Blog Posts
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
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.
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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
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.
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.
WNPR News presents “April Fool’s! Exploring Pranks and Practical Jokes“, an hour long radio talk show broadcast April 1, 2014 at 1:00 pm & 8:00 pm EST.
Show features Jeff Pinsker, president of Klutz and VP of Scholastic, Inc.; Martin Wainwright, author of The “Guardian” Book of April Fool”™s Day; Tom Mabe, a professional prankster living in Kentucky; and Joey Skaggs, multimedia artist in New York City called The World”™s Greatest Hoaxer.
Listen here.
March 30, 2014: Pranks and Hoaxes, produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International, presents an interview with Joey Skaggs called Art of the Hoax – Joey Skaggs.
Listen here
A reminiscence by Joey Skaggs:
On April 2, 2013, I received an email from my friend Peter Maloney, director, writer, actor and a co-conspirator in my hoaxes, pointing me to a New York Times article about a fake kidnapping. He said,
“It reminds me of the night that you and your cohorts kidnapped Sam Shepard from the Astor Place Theatre on the opening night performance of his plays “˜The Unseen Hand”™ and “˜Forensic and the Navigator”™ (in which I played “˜Forensic”™). I also remember that actor Beeson Carroll wore as his costume in “˜The Unseen Hand”™, your Buffalo skin coat.”
I had caught the news story about the kidnapping on TV a day earlier. I immediately thought it was a prank. A video taken from a surveillance camera showed an abduction with people being thrown into a van on the street. But local police could not find evidence of anyone missing. As it turned out, it was a joke played by friends as a birthday prank.
Stories like this sometimes make it into the Art of the Prank blog, and I considered it. But, being under the weather I wasn”™t highly motivated to do anything with it. Later, thinking about it, I realized how lucky these pranksters were. They could have been shot. They could have been arrested. Any number of bad things potentially could have happened because of this relatively harmless joke.
Peter”™s email and this story inspired me to tell the story of my attempt to kidnap Sam Shepard, a version of which appears in a book by Ellen Ounamo called Sam Shepard: The Life and Work of an American Dreamer
More coverage:
Update, April 3, 2011: You can now listen to this 30:00 radio show here.
The Artiness of Naughtiness, hosted by Toby Amies, aired on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, April 1, 2011. Until April 7, 2011, you can listen to it here.
The art of the perfect prank
by Toby Amies
BBC News Magazine
30 March 2011
As April Fools jokers hatch their plans, what’s the secret to a perfect prank, asks broadcaster Toby Amies. And how far do the very best tricksters go in preparing their practical jokes?
This article is not a hoax. I promise you. It’s a serious work about the practical joke.
How far would you go to pull off a prank? The dole queue? In 1987, a young British broadcaster called Chris Morris let off helium into the BBC Bristol studio, causing the newsreader’s stories to reach a higher and higher pitch. Chris lost his job. And started his career in satire.
Would you risk prison? Pranks are often protests, against unfairness or authority or reality. And protest is increasingly risky in the 21st Century.
As the film director Billy Wilder said: “If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.”
Whether personal or public, the prank has a point to make, but if you’re planning on tricking someone, it’s best to ensure everyone gets the joke. (more…)
Submitted by Steffani Martin and Peter Maloney:
April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks
by Benedict Carey
New York Times
April 1, 2008
Keep it above the belt, stop short of total humiliation and, if possible, mix in some irony, some drama, maybe even a bogus call from the person”™s old flame or new boss. A good prank, of course, involves good stagecraft. But it also requires emotional intuition.
Psychologists have studied pranks for years, often in the context of harassment, bullying and all manner of malicious exclusion and prejudice.
Yet practical jokes are far more commonly an effort to bring a person into a group, anthropologists have found “” an integral part of rituals around the world intended to temper success with humility. And recent research suggests that the experience of being duped can stir self-reflection in a way few other experiences can, functioning as a check on arrogance or obliviousness. (more…)
From: katra.vox.com
On the other hand… what not to do:
A 13 year old boy was arrested and held without bail on suspicion of making a criminal threat after he allegedly wrote “Shooting Friday” as a prank on a bathroom wall at his school in Vista, California. Read the story here.
Update to this story:
From AAP (Australia AP) via NEWS.com.au
April 16, 2007:
Judge Leo Hart today jailed Barnett for 15 months, with 12 months suspended for 15 months.
He said it was a “bizarre” case and that Barnett had the dual aim of getting recognition for his work and sending an anti-terrorism message.
“You’re an artist and believe yourself to be a good artist,” Judge Hart said.
“You believed that you had not been given the recognition that your work deserved and you sought to rectify this.”
Judge Hart said Barnett’s motives were not malicious but his behaviour was stupid and reckless.
He ordered Barnett to pay $6319 compensation to the police.
Original post:
From AAP via The Herald Sun
April 4, 2007:
A frustrated artist who wanted recognition for his work has pleaded guilty to creating a bomb hoax outside the National Gallery of Victoria.
Colin Douglas Barnett, 46, of suburban Cranbourne North, today pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to one count each of creating a bomb hoax and causing a public nuisance, and two counts of making a false report to police. (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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