I have dedicated my life,
my entire life, since being a boy to now,
to being an artist,
and to do so in a way that was, to me, self-righteous.
I want the world to be the way that I envision it.
And that means that the world is full of conflicts,
and so am I.
I'm in conflict with everything out there that pisses me off,
that upsets me, that's, you know, not...
That's not just, that's not right.
A speedy trial in front of a jury of peers,
it's one of our Constitutional rights.
But there are those that think the Sixth Amendment
ought to be amended to include trial by mainframe.
When jurors found OJ Simpson not guilty,
more than a difference of opinion separated them
from New York computer scientist Joseph Bonuso.
We found OJ guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
He was guilty of murder.
As designed, the Solomon Project
at the New York University Law School
is supposed to take the jury out of jurisprudence,
casting all trials to the impartiality
of artificial intelligence.
Testimony, evidence, and precedence
were entered into the computer,
and a complicated formula using fuzzy logic
helped render a verdict.
A jury is a manipulated group of puppets.
As a prankster, I always have my guard up in general,
especially when I hear Joey's name.
- You run... - A brothel for dogs.
A brothel for dogs.
How would you feel
if you had covered Joey Skaggs' Cathouse for Dogs?
Would you welcome the inventor
of the fish tank condo, Joey Skaggs.
Joey Skaggs, he's fooled every major American network
with his elaborate hoaxes.
Print this guy, Mike.
I want to make sure we never see him again under any other name.
How do we even know that you are Joey Skaggs?
How do we even know what you're saying
about these media outlets is true?
Any journalist who falls for a Joey Skaggs prank is...
it's their own fault.
He thinks that cockroaches are very important to all of us.
A cockroach hormone pill to cure everything.
Cockroach Cure.
Now, would you read that article?
It's because they didn't look closely.
They didn't fact-check.
They didn't make that call to verify something.
My parents were missionaries in Kenya.
Would you ever believe all the things
you see on television?
Hoaxes performed before your very eyes.
Don't you feel bad when you do it?
I feel very good.
I was pissed off at Joey for a period of time.
But I decided to forgive him,
because Joey does what I really love,
and that is, he makes you laugh,
and when he makes you laugh, he makes you think.
Well, about a month ago we told you about a man
who came up with a way to render verdicts
without all the arguing in the jury room.
But he didn't say anything about being embarrassed,
which is what CNN is right now.
We've learned his invention was all a big hoax,
and we fell for it.
Wow, that thing on TV news
that we were all talking about wasn't true.
I remember being kind of scared.
Like, oh, my God, we've been found out.
And Joey's like, "No, this is all part of it.
"It's all part of it, because they have to find out.
That's the other part."
I can't put that on the back of a tricycle.
There's just no way.
So I'm gonna stick with the missile.
The missile it is.
First, I'd get it extended.
Making sure that it was supported.
And then I would, like you said,
a pipe with a flange.
We have Iran, you know, still playing games.
North Korea still playing games.
You have surveillance drones.
You have Russia being very upset with what's going on with NATO,
with moving missiles to their borders.
There are just so many issues that this relates to, and it's...
- You know what, though? - And it's satire.
I mean, it's a mobile rocket launcher.
The thing is, you know, something may just,
in the next six weeks, happen.
Yeah.
And, it's just gonna need to be ready.
What color do we paint it?
We have the North Korean flag on it,
the Iranian flag on it?
If I had a robe, I can be an Arab.
I like to mix it up.
It doesn't have to always be a hoax.
It can be a direct theatrical piece
which is a political statement or a confrontation.
I just love the fact
that here I am in the middle of rural America
with people who, you know, you wonder
whether they would agree with your political stance or not,
but they're willing to do it.
The rocket's the rocket.
That'll be a great visual,
peddling down the streets of New York.
Or wherever.
Jon.
Well, you're not gonna believe this.
I just came back with Judy from seeing Sacha Baron Cohen,
Cohen's film, "The Dictator."
And, yeah, so he's got a missile in it, you know?
And he's paying homage to North Korea,
and, you know, he's an Arab building a missile, you know.
