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.

Reality TV got caught trying to be real. CBS was casting for a new reality TV show called The Activist where social issue crusaders would be pitted against each other. h/t Naomi

POSTSCRIPT: The loud outcry against this pathetically bad idea resulted in a complete reconfiguring of the show.

Inside ‘The Activist’ Meltdowns as the Entire Shitshow Spiraled Out of Control, by Cheyenne Roundtree. The Daily Beast, September 15, 2021

The backlash against “The Activist” continues, with an open letter and response from host Julianne Hough. The Daily Beast spoke with two activists who were approached by the show.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway

It took just a few hours for CBS’s new reality competition The Activist to be globally panned. A Frankenstein mashup of a Hunger Games-style dystopian world mixed with hints of Survivor and The Apprentice, the show places six activists into teams and pairs them with a “high-profile public figure” to duke it out in challenges to promote their various causes. At the end of the five-episode series, they will have the chance to pitch their cause at the G20 Summit in Rome. Whoever secures the most funding wins the show.

Instead of world leaders or any sort of mission-driven experts being tapped to host the show, Usher, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Julianne Hough will serve as co-hosts and offer up advice to the contestants.

The Daily Beast reviewed the six contestants’ social media accounts—including TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram profiles—which were all created in August. One posted, “Help me win by commenting and liking my posts through the next few missions!” Another contestant thanked his followers for donating to his GoFundMe, which went towards covering the unpaid time off he took as an elementary teacher in order to compete on the show.

Needless to say, the announcement of a show that pits serious causes against one another and then relies on superficial social media metrics to determine which campaign is more successful—in the middle of global pandemic—did not go over well.

Read the rest here.

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…)

See more photos here.

Watch the video:

From Jesse Brown, host of Canadaland Podcast:

The greatest media prankster alive talks to Jesse for our April Fools episode.

For information about Andrea Marini’s award winning
ART OF THE PRANK movie, visit
http://artoftheprank-themovie.com

**Film News**

ART OF THE PRANK Movie is now available on

DVD and BLU-RAY (with 38 minutes of Extras)

iTunes | Amazon | Roku | Kanopy | Xbox | YouTube

Educational DVDs are available here

Would you like to organize a screening for your community?
Check here for info

Stay tuned for upcoming screenings and airings

See what people are saying at
http://artoftheprank-themovie.com/press

Movie Website | Teaser | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Updates

This “sticky” post will be here for a while. Scroll down for other posts.

Seattle author Dan Savage is once again taking the piss out of America’s social conservative right.

Savage is best known a sex columnist, podcaster, and political activist. But perhaps more fundamentally he is a masterful media manipulator. Stunts such as his notorious SEO-based public humiliation of then-Senator Rick Santorum rank with the classic pranks of Abbie Hoffman or The Magic Christian.

In response to North Carolina’s wildly controversial “transgender bathroom bill,” Savage, the prankster, has reappeared with another disgusting, gut-busting idea. And this one is not confined to the internet.

“Dan Savage Has A Brilliantly Gross Idea To Protest NC”™s Anti-LGBT Law”
by Noah Michelson
Huffington Post
May 9, 2016

If Dan Savage gets his way, Pat McCrory”™s office will soon be filled with urine.

On Monday, the writer and activist tweeted his suggestion for how the North Carolina governor and his staff could ensure the “safe disposal” of transgender people”™s bodily waste:

Trans people should start dropping off jars filled with their urine at @PatMcCroryNC's office so his staff can oversee its safe disposal.

— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) May 9, 2016

Savage”™s tweet came just hours after Governor McCrory announced the state of North Carolina would sue the U.S. Justice Department over House Bill 2, which was signed into law in March and forces transgender people to use public restrooms that don”™t correspond with their gender identity. The Justice Department had given the state until Monday to stop enforcing HB2 or risk a federal lawsuit.

Rather than agree to follow the Justice Department”™s order, McCrory and the state”™s secretary of public safety instead filed the lawsuit today against the Justice Department for its “radical reinterpretation” of federal civil rights law. (more…)

Submitted by Deborah: Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano did this melting ice sculpture called “Middle Class” for the Republic Convention. On to Democratic Convention next.

Large ice sculptures of the words Middle Class will melt away on the first day of the Republican and Democratic Conventions, in nearby public parks in Tampa and Charlotte. The work is by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. The sculptures they will install weigh over 2,000 pounds and measure 15 feet wide. Individual letters are 4 feet tall.

The artists call these sculptures “temporary monuments.” After unveiling them, Ligorano and Reese let them melt away and film their disappearance, which can take anywhere from 6 to 24 hours. The dates for the conventions, “do not bode well,” Reese says, “for the sculptures”™ survival.” “They may disappear,” Ligorano adds, “even faster than usual. It”™s a tossup whether, that”™s due to economic or climatic conditions.” (more…)

A Movement Too Big to Fail
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig.com
October 17, 2011

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do””fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Watch a video of Chris Hedges in Times Square, October 15, 2011:

(more…)

Greenpeace Buys Land To Block New Heathrow Runway
by Dave Demerjian
Wired.com
January 13, 2009

Greenpeace announced today that it has bought a parcel of land that sits directly in the path of a proposed third runway for London’s Heathrow Airport. It’s the latest move in a long-running battle between environmentalists who say expanding Heathrow would be an environmental catastrophe, and expansion advocates who say without a new runway Europe’s top airport will become an antiquated also-ran.

Greenpeace’s plan for the 0.4-hectare parcel, which it purchased from an undisclosed owner, is sure to have expansion advocates reaching for the Rolaids. The group will sell off the land in tiny pieces to environmentalists, celebrities, and anyone else who feels like buying in. This means that if the UK government were to exercise eminent domain laws to acquire the land, it would have to deal with thousands of different landowners and the lawsuits they would be sure to bring. Regardless of where you stand on the expansion issue, you can’t deny that Greenpeace’s move is a brilliant one. (more…)

The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty
by Diane Farsetta
Center for Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org
December 10, 2008

There’s nothing quite like a hotly contested election. The candidates have their devoted supporters and angry detractors. Then there are vigorous debates over the issues, while some people question the integrity of the entire process.

We speak, of course, of the Falsies Awards.

This year marks the Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) fifth annual Falsies Awards. The Falsies are our attempt to shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting the information environment over the past year. We’re happy to report that more people — nearly 1,450 — voted in this year’s Falsies survey than ever before! We’re also bestowing special recognition on one of this year’s “winners.”

Falsies recipients can collect their prizes — a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, our two cents and a chance to atone for their spinning ways by making a detailed public apology — by visiting CMD’s office in Madison, Wisconsin. This year’s Gold and Silver Falsies go to masters of war deception, while the Bronze Falsie recognizes a massive greenwash campaign. The first-ever Lifetime Achievement Falsie goes to a serial corporate front man, while a determined (if at times laughable) attempt at nation re-branding wins dishonorable mention. Then there are the Readers’ Choice Falsies and Win Against Spin Awards, nominated by our survey participants.

That’s a lot to cover, so without further ado, the winners of the 2008 Falsies Awards are…