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Lots of upcoming opportunities to see Joey Skaggs oral history films both in theaters and streaming online.
Details for May and June 2023 film festivals screenings are here.
There are two great film festival opportunities to watch “Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure“, the sixth film in the new oral history web series, “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond“:
The first, the International Social Change Film Festival, starts on Monday, September 12, 2022 with an online-only screening available for a month. Later in the Fall this festival will have in-person screenings. The time and place are TBA.
On September 30, 2022, the New Jersey International Film Festival will host an in-person screening at 7pm. Starting at midnight the same day, the film is available for online streaming for 24 hours. Details are here.
Coverage in New Jersey Stage: Cockroaches, Hidden Worlds, Dancing to Agatha Christie, and Forgotten Children are among Highlights of New Jersey Film Festival in September, by Gary Wien, New Jersey Stage, September 2, 2022
Bait your hook and land a great fish story — “Joey Skaggs: Fish Condos”, the short doc with a big message! Available online for 24 hours starting February 11, 2022 at midnight.
Don’t miss this chance to see “Joey Skaggs: Fish Condos”, Episode #5 of the new Oral History Series, “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism”. The 19 minute film is streaming as part of the New Jersey Film Festival Short Program 2 and will be available for 24 hours anywhere, starting tonight at midnight.
Here’s a beautifully insightful review by Justin Almodivar in today’s New Jersey Stage Magazine.
Plus, Our Favorite Stories In Film – An Interview With Joey Skaggs.
ANNOUNCING:
Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond
A new series of short oral history films,
produced and directed by Judy Drosd with Joey Skaggs
UPCOMING SCREENINGS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE HERE
This “sticky” post will be here for a while. Scroll down for other posts.
Spanish Art and Activism Collective Homo Velamine Interviews Joey Skaggs [Spanish and English]
Joey Skaggs: “A fool is a fool, no matter what their political leaning is”
by Demófila Martínez and Luis Platypus
Homo Velamine
October 31, 2019
Joey Skaggs. PHOTO: Sam Ortiz for Observer
Homo Velamine: The increase of fake news in the media in recent years makes us feel that the limits between fact and fiction are more unclear than ever. In the documentary Art of the Prank (2015), you let the viewer peek into the creative process behind one of your hoaxes. The trickiest part seems to be deciding how far you can take it, without crossing the limits of plausibility and creating something that is impossible to believe. After all these years, does it still surprise you how far this limit can actually be pushed? Which of your performances would you say has pushed this limit the farthest and still has been successful?
Joey Skaggs: Pushing the limits of plausibility is the fun part for me. I create the problem and I create the solution. I take a gamble that what I’m doing is so ridiculous that no one’s going to believe it. I want it to be totally absurd because if the news media does fall for it, it will be even funnier and more effective in revealing their gullibility and/or hypocrisy. (more…)
Posting fake photos on a fake TV news website about your fake arrest because of your fake meth lab in the basement. Hmmm… What could go wrong? h/t Ed
My Breaking Bad Prank Gone Wrong Almost Cost Me $150,000
Vice
July 24, 2019
Inspired by his favorite show, “Breaking Bad” Josh decided to pull a prank that went terribly wrong. What started off as a harmless joke meant for his friends, quickly spread online resulting in unforeseen consequences that Josh could never have imagined.
How to thwart thieves one package at a time. Don’t miss the video!
h/t Naomi
NASA engineer comes up with epic revenge package to catch Amazon delivery thieves complete with a glitter bomb, fart spray, GPS and cameras to catch their reactions
by Jessica Finn
Daily Mail
December 18, 2018
Mark Rober, a NASA engineer, had a package stolen from his porch by an alleged thief and the police told him it wasn’t worth investigating. He came up with an idea to create an epic revenge bait package made to look like an Apple HomePod delivered from Amazon. Inside is a high-tech contraption complete with a glitter bomb, a fart spray, and hidden cell phones to record the thief’s reaction and utilize the GPS. Rober tested the package and caught people stealing it with hilarious results.