It's like, oh, fuck, man.
You know?
But he didn't have it on the back of a tricycle.
So we'll stick with the rocket.
And we'll just have the mobile rocket launcher, and that's it.
And I just have to...
I may not dress up like an Arab,
as I thought I might.
Or as a North Korean, as I thought I might.
Maybe I should go as Uncle Sam.
I don't know, I don't know.
It's not the same thing, but...
you know, he's got it covered kind of.
Rethink this one.
You got to be first.
Not always easy.
Look, life throws you a lot of curveballs.
You have to be prepared for it.
You have to go with the flow.
There's, you know... you don't have a lot of choices.
And what happened with me was, my father had dementia.
He was bedridden for nine years.
My mother was incapable of living alone
and taking care of herself.
I said that, you know, when she needed me,
I would be here full-time.
And she needed me.
So I had to give up Hawaii and New York.
Right after my husband died, he came from Hawaii,
and it was a big change for him.
And I'm not gonna say what he calls this place,
but it's not been his greatest move,
because he doesn't have access
to the things that he's used to.
It's a tricycle, it's a three-wheeler.
And on the back of the three-wheeler,
there's a platform that's gonna hold the confessional booth.
I've got some crucifixes.
From FOX 5, this is Election '92.
Good evening, I'm Jack Cafferty at Madison Square Garden.
Cora Ann will join us shortly from the studio.
Now, if anyone at the convention's feeling guilty
about something they may have done,
they don't have to go far to confess their sins.
A man who calls himself Father William
has mounted a portable confessional booth
on his bicycle.
For delegates who feel they may have overindulged a bit,
a Catholic priest has set up
a mobile confessional outside Madison Square Garden.
A Southern California priest has the answer for Catholics
who don't have time to confess.
He calls it Portofess.
Father Joseph, who is schlepping a Portofess,
a portable confession booth, around by bike.
Well, I didn't start out as a prankster.
I was a child artist.
I had a passion for art.
I always drew, I painted, I sculpted.
I just knew that I wanted to be an artist.
That was my dream.
Most children, they don't obey their parents.
They don't want to accept rules and regulations
and come in at a certain time.
He was just a normal child
who just didn't want to do what Mama and Papa said.
My parents moved to a little area
on the Brooklyn-Queens borderline called Laurel Hill,
by Newtown Creek, a real industrial slum area.
And there was Calvary Cemetery there,
the Kosciuszko Bridge.
And off in the distance was Manhattan.
I was a young artist.
I knew what I wanted to be.
And I wanted to be in Manhattan.
It was a junior-high-school art teacher that told me
about the High School of Art and Design.
And I was really fortunate enough to be accepted
into this extraordinary high school.
And it was all young artists, and the teachers were artists.
And it was inspirational.
My husband never agreed, never.
Well, what does your son do?
He's a fine artist.
What the fuck is a fine artist?
And I said, well, as far as I'm concerned, so be it.
It's his life.
And if he says it's what he wants to do,
that's fine with me.
You have a dream, a passion.
I'm gonna be an artist.
I'll just do all my work, and then I'll be discovered.
I'll just paint and paint, and somebody's gonna go,
"Oh, genius!"
But it doesn't always work out that way for most people.
You're forced to wait until you are accepted into a gallery
and then have a show and then hope for a review.
There was no immediacy involved.
And I wanted the immediacy.
I like things now.
I said, fuck that.
I'm just... I'm gonna do it in the streets.
I'm gonna do it my way.
Here in the "Time" Magazine I read about a guy
who took a load of hippies,
who were long-haired, strange-looking people,
as you well know,
put them on a bus and took them to Queens.
We took pictures of people
mowing their lawns and washing their cars,
and I took people to Howard Johnson's for ice cream
and White Castle for, you know, hamburgers.
And they screamed, "We're bring invaded!
We're being invaded!"
Day and night, there were busloads of tourists
from all over America, all over the world,
coming through, looking at the hippies in the Village.
But to have freaks go to suburbia
and take pictures of them.
"Oh, we're being invaded!"
I think that is the definition of great political art,
is when it goes outside of the museum
and affects people in their daily life.
