You would never imagine that people would be so easy to fool. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are surrounded by paraphernalia related to their organization, the Yes Men: T-shirts, stickers, Vote for Bush pamphlets and credentials for the Republican National Convention.
It's a wonder these two very liberal activists could magically become representatives of the World Trade Organization just by putting on suits. They at least managed to get into the Republican National Convention in New York.
"We went on the floor and wandered around the whole convention floor," Bichlbaum said. "We were happy we did because we stumbled across this thing."
Bonanno pulled out a stapled script.
"Exhibit A," Bonanno said.
"The script for Tuesday," Bichlbaum finished.
"Two hundred and twenty pages of absolute strangeness," Bonanno said. "You always know all of these things are scripted, but when you actually find the script it's amazing. We found it in the control room; the door had been left open. We're not supposed to have this document."
Bonanno thumbs through the script.
"Every pause in the speech is pre-programmed; they go through these so carefully," Bichlbaum said. "And there's applause, that's pre-programmed, and when there's a vote, the outcome is written down in the script."
Bonanno has found the part he was looking for. He reads from the text, overacting the parts.
"'The chair recognizes the delegate from New Hampshire for the purpose of offering a motion,'" Bonanno reads. "'Delegate from floor: 'I move that this convention will adjourn until Wednesday, September 1, 2004.'"
Bonanno turns the page and continues reading.
"'The question occurs on the motion of the delegate from New Hampshire. All those in favor will signify by saying 'aye,' those opposed, 'no.' The ayes have it.'"
Both Bonanno and Bichlbaum laugh as Bonanno finishes his excerpt.
"'Accordingly, the convention stands adjourned until tomorrow Wednesday, September 1, 2004. Bang gavel.'"
"It's just strange," Bonanno concludes.
Bichlbaum and Bonanno's first collaboration that garnered major attention was for the Web site www.GWBush.com, where they spoofed the Bush Web site for his 2000 presidential campaign. The site was eerily similar to the then-governor's, except for some changes. One photograph was altered to show Bush giving the middle finger to African-Americans. On the page, Bush remarks in regard to the Yes Men that "There ought to be limits to freedom."
After GWBush.com, the Yes Men were approached about spoofing the World Trade Organization under the web address www.GATT.org. They made the Web site as their contribution to the protests against the WTO since they couldn't attend the demonstrations in Seattle.
"It was a sort of sorry substitute for that and we didn't know that much about what the World Trade Organization was about precisely, except that it was the institution that allows corporate rapacity to operate," Bichlbaum said.
Eventually, the Yes Men began receiving invitations to speak at conferences around the world by organizations mistaking GATT.org for the WTO. As Bichlbaum and Bonanno were representing the WTO in Salzburg, Austria, they brought along a handicam to document their inevitable arrest as they presented a bogus lecture, but things didn't work out exactly as they had planned. The duo wasn't arrested. Or even caught.
"When we didn't get arrested, we felt like we had been in such a weird experience that it seemed like it might make a good movie," Bonanno said.
They called their mutual friends Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price - who made the successful documentary "American Movie" - and began shooting for "The Yes Men." In the film, they attend several conferences as the WTO and present an agenda of unapologetic greed and disrespect of basic human rights, in an effort to portray a more honest account of what the WTO really does, according to the Yes Men.
"The basic idea we were communicating is that greed is good, let it operate and everything will work out fine, and as long as you say that, that's like pre-market orthodoxy," Bichlbaum said. "And that's all they heard and the rest were just details because the basic idea was there and everything we were saying wasn't that grotesque if you believe that."
In "The Yes Men," the results of their presentations, which become increasingly more ridiculous (one even includes an inflatable phallus used to monitor manual labor with electroshock), are similar to the way things went in Austria. Everybody buys it.
"All the lectures we were giving weren't that extreme, it turned out," Bichlbaum said. "We thought they were, and normal people always think they're weird, like proposing that corporations should be allowed to buy votes from people. That strikes anybody normal as weird."
And the film shows this. When the Yes Men present an equally ludicrous plan to a group of students in a college classroom, the students don't buy it and become angry.
Bonanno explains the disparity of the reactions by saying that the experts have trust in an established system that the students do not.
"They have so much faith in that system that they believed every word we said," Bannano said. "Whereas the students hadn't really been trained so much yet to believe that. And so they had much more sensitive bullshit meters and they could immediately go like, 'What the hell? What are they saying? Stone them before they hurt someone else!'"
Bichlbaum said there's a problem with people as they age.
"Older people, their brains start to decompose and they have less faculties overall in general," he joked. "We know about this first hand. It's amusing on one hand, but unfortunately they start controlling the world more and more."
Of course, for the Yes Men crossing over to film, it raises some interesting questions. So much of what they do relies on convincing world experts that they are members of the WTO. Do the Yes Men feel as if their film is going to hurt them?
"I don't feel pain from it," Bonanno said, laughing. "There's a chance that somebody would recognize us. I mean, that's always a concern. So far, that hasn't happened even with people that we've met before, if you meet them again in a different context."
Another concern for the Yes Men has been the ever-present threat of legal action. Amazingly, the Yes Men have yet to be sued or arrested.
"The WTO isn't really the kind of thing that sues a lot," Bichlbaum said. "They realized early on that whatever they did, we would throw back at them. They called us deplorable in an early press release in [1999] and we issued a press release about that ourselves, and it turned into a big story. They kinda calmed down after that."
After the WTO, the next target of the Yes Men is that "crazy guy in the White House," according to Bonanno.
They're driving a vote-for-Bush bus across the country, campaigning for Bush with tongue planted firmly in cheek, asking people to take the USA Patriot pledge, which includes a voluntary sacrifice of some constitutional rights to support the war on terrorism. The Yes Men are also planning on promoting a mass annulment to gay marriages. The idea is to prevent any future gay marriages by pre-emptively annulling them.
The Yes Men think it's important for Americans to examine these issues in the upcoming election and have nothing but contempt for Bush.
"[Bush] is trying to drive this weird wedge into the country like you have to choose sides," Bonnano said. "Either you're a terrorist, or you're a patriot."
Bichlbaum agreed.
"Having the convention in New York was like [Ariel] Sharon visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem which set off the second uprising," he said. "[The Republicans] are really aware of what they're doing. They're deliberately making things more extreme. I think they're capable of doing anything to hold on to power."
What the Yes Men are saying now is nothing new for those who've seen any one of the handful of liberal documentaries to storm theaters this summer, led by the $100 million-plus grossing "Fahrenheit 9/11." The Yes Men are proud to be part of that trend. However, they feel as if their movie differs from most liberal documentaries because of its sense of humor.
"People that like 'Jackass' are going to like this movie, but it's also got the politics in there," Bonnano said. "It's a little less heavy than something like 'The Corporation,' which is a really great, important movie, or 'Control Room,' which is an amazing documentary. We can never pretend that our thing is anywhere near as good or as interesting as ['Control Room'], but it's a lot funnier. ... We generally see people fall on the floor laughing in screenings. Well, not really. That's not true. People have been described as rolling in the aisles, but we've never actually seen it."
"How do you roll in the aisles?" Bichlbaum asked. "There are all those seats in the way and legs, presumably."
"I thought the aisles were just the parts that went down," Bonanno said.
"Oh, you're right," Bichlbaum said,
"So you can roll in the aisles," Bonanno said.
"Right," Bichlbaum said. "You can get to the top and then roll down"
