Punk the Power: Twenty Questions With The Yes Men

How do you write the scripts?

It's a group effort. We trade them back and forth, working on them as long as we can. The Chamber speech was basically done in a day. But some of the speeches -- the Exxon one at the oil conference -- we worked on it for six months. It's a lot about the writing. Speeches get published a lot. In the film, you see just a couple minutes of each speech, but they are quite long. Twenty minutes usually.

Is there a Yes Men manifesto?

I guess so. There's a Frequently Asked Question page on our site. We just want to expose the absurdity of the theory that if you let the wealthy do whatever they want, things will eventually work out for all of us. That was the dominant theory of our society for 30 years, beginning with Reagan. Our manifesto says that's completely preposterous, so let's ridicule the hell out of it and provide an alternative. The only alternative is that there's this enormous corporate pressure on elected leaders like Obama; we need to provide a different force. We put ourselves on the line, we take risks and do absurd things at conferences, sometimes we get hauled out. Usually it's nothing, but there is a risk, and we're saying that's what's called for now. Visible public pressure. It's really come to that.

Has it not come to arrest yet?

No.

Not even close?

Not even close, no.

What's the worst thing they did to you?

At the Exxon thing, we were hauled out -- and not because they caught onto it because of the absurdity of what we said, but because someone recognized me. They basically dragged us to this holding cell and said that things were going to be very bad for us. The police arrived and just laughed and let us go. We've pissed off a lot of people, obviously.

Have you found it harder to pull these things off with your newly increased visibility?

No. Not at all.

Are you getting recognized?

No. I think I'm ordinary-looking enough that I just kind of blend in. But we are involving a lot of people now in the things we're doing. A lot of it is just hitting the streets with 100,000 copies of a newspaper. We share our secrets liberally with people, so if anybody wants to, they can do it. We also want to start training to show how to do this.

Is there a dream sting you have? Someone you'd really like to take down?

Chamber of Commerce. They do represent the nastiest of American business. It's so powerful; they have so much money. The Chamber itself has $37 million quarterly budget to lobby. And the corporations like Chevron with their Human Energy Campaign. The Faces of Coal. The Energy Citizen Rallies -- these fake rallies they put on. It's just this incredible pressure, and it's the worst thing in our society. The pressure money exerts over politics. So the ideal target is diffused, but it's that mindset. It's not one target specifically. When Bush was in power it was easy. Now it's still all there, but now we have a chance to beat it. That depends on us actually activating.

What do you think of the job President Obama has done until now?

Nothing to complain about except that people haven't provided countervailing pressure. So when he gives into industry and makes stupid compromises, you have to wonder why he's doing that. He does that because we aren't providing anything else. He has to be able to point out the window and say to his corporate influencers, but I can't do what you're saying because these people are coming here with pitchforks, basically.

Is there a specific example of instance in which he caved to a corporate pressure that rankled you guys?

Just in general. No. I mean -- yes and no. I actually believe he's doing the best he can in the constraints he's got to deal with, as are a lot of elected officials. But what is missing is pressure from our side. But the tide is changing on that.

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