If I had a show of my paintings
and 1,000 people or 10,000 people came,
that would be considered a great success.
But if I'm capable of accessing the news
and millions of people see it,
well, there's a tremendous difference
between 10,000 and 10 million.
He was wilder in the '60s.
His stuff was so raw and so fresh
that it was like experimental jazz.
The war motivated everything we were doing.
Even though what we were doing
may not have been specifically about the war,
underneath it was kind of a motor.
It kept us going.
Whether you could call it anger or dissatisfaction
or unhappiness,
whatever it was inside us was making us make our art.
The war in Vietnam was going on.
People are killing one another.
What kind of God are we talking about here?
And so I constructed a life-size sculpture
of a dead and decayed figure on a crucifix.
I dragged it on my back...
Up 5th Avenue.
Into the Easter Day Parade.
Easter Parade, well-to-do people
walking on 5th Avenue in their most beautiful clothing.
When I got to the doors of St. Patrick's,
the police locked the church doors,
pushed the piece and me,
kicked the piece, kicked me.
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"
And I just dropped the sculpture,
and I ran down the block
and jumped into a cab and got away.
The police became the Roman soldiers.
The crowd became, you know, the jeering crowd.
And it was a total reenactment of over 2,000 years ago.
He was at the right place at the right time.
Had the wish, the energy, and the love
to explore it and push it.
The war in Vietnam dragged on,
and I had to continue to protest against it.
So I built a life-sized Vietnamese village
portraying a Vietnamese nativity.
And I chose to do it on Christmas Day in Central Park.
I got all of my friends with fake guns and helmets
and whatever we could put together,
in an attempt to burn it to the ground.
And, of course, the cops found us.
They were looking for me.
"Has anyone seen Joey Skaggs?"
They had a piece of paper.
They even asked me, "Have you seen Joey Skaggs?"
I said, "He was around here a minute ago."
And then "The New York Times" does a story...
"Hippies arrested for littering."
Gee, they missed my intent.
That's not what I was saying.
That's not what I meant.
I was doing something against the war in Vietnam.
I watched how the media twisted and torqued
the intent, content, meaning of the message
to suit their own agenda.
And I realized that the media has an amazing ability
to mold public opinion.
So I decided, rather than just use the media
to try to get attention for my work,
I would use the media as part of my work.
Exploit their vulnerability, gullibility,
necessity for being out there first,
and incorporate this into a theatrical performance.
And then...
See what happens.
Handler and vet on duty,
stud and photo service available.
No weirdos, please.
Dogs only, by appointment.
I can't believe that the "Village Voice,"
for all its great reporting, fell for that one.
That always makes me laugh.
It was, you know, outrageous.
But it was a sex story, and it was a dog story.
The media likes to have, you know,
little kids and dog stories all the time.
There has to be an animal.
Boom, I put that out.
And the phone rang off the hook.
I got together a group of actors,
a bunch of dogs in a loft in downtown Manhattan...
And created a theatrical performance for the press.
Okay, so what was going to be
just the gag of having this ad appear
turned out to be something you had to concoct
because there was so much media interest in it.
But that's what I wanted.
I wanted to do that.
I was setting it up.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
This is Alex Bennett.
And tonight "Midnight Blue" visits a cathouse
where all the females are real bitches.
Betty Drake and Blackberry.
Isn't she beautiful?
This meeting is to introduce the customers and their dogs
to the brothel, to the bitches.
And after they've chosen
which bitch they wish their dog to mate with,
we then inject the dogs with the drug
which induces heat, and we have a second meeting
then when they copulate.
And we had a really horny male dog that was there,
and his mojo kicked in, and he was just humping space.
He would hump anything.
He'd just grab a head.
He'd grab anything.
And it looked like a dog orgy.
I wrote letters to editors.
I said, "I've taken my dog, you know, to the cathouse,
"and he had a great time.
I recommend this."
Or, "I've taken my dog there,
"and he was attacked by other dogs.
You know, I'm thinking about suing."
I created a controversy.
I'm completely against it.
