Ben Steinbauer's documentary about Jack Rebney is an interesting and entertaining piece of filmmaking. I realize there is a huge sub-culture of "YouTube junkies" mind-boggling in diversity and size. Because I do not regularly peruse YouTube videos I was unaware of one of the most iconic characters ever to achieve a kind of mass popularity in cyberspace: "Jack Rebney, The Angriest Man In The World". It is definitely a cultural phenomenon whereby a man who would otherwise be as unknown as any other has become a world-wide star. His dialog, and I'm not just talking about his profanity, has transcended the internet ending up even in Hollywood movies. The industrial video he made for Winnebago probably helped shift some units by helping dealers sell their product...maybe not? But, the outtakes, which originally only went to a few executives at Winnebago and the crew, have transcended time place and product & will "live in infamy" on the internet and within pop-culture.
How could one man's frustration shooting an "infomercial" come to this? Who is the man, the so-called "Angriest Man in The World"? What became of him after the video and, more saliently, is he still alive? These are some of the questions that Ben Steinbauer was interested in and he had to expend some effort, indeed, because Jack Rebney had long ago retreated and become a true hermit. Finally when Steinbauer found Jack, Jack was not often not honest, but still capable of great bursts of anger-many times still laced with language more suitable to jail and wartime. Jack is a juxtaposition who finds his notoriety irritating and intoxicating. He seems miffed that he is a kind of cultural icon due to the internet, more specifically due to film he thought shouldn't have ever existed in the first place. Perhaps in his seclusion he has found peace, but you get the feeling that under the surface he's mad as hell still with a lot of it centering around events culminating with the George W. Bush presidency. At one point I think Jack believes Ben's movie will to allow him to profess his manifesto regarding politics (and the general decline of the United States) which, it seems evident, is where Jack thinks his importance to his audience should lie. Ben tries to make it clear he seeking something more like how Jack got to the point he was as when he made the Winnebago video, that is what his fans are more interested in. This serves to irritate Jack and all grinds to a halt for quite some time. Ben does an end-around and finds a way to get back to Jack though and because of that we do end up getting this documentary.
As mentioned earlier, the film Winnebago Man is entertaining. We get a slice of Jack Rebney, though not a whole picture of who this man really is. The holes are unavoidable as Jack Rebney has covered his tracks, purposely fell away from the day-to-day trappings of civilization. Who Jack is, perhaps, is truly only known to Jack himself and he is playing his cards close.
In the end "Winnebago Man" fans are not terribly interested in Jack's life-story and/or his deeper views. The whole phenomenon rests on actually seeing a man voice "over-the-top" frustration so frequently and with, seemingly, bottomless profanity. Ben Steinbauer succeeds admirably by, first, finding the man behind the expletives who can still get just as frustrated and angry. This is what Jack's fans love him for...he's like us, but he has no need to fit in at all anymore. To coin Jack: "You believe any of that $#!+"?
