Documentary

For Jack Rebney, the moments in his life that eventually made him famous were inconsequential and forgettable. The former newsman had a job as a presenter in a Winnebago advertisement video, working long hours during a hot, Iowa summer in 1989. Rebney is articulate, intelligent, and, having left the news business on principle, generally disillusioned with the state of things. As the shoot dragged on, Rebney’s frustration erupted into a slew of swear-filled angry outbursts, in which he swatted at the air, cursed his job, his crew, and himself, and generally broke down. The crew, amused by Rebney’s temper and talent for swearing, compiled the outtakes into a single video. Unbeknownst to Rebney, for a long time after the shoot, that tape circulated widely, becoming a “viral video” long before the advent of the internet. After the Winnebago gig, Rebney retreated from the world, but his cult status grew.

It is hard to tell if the title of Marshall Curry’s documentary about young hopeful race car drivers, Racing Dreams, is a play on, homage, or unintended mimicking of the documentary about young hopeful basketball players, Hoop Dreams. Either way, the comparison between the two films is unavoidable. Like Hoop Dreams, Racing Dreams is an up close and personal look at the culture of hope that surrounds American sports – where kids at the top of their game at a crucial age discover if their life long dream of sports success is going to come true or be forever lost.