The first documentary (that I’m aware of, at least) directly inspired by an unexpected YouTube hit (although I had hoped Thriller in Manilla was going to be about this instead of this), Ben Steinbauer’s Winnebago Man is a portrait of Jack Rebney, the Winnebago salesman whose profanity-filled outtakes for a commercial turned him into a reluctant YouTube star (and, apparently, a subject of controversy — his Wikipedia page has been deleted twice, once for abusive entries, once for incorporating “patent nonsense.”) Below the jump, the original Winnebago Man viral video. Plus, Steinbauer’s answers to The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone, in which he confesses to being Austin’s town slut, and also shares a memorable moment involving puke. …Read more
Ladies and gentlemen, a new meme is born: the literal version of the 80’s music video. This isn’t the first from Youtuber DustoMcNeato — his literal version of A-Ha’s Take On Me scored over a million views in three weeks. The above video is currently just over 100k.
The success is no surprise. The videos follow a well proven formula for viral video success. Take a simple concept that produces both absurd humor and a sense of “why didn’t I think of that?”, combine it with catchy music, keep it around five minutes or less, and you’ve got a viral hit on your hands. If you don’t believe the formula is that simple, go back and re-watch: OK Go - Here It Goes Again, Evolution of Dance, Daft Hands - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Crazy Indian Video… Buffalaxed!, and I could go on.
I’d like to see DustoMcNeato milk this a little longer, but move on once the imitators start coming in droves. 80’s music videos work pretty well, but what about song and dance numbers from classic Hollywood musicals? Some of those are even more absurd than a chimp in a library.
It’s no secret that Obama is ahead in the polls. Democrats don’t want to jinx it by saying they’ve got it in the bag, and Republicans don’t want to loose hope that an upset is still possible. Still, at this late stage in the game, a lot is being said about the endorsements Obama is getting. Colin Powell and The Chicago Tribune are both big ones, but smaller endorsements are coming out of the woodwork as well. Neil Cicierega, internet-famous for his Potter Puppet Pals YouTube videos, has finally broken his silence and thrown his support behind Barack Obama. It seems like the above video also has something to do with Pokémon, and it may or may not cause epileptic seizures. Two observations:
One, I just did some math and found out that 18 year-olds who will be heading to the poles for the first time next month, those all-important young voters, were six years old when Pokémon made its American debut! Six! I feel really old now. I guess appealing to voters’ ironic/nostalgic connection to Pokémon is not so silly after all.
Two, I can’t help but wonder if this sort of thing will exist four years from now. Let’s just assume Obama is going to win (according to some polls, he has a 10 point lead with less than two weeks to go). Assuming his first term goes relatively well, can he expect the same kind of grass-roots support, especially from hipsters? How much of this kind of support is based on his policies, and how much is based on the fact that he’s not George W. Bush? Come 2012, will John Cleese, Matt Damon, and Hayden Penettierre produce viral videos where the message is, “Let’s keep things the same!” It’s hard to imagine.
Yesterday, MEAN Magazine released (or, sent out a press release about) their latest viral video, a “remake” of Bad Lieutenant starring SNL’s Bill Hader (”Eat your heart out, Werner Herzog,” reads the explanatory title card.) It’s okay. The best part is Hader’s final, weepy line, “I’m such a bad lieutenant!”
But more interesting is a MEAN video that I missed, the above “Emma Stone in Busby Berkeley 2.0.” With Stone (Jonah Hill’s love interest from Superbad) wearing a vintage bathing suit and staring coquettishly at the camera amidst digital kaleodoscopic chaos, it’s less Busby Berkely than a retro-porn spin on Esther Williams. But it’s pretty!
NewTeeVee, the web video journal that I freelance for, has just launched a sub page called NewTeeVee Station, which pulls editorial reviews from the main site, as well as reviews written specifically for NewTeeVee Station, into an IMDb-like database with cast and crew information, user comments, and more.
Yes, some of my reviews are included on the site, but I’m not posting this here on Spout purely as self-promotion. Obviously, there’s more overlap every day between the world of web video and what’s going on in indie film/film blog land, and I think a project like this does more to emphasize and strengthen those connections than diminish them. Plus, there are review on the site of work that should be familiar to Spouties, like Joe Swanberg’s Young American Bodies and Rob Parrish’s Next to Heaven and Micahel Cera’s Clark and Michael. Yes, I wrote those reviews, but I had absolutely nothing to do with these entires on Ze Frank and Star Wars Kid and Lazy Sunday, the latter of which contains Liz Shannon Miller’s immortal reminder that “2005 wasn’t that long ago. And it’s important to remember that back then, Hollywood had no idea what it was doing.”
No, it’s not just an urban internet rumor: winners of Webby Awards really are restricted to five word speeches. Last night at the Webby Film and Video Awards––the slightly lower-key web video-centric run-up to tonight’s big real super Webbys proper––host Judah Friedlander threatened to kill any winner who went over the limit. I guess the finest minds in the world of web video live in fear of comedians with gimmicky hats, because by my count, only one winner went over, and Friedlander decided to let her slide on the grounds that she was “pretty hot.”
So: it now falls to us to hand out our own awards, in our own totally made-up categories, for the best and worst use of the alloted five words of the night. The nomination and selection process was extremely arbitrary; all voting was done by me whilst sitting in the back row of the show, and the results were undoubtedly influenced by the 2.5 glasses of complementary chardonnay that I enjoyed at the pre-show reception. The full list of winners and losers after the jump; the winning video from one of our Best Speech winners is embedded above.
You knowaboutthatCloverfieldthing, right? The mysterious trailer for the mysterious J.J. Abrams movie that debuted last weekend in front of the not-at-all mysterious Transformers movie? I honestly haven’t been paying much attention, until a little birdie pinged me about the clip embedded below, which “answers” the mystery of what kind of monster is responsible for the destruction of Manhattan. I’ll give you a hint: the same cultural construct figures prominently in one of my favorite movies of all time (and it’s not Judy Garland).
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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The first documentary (that I’m aware of, at least) directly inspired by an unexpected YouTube hit (although I had hoped 