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:
“Art of the Prank was hysterical, sometimes shocking and ridiculous, but mostly inspiring and thought provoking.”
– Dircksey
“Really fascinating… incredible”
– Film Colossus
“If you don’t know who Joey Skaggs is, know this: he is a f*cking national treasure! One of the best pranksters in history. We see him provide comical and sometimes biting commentary on our society in Art of the Prank, all carried out with deadpan precision.”
– Fandor
“For those who still believe in Santa Claus this film is a must-see!”
– Joey Skaggs
Egyptian zoo shows its stripes.
Egypt zoo accused of painting donkey to look like a zebra
BBC News
July 26, 2018
A zoo in Egypt has denied painting black stripes on a donkey to make it look like a zebra after a photo of the animal appeared online.
Student Mahmoud Sarhan put the images on Facebook after visiting Cairo’s International Garden municipal park.
Aside from its small size and pointy ears, there were also black smudges on its face.
The pictures quickly went viral, with experts weighing in on the species of the animal.
A vet contacted by local news group Extranews.tv said that a zebra’s snout is black, while its stripes are more consistent and parallel.
Mr Sarhan told Extranews that the enclosure contained two animals and that both had been painted.
This is not the first time that a zoo has been accused of trying to fool its audience.
Unable to find a way around the Israeli blockade, a zoo in Gaza painted two donkeys to look like zebras in 2009.
Another Gaza zoo put stuffed animals on display in 2012 because of the shortages of animals.
In 2013, a Chinese zoo in Henan province tried to pass off a Tibetan mastiff dog as an African lion, and in 2017 a zoo in Guangxi province disappointed visitors by exhibiting blow-up plastic penguins.
Weeks later, another Guangxi zoo drew condemnation for displaying plastic butterflies.
There’s a huge difference between socially revealing satirical commentary and scaring the shit out of everyone…
Inside the world of extreme ‘terror pranking’
BBC
February 11, 2018
Fake bombs, staged murders, stunts that resemble acid attacks – as competition for eyeballs on YouTube gets fiercer every day, popular vloggers are resorting to extreme pranks to get clicks.
Arya Mosallah’s video channel had more than 650,000 subscribers. But his YouTube career came skidding to a halt with a video titled “Throwing Water On Peoples Faces PT. 2”. In it, he approaches several people, and after a brief conversation, throws a cup of water in their faces.
Many viewers thought the prank in the video looked like an attempt by the British social media star to mimic an acid attack – amid a recent increase in such crimes in London and across the UK.
YouTube deleted Mosallah’s channel – and then a second channel he set up. He told the BBC he had not meant to reference acid attacks – but that he would continue to produce prank videos.
But Arya Mosallah is certainly not the first YouTuber to get into trouble for prank videos. His story, along with the controversy over hugely popular Youtuber Logan Paul joking about a suicide victim to his young audience, have put a spotlight on extreme content on YouTube.
But although it appears to be on the rise – and is getting more attention from news outlets – extreme pranking is not an entirely new phenomenon. For some time, vloggers have been faking bomb attacks and murders, tricking and frightening friends and members of the public in an attempt to up their view counts. Read the rest of this article here.
Update January 25, 2018: Vice Video: How to Become TripAdvisor’s #1 Fake Restaurant. Thanks Frank.
The London restaurant so exclusive that no one could ever get a reservation. H/t Bob O’Keefe.
Bonus: Oobah Butler’s Vice play book on how he pulled it off.
“The Shed at Dulwich” was London’s top-rated restaurant. Just one problem: It didn’t exist.
By Eli Rosenberg
The Washington Post
December 8, 2017
It was a unique restaurant in London and certainly the hardest to get into. And it beat out thousands of upscale restaurants in the city to earn the top ranking on the popular review site TripAdvisor for a time, drawing a flood of interest.
There was just one small problem: It didn’t exist.
The restaurant was just a listing created this year by a freelance writer, Oobah Butler, who used his home — a shed in the Dulwich area in South London — as the inspiration for a high-concept new restaurant that he posted on TripAdvisor: “The Shed at Dulwich.”
