting Rebney to come out of seclusion and bring him to San Francisco for the Found Film Festival. The film begins with an argument between the director and subject, then inserts a "three years earlier" card before introducing the viral video. After that, there are periodic, incremental ".... later" cards, and then vanishes for the bulk of the film. Steinbauer and editor Malcom Pullinger collapse the time between meeting Rebney and everything that happens afterward, ultimately hurting the film at the point the "narrative" most needs it.

I also wonder how Rebney would have responded if he knew that the audience he reconsidered after the Found Film Festival Q&A were on camera openly wishing that he'd show up at the theatre angry, cursing, and that "maybe there will be some flies," everything he assumed people watched the video for. The disconnect between what the audience was assuming they'd see, what Rebney assumed he would see***, and the lasting impression he had of his "fans" closes the film on a somewhat sweet, uplifting note, but like Best Worst Movie, the audience members outside were hoping for someone to laugh AT, not with. While at least one attendee admits how wrong their perceptions were coming out of the Q&A, I have my doubts that most people at the showing saw past the grouchy, profanity spouting Rebney**** they expected to see.

There are moments that make Winnebago Man worth seeing, mostly related to Gordon's friendship with Rebney and Jack's dog, Buddha. The DVD includes Rebney's finished Winnebago industrial film, which provides context lacking from only watching the YouTube video. Yes, there's actually a successful flip-side to the outtakes, and I'd argue that it makes the profanity and frustration worth it, as would anyone who seriously struggled to put something good out there. In the "premiere" feature, Steinbauer suggests that Winnebago Man is ultimately about the "human condition," an argument I don't necessarily buy. What Winnebago Man, ultimately, "is", is a documentary about looking for something, not finding what you expected, and making a film out of what's left. It's worth watching once, but I don't know that I'll be revisiting Winnebago Man in the future.


* If you haven't seen the video, then go to YouTube. I'm not putting the link up for reasons outlined in the review. ** I don't want to put this in the body of the review, but the whole "bait and switch" component of Winnebago Man really strikes me as dubious considering how uninterested Rebney is in collaborating with Steinbauer. That many of the film's "re-enactments" happen during this point in the documentary doesn't help matters. *** There's not a good place to put this in the review, but Rebney begins going blind from glaucoma during the film, leaving Gordon and Steinbauer to lead him around. **** Speaking of which, I sometimes wonder how much of the "grumpy" and the cursing is part of what Rebney expects will keep Steinbauer around, as it increases exponentially as the film goes on.