For the last 20 years, notorious activists The Yes Men (Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum) have staged outrageous hoaxes to hijack public dialogue worldwide about the issues of the day. In their third cinematic outing (after The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix The World), they are now well into their 40s, and their mid-life crises are threatening to drive them out of activism forever—even as they prepare to take on the biggest challenge they've ever faced, climate change. Frustrated by each other, and worried they can't make a difference anymore, how can they keep fighting the world's most urgent threat?
Revealing the real people behind the ruses, their latest film is as much a character study as it is a thrilling ride depicting their latest interventions against corporate greed. Following their lives for over four years, The Yes Men Are Revolting reveals their creative process, hilarious strategies, and personal conflicts while they juggle the demands of getting older, holding down jobs, and maintaining some shred of personal lives.
From villages in Uganda's Karamoja region to the toxic oil fields in Canada's tar sands, these iconoclastic revolutionaries take on big oil, lobbyists, Wall Street, and the U.S. government, armed with nothing but thrift-store suits and a lack of shame. Overcoming personal obstacles to deliver uproarious actions of global significance, The Yes Men deliver a hopeful message about ordinary people breaking through the paralysis to take back their planet.
Q: You have worked with The Yes Men for a long time. How did you meet them and how did you come to work together?
A: I went to both college and graduate school with Igor (Mike) so I've known him since he was 18. When Igor and Jacques (Andy) first started working together, I was around to watch the beginning of their collaboration. Right from the start they were inseparable, like two halves of one person. The first action they ever drafted me for was in the late '90s, back when they called themselves RTMark. They had me pose as a journalist from CNET to interview the corporate officers of Etoys at their headquarters. It was a blast and I was hooked.
Q: What was the challenge of making a comedy about climate change?
A: Climate change is one of those issues that can cause you to stay in bed all day and give up hope, and so can a mid-life crisis. It was difficult to address both these issues while keeping the overall tone of the film light. But humor is one of the best weapons to address topics that seem overwhelming - it makes them feel approachable. Of course the actions are conceived to be funny—whether it's a fake polar bear on a barge in Amsterdam or getting defense contractors to join a dance in a hotel conference room. And luckily both The Yes Men are naturally funny and able to improvise in a scene. For me, the best comedy also includes pathos, and it was essential in this film to show that The Yes Men actions don't always succeed. Failure can be funny, and activism always involves failure, even if overall social movements tend to succeed. I think we care about the guys even more when we experience their struggles in both a comedic and realistic light.
Q: What does it feel like to direct Mike and Andy's stunts, given the degree of improvisation in situations that would seem to be impossible to plan in advance?
A: Each stunt involved a copious amount of planning, definitely more than we could show in the film. There was the process of The Yes Men conceptualizing the action, creating fake characters with bios, websites, email addresses, and then the fake characters communicating with real people for an extended period of time via email and phone. Sometimes a stunt required pulling a number of elements together to create a spectacle. For me the biggest concern was always how we were going to shoot each one. What kind of cameras did we need for each scenario? Were we outside, or if we were doing interiors what kind of available light did we have? Did we need to use hidden cameras? Was it possible to get good sound? Things often didn't go smoothly, and we usually needed to improvise. During stunts I was always worried we would be stopped midway and we wouldn't get to shoot the scene we needed. So for me, directing a stunt required planning for every contingency as best as we could - decoy camera cards, aliases for the crew, lawyers on call, getaway cars. Knowing these plans were in place made it easier for me to wing it when things started to go haywire. The guys weren't really into contingency plans; they just went for it. But if I was involved from the beginning, I tried to prepare for whatever could happen, it made me calmer during an action.
Q: In many ways, The Yes Men ARE REVOLTING is a more personal film than its predecessor The Yes Men FIX THE WORLD, with more biographical elements. Did that develop during the shoot or was that planned from the beginning?
A: We knew from early on that we wanted to make this film a more personal story, especially to differentiate it from the other two. The Yes Men make their work look effortless. But I wanted to offer audiences the same insight I've gained from being around them a long time. Revealing the labor, doubt and struggle behind the scenes is intended to help audiences connect with two characters who are more like us than we realize. They don't wear superhero capes as they jet around the globe confronting injustice; rather, Igor and Jacques face obstacles every day that are similar to our own. And as we watch The Yes Men decide to keep going, hopefully we'll realize our own ability to fight back and create change.
Q: How do you approach working with such heterogeneous materials from different sources and in different formats, from undercover footage to snippets from networks news shows?
A: The challenge when working with so many different kinds of material is to keep track of the story, and in this film we were tracking two narratives, one about climate change and the other about The Yes Men staying inspired as activists. Based on what equipment was available for each action, the film was shot on literally dozens of different cameras and formats. We had a number of researchers in the U.S. and Europe gathering archive footage to help tell the climate story, and a Los Angeles based animation team, Six Point Harness, creating mini-climate stories. The Yes Men also shared their personal archive with the film, which adds a more intimate layer. With so many types of material, our post-production process was fairly arduous. I worked with the post team to create as many organizational systems for the footage as possible, to create continuity and order for the hundreds of hours of material. Over the course of editing, we worked with several editors and many assistant editors who collaborated with us to construct the story out of so many disparate elements—they are really the unsung heroes of the film.
Q: As a producer as well as director, how much effort goes into working ogether with the various activists and groups involved in Mike and Andy's stunts?
A: There's a coordinated effort to work with various activists and groups for most actions, and Jacques and Igor took the lead to organize this due to their pre-existing relationships. I facilitated communication between The Yes Men, the activists, and the film crew to ensure we were able to shoot the necessary story beats for the film, so the action would make sense to a film audience.
CREATIVE TEAM Laura Nix, Director and Producer Laura Nix directed the documentary The Light In Her Eyes, about a Syrian Quran school for women, which premiered at IDFA in 2011, was broadcast on the series POV on PBS, and toured the world as part of Sundance's Film Forward program. Her other feature directing credits include the critically acclaimed fiction feature The Politics of Fur, which played in over 70 festivals internationally and won multiple awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest, and the feature documentary Whether You Like It or Not: The Story of Hedwig, for New Line Cinema. Nix co-wrote the Emmy-nominated PBS doc California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, about the former state governor. Her nonfiction television work has appeared onHBO, IFC, Planet Green, and the History Channel. She has given talks about filmmaking at numerous events and universities, including IDFA, Harvard University, and panels for the International Documentary Association. Based in Los Angeles, she's currently developing a documentary feature about ballroom dancers in San Gabriel Valley, a predominantly Chinese suburb of Los Angeles.
The Yes Men, Directors and Producers The Yes Men impersonate big-time corporate criminals to draw attention to their crimes against humanity and the environment. Their outrageous satirical interventions at business events, on the internet, television, and in the streets form the basis of two award-winning documentaries, The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix the World, festival favorites in Toronto, Berlin, SXSW and others. Their work has been shown in the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, ARS Electronica, and other art exhibitions. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including Creative Time's Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, Grierson Documentary Award, Berlinale Panorama Audience Award, the United Nations Association Film Festival Grand Jury Award, Best Documentary Award at HBO Comedy Arts Festival, and the Audience Award at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. They are the authors of several books and many articles, and lecture internationally on art and social change. They are the founders of a nonprofit, the Yes Lab, and the Action Switchboard, an online platform for generating real-life direct actions in the service of social movements.