With hardly more than some fake reviews — “Best shed based experience in London!” a particularly cheeky one read — and a website, it had gamed the site’s ratings in London, a highly sought after designation that could bring a surge of business to any restaurant, let alone one in major global capital.
The story has by now traveled around the globe and back, after Butler wrote a piece that exposed the ruse on Vice. It has been hailed as an incredible feat. But in an era increasingly influenced by disinformation online, it also has served as another reminder of the ease with which pranksters and other dishonest actors are able to manipulate online platforms to sometimes unthinkable results. Read more.
Update from HuffPost, September 1, 2017: Jeff Sessions' DOJ To Put Woman Who Laughed At Jeff Sessions On Trial Yet Again
A new article by Joey Skaggs published in Huffington Post, May 4, 2017:
Jurors on the case against Desiree Fairooz—a protestor who laughed out loud during a Senate hearing on Jeff Sessions' Attorney General appointment, when Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Sessions had an "extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law," and then demanded to know why she was being physically removed and arrested—apparently felt forced to find her guilty. Some of them said it was not the laughter, although Justice Department attorneys believed that the laughter was enough to justify a criminal charge, but the disruption after the laughter that forced their hands.
It's a slippery slope away from our civil rights when jurors are forced to deliberate on laws that should be challenged rather than enforced. What's next? If you fart out loud, you get 5 to 10?
And, it looks like laws about public conduct are being used in a discriminatory way. Not everyone is being held to the same standard. Remember South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, Sr. who yelled, "You lie!" at President Obama in a joint session of Congress? His outburst was considered "disrespectful" and he got off with an apology.
In fact, these days, everyone should be laughing and challenging the obvious hypocrisy and alternative facts presented to us daily by the Trump Administration and members of Congress. Laughter is a great way to help people realize how absurd the situation is when officials lie with impunity. We have short memories. We should think back to the Chicago 7 and how satire and mockery were powerful tools used to sway public opinion in 1968.
We the people should not tolerate this kind of abuse of power. So, let's, at every opportunity, scoff, mock, satirize and laugh, so that unthinking people might start thinking. The First Amendment does not give you the right to slander someone, and sometimes it’s not effective to disregard civility, but challenges must be made and people have to find ways to speak out. Let's do it in a more creative way so as not to be sucked up into the legal loop and drained of time and resources.
I've been using satire as a weapon of choice since the 60s. And I marvel with wonder at how lucky I've been to not be locked up for some of the things I've done. There have certainly been enough people rooting for my incarceration.
I suspect this protestor was unaware of the potential legal ramifications of her actions. Not that being aware would (or should) have stopped her. I think she was brave to do what she did. However, had she been aware, or perhaps more thoughtful about her plans, she might have come up with a more creative way to protest given the circumstances. It's always necessary to ask, "Do my actions have a chance of being effective or will they be alienating and dismissed?" Had she stopped at the laughter, she might have made a greater case in the court of public opinion.
We can’t let false truths become the official record. Lies should be revealed and challenged at every opportunity. It's the system allowing them to continue unfettered that must be changed.
And… Capitol security should not be run by the airline industry.
Here’s a playful and illuminating interview with the anonymous prankster who humiliated Donald Trump’s powerful son-in-law Jared Kushner and ex-Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci with duplicitous emails. It touches on the literary merits of email pranks, the repercussions of sending them, and pointers for engaging recipients in high places.
“How to Prank the Rich and Powerful Without Really Trying”
by Adrianne Jeffries
The Outline
August 4, 2017
On Tuesday, a bright spot appeared in this dark, cruel world when CNN first reported that an anonymous mischief maker had tricked multiple White House officials into responding to prank emails.
The Email Prankster, as he's branded himself, isn't worried about getting in legal trouble, he told The Outline in an interview Thursday. He duped several high profile targets earlier this year, including Barclay's CEO Jes Staley, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat, and was not contacted by law enforcement.
He was, however, suspended from his job this morning. His company, which knew about the banker pranks, suspected he was involved in this latest round of hoaxes and opened an investigation. "I think they’ll get me on misuse of IT," the prankster said. "I did send an email to the White House from my work email address because I forgot to switch the email account over in the drop down."
