Moment of Truth: Winnebago Man's Director on Docmaking with the Angriest Man in the World

Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. Today we hear from Ben Steinbauer, whose Winnebago Man is now playing in New York and opens Friday in Los Angeles.

Early in his documentary feature debut Winnebago Man, director Ben Steinbauer shows footage of irascible subject Jack Rebney to his hugely entertained film students at the University of Texas. One can only imagine how Steinbauer's future students will react to his completed movie, which profiles the filmmaker's attempts to draw Rebney beyond the contours of his prodigious viral-video celebrity.

See, Jack Rebney is the Angriest RV Salesman in the World. Or at least he was back in the day -- 1988 specifically, when outtakes from an industrial video made for Winnebago showed a faltering, blazingly profane Rebney in various stages of frustration and exasperation. "My mind is just a piece of sh*it this morning!" he bellowed -- famously so, as the tape made the cult rounds before eventually scoring millions of views internationally in the YouTube era. But the clips weren't enough for Steinbauer, who sought to locate the elusive legend himself. The fascinating Winnebago Man is the story of what -- and who -- he found, and what it all means in the era of the Internet superstar. (Check out Michelle Orange's review here.)

Perhaps fittingly, Steinbauer's film has made a stir of its own on the festival circuit and now in theaters, where it made a whopping $17,000 last week in its New York debut. It opens tomorrow in L.A., with Rebney and Steinbauer -- as odd a couple as they come -- even appearing July 22 on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Movieline got to the filmmaker first.

[Mild spoilers follow.]

Congratulations on last week's success! How are you feeling about this run you're having?

Well, I'm feeling like I'm at the center of a hurricane, sort of floating up above everything and marveling at how fantastic this has all been. It's already above and beyond my wildest dreams. This is a film I made with my friends and am continuing to release with my friends, and it means a lot to Jack. The success that we've had already is mind-blowing, so I'm trying to remind myself that no matter what happens from here on out, this has been already beyond my wildest dreams.

This film is, in a way, about relationships with audiences. What has been your experience getting to know your own viewers and seeing their responses along the way?

The experience has been that people respond so enthusiastically to Jack. We've played this movie over the last 14 months at film festivals all over the world, and one of the coolest things for me about it has been seeing how audiences who are not familiar with the" Winnebago man" clip have responded -- meaning that people who are not just in the YouTube demographic, but people who are much older, like 60 or above, really relate to Jack and his frustrations with the modern world. The idea that he's having to struggle with how he's known, how he's remembered... those are all universal themes that I think we can all relate to and struggle with to a certain degree. It's just been really gratifying to make a film that touches people in that way.

It's also great to sit in a theater with a couple hundred people who are all laughing. That's really... I hate to use the word "healthy," because it sounds so corny, but it's one of those experiences I just treasure as an audience member. And it's been phenomenal for the first feature film I've directed to have that same outcome.

The distributor's notes urge reviewers not to reveal the "specifics of the storyline after Ben first reaches the cabin." I'm not sure I understand this admonition. Do you think knowing about the story compromises the experience?

Not necessarily. I think the request comes from a place of wanting to protect audiences from knowing what unfolds, because it is such a roller-coaster ride. It was very much a surprise for me during filming, and the production was full of ups and downs and twists and turns that people experience along with me when they come see the film. Particularly what we're talking about is Jack going blind. You want to protect that so it's not [placed] over the film being a comedy and fun to watch. And also the ending, where he embraces his audience, literally and figuratively speaking.

At what point did you determine you were part of the story?

That's what's also been very gratifying, but also a little scary at the same time. I've made a lot of other documentary work -- this is my first feature -- and I've never even used voice-over, let alone been in them. And that was never my intention starting out. But during production, the DP I was working with, Berndt Mader, began to film me during the interviews. That it became about Jack's and my interaction became impossible to ignore. But I never set out to be in the film at all, let alone a large part of it. And you can tell because in the film I look awful! I'm so stressed out! My hair's greasy, I'm pale, my pants are sagging down -- I just look ridiculous. I cringe when I see it, for that reason. But I think also to a degree, that's why it works. And hopefully people agree that it works.

This is interesting, because to the extent Jack is a fan of the film, he technically hasn't really seen it himself, right? How does that work?

Yeah, the morbid joke is that he hasn't seen it. But he sat through our premiere at South by Southwest in 2009, and he sat through it again in New York this last weekend. So he's now had the opportunity to be in theaters twice, and it was important for me to have him hear it before I released it. So I sent a copy to the cabin, and he was able to hear it. He definitely understands the gist of the film, but it is a large handicap for him -- someone who was a news producer and a media-maker himself -- to not be able to see it. It's something he's very frustrated by.

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