At 76, Jack Rebney speaks in rich, Orson Wellesian tones and has a gift for cursing that even the old master might have admired. Trained as a broadcaster but reduced, late in his career, to starring in in-house corporate videos, he’s developed a peculiar persona: That of a quintessential disappointment artist. Rebney’s extensive outtakes from a 1988 Winnebago marketing video suggest a man whose explosive reactions to the indignity of his predicament have taken on a performative zeal. Those outtakes, which became a hot commodity in the VHS underground before going viral on YouTube in 2005, inspired Winnebago Man, an earnest and occasionally poignant attempt to penetrate Rebney’s potent man-on-fire image and explore the impact of becoming an Internet sideshow.
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REVIEW: Winnebago Man Explores Making and Breaking of a Viral Video Superstar
