The Observer welcomes Joey Skaggs back to New York and ponders his relationship with the media.
If You’re Reading This, You’ve Already Been Conned: Joey Skaggs Doc Premieres in LES
by Spencer Roth-Rose
The New York Observer
June 13, 2016
Film documenting media hoax artist opens up LES Film Festival
Good God, we’re easy to fool.
It feels a bit counterintuitive to be writing, in the media, about media hoaxer Joey Skaggs. Skaggs, who was interviewed this past week by the Observer, has made a name for himself since the 1960s through elaborate pranks that aim to highlight the absurdity of our media culture. So how’s a writer to know he’s not being punk’d by a man who describes fooling the media “as easy as a bowel movement”?
A new documentary detailing the greatest hits of Skagg’s hoaxing career opened up the Lower East Side Film Festival on Thursday night. Art of the Prank, directed by Italian newcomer Andrea Marini, is both an upbeat summary of decades of mischief (a confession booth on the back of a tricycle, a brothel for dogs, cockroaches that hold the key to the human immune system, each one eagerly lapped up by hasty news outlets), and an intimate portrait of an earnest man earnestly engaged in the business of tomfoolery.
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