'Yes' men tell all

We were supposed to interview the Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) in front of their Bush Bus to be parked in front of the Ritz Five. But the bus broke down in Cleveland, so we met with the two prankster protesters at the Four Seasons.

In "The Yes Men," the men portray representatives of the World Trade Organization and travel the globe giving offensive, slightly nonsensical speeches to economists, manufacturers, etc., who frequently lap up the talks as WTO gospel.

One particular scene, in which Bichlbaum wears a gold phallus and explains it away as an off-site management device of the future is too ridiculous to be believed.

And yet, it is believed.

For more on the Yes Men, go to www.theyesmen.org.

Q: What are the Yes Men doing at the Four Seasons? Should you be staying at a hostel or a Super 8?

Andy: It's out of our control. We're not actually staying here. They thought that you would like this.

Mike: We're staying at the Comfort Inn. Seriously.

Q: OK, seriously. Has the success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" spurred a political documentary revival and helped with your film getting a release?

Andy: This was bought before "Fahrenheit 9/11" was released.

Mike: Really I think "Bowling for Columbine" was a big influence on the market. Because "Bowling for Columbine" was bringing in more money than any other documentary in history and people were suddenly saying, "Whoa, there's a market for these things." And all of the ones that are being released now were purchased before "Fahrenheit" had its great success. But it is still Michael Moore's fault that people are going to be able to see this.

Andy: If we want to look at prime causes, it's George Bush, because in a different political context Michael Moore may not have made "Bowling for Columbine."

Q: So is documentary filmmaking sort of the new folk- singing?

Andy: Yeah, that sounds good. It is in a way because that's what people do more than anything else now is go the movies.

Mike: And a lot of documentarians are carrying the torch for political causes and trying to get in depth because there isn't that much room in the television media for exploring these stories in depth - and people are craving that right now. In a culture where everyone gathers their information from the television, it's a natural step to have something that has more information.

At this point, Mike's and Andy's lunches arrived. Twenty-dollar cheesesteaks from the Four Seasons kitchen (paid for by MGM). They seemed embarrassed.

Andy: They're huge.

Q: So you guys aren't vegans, too?

Mike: No. Not that we know of. Maybe after this. Can you stay and help us eat this?

Q: Why did you pick the World Trade Organization as your target for ridicule and not the Environmental Protection Agency or another group?

Andy: It was in 1999 around the time of the Seattle meeting when all these protesters were converging on Seattle and we weren't able to make it, so as a sorry substitute we decided to put up a Web site. And we did it like we had done with the gwbush.com Web site where we made it look just like the real campaign site but have a lot of misleading - well, not misleading, correctly leading, what's the opposite of misleading - honest information about Bush. Instead of claiming he's [Texas'] ecology governor, he'd actually be proud of making Texas the most polluted state in the country.

Mike: So the idea was to infuse his campaign with a little bit of honesty. Back in 1999 it was considerably less dire but he still needs a lot of identity correction.