It's unclear if the prankster did anything illegal. He did no spoofing or hacking, and lawyers we spoke to in the U.S. and U.K. said it would be difficult to make a criminal case against him. The prankster merely registered addresses that looked semi-legitimate, such as reince.priebus@mail.com and jonhunstmanjr45@gmail.com, made sure his character's name would show up in the "From" field, and thought up an intriguing subject line. He registered email addresses in the names of senior advisor Jared Kushner, Ambassador-to-Russia designate Jon Huntsman, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump, and had them email various White House staff.
The highlight of these pranks was an exchange between the fake Reince Priebus, whose real counterpart had just been ousted, and then-White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. The exchange, a testy back-and-forth that played on the real rivalry between the two men, ended with Scaramucci telling the person he thought was Priebus to, "Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello." Scaramucci was ousted the next day, and The Washington Post called the prank "a final indignity." Read more.
Philadelphia requests full spectrum satire…
Mummers seek inclusive tone after insensitive displays
by Errin Haines Whack
Associate Press
December 4, 2016
credit Philly mummers.com
The initiatives include sensitivity training sessions and online videos that explore issues such as cultural appropriation and privilege, sexual identity and the rules of satire. Mummers’ leaders also published an open letter last week condemning “expressions of hate and bigotry.”
“We want to make this open for more people,” said George Badey, a veteran member of the Fralinger String Band and chairman of Love the Mummers. “The parade needs to evolve and represent the full spectrum of Philadelphians.” Read the rest of this story here.
Call us snobs, sticklers… call us the Emily Post of prankdom. But releasing a bunch of live crickets in a crowded subway car, as Brooklyn’s Zadia Pugh was recently arrested for doing, isn’t much of a prank. When there is so much groupthink and hypocrisy to expose and so many passersby thirst for wonder and delight, it’s not enough to simply scare and annoy people. That’s a sad and boring way to go viral. People are plenty scared and annoyed as it is.
Legendary prankster Joey Skaggs was asked to comment on Pugh’s stunt and to lend some guidance to cavalier young instigators of her ilk. Irreverence is just the beginning.
“Seasoned prankster Joey Skaggs chides rookie Zadia Pugh for unleashing crickets on packed D train: ‘You gotta realize there are consequences'”
by Graham Rayman
New York Daily News
September 3, 2016
As a prankster, Zaida Pugh “” who terrified straphangers in August when she released live crickets on a packed subway train “” is no more than a misguided rookie.
And Joey Skaggs should know.
For the past 40 years, Skaggs, 70, a New Yorker who now lives “somewhere in the south,” has conned the media into reporting fake stories as fact.
His elaborate pranks include creating a brothel for dogs and posing as a man who invented a vitamin pill made of cockroaches which supposedly would make people invulnerable to radiation.
The press bought it.
He got the press to buy that he had windsurfed from Hawaii to California. He created a Celebrity Sperm Bank, and a “Fat Squad,” made up of commandos who supposedly physically restrained people from breaking their diets.
He unrepentantly posed as a priest and pedaled a full-size confessional booth around St. Patrick”™s Cathedral, and got on the news for that, too.
Author Andrea Juno once wrote that he “uses the media as a painter uses a canvas.”
Skaggs told the Daily News on Saturday even though Pugh claimed to be making a statement about homelessness, her stunt on the Manhattan Bridge on Aug. 24 was “irresponsible and dangerous.”
“To me, the expose”™ is the most important part,” he said. “It’s not the “˜hahaha, I got you.”™ It’s the “˜Aha.”™ When they realize they have put aside critical thinking.
“The goal is to get people to become more media literate and more skeptical about information that’s given to them by governments and corporations. And you have to be ethical and careful in going about it.” Read more.
Welcome to the Art of the Prank, produced and edited by Joey Skaggs. Here you will find insights, information, news and discussions about art, pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming & reality hacking around the world - past, present and future - mainstream and counter culture. You are invited to contribute to its development. May your journey be filled with more than your expectations.
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