WINNEBAGO MAN Opens Today In New York!
|
|
Location
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
143 East Houston Street
New York, NYUnited States
Today is Friday, July 9th, which means that New Yorkers can finally see the great documentary Winnebago Man. It’s playing at the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, and the Landmark Sunshine Cinema downtown. The movie’s star, Jack Rebney, will be at the Sunshine screenings tonight – which is already sold out – and tomorrow night.
This movie has my highest possible recommendation. It’s funny and perceptive, and even a little moving. If you have any interest in it at all, or even if you’re up for taking a gamble on a less-famous movie choice this weekend, I strongly encourage you to go as soon as possible. It’s only by supporting smaller movies that we get the chance to see more of them.
Here is my original rave review of Winnebago Man:
Winnebago Man is a documentary that follows the very likable director, Ben Steinbauer, in his quest to locate his own personal Great White Whale: Jack Rebney, the corporate spokesman made legendary in the intervening two decades by his colorful flameout on a Winnebago shoot in Iowa in the late 1980s. It’s not really a spoiler to announce that Ben does eventually find Jack, and what unfolds is way more dramatically satisfying than the by-the-numbers scripted films that are so often dumped onto screens. Jack is an amazing American character – sad and sharp and expertly-spoken and hilarious – and his story is plenty funny, but the method with which it is told is uncommon in its sensitivity and its ability to locate the humanity in unusual individuals.
This is the first real post-YouTube movie, in the way that it specifically addresses the 21st-century viral-video phenomenon that positively exploded when YouTube arrived in 2005. VHS tapes of “The Winnebago Man” were circulated by discriminating schadenfreude-craving collectors even before there was an internet, but if you mention Jack Rebney to most people, they’re well familiar with him through the “Winnebago Man” videos. Take a moment if you need now to go search him out on YouTube. (Amazingly to me, I’d never seen this one, though I’ve seen that grape-stepping lady at the vineyard fall down approximately two hundred times.)
What is so impressive about what Ben Steinbauer and his crew have done here is that, of course, they allow us to have a couple laughs at Jack Rebney’s expense, but they go way beyond that initial response; delving deeply into the effects that this kind of uninvited celebrity can have on a person’s life, while highlighting what makes this particular person so interesting. Jack Rebney is certainly absurd in most respects, but he’s also a sensitive human being with feelings and opinions and an absolutely fascinating and unique elocution. (Picture Hal Holbrook with the mouth of Eddie Murphy circa Raw.) The camera loves him and so does every audience who sees this movie. Jack deserves this expertly-crafted documentary, even if he never asked for it. He, and the filmmakers, make us consider why we’re so interested in these YouTube celebrities, and why, in the best cases, such as in the case of Jack Rebney, it has absolutely nothing to do with scorn or derision. In the case of Jack Rebney, it’s because he’s fucking funny as hell.
I beseech you to see this movie at the earliest possible opportunity, but not for my sake; do it for yourself. You will love it, and that’s a rare guarantee.
Visit the official site of the film here:
And read my collected postings on it here:
Comments
Post new comment