Number one, I think you're gonna be taking female dogs,
causing them to go through false
or silent non-ovulatory heats.
I created a second controversy in the Cathouse for Dogs
when I got so many calls
from people wanting to have sex with dogs
or wanting to watch women getting screwed by dogs.
So I thought, well, here's an opportunity.
I will create a diversion
so that people don't question the initial premise.
So I sent out a second press release
saying there's absolutely no animal-human contact
happening in the Cathouse for Dogs.
And so that had, you know,
the effect of making you not think,
"Well, is there really a cathouse for dogs?"
Because now you're thinking,
"People are having sex with dogs.
Oh, my God."
So when ABC Television called me,
they wanted to do a piece on the brothel for dogs.
So I provided WABC with an interview
in Washington Square Park
and a videotape of the "Midnight Blue" performance.
And they did a documentary
which was nominated and, I later found out,
won the Emmy as Best News Broadcast
for the inside of an animal-cruelty story.
In the United States,
there's a myth of the happy-go-lucky vagabond.
The carefree mutt with no master and no leash,
who comes and goes as he pleases
and does whatever his nose tells him to do.
This establishment in Greenwich Village
is a cathouse for dogs.
By that, we do not mean a stud service.
We mean a house of prostitution for dogs.
For $50, your dog can have sex with a female dog
while you watch and sip cocktails
and take some pictures if you'd like to.
It was such an obvious idea to me.
First of all, there are hundreds of thousands
of dogs in the city.
There's a dog-population problem.
People are willing to take their dogs to dog restaurants.
I thought it'd be natural to get their dogs sexually gratified.
They got after me, the ASPCA, the Bureau of Animal Affairs,
the NYPD Vice Squad,
various religious and humane organizations.
And I was subpoenaed by the Attorney General
for illegally running a whorehouse for dogs.
Today at the State Attorney General's Office,
Skaggs and his attorney appeared
in response to a subpoena.
And miraculously, the subpoena was for April 1st...
April Fool's Day.
He says the hoax was a conceptual art piece.
And an expensive one.
For what purpose?
Well, it says a lot about the media.
I hope that it will change the viewing audience's opinion
and change their perspective as to what media really is.
There's a media reality.
Television is not necessarily reality.
And millions of people have spent weeks
believing that there's a cathouse for dogs.
And, in fact, there never was.
And that's what I did.
I decided to have a relationship with the news media
where they were not just reporting about me,
but I was reporting about them as well.
Their irresponsibility, their gullibility,
their prejudices.
Joey is the quality-control inspector.
He's poking for the soft spots in the media armor,
and it turns out that it's very easy to find.
And in a culture like ours that's so media-dominated,
where commercial interests
are just pushing their propaganda on us
from every direction,
the lesson he teaches, I believe,
is, you know, be skeptical.
Be double-skeptical.
Don't believe what you see.
And if I believe that,
what else do I believe that's total bullshit?
Denis, aloha, it's Joey Skaggs.
Could you please give me a call back when you can?
This is a guy that is leasing my property in Hawaii.
I just didn't want to give up what was, to me,
the most important thing in my life,
to be an artist, to be creative,
to get up when I want to get up,
sleep when I want to sleep,
eat when I want to eat,
and that's it.
It's really... you know, you think it sounds easy.
It's not easy.
It's a very difficult thing to do,
and you give up many things in doing that.
But I couldn't live it any other way.
I don't want to live it any other way.
And people always want to know what's next.
You know, what have you done recently?
You know, I could just, you know, sit back
and wait and see, you know, what the next, you know...
'Cause he can't stop.
So, you know, if you've been doing it for a while
and it's a thing that you're really good at,
you know, why would you stop?
What else would you do?
10,000 rural farmers were marching in the streets saying,
"Down with Monsanto,"
because Monsanto donated 475 tons of seeds to Haiti
after the earthquake to help them
in their time of greatest need.
About 70% of grocery store food in the U.S.
contains genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
Biotech giant Monsanto,
campaigners, and environmental...
Why don't you buy these GMOs?
And they're resistant to Roundup, which we also make.
So why don't you take that, too?
