Indie Focus: ‘Winnebago Man’

“Winnebago Man,” directed by Ben Steinbauer, is a warmly funny character portrait that explores the culture of unwanted online fame by way of case study .

The documentary, which opened Friday in L.A., focuses on Jack Rebney, a onetime television newsman who was featured in a 1988 video for Winnebago dealers, showing off one of their new motor home models. The uproarious outtakes from that shoot would eventually become the stuff of legend — quoted, referenced and parodied by legions of fans who helped Rebney earn the title of “angriest man in the world.”

In the outtakes, Rebney grows increasingly irritated with himself for blowing lines to a script that he wrote. His explosions of dense verbiage, made even more memorable with his stentorian delivery, vary from the benignly catchy (“Do me a kindness”) to baroque vulgarities unprintable here.

But the appeal is more than Rebney’s inventive strings of profanity, Steinbauer says. “It’s that he’s frustrated with himself and it’s the way he’s expressing that frustration that makes it unique and makes it cathartic.

“To swear that well,” added Steinbauer, “you have to be extremely well-spoken.”

A teacher of film at the University of Texas, Steinbauer, 32, first discovered the clip on VHS tape in 2002 and was immediately hooked, watching it over and over again. Once the clip became an early viral sensation after the introduction of YouTube in 2005, he began to wonder more about the man himself — where was he, did he know of his newfound fame, did he care?

Finding Rebney proved tough. Steinbauer hired a private investigator and discovered a terse online posting signed “Jack Rebney, Planet Earth” regarding a boat. Steinbauer eventually found Rebney living, as he had since well before the video hit the Internet, as a relative hermit in a remote area of Northern California. Getting on in years (he is now 80) and with growing health issues, the idiosyncratic Rebney was at first unsure of how to engage with the young filmmaker who arrived at his door.

“The interest that I have at this point is having people understand that I’m just a regular person out there,” said Rebney during a recent phone call from his home. “When I hit my thumb with a 32-ounce framing hammer, I don’t say ‘Jiminy Cricket,’ I use the terminology that has now become quite infamous in terms of this film clip. I say what I want to say.”

The relationship that developed between Steinbauer and Rebney — at once affectionate and contentious — is a vital part of “Winnebago Man.” Steinbauer draws Rebney out of his self-imposed exile, while Rebney, who initially wanted to talk only politics and cockeyed philosophy, repeatedly makes it clear he is nobody’s foul-mouthed monkey.

Initially, Steinbauer was reluctant to be such a big on-screen part of his own film. Steinbauer’s previous short documentaries — “Winnebago Man” is his first feature — did not use voice-over narration, let alone include the director as a character and influencing the subject.

“I felt like when the story demands it, you have no choice,” said producer Joel Heller, who was instrumental in convincing Steinbauer to allow himself to be seen as part of the action.

“Winnebago Man” premiered at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival, and has gone on to play many festivals since. The version being released to theaters is a new, tighter, 2010 version, as Steinbauer was able to use the film’s long festival life as an extended series of test screenings.

At festival showings around the world, Steinbauer would often call Rebney during post-screening Q&As , allowing audiences to interact with him. Rebney’s re-engagement with people, ostensibly on behalf of the film, has added yet another layer to his story.

“He basically has gotten what he wanted without knowing that’s what he wanted,” said Steinbauer. “Keith Gordon [a longtime friend of Rebney’s] says it in the movie … Jack is a dichotomy in that he’s always wanted to have his opinions heard and a crowd to address, but at the same time he’s always wanted to be able to isolate himself behind a locked gate. So in a strange way he’s gotten really late in his life what I think he sort of always hoped to achieve, but in a way neither one of us could ever have foreseen.”

So does Rebney feel vindicated somehow by the film, or has it helped him in overcoming any sour feelings from his unsought notoriety?

“The short answer is I don’t need help, I don’t need any vindication,” Rebney said. “From my perspective, anybody that’s involved in the making of, as an example, a marketing film, understands there is an enormous cacophony of mistakes made all during the course of it. No one does it perfectly, there are no Mary Poppins people available in media.

“So effectively I don’t need any excuse for any of that.”

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