NEW JEWISH FILMMAKING PROJECT

As many of us meditate the possibilities, the impossibility, the complexities, simplicities and strategies that factor in to building a world without greed, without corruption, without shady, immoral and truth-dodging swindling . . . The Yes Men embark on a mission. Or rather, a series of missions. Under false names and distorted objectives, The Yes Men enter the conference room adorned with camera-embedded glasses and Gilda the Golden Skeleton. They prepare to address bankers with a ravishing display of ethics that have been flushed down the toilet. . . . As I may have sat in my current-events class, watching a PowerPoint on the endless perils of the world, The Yes Men were presenting PowerPoints designed to annihilate those perils. Through an appearance on BBC, bearing news from DOW Chemical that’s too good to be true, their method in finding a path to a better world is to simply concoct one: presenting what corporations “should do” and airing “truth-telling where normally there would only be lies” (words of co-director Andy Bichlbaum) — the world finds that it is not impossible to venture into the realm of Right. That corporations could, if willing to lose a bit of net worth, undertake the responsibility of correcting their (lethal) errors and help those affected on ground level. But do we know if that message has penetrated the hard skulls of CEOs?

Luckily for us, The Yes Men have made (another) film.

In watching The Yes Men Fix the World, one is stumped with the fact that these “two guys with cheap suits” are able to pull off such large-scale stunts without lawsuits or even time-in-jail. It reminds me, slightly, of a family trip to Yosemite in 2004.

We exuberantly had set out on a rafting trip, a group of us. After waiting in line for an hour in the smoldering sun, my parents and uncle were (very rudely) told that all raft-riders must be present to rent their boats. My uncle, thinking fast, described their missing company: a 400 pound man who was unable to make the trek to the rental hut and required two rafts to stay afloat. After much fuss, and much rudeness on the part of the raft-leasers, my parents and uncle returned with two rafts.

We floated down the river.

In the late afternoon as we turned a corner nearing the end of our route, we were suddenly told to get out of our raft by a walkie-talkie-bearing young woman on land. She began a long speech, threatening us for misrepresentation-of-our-party and proceeding to call the cops. We waited, we waited an hour for the park police, under an almost sunless sky. A girl in our group began to shiver vigorously. My uncle, a doctor, had her lie down on the sand. My cousin and I had begun to cry for fear of being arrested. The young woman had inched away, continuing to mutter into her walkie-talkie, looking into the horizon for the police. My uncle proclaimed the girl was coming down with hypothermia.

Being as we had paid for the two rafts, we simply decided to leave. With much protesting on the part of the young woman (who insisted the girl was only slightly cold and that the police were on their way), we made our way across the river, loaded into our nearby car and the fuss was left far behind us.

I suppose, after writing this, it may seem to have very little to do with The Yes Men, but it is a mini-display of the empty words you may find in threats. Authorities may consist even of a raft-park intern, may be big or small, but often those who have caught a misbehav-er will inflate themselves with power.  In The Yes Men Fix the World, there were situations where they found themselves exposed and confronted by angry officials of all sizes. These authorities may come down with a hard hand and may have the capacity to execute, but the Yes Men were not cowed.

In a Q & A with Andy Bichlbaum, the co-director of The Yes Men Fix the World, he revealed that upon approaching numerous lawyers, the advice they received varied: some said “yes, it is very illegal, don’t do it,” and others, “no, it is completely within your rights.” The Yes Men chose to follow the latter. Andy also suggested the reason lawyers had not come knocking at their door was for publicity purposes. It was wiser to avoid drawing additional attention to the issues that had already wounded them.

The Yes Men Fix the World will, I think, spark many imaginations. Although reading this, one may think: The Yes Men = Borat + Michael Moore, The Yes Men Fix the World most definitely offers its own path of inspiration, exploration and revelation, guiding us into the depths of their Underground Headquarters and unfolding mental cavities.

The Yes Men Fix the World will be released in theaters October 7^th. If you feel inclined, you may follow in the footsteps of The Yes Men by pursuing your own quests of “uncovery” that may feed into the fixing of the world. You may also scrutinize a brief interview we conducted with Andy Bichlbaum at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which we will build on in October:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJbgcIebwE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdLU451MJk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKcqyICSckk