Hot Docs 2009: Winnebago Man

Winnebago Man (Ben Steinbauer)
BY ASHLEY CARTER

You know a movie has really won over an audience when the projector at its premiere can conk out indefinitely at the most pivotal moment only to be met with huge laughs. Winnebago Man is a portrait of Jack Rebney, a.k.a. YouTube's "Angriest Man in the World" (or "World’s Angriest RV Salesman," or most popularly, the movie’s namesake, "Winnebago Man"). Really, there's no reason this documentary should be the hilarious, heartfelt saga that director Ben Steinbauer manages to capture. On its surface, the conceit is almost too simple—Steinbauer is obsessed with a long-circulating bootleg VHS tape featuring awesomely foul-mouthed outtakes from a Winnebago commercial that Rebney starred in twenty years prior. With the advent of YouTube in 2005, the video’s viral popularity brings a completely bananas new form of a celebrity to this perfectly crotchety hermit of a man, which the film goes on to investigate and unravel over its however-many minutes. Using Rebney's story as a lens through which to examine internet celebrity and our cultural obsession with videos of people falling down (and technology’s new role in supplying us with a neverending supply of said videos of people falling down), the film functions as both a high-minded sociological study, as well as a simple portrait of one really intelligent, foul-mouthed old man. It's a tightly structured and slick doc with some surprisingly organic discoveries and one that without Rebney's involvement would have a lot of interesting ideas and no heart. But Rebney comes to embody the everydude in a way that’s hard for any viewer (or even Steinbauer, initially) to expect. Plus, guy is, like, eighty now, and he is still the most hilariously creative swearer of all time, if that counts for something! 4/5