Winnebago Man tracks down the “angriest man in the world” – the relusive star of a series of expletive-laden outtakes from an RV commercial that went viral. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to director Ben Steinbauer and producer Joel Heller about finding and filming the lovable grump in those clips, Jack Rebney.


IT’S HARD NOT to like Winnebago Man. Director Ben Steinbauer looks at one Jack Rebney, a man who had one of the worst days of his life while filming a promotional video for the Winnebago company over twenty years ago (youtube.com/watch?v=zSWUWPx2VeQ). Unfortunately for Rebney, the outtakes of outbursts were kept and edited into a video. And in the days before the Youtube celebrity culture, this video was passed around and copied by enthusiastic fans. However, with the advent of Youtube, Rebney moved from being a cult sensation to being a Youtube hit.

Steinbauer didn’t originally intend to become a documentary filmmaker. “I was a creative writing major in college. I always thought that I would be an author. My grandma always tells this story of how she would take me as a two-year-old to the public library and I don’t think I’d even understand the stories but I would get right up to the person who was reading to the kids and stare at the face for hours. I read voraciously, and I wanted to be a writer, wanted to be like John Steinbeck, one of my favourite authors. I was just a shitty writer. I did creative writing courses in college and I got about three semesters in, and I had my professor say ‘you should really take some film classes’. At the time, I took it as a compliment, ‘this is guy is really thinking of what I might have to say, and really likes my work’ but now when I look back I think ‘oh no, he just thought I was a shitty writer’. I immediately made a documentary, and it played at film festivals and won an award or two, and I haven’t looked back.” Steinbauer taught film at the University of Texas, and is part of the hugely fertile Austin, Texas arts scenes. Winnebago Man is his debut feature, and his next documentary is planning to track down a con-man who conned him after Steinbauer had bought the rights to document the con-man’s life.

Steinbauer first saw Jack Rebney on a VHS tape, a process which is quite different to watching a viral video on the internet for the first time. “I knew that it was going to be really good because I trusted the taste of the person who gave it to me. There was also something about having to physically make a tape that was time consuming. You knew that if that much attention and energy went into the making of the tape, it was going to be worth your time. It was special, not everybody had a copy. So when friends came over and we would watch the clip, it wasn’t as if they could then go and watch it at their house. It was an event to whatever degree. And now with Youtube, people send me links all the time. I watch them really quick and then delete them. I don’t have the experience where I used to have eight to ten friends and we would all watch tapes and have a couple of drinks and everybody would have a laugh. I think it would happen with Youtube to some degree but it doesn’t happen as much with me. It’s taken the curatorial aspect out of sharing these things. I guess you could still sit down with friends and open up Youtube and watch videos, but there’s something about how easy it is, and the immediacy which makes it less special.”

Jack Rebney became infamous for the sheer anger in which he expresses the little frustrations of trying to make the video. “I’m fascinated because I don’t express myself in that way at all, and people who do, I’m... so enamoured with, because it’s the opposite.” Producer Joel Heller adds that “I could see through the angry exterior, even if he would never admit that heart, I knew it was there.” Steinbauer sought to find the man, and knew that he’d make a great subject for a film. “I knew because the clip is as popular as it is, and it’s been around for twenty years, there is something compelling about him as a character. I knew that, at least for me, if I was relating to somebody and empathising, it’s not just for some sort of prurient interest. There is something redeeming or sweet or lovely about them in some form. I just trusted that it would be there with Jack and it definitely is with Jack – and it definitely rises towards the surface. Somebody comments at the end of the film – ‘he’s just like my grandpa, everybody’s angry grandpa’. It has a deep sweetness to it.”

The film doesn’t end up being falsely sentimental either – you get the sense that Steinbauer really does care about Rebney. “We knew all along, it could be something very un-sweet, or very corny. There are all kinds of TV shows which do that ‘where are they now?’ web-series stuff. The Afro-Ninja, who was in our film who missed a back-flip in his audition, they go and find him and he does this actual back-flip, and it’s in slow-motion and there’s corny music. It’s just a cheap gag. I think that people when they come to see our film think ‘how is he going to get beyond that?’ The way that it does that is that it is a heart-warming story. We become friends and we see him struggle with how he’s known and his place in the world and I think that’s universal. We all struggle with our place in the world to some degree, to become comfortable in our own skin.”


He was however conscious of appearing exploitative of Rebney. “I think that as somebody who’s a young documentarian, my experience, is who you are as a person and how you relate to people comes across when you make a documentary. It’s so easy to make fun of people in the documentary process, because it’s an inherently edited, presented view of the person you’re presenting. The quick joke is to make the person look silly. The hard thing to do is to really make them look human and multi-dimensional and complex. I think that good documentaries present anybody or a situation in a complicated or interesting or multi-levelled way. I think that’s the difference between a good and bad film.”

