Winnebago Man

Winnebago Man is a documentary about Jack Rebney, a former television reporter who became an unlikely internet celebrity after outtakes from a promotional video he made for Winnebago motorhomes began circulating unofficially. In the footage, an increasingly exasperated Rebney struggles through take after take, swearing at the heat, the flies and his own mistakes. The clips were passed around on VHS tapes long before they spread online, turning him into a cult figure known to many as "the Winnebago Man" while he himself remained unaware of his fame. The film follows director Ben Steinbauer as he sets out to track Rebney down, eventually finding him living in seclusion, and builds toward a meeting between the man and the reputation that grew without his consent.

Steinbauer directed and wrote the screenplay with Malcolm Pullinger; the two also produced alongside Joel Heller. The film is Steinbauer's first feature, and it stays close to its subject rather than widening into a general study of internet culture. Rebney appears as himself, as do Steinbauer, pranksters Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, media scholar Douglas Rushkoff and Charlie Sotelo. Running 85 minutes, it was released in the United States in July 2010.

Audiences have responded warmly: on IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from roughly 5,200 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.7 from a much smaller pool of under a hundred ratings. The wider sample on IMDb, together with the volume of votes, suggests a durable following rather than a passing reaction.