Some people see documentaries as pointless and boring films that just collect information about a topic "no one cares about." Totally not the case, especially with Winnebago Man. It is easily one of most entertaining documentaries I've seen and probably focuses on one of the quirkiest topics a film in this genre has ever touched on.
For those unfamiliar, "The Winnebgo Man" is a video from the late eighties that was passes around from VHS tape to VHS tape like a virus. The video consisted of a man, presumably in late forties or early fifties, named Jack Rebney swearing between cuts and takes off a commercial him and his crew were shooting over the course of two weeks. Normally, once a take is shot and something fails in the middle of the take, the camera immediately stops rolling. The crew decided they couldn't hit stop just when Jack Rebney messed up and decided to keep the camera rolling just a tad bit longer.
The lines Rebney drops make me laugh just thinking about them. Quotes like "Will you do me a kindness?" "Don't slam the f**king door...no more!" "God, I can't f**king make my mind work!" and "The acutrama that you will need, ACUTRAMA? What is that s**t?" are all just little tastes of the rage Rebney delivers in the four and a half minute clip. In 2005, a video sharing site named "Youtube" opened and the video as uploaded to the site currently boasting over six million views.
The real question was, what happened to Jack? Ben Steinbauer, the filmmaker responsible for this film, is hellbent on trying to answer that question. He calls in a private investigator to try and track down Rebney in hopes that he can answer one of his hundreds of questions. At first, it seems like a lost cause. He has no voting registration, no social networking accounts, and the Winnebago company stated after firing him for verbal abuse to employees they heard nothing from him and they didn't want too.
Ben finally finds Jack on a remote mountain in Northern California living a secluded lifestyle and being "a hermit" as he refers to himself. He has a a dog, he is going blind, and has a George Carlin/everybody's crabby grandpa type attitude towards everything. He is now seventy-eight years old and has published a book called Jousting With the Myth.
Ben is such a fan of "The Winnebago Man" clip that he shockingly did this out of the goodness of pure groupie curiosity. He is a likable guy and even goes into a detailed background about his obsession with the video saying how if he had a bad day at work he'd pop in the tape and also explain how he showed it to his grandmother and his dates.
Winnebago Man was included in a ten pack of Dvds my uncle purchased from the Found Footage Festival, a festival that two average joes named Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher put together showing random clips from VHS tapes they got from garage sales, thrift stores, etc. At the end of the film, Ben convinces Jack to make an appearance at the festival because the two men think of Jack like a movie star.
Being at the festival lands the brightest part of the film; Jack interacting with the fans he thought he never had. The boys ask him "What is an acutrama?" to spice things up. While the actual definition is an add on for something, Jack explains that he didn't know whether it was pronounced "acutrama" or "acutramaw." But he then goes onto say "When you're in Iowa, in a forrest, and it's 100 degrees it's f**king acutrama!" Starring: Ben Steinbauer and Jack Rebney. Directed by: Ben Steinbauer.
