Tony's View

The famous Tony has a thinly-viewed Facebook fan page, called simply Winnebago Man Tony. He answered a few questions from me early on, that I thought added interesting insight into the story behind the outtake videos.

First, at the time of the filming, Tony was *not* an "unpaid intern," but a recent graduate who was a full employee.

Second, the filming was done not by Winnebago directly, but by a company called Cycle Sat. Cycle Sat was a fully owned subsidiary Winnebago purchased in 1986, and Tony was an employee with them. I believe originally, Cycle Sat was an advertising distribution company, but I gather Winnebago had expanded them to become a full ad production shop. The gist of the story, then, is that the promotional video was to be one of Cycle Sat's projects: written, directed, and shot by their team.

However, at the last minute, Winnebago directly hired Jack, and foisted them on the Cycle Sat team. Now, the dynamic makes sense: Jack is an outsider, a victim of palace politics. He's been brought in by the "overlords" and his mere presence is stepping on toes. He's nervous and probably feels like he's got to do all he can to assert his authority. His nervousness and this untenable position undoubtedly fueled his discomfort which is evident in his tirades.

And thus the outtake videos. Of which, by the way, there are two. The first was made by the director shortly after the shoot, and features some shots of him directly mocking Rebney's mannerisms. Tony doesn't know the director's motivation for creating that video, but the documentary does say it was used to get Rebney fired. That director has refused to have anything to do with Steinbauer's documentary--he wasn't one of the ones interviewed in the film, and he hasn't come to any showings for Q&A like the others. It sounds like 20+ years later, he still has a chip on his shoulder against Jack.

The second video was made by Tony months after the shoot was over. He claims he did it primarily to work on his editing skills. Much of his video features the clips of Jack yelling at him (including many we hadn't seen before, that were featured in the documentary--"Tony get me a battery!" "Eff off Tony!" and the montage of Jack yelling "Tony!" about twenty times in a row).

Over the years, sections of both were edited together to make one of the several well-known versions. At one time Tony had the two original unedited versions available on his fan page, though they're not there anymore.

But in any case, if Tony's take on this is correct, it's much more clear now what was really going on those few weeks in 1988. It's really kind of taken the joy out of the outtakes for me, because it comes across as mean-spirited, especially the original director's version (which makes up most of the well-known version we've all seen). It seems like Jack just got stuck in a bad position.

It would have been nice I think if Steinbauer had gotten those details more correct because I think it would have added more empathy for Jack.

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As a reward for your bravery, you will both find permanent homes on adult contemporary radio.