The new film The Yes Men follows the wild performance/activist art exploits of former game developer Andy Bichlbaum, and media artist and teacher Mike Bonanno. The duo met online in 1996 and together set up the initial phony gwbush.com website. They continued to work together after that, setting out to infiltrate major corporate organizations like the World Trade Organization in order to shock and presumably enlighten the members by presenting views so extremist and right wing that they could only be seen as a parody. But it backfired: The Yes Men found that their loony ideas were not only accepted but admired by top CEOs the world over. The subsequent documentary, by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price, is fast-paced and fluid, taking full advantage of the current rage for left-leaning documentaries as the audience follows the political pranksters though their quixotic quest. The Weekly Dig recently spoke with The Yes Men about their particular brand of socially conscious comedy.
In the film, you said that Herb Albert was giving money to you guys. I'm assuming you mean Herb from A&M Records? Is he into this kind of thing?
Andy Bichlbaum: (Chokes) Yeah, he isn't, really; it's his foundation, so it's a bit of a misrepresentation. He started a foundation that gives money to artists, and we got nominated for the grant, and then a committee reviewed our application and gave us the money.
So he never knew anything about it?
AB: No, he definitely didn't, although we did have dinner with him. But he still didn't know (laughs), and we prefer to keep it that way.
But before that, you put your own money into it?
Mike Bonanno: It's not that much money, really. We think of what middle-class people do - they go on vacations once a year? We don't, so we just save that money and go on these ... I don't know, you can't really call them vacations, but maybe some kind of weird tourism, getting into places that people don't go usually.
You were strangely believable impersonating a member of the WTO.
AB: It's easy, because everybody there just takes it for granted that that's who you are. They give you feedback and cues, and you can't really mess up. Like, the first time there, I did basically everything I could to mess up.
MB: It's fun! Let's tell people we want to auction votes off to the highest bidder! Mmkay? You know, a free market in democracy. Let's tell people we're gonna outlaw the siesta in Spain, because it gets in the way of work. Let's tell people we want to outlaw lunch! Because that gets in the way of work. Let's tell people that we want to make a 3-foot golden phallus that you can use to give electric shocks to workers in the Third World, and they agree with that as well.
Yeah, and that slavery would've priced itself out of existence if they would've just left it alone.
AB: And it turns out that argument has been made by real conservative thinkers. Believe it or not.
Do you do this for fun?
MB: The thing is, fun and politics aren't necessarily oxymorons. They can exist together. You can try to have fun and try to have a social purpose at the same time. And if we couldn't have fun doing it, it would just be much more difficult for us to commit all of our time to it. (Laughs) All off our free time. Um.
AB: Twenty years of our lives.
MB: It's, a lot of it is about play, you know, having like, being playful with these very serious ideas. And also trying to access people through a sense of fun, you know? Because a lot of people who we've talked to wouldn't really be interested in talking to us about politics, but they are interested in the fun part, and they get involved in the politics through the fun part.
Do you think that's something that might be missing from the way the Democrats are doing things? You know, that sense of fun?
AB: Hmm. There's this way in which the Republicans are really doing some kind of experimental theater. It's like they're just going with it, you know? They're just all, “Aw, fuck the truth, we're just gonna try this out.” And it's fun for them, I think, in this crazy way. You know, like, they have all these insane convictions about the End Times, and they have these insane convictions that we're in a world war now and that only a fearless leader can save us from the infidel, really, and not even religious people will say that. Um, but I think basically it's just this idea of like going for something, you know, doing it. Being on this crusade. And the Democrats are concerned about truth.
Do you think you guys might have influenced things in a bad way by giving these people ideas?
MB: That's always a danger. You know there's this Danish [activist] guy, [who] went to an arms fair in China with a fictional weapon to see if he could get enough people to buy it. It was a gun, a sniper rifle that would fire an ID tracking chip, a GPS ID tracking chip into protestors so you could follow them anywhere they went, and, you know, do away with them if you need to. So he went to this arms fair in China and people went, “Yeah, great idea; how can we help you develop it? And so when that happens, you gotta say, “Oh shit (laughs); did I just come up with a really good idea?”
What happens if Bush doesn't get reelected. Is that going to change the amount of outrage that you guys can provoke?
AB: Um, yeah; we hope it increases it. And a lot of people are fortunately talking about that - about how Kerry, if he wins, he's just like, you know, that's just the signal to double efforts to change policy. Because at least then we'll have somebody who's part of Western history, and you know, part of the history of politics in the world, rather than this totally insane wildcard that we can't ever hope to affect. Kerry, you know, maybe he could respond to enough popular pressure, whereas Bush, it's pretty clear, is on a Messianic thing. But you know, we're thinking of changing our entire campaign to be against Kerry the day he wins.