Winnebago Man is a great example of how a documentary can be wildly entertaining and insightful at the same time. It is an excellent examination of what celebrity has become in the 21st Century.

The film got its start from aspiring filmmaker Ben Steinbauer’s curiosity about the viral videos with Jack Rebney, aka The Winnebago Man, aka The Angriest Man in the World. In the late 1980s, Rebney created an industrial video promoting Winnebago. Copies of the profanity-laced outtakes from the video were circulated hand-to-hand back in the VHS days and later surfaced on YouTube where it became incredibly popular. Steinbauer set out to find Rebney to see what became of this man and how he felt about being an Internet celebrity.

Winnebago Man is equal parts hilarious, touching and enlightening. The tension between Steinbauer and his sometimes reluctant subject give the film plenty of drama. Steinbauer treats Rebney with great respect and the film humanizes Rebney and implicitly raises the question about the humanity of the people who populate the Internet.

The early part of the film briefly and cogently explores the impact of such media on the Internet and interviews noted media critic Douglas Rushkoff.