Long before YouTube, years before ad agencies and networks opened "viral video" divisions, there were underground video clips that made the rounds and achieved their own small fan base because they were fascinating or funny in some way. Among them, the mash-up of outtakes from a Winnebago promotional film approached legendary status.

"Winnebago Man"
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In the piece, spokesman Jack Rebney—who came to be known as the "Winnebago Man" and also "the angriest man in the world"—is driven to distraction and to many strings of hilariously foul outbursts in his frustration at the progress of the day's taping. In the early 2000s, the Found Film Festival packaged the piece with similar material to great success, and when online media sharing took off, the "Winnebago Man" clip went viral. Now it is the basis of the feature documentary Winnebago Man by Austin filmmaker Ben Steinbauer.

So what happened to Jack Rebney? Was he still selling RVs? Had he retired? Had he succumbed to his rage? Steinbauer, who'd first seen the clip as a VHS tape in 2001 and thought it "one of the funniest things I'd ever seen," was curious. And in 2006, when, thanks to the Internet, Rebney's video had entertained many millions of people, Steinbauer decided to try to find out.

Winnebago Man theatrical trailer
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He put together a small crew and recorded his search with Panasonic cameras, beginning with a DCR-VX2000 Digital Handycam and migrating to the AG-HVX200 HD camera as soon as it came out. He worked with cinematographers Bradley Beesley and Berndt Mader, often riding sound levels himself.

The project began as an exploration of the phenomenon of viral video and the consequences of the sudden and often unwanted fame that can result. Rebney was to be just one of several examples, with the others possibly to include the unfortunate "Star Wars Kid," or the force behind the "Evolution of Dance" bit that was a YouTube sensation. "I was interested in the idea that people could be famous in ways they never intended and had no control over," he recalls. "It's part of the bigger issue that we all have these 'digital reputations' we can't shake."

Intent on finding out what happened to the Winnebago Man, Steinbauer approached an Austin private investigator. "I explained to him that I was making a documentary and I wanted to hire him to help me find this person I wanted to interview," Steinbauer recalls. "I told him the person's name was Jack Rebney and he was known as the Winnebago Man. There was a silence, and then he just burst out laughing and he said, 'I love that video!' And he ended up finding him for free!"

In an effort to avoid spoilers, we will reveal only that he does find "the angriest man in the world" in a remote wooded area; in learning about Rebney's story, his ideas, and his current pursuits, the documentarian realized he had plenty of material to build his entire feature-length documentary around Rebney and the tug of war between filmmaker and subject over what the documentary Winnebago Man should be about.

With his skeleton crew, Steinbauer shot interviews of Rebney in and around the recluse's cabin with the HVX200, as well as with some 16mm negative in both a very old CP-16 with Angenieux lenses and an older Bolex with Canon lenses. A fellow Austin filmmaker who'd had success in the festival market had strongly suggested shooting some film for the project to add production value and make Winnebago Man stand out from all the other all-video docs it might end up competing against at festivals.

"It was a few-thousand-dollar investment," Steinbauer says, "and I think it was worth it. The scenes shot on film do have a very nice look to them. We recorded all the audio for the filmed sequences on the HVX200 and just dealt with synching them up in Final Cut Pro later."

The project came together in a piecemeal fashion over a four-year period while Steinbauer was teaching at the University of Texas at Austin. San Francisco-based editor Malcolm Pullinger cut the show together in Apple Final Cut Pro, ultimately moving down to Austin for several months for the final push to finish. L.A.-based editor Joel Heller, who'd most recently cut the Farrelly Brothers comedy The Ringer, came on board as a producer, helping to finish the cut and polish the voiceover copy.

The film was then mastered at 1080 in Austin. The company used a Teranex box to up-res the various formats—4:3 NTSC for the earliest shoots and a significant amount of stock footage, 720p from the HVX200—up to HDCAM. The 16mm material had been telecined to HDCAM already at Dallas-based Video Post & Transfer. 1080 colorist Nick Smith graded the project using the facility's new Autodesk Lustre system.

With the film completed, Steinbauer paid a visit to an entertainment attorney with whom he had a mutual friend. "I started telling her what the movie was about, and as soon as I mentioned the Winnebago Man, she started laughing. She said, 'You're not going to believe this but that clip got me through law school!' It seems that whenever she was stressed about a class or an exam, she'd get together with friends, watch Rebney in action and die laughing, and that helped her cope.

"I think this clip has been around so long for a reason. Since we premiered at SXSW in Austin, we've played the film at festivals in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and some places in South America. No matter where we are, people say, 'This reminds me so much of my uncle' or 'my brother.' Like with all the really good viral videos, you watch it and you think, 'You just can't make this stuff up.'"