And they don't grow well in your country,
they aren't really from your country,
you need to buy this synthetic fertilizer
- to go along with those. - Right.
And they would lose their own seeds in the meantime.
Epiphanies come in weird places at weird times.
I moved to Kauai because I was looking to get away
from all the restrictions that I felt living in New York.
I've lived there for decades,
and I know the intimate, underbelly stories
of what's going on on Kauai.
Star Wars development, drone development,
GMO corn fields.
And Hawaii's just a microcosm of the real world.
This is going on all around us.
This Pandora's box, you know,
we've opened up all this technology.
Who controls it?
Who's making money from it?
Are we gonna be able to know what we're eating?
Are they going to identify it?
My intent is to bring attention to these issues,
because I know that no one's getting attention
for the issues, nobody cares.
So how do you make people think
and get upset and motivate them to take action?
I do it by creating characters.
- There we go. - Okay.
So we're gonna do a fake news story.
I'm trying to put together a little mini documentary,
about 10 minutes long,
so that I can either put it in a film festival
or make a news story out of it, put it on YouTube,
figure out some way I can have people
have access to it.
99% of this is true.
I am the only false part.
My character is a guy,
whether I'm a marine biologist or a fisherman.
I was in a motorcycle accident,
broke my jaw in several places, knocked out my teeth.
And my geneticist scientist friend said,
"Look, you know, we can try introducing
"shark stem cells in your jaw
and see if we can regenerate teeth."
Oh, wow.
You have to tell a story.
Scary, man.
And that's the key.
A good hoax promises a good story and visuals.
Our next guest on "Live at Five"
is a man with a mission.
He is the head of a group called Metamorphosis,
and he thinks that cockroaches are very important to all of us.
Sue and I are delighted to welcome Dr. Josef Gregor
to "Live at Five."
Doctor, it's nice to have you with us.
You have completed a rather exhaustive study,
and in your words,
the future of mankind lies in the cockroach.
So I went with this Panama hat, Panama suit,
roach pins all over me,
a cockroach T-shirt saying "Metamorphosis."
I am an entomologist.
I've been doing research with roaches over the past ten years.
And I believe that roaches are the key to human survival.
He wore a white hat and a white suit.
He looked as fraudulent as can be.
And I told him, "Joe, you can't get away with this.
Who's gonna believe it?"
Actually, I brought a strand of super roach
which I have developed,
which is actually impervious to all toxins known to man.
Those are big fellas in there, huh?
Yes, they are.
And they're alive, Jack.
They are alive...
He had this really giant cockroach
that he had gotten from the museum.
When he took that out and he put it on the desk...
And I have developed a formula which is a roach extract,
which I have been taking along with my subjects
for the past year.
And colds, flus, virus have all but disappeared.
And, you know, when you're there,
and the red light goes on in the camera,
I can't believe I'm here.
I can't believe they're falling for this.
The results have been incredible.
And so now I'm on the set.
Well, this is really our theme song.
And I had a little tape recorder with me.
I see.
And I was just gonna, you know, push the button.
Organization's called Metamorphosis.
Okay, Doctor, we probably ought to move along here.
I want to thank you for sharing
your scientific breakthrough with us here on "Live at Five."
Roaches... The future of mankind
lies in these little devils right here.
I'm prepared for anything.
You know, if they go, "We gotcha," they got me.
If they don't have me,
I'm just gonna take it to the next level.
With all the space given to the cockroach cure,
isn't the American newspaper reader entitled to wonder,
what isn't getting in this space because this did?
Sometimes the facts are boring.
People are more interested in the story than the facts,
and that's what they want to exchange.
People don't want to know the truth.
They want to play with the story.
We're willing to believe in things
that we want to believe in,
even if we have a feeling they might not be true.
Why deal with the legal system
without knowing the outcome beforehand?
Let me tell you whether to sue or settle,
if you'll win or lose.
I use nontraditional techniques
to determine the outcome of legal decisions.
Have you been the victim of a psychic injustice?
Are you suffering from psychic surgery malpractice?
Do you wish to renegotiate contracts made
during past lives?
