The Yes Men Fix The World
Directed by Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, and Kurt Engfehr. Written by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. With Reggie Watts, Mike Bonanno, and Andy Bichlbaum. (NR)
In The Yes Men Fix The World, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno play a hell of a game of dress-up. With just a few business suits, some phony websites and a great grasp of corporate doublespeak, these sly satirist activists con their way into positions of power. Imagine a Michael Moore movie with more subversion and less grandstanding, and you're almost there.
Their method is simple: create a slew of fake websites—for Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Exxon, etc.—whose contact information leads back to The Yes Men, the name they've given their troupe of theatrical pranksters. When big media comes calling, use the free press coverage to push a message of corporate responsibility and ethics that will almost certainly be at odds with the company's real-world behavior. The duo's movie is a kind of greatest hits collection.
It starts with an audacious hijacking on the 20th anniversary of the deadly Bhopal catastrophe. Invited to appear on the BBC—who believed that Bichlbaum was "Jude Finisterra," a Dow spokeman whose name manages to reference lost causes and the end of the world—the Yes Men craft an extravagant apology to the people of Bhopal, along with a promise to liquidate Dow assets to fund payments to the afflicted. Within 30 minutes, the company's stock is down two billion dollars, as panicked shareholders rush to sell before the humanitarian plan takes effect.
From there—arguably the troupe's biggest coup—the movie bounces from one caper to another, tagging along as the pair interview free-market think tanks, expose shady real-estate practices in post-Katrina New Orleans, and introduce oil conference attendees to Vivoleum, a new biofuel that will be made from the victims of catastrophic climate change. The attendees then light their commemorative "Reggie" candles, made from "the flesh of an Exxon janitor" and cast in his likeness.
Of the pair (they work with a behind the scenes crew that helps pull off the pranks), it's Bichlbaum who's most often in the lion's den, cast as the corporate shill in just about all the gags. But curiously, their most successful piece of theater is the one in which they play the smallest physical role—a neat piece of wish-fulfillment magic on a grand scale that is too special a surprise to reveal here.
The simplicity of their fraud is outrageous. And if it often seems unbelievable, that's often the point: that we're all too ready to listen to anyone with a suit and a stage. Yet I can't help but wonder who The Yes Men hope to reach with their film, and if it might contain a fatal flaw. Their activism has enormous merit, but will anyone not already on their side pay to go see it?
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Also this week: With a new generation of movie buffs coming of age during the reign of online social networks, it seems like an opportune time to take a moment to review some of the highs and lows in the Facebook offerings of local film-related businesses.
It may seem surprising at first that the least interesting—and least useful—are those pages devoted to local theaters. Hoping to get fresh updates about shows at Amherst Cinema or Pleasant Street Theater? The most recent update is for a movie that screened in September. It's even worse for Cinemark's Friday Night Rewind, unless you're interested in what the popular midnight series screened in 2008. Part of the problem is that these sorts of sites are often started by well-meaning employees who move on and leave the site to wither, or overenthusiastic film fans who quickly tire of the massive amount of updating a cinema site requires. For news and showtimes, official sites are always the way to go.
One page that has kept up to date covers the Academy of Music in Northampton. In addition to viewing a current schedule, visitors can also peruse a collection of photos and handbills from the theater's long history, including a classic advertisement for the famed illusionist Blackstone and his "Company of 30 Mostly Girls." There's room for improvement—or at least a bit more pizzazz—but administrator Brian Foote adds enough updates to keep fans in the know. (Not everyone on Facebook is happy with the Academy, however; a group called "The new scrolling LED Academy Of Music sign is an eyesore" has brought together six angry citizens.)
But the most compelling pages—the ones you might find yourself checking in on even when you're not interested in seeing a movie—belong to area video stores. Tim and Liz Jenks of Easthampton's Pick Your Flick are continually letting their customers know what they're watching: in one 24-hour period, Ghost Dad leads to Ghost Dog and winds up at Hotel for Dogs. They also offer a place for customers to suggest new films for the store.
Not surprisingly, it's Northampton's Pleasant Street Video that has the most active Web presence; the store has always been a de facto community center where people come together to talk politics or watch a Red Sox game, and it's the same way online. Old friends and neighbors drop in, and the staff posts frequent updates about new releases and whatever bit of online mayhem has caught their attention that day. It's a warm, inviting place peopled by a friendly and intelligent crowd—the polar opposite of the equivalent Movie Gallery page, where outraged employees rant about the company's business practices—and a great example of why independent video stores are still vital in a Netflix world.
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Back in the real world, two special events come to Northampton this weekend. First is a Friday night screening of Orange Revolution, which shows at 7 p.m. at the Media Education Foundation. A documentary look at one of the most dramatic political dramas of our time, it charts the remarkable recent history of Ukraine's rigged presidential election. When the victory of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko—famously poisoned on the campaign trail—was voided by a corrupt government, over a million citizens took to the streets to protest the stolen election. Immediately afterward, director Steve York flew to capital city Kiev to capture the movement as it unfolded.
On Saturday, the 1952 cult noir Kansas City Confidential comes to Pleasant Street Theater as part of the Zero Hour Films NOIRvember midnight movie series. A proto-Reservoir Dogs, it's the tale of a heist's aftermath. When an ex-cop gone rotten frames an innocent man for the crime, patsy Joe Rolfe tracks the crew to Mexico on a quest for revenge. Once there he infiltrates the gang as one of their own—and falls for the ringleader's daughter along the way. Co-starring classic screen villain Lee Van Cleef, Kansas City Confidential is as dark and cold as an open grave.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
