It was inevitable that the Yes Men would pull a prank at the premiere for their new film, The Yes Men Fix the World, at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. The group's founders, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, wore inflatable costumes and blocked the red carpet of the BMW's Cinema for Peace gala. They said they would not leave 'until BMW stops making cars'.
Their biggest stunt to date came in November 2004, when Bichlbaum made it onto the BBC posing as a representative of Dow Chemicals. Going under the pseudonym Jude Finisterra, he announced that Dow would take full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster and commit more than US$12 billion in compensation and clean-up funds.
The story stormed through the news cycle, Dow's stock plunged, and the goal of the caper was achieved - the media heavily covered the legacy of one of the worst industrial disasters of all time.
The Yes Men Fix the World, the group's second feature film, is being rolled out gradually, but they see the films largely as by-products of their activism. 'The main thing we do,' Bonanno says at the Taipei Film Festival, 'is we're part of a global conspiracy to make things better'.
Before the film came out, the Yes Men were regularly updating their antics on their website, theyesmen.org, where posts continue to appear (the pair's videos are easier to find on YouTube).
Since 2000, they have posed as spokesmen for the WTO, Dow, Exxon, McDonald's and Halliburton. They have yet to be sued. 'We want them to sue us. That would be ideal,' says Bonanno. 'But the PR consequences of a protracted lawsuit would probably be worse for a big corporation than whatever they could get by suing someone like me or Andy.'
Bonanno and Bichlbaum, both of whom are teachers, got their start by creating fake websites that purported to represent everyone from George W. Bush to the WTO.