There is no statute of limitations
in the psychic realm.
Let me use my psychic abilities
to help you rectify injustices of the past and present.
No fee unless I win your case.
Call me.
Every Joey Skaggs story starts
with some sort of unbelievable lie
that people just want to believe in.
They wear commando-type berets
and leather jackets the color of coal.
They are the men and women of Walk Right!,
and their mission is to get you if you walk wrong.
I think a lot of marketers today
are doing the same sort of things.
They come there with live actors,
who are playing parts or dressed up in costume
and getting the names of their brands out there.
It's got much more of an impact than a billboard or an ad on TV.
If you look on Google and look for brand marketing,
brand storytelling, brand narrative,
you get a gazillion hits.
And everybody is trying to theorize on what that is.
You know, Joey's done it.
Six Fat Squad commandos are here now, this morning, live,
to maintain tight security around
our "Good Morning, America" refrigerator
while we talk to the leader and the founder, Joe Bones.
That is his real name.
We are there to physically restrain them if necessary.
Stop them from going to the refrigerator?
You bet.
It was a nightmare.
She really couldn't help herself.
I had to hold her down.
So what's the significance of this chain?
Oh, you got to lock the refrigerator sometimes.
The Yes Men, of course, are dealing
with giant corporations and business
and moving into the inside and trying to make changes.
Andy is about to tell a really big lie.
They're gonna think that he represents
one of the largest companies in the world.
I don't know if they would exist if it weren't for Joey,
if you think about it,
because he's laid the groundwork,
and everybody went, "Whoa, that's really cool.
Maybe we can do something like that."
I think that definitely gave me inspiration
to realize that what I was doing with Improv Everywhere
didn't just have to be a hobby.
I met Joey Skaggs August 1, 1994.
He was in the middle of an operation
that he called Dog Meat Soup.
A strange letter is arriving
in the mailboxes of animal shelters.
Animal shelters all across the country...
The letter, written in broken English,
asks if the shelters would be willing to sell unwanted dogs
for use as food.
According to the letter,
the dogs would be bought for 10 cents a pound,
then canned, and sold here and overseas.
It may sound outrageous,
but Korean-Americans concede it could be true.
Someone who thought it up is very, very sick,
so we want to get to the bottom of it.
They are companions,
they are protectors, they are pets.
But they are never dinner.
- Hey, Joey! - How are you, man?
- How you doing? - I'm good.
We arrive Friday night,
and I've already scheduled a shoot in Kekaha.
Tom, aloha.
Joey Skaggs here, how are you?
Actually, why don't you tell me when is a good time
for you to get a bunch of people together
who can talk about what's wrong with GMOs.
I need, you know, something to counter the GMO.
I need conflict in this story.
Aloha, you've reached the Printmaker.
We can't get to the phone right now.
Leave a message.
I want to talk to you about a hoax.
I've been speaking to Will.
He thought of an actress
that might be good for my news commentator.
I need a TV personality.
It's not just a good voice.
He has to keep it secret for about a year,
till the movie's out.
There is no money involved.
This is a low-budget flick.
Well, he'll get exposure.
The crew is all coming.
We're all coming to Kauai this Friday.
And I know it's rather late notice,
but I'm looking for an actor or an actress
to play a principal role.
All right.
All right, thanks. All right, bye.
She has other clients, you know,
and she's rehearsing for a play at 5:30 every day.
Well, if you direct me and coach me, I could try.
But I don't know.
Well, you're gonna be, you know,
with the production for the entire time.
- So, I mean, you know... - I'm there.
You're there.
I have to use what I have, you know?
I have to make something out of clay, you know?
I've got to get something out of there.
Here you guys go.
I learned about Joey because I did Media Studies
at San Francisco State University.
And it was literally just two or so weeks ago
that I met him in a bar for a rehearsal to participate
in this demonstration that was happening.
And he asked me, could I dress up as an elf
and maybe sing some dirty Christmas carols.
And so I thought, "Oh, this is cake."
I have a couple in the bag.
And I think that's all it took, really.
I think that that was how I won Joey over.
And maybe there's a way of changing those lyrics
so that it has something to do with...
