Winnebago Man

In the words of a visitor to the American Found Footage Festival, the phenomenon is "a modern-day freak show": Internet movies in which normal people make absolute fools of themselves, much to the pleasure of the entire online community. Such as the film about the Winnebago Man, also known as "the angriest man in the world." Even back when it was recorded in 1989, VHS cassettes containing outtakes from a camper commercial were passed from hand to hand in the American film underground. In 2005, the video was put online and got mainstream attention: it was one of the first big hits on the brand-new site called YouTube. The object of the fun is camper salesman Jack Rebney, who spouts his anger at the whole world during a series of failed takes, in a hilarious barrage of four-letter words. He is mad at the camera assistant, the flies swarming around his head, but most of all at himself. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer was a fan from the get-go, and is about his search for Rebney. This personal quest is an attempt to find the human face behind the aggression, and it also serves as a study of this "new form of celebrity," as media expert Douglas Rushkoff calls it. And like always, reality turns out to be much more unruly, complicated, and humorous than what we see on YouTube.
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