Dan Ollma
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the Yes Men, are behind the documentary The Yes Men Fix the World.
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StumbleUponKnown for impersonating corporate CEOs and spokesmen in a practice they call “identity correction,” Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the artist/activist duo known as the Yes Men, recently caused a stir by staging a hoax press conference as U.S. Chamber of Commerce executives announcing the chamber's newfound support of climate legislation.
Bichlbaum discussed the corporate pranksters' new documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World, which opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center.
Q: How much of a departure from your previous film, The Yes Men (2003), is The Yes Men Fix the World?
A: The first film was mainly an observational documentary about us. With this one we decided we wanted to make a real advocacy piece, one that would be both hilarious — make people laugh, get them falling in the aisles enjoying themselves so that it might reach a mass market — but that it would also make people really angry and wanting to do something and look at the ways that the big system that the World Trade Organization embodies … the big corporate system, the way it hurts people and why.
In the film, we get ourselves invited onto the British Broadcasting Corporation as the Dow Chemical Co. on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal catastrophe, and we take responsibility on Dow's behalf for the catastrophe, which they should do, because they bought the company that actually did it (Union Carbide), and something like 120,000 people are sick for life because of it, and nothing's ever been done. So we did it for them. We just showed how easy it would be. We went on the BBC … in front of 350 million viewers (and said), “We take full responsibility,” and a couple of things happened. The most instructive thing was that Dow's share price plunged — lost $2 billion because of that — and then it went right back up when it was revealed (that it was a hoax) like 20 minutes later.
And for us, that's sort of the key to why companies don't do the right thing. … A lot of activists go after CEOs or go after the management of companies and think that if we just communicate to these people what they're doing to the world, they'll change. But I think they know what they're doing to the world; they don't like it; and they can't change, because the rules of the game are written a certain way. And until we change those rules … we're doomed.
Our next target after that is global warming. We pose as (executives from) Halliburton and Exxon and unveil really hideous solutions to global warming to audiences of, in one case, insurance executives, and in the other case, oil people up in Canada, and really surprising things result. I won't spoil it for you, but we get across, I think in a visceral kind of way, how bad things could be and how little they care and how little they can care.
Q: Part of what's interesting about your hoaxes is the fact you can get away with them for a little while — they don't seem that far-fetched.
A: At one point, we're unveiling this bubble suit that's supposed to protect CEOs from any climate catastrophe. We have animations, and we're saying really horrible things like, “Even the great deluge was just an opportunity for Noah to monopolize the animals, and similarly, today, we have this great opportunity as long as we survive. So here's this thing to help us survive.” They just asked polite questions, like “Can it be used against terrorism?”
The movie starts to end with us actually advocating for a change in the rules of the game. Yeah, we've been making fun of these people, but really it's ourselves that we need to be making fun of for having these rules that allow companies to get away with things like the Bhopal catastrophe, keep leading toward global catastrophe. It's our fault, and we need to change the rules of the game, and we have to get up and do that.
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