Character-Driven: Ben Steinbauer on Jack Rebney

2011-09-02

TFI Documentary Fund (deadline October 11th) is for exceptional, character-driven feature docs that aim to take audiences into someone else’s world. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be highlighting some fabulous films we feel exemplify what we're looking for with this grant, and hearing from the filmmakers behind them. In the post below, (deadline October 11th) is for exceptional, character-driven feature docs that aim to take audiences into someone else’s world. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be highlighting some fabulous films we feel exemplify what we're looking for with this grant, and hearing from the filmmakers behind them. In the post below, Ben Steinbauer discusses his 2009 film Winnebago Man, about Jack Rebney, a man who became a viral sensation before the term was even coined.

How did you first find the main character of your film?

In a manner of speaking, Jack Rebney found me -- in the form of a beat-up VHS tape circa 2001. That was my introduction to the Winnebago Man clip, the three-minute outtake reel of Jack attempting to film an industrial sales video for the Winnebago brand of RVS in 1989. During the shoot, the crew left the cameras rolling and cut together Jack’s blistering tirades into an outtakes reel that was passed hand to hand on VHS tape before the term "viral video" had been invented and it was possible to post videos on-line.

Then in 2005, YouTube was invented, and I watched in awe as the Winnebago Man clip was uploaded and millions of people from around the world saw Jack Rebney’s outtakes. I was taken with the idea that technological innovations like Google and YouTube were saddling people with digital reputations over which they had no control. And I wondered how the star of my favorite video was dealing with this new type of notoriety.

I went looking for him and when I couldn’t find him myself, I eventually hired a private investigator who tracked him to the top of a remote mountaintop in Northern California. Once we made contact, the film was born.

What made you believe Jack would be a compelling focus for a film?

I knew that Jack was a great character from watching the original Winnebago Man outtakes clip. My friends and I would quote it and re-watch it religiously. Once I met Jack in person and he was even more eloquent and better on camera than I had hoped, I knew he could carry the film.

It was then I discovered that Jack was not only unaware that his infamous blooper reel existed, but was totally unaware of its overwhelming popularity. That gave his story the two essential ingredients for a satisfying three-act story -- a compelling character that can carry a feature length film and a universal conflict that would force him to take action.

Additionally, the fact that Jack was 80 years old and had worked in the media, producing the nightly news at a time when it was stilling being shot on film, made his story of coming to terms with inadvertently becoming an internet celebrity all the more poignant.

Was there anything surprising you hadn't expected about Jack you discovered over the course of shooting?

Every part of making Winnebago Man was surprising, and that's what I think audiences respond to in the film. Because my team and I had no idea of how Jack would react at any given moment, or how the film would find its resolution, the audience is taken on the wild ride along with us.

Making a film that way is challenging and forces the producers and directors to really commit, financially, emotionally and physically to the outcome. That’s why funding organizations like the Tribecca Film Institute are so vital to fostering independent films.

Ben SteinbauerWinnebago Man. He is the recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation Award for filmmaking. Steinbauer's short films have played at SXSW and aired on PBS. He teaches film at the University of Texas, Austin, and is the co-founder of the commercial production house The Bear.