'Winnebago Man': Where is He Now, and Where Was He Then?

Most YouTube heroes whose antics have gone viral are from the immediate present and all too easily located, but the Winnebago Man made his masterpiece in the eighties. Documentarian Ben Steinbauer chose to try and track him down, and bring along his camera for making a movie based on what he found. What he found was the Winnebago Man, and what he made was a masterpiece of his own. Jack Rebney is still the cranky guy who'd done all that yelling between takes of that vintage RV commercial, but he's older now, which has done nothing to mitigate his crankiness. "If you piss me off," he tells Steinbauer at one point, "that reaction will be something you will not forget." Steinbauer's movie isn't just about some guy from a funny video gone viral. Steinbauer is savvy and sophisticated enough to make it about the very nature of these videos--about why they catch on, and what's appropriate to laugh at. Then it's about looking for the old man, and finding him (along with members of the crew who'd witnessed him that day), and what happens when one's vision begins to go, and when one learns to accept and then embrace one's strange fame.