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‘Yes Men’ say No to careless corps
Funniest anti-corporate film ever
By REILLY CAPPS
Writer
They
weren’t perfect impostors. Sometimes, their suits fit badly, and their
shoes weren’t shined. Sometimes, they gave weird eyerolls no real
spokesman ever would. They were business men at business conferences
who didn’t bring business cards.
But, for the most part, no one saw through the two “Yes Men.” Over and over again, they were able to fake their way into conferences and on to TV, pretend to be spokesmen for powerful lobbies, and punk huge corporations and the government.
“The Yes Men” is a hilarious and shocking movie, showing this weekend, including Friday at 9:15 p.m. at the Opera House. It’s like the “Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” if Jamie Kennedy were out to help poor people and the environment.
Their movie starts with Andy Bichlbaum posing as a spokesman for Dow Chemical. After he and Mike Bonanno made a fake Web site pretending they worked for Dow, the BBC invited them on TV. The BBC wanted them to talk about the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical disaster in India that killed enough people to fill up the Pepsi Center.
The BBC expected corporate blather and greenwash. What they got was the (false) announcement that DOW was giving $12 billion to Bhopal victims.
Indians were ecstatic. Dow’s stock dropped 3 percent.
The headlines screamed: “Corporate humiliation of a chemical giant.”
The BBC should have known. As a Dow spokesman, Bichlbaum had called himself Jude Finisterra. That’s Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and finis terra, the end of the Earth.
There’s a lot of that kind of thing at Mountainfilm, people who may be the last, best hope in the defense of the environment.
Bichlbaum will also speak Monday morning at a breakfast talk with another activist / impostor, Tim DeChristopher, who waltzed into an oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City and bought up $1.7 million worth of gas leases he had no way to pay for. His trickery helped block the land, some of which was near National Parks, from being drilled. Also Rudy Amenga-Etego, who was repeatedly jailed in Ghana for his environmental activism.
The forum asks the question: How much should you risk for something you believe in? Is lying the only way to counter the corporate spin and government ineptitude? Is it OK to lie if your motives are good?
It seems that the Yes Men were risking prosecution. But in the movie, at least, the Yes Men were never arrested or sued.
In fact, when they’re incognito, the Yes Men get real businessmen to fess up to staggering truths. “Whichever way you do this,” one man says to the fake Dow spokesman, “it’s going to cost some lives.” And when they pose as Halliburton reps with the hilarious, absurd idea to sell giant inflatable protection suits, almost like hamster balls, in the event of a disaster, a potential buyer says, basically: These are going to be expensive. But that’s OK. The people who really need them will buy them. And that’s what we want.
Mountainfilm is about inspiration, and the Yes Men have inspired regular people to pull pranks on corporate talking heads. In front of the L.A. Auto Show, enviros accosted the former CEO of General Motors, asking him to sign a pledge to be the world’s greenest car company. Of course he wouldn’t. “I think my speech spoke for itself, and I’m sorry you have to leave now,” Rick Wagoner said as he shoved the guy offstage.
But the press ate it up, and it was Wagoner who looked silly.
That’s the point: Although these Yes Men are dressing funny and saying ludicrous things, it’s the establishment who ends up looking like stooges. They end up admitting the truth: we’re not really committed to helping victims or the environment. We’re just corporate yes men. We’re just doing our job.
But, for the most part, no one saw through the two “Yes Men.” Over and over again, they were able to fake their way into conferences and on to TV, pretend to be spokesmen for powerful lobbies, and punk huge corporations and the government.
“The Yes Men” is a hilarious and shocking movie, showing this weekend, including Friday at 9:15 p.m. at the Opera House. It’s like the “Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” if Jamie Kennedy were out to help poor people and the environment.
Their movie starts with Andy Bichlbaum posing as a spokesman for Dow Chemical. After he and Mike Bonanno made a fake Web site pretending they worked for Dow, the BBC invited them on TV. The BBC wanted them to talk about the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical disaster in India that killed enough people to fill up the Pepsi Center.
The BBC expected corporate blather and greenwash. What they got was the (false) announcement that DOW was giving $12 billion to Bhopal victims.
Indians were ecstatic. Dow’s stock dropped 3 percent.
The headlines screamed: “Corporate humiliation of a chemical giant.”
The BBC should have known. As a Dow spokesman, Bichlbaum had called himself Jude Finisterra. That’s Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and finis terra, the end of the Earth.
There’s a lot of that kind of thing at Mountainfilm, people who may be the last, best hope in the defense of the environment.
Bichlbaum will also speak Monday morning at a breakfast talk with another activist / impostor, Tim DeChristopher, who waltzed into an oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City and bought up $1.7 million worth of gas leases he had no way to pay for. His trickery helped block the land, some of which was near National Parks, from being drilled. Also Rudy Amenga-Etego, who was repeatedly jailed in Ghana for his environmental activism.
The forum asks the question: How much should you risk for something you believe in? Is lying the only way to counter the corporate spin and government ineptitude? Is it OK to lie if your motives are good?
It seems that the Yes Men were risking prosecution. But in the movie, at least, the Yes Men were never arrested or sued.
In fact, when they’re incognito, the Yes Men get real businessmen to fess up to staggering truths. “Whichever way you do this,” one man says to the fake Dow spokesman, “it’s going to cost some lives.” And when they pose as Halliburton reps with the hilarious, absurd idea to sell giant inflatable protection suits, almost like hamster balls, in the event of a disaster, a potential buyer says, basically: These are going to be expensive. But that’s OK. The people who really need them will buy them. And that’s what we want.
Mountainfilm is about inspiration, and the Yes Men have inspired regular people to pull pranks on corporate talking heads. In front of the L.A. Auto Show, enviros accosted the former CEO of General Motors, asking him to sign a pledge to be the world’s greenest car company. Of course he wouldn’t. “I think my speech spoke for itself, and I’m sorry you have to leave now,” Rick Wagoner said as he shoved the guy offstage.
But the press ate it up, and it was Wagoner who looked silly.
That’s the point: Although these Yes Men are dressing funny and saying ludicrous things, it’s the establishment who ends up looking like stooges. They end up admitting the truth: we’re not really committed to helping victims or the environment. We’re just corporate yes men. We’re just doing our job.
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| MOUNTAINFILM Smuggling the truth out of a closed country |
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