Prank You Very Much: The Yes Men Document Their Anti-Corporate Hijinks

You’re at GO-EXPO, one of North America’s fastest-growing oil-and-gas events. It’s business as usual as representatives from the National Petroleum Council and Exxon start their presentation. But wait—this is odd. They’re handing out candles. And their presentation is about a new oil-based product called Vivoleum, which you’ve never heard of. (Come to think of it, these candles are starting to smell funny.) And then there’s this video tribute to a terminally ill Exxon janitor named Reggie, who—wait, hold on, he’s saying he wants to be turned into candles after he dies? And—oh, no. Oh, God, no.

Yes, you’ve just been pranked—played, punked—much like millions of others who, in recent years, have weathered the political tomfoolery of the Yes Men, led by two cheerful provocateurs who have infiltrated conferences, imitated corporate spokespeople on live television and published one very real-looking fake newspaper, all in an effort to undermine capitalism and satirize the worst parts of corporate culture.

In their new documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World, they revisit their recent stunts (including the GO-EXPO charade) and reckon what activists can and should do now that—as Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum tells Paste—“we’re now fighting with, for, against a government that’s nominally on our side.”

“I got interested in activism through mischief,” says Yes Man Mike Bonanno, and mischievousness is very much at the heart of the Yes Men’s stunts. The movie’s first scene trails a visibly nervous Andy (playing Dow Chemical Company representative Jude Finisterra) while he prepares to tell the BBC’s 300 million viewers that Dow will compensate victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak, the worst industrial disaster in history. The film gets more ludicrous from there, with golden skeletons (a mascot for the duo’s proposed Acceptable Risk campaign for Dow, every bit as cruel as it sounds), Halliburton SurvivaBalls (to protect the wealthy from future Katrinas) and, of course, the candles—made with real human hair.

The Yes Men’s most recent shenanigan—distributing thousands of overly optimistic editions of The New York Times (“Iraq War Ends,” “All Public Universities To Be Free”)—attracted worldwide attention a few days after Obama’s election. The Men worked with CODEPINK and many other left-wing organizations to make it happen.

Bichlbaum says the Yes Men want “to move beyond just collaborating on our projects to coming up with projects together with others and contributing to movements.” The film is thus as much a recruiting tool as it is a documentary, and the stakes—and the need for more participants—have never been higher. “We could get arrested,” Bichlbaum says, “but it just doesn’t seem like a big price to pay when you’re faced with a runaway system that’s destroying the planet.”