Steinbauer is a huge fan of Werner Herzog, and admires the way he approaches his seemingly flawed subjects. “One of the greatest compliments we’ve [been] paid about this film, was someone compared it to the Grizzly Man for the Youtube Generation. That for me was amazing. Such high praise. Grizzly Man I think I’ve seen ten times. I saw it three times at the theatre. The third time I actually took a notebook and scribbled maniacally and tried to figure out what made it so good. One of the things I really like about it is that it does what I like about films – it explores somebody whose reality is not consistent with the rest of his life. He’s creating this place which doesn’t jive with the rest of his ordinary, day-to-day life. You really get to know Timothy Treadwell in way that is very complicated. I think that Albert Maysles said that if you look at anything closely enough, it becomes an incredible human interest story. If you take the time, and look at it through a magnifying glass, it becomes this microcosm about what it means to be alive. I think that Herzog does that with people who are seemingly mad, but then discounts that. He doesn’t even reference that they could be mad, you just understand their drive is as passionate people.”

Rebney is just an example of the explosion of viral videos that has taken place with the internet. Steinbauer says “One of the things that drew me to this subject was that I started to meet these other viral video celebrities. One of the constant threads of these stories is that they did something really embarrassing, they were caught on camera, and that’s then jeopardised their job as well as their standing the community. As late as ten years ago, if that happened to you, you could just move to another state or another town, or go to another police precinct or whatever. If I have a video made about me, or this interview gets posted online, I apply for a job and someone looks up ‘Ben Steinbauer’ as everybody does now, there will be a permanent record of what I’ve done online that will follow me the rest of my life. If you amplify that to a video of you acting like a fool at the age of fifteen, or melting down at a beauty pageant, or while filming a Winnebago commercial, that becomes an entirely different conversation. It marks you and restricts you. It’s almost like having a tattoo on your face. You can’t get out of a certain way that people view you.”

There are potentially parallels in this kind of behaviour to the freakshow of ye olde days, but Steinbauer suggests our fascination with freakshows isn’t purely a mocking one. “What I know of them, I’ve heard kind of the same stories over and over again about them – the bearded woman, the Siamese twins, the bend-able people. I’ve heard of the same ones so many times, there’s probably something about each of those that are archetypal in some ways, so that we relate. I wish I could tie myself in knots, or I feel sometimes like I’m tied in knots. Or, the bearded woman, there’s two genders, maybe I feel like that sometimes. While they’re funny and we look at them and laugh, the ones that stay with us, the Winnebago Man, or Star Wars Kid or Miss Teen South Carolina, that kind of stuff resonates for deeper reasons. It’s cathartic in some ways because there’s something about the human condition for us.” However, the documentary digs away the 2-D two-minute world that Youtube potentially has in this respect, and shows Rebney as complex, multi-faceted individual.

And audiences have loved it. Heller says “I think as far as the reaction, we’ve done twenty Q&As now, when we stand up at the front of the audience, you really kinda see did they have a good time, did they have a great time? People are smiling throughout the entire Q&A. I’ve never stood up in front of a group of people and had continuous warmth and smiles from people for twenty minutes. It takes people to a very unique place.” He’s also been particularly warmly embraced in New Zealand. Heller says “it almost seems like New Zealand is more enthusiastic about Winnebago Man than anywhere else in the planet. This country has embraced this film in a way that’s quite amazing.” Rebney himself is a huge fan of New Zealand. Steinbauer says “He always wanted to come to New Zealand and sail all around the islands. He said he wanted to ‘circumnavigate the fjords’. He loves New Zealanders. He thinks you guys are ‘forward thinking’ and ‘environmental’ and ‘robust’ and ‘brilliant people’. I think this country’s affection for this movie, and Jack’s affection for New Zealand is quite mutual.”

And importantly for the filmmakers, Jack Rebney enjoyed the film. “He said he was ‘very pleased’, but he hadn’t been pleased with anything for twenty-five years. It was high praise. He cried at our premiere during the Q&A with 250 people giving him a standing ovation. That was the first time in his life that anybody had applauded him just for being himself, for being Jack Rebney. I know it meant a lot to him to a certain degree. He calls me everyday, and wants to know what’s going on with the movie. He’s a huge supporter.” Steinbauer says “I always hoped that with our film, Jack would have an understanding that he’s brought joy to people, through this experience that may have been humiliating for him. It certainly has to me and my friends, and to millions of people online.”