Winnebago Man (1988)NSFW

Longer version

About

In 1988, Jack Rebney, a former bradcast journalist, was shooting a promotional video for Winnebago Industries. the shoot was tough on Rebney, who frequently threw vulgar tantrums. The crew assembled all his outtakes on to a VHS to get him fired, and it worked.

Spread

The VHS was copied and spread amongst people virally even before the internet.

Enter Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, two longtime friends who collected strange videos anywhere they could find them. One of the videos they found was “Winnebago Man” and they put it on display in their Found Footage Festival in 2004.

The first website to host this video is hard to tell, the first instance of it being uploaded on Youtube was by a user named justinosman, but it has less than 2,000 views. The most popular video of it on Youtube was uploaded by user giantmonster and it is the one on the top of this page.

Google Trends results

Blue = Winnebago Man, Red = Jack Rebney

Film

In 2009 a documentary was released about Jack Rebney by director Ben Steinbauer. The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX and it won several awards. It won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival in April 2009, the Audience Award for Best Documentary at CineVegas Film Festival in June 2009 and it was voted a Top Ten Audience Favorite at the Hot Docs Film Festival in May 2009.

Rocketboom covering the panel for the film at South by Southwest Film Festival.

Remixes