Art of the Prank (2015)
The great media prankster, Joey Skaggs, wants to fool the world media AGAIN, and, with the most complex hoax of his career in the pipeline, he now must use every trick in his prankster's arsenal to make it work. Art of the Prank is an emotional journey following the evolution of artist Joey Skaggs-a fierce proponent of independent thinking and the man who has turned the media hoax into an art form. With unprecedented access to the man and his archives, the 95-minute documentary interweaves a current unfolding hoax with a look behind-the-scenes at some classic performance pieces (all reported as fact by a wide range of prestigious journalists) plus commentary from co-conspirators and others. -IMDB
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Powerful
How sad is this?
Did you people see the same film I saw?
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Hilarious takedown of the culture and media. Original, witty and not to be missed!! From the cathouse for dogs, to the cockroach cure for everything, to the fat squad, this film satirizes the culture. It's amazing how ahead of his time Joey Skaggs has been, and how he continues to come up with new and piercing critiques.
Watching the Art of the Prank was a totally joy inducing experience. Marini takes us through 30+ years of the career and times of Joey Skaggs, performance artist, provocateur, culture jammer, and media hoax extraordinaire, in what is a fascinating study of not only Mr. Skaggs artistry but also a haunting look at how our current systems of information are warped and easily manipulated. While this documentary is a highly entertaining journey about the life and art of Joey Skaggs, more aptly it reflects how broken and unreliably modern media outlets are. Thoroughly enjoyed this. Highly recommend it. I laughed, I cried. It was better than "Cats".
Loved, loved, LOVED this movie! I like to laugh when I watch a flick and this one did not disappoint. A guy dressed as a priest bicycling around midtown with a booth in tow to offer quick confessions to New Yorkers? Who is then covered by the earnest local press as a sincere cutting edge padre ministering to the harried masses? If you think that might be funny, see this movie! And the construct is terrific: instead of doing just a "greatest hits" compendium of Joey Skaggs' pranks that fooled print and TV reporters (of which there are plenty in the movie), the documentary morphs into a close-up of a Joey prank which is a fake documentary that fooled the festival cinema crowd. The pace is great and the laughs are heartfelt. I saw this with a pal who thought this was not a good time to cast reporting in a negative light considering the present hostile environment created by Trump and his acolytes. I say, fear not, oh defenders of the fourth estate! This movie is a great tonic against all that madness. I wish everyone sees it - they will experience a wonderfully apolitical HILARIOUS treatise on what fake news REALLY is all about.
Wonder why anyone believes in Pizzagate, or in countless other "fake news" stories planted on the internet? Way back in the 70s, media prankster Joey Skaggs began gleefully and successfully exploiting precisely this sort of "need to believe" with such elaborate hoaxes as "Cathouse for Dogs" and "Celebrity Sperm Bank," embarrassing media outlets and the public into eagerly falling for dozens of them over the years. This highly entertaining and funny documentary of Skaggs's career is essential viewing for anyone who is interested in the techniques by which our notions of reality can easily be manipulated.