I'll think on it, yeah.
Okay, okay.
Joey?
Sarah, I hope it's not too late.
Is it too late?
No, no...
I would love you to play a journalist
doing a "60 Minutes," you know, kind of piece,
or a "20/20" kind of piece,
profiling certain aspects of Kauai that aren't really known.
But there's no money in this.
I mean, you know, this is like, you know...
This is just on a whim and a prayer.
Everyone that's working with me is volunteering.
If I can get your passage over there
and put you up and buy your meals,
is that okay?
Mr. Skaggs, it would be an honor.
Oh, well, I'm...
I mean, are you kidding?
This is art, this is life.
This is something I believe in.
This is, you know...
Fantastic.
Well, I think that the mainstream media
doesn't like the idea of this guy out there
who's basically trying to damage them and expose them.
And I think that probably the establishment
is very much against him
and probably would want to see him thrown in jail,
because he embarrasses these institutions.
Some of the stuff Joey's done is scary.
And on top of that, you know, it's...
There are lots of authorities, political powers,
people who are gonna sue you.
The legal profession is industrialized as well,
and they can take action against you.
Is that the spot in Hanalei Bay where you,
there's like that beautiful snorkeling,
but then there's a really abrupt drop in the reef?
That's further out.
That's where the surfers go.
That's where the break is.
We'll go out there.
I windsurfed from that spot to California,
or so I said I did.
And I had a band and a big farewell party
and a Hawaiian blessing.
I had a stand-in double, shaved to look like me.
- Cal or bust? - Yeah.
He made it around and came back to shore.
And we met at the bar and were having a laugh,
and everyone believed that I took off for California
on the longest, you know, windsurfing expedition ever.
29-year-old Jay Skaggs shoved off for California today.
That's not a big deal,
except for Skaggs is trying to make the 2,500-mile journey
on a windsurfer.
And the local media here got really bent out of shape.
The journalists didn't appreciate it.
- How's it going, man? - Great.
Welcome home.
- Sarah. - Hi, Sarah, how are you?
Thank you all for coming.
Thank you for having us.
What I'm trying to do is create a story
that has an element of plausibility
and yet has a lie in it.
So all of you are speaking your truth,
but you are taking part in a prank.
I'm just trying to get anti-GMO, pro-GMO.
But my piece really is about
how science controls inventions and patents,
how the corporations own it.
I want a strong opinion from your side.
I want a strong opinion from the other side.
I'm not making up my mind.
I want to present opinions.
Okay, speed all around.
And, Sarah, go.
I'm here with members of a local organization
called GMO-Free Kauai.
I'm standing here with Ed Coll,
A college professor and activist here in Hawaii.
It's a fallacy that science belongs
to these chemical companies.
This is giant corporations specifically own those seeds
and patent them.
People became concerned that all this information,
they could use it for purposes
that are not necessarily in the public good.
In a fishing village,
you always take only what you need,
and if there's any extra, you share.
They talk about the corn or the corn spray.
What about what the sugar used to spray?
They used to spray. Who knows what they used to spray?
Long term, nobody has the wisdom
to conduct this thing safely.
How you doing?
I'm here with Doctors Ing and Croft,
who are overseeing some of the research being done
on Joe Howard in terms of his tooth regeneration.
They regenerate.
I lose them constantly.
But there are teeth right behind.
Yeah, I see that.
And they just keep coming forward.
I kind of see Joey as this conductor
of this orchestra of chaos.
I mean, this is unlike any symphony
that has ever been heard.
We cover every walk of life.
Doctors, Jonas Salk, sports figures, politicians.
They're gonna try to get rid of anybody
that isn't to their liking.
In 1976, I had a celebrity sperm auction.
Unfortunately, last night Celebrity Sperm was broken into,
and celebrity sperm was stolen.
It was right here.
Everything was totally staged.
Who's sperm did you want?
Dylan.
- Dylan? - Yeah, this man here.
I decided Bob Dylan.
So I dressed like Bob Dylan,
and I went there looking for Bob Dylan's sperm.
There was nothing there.
It was a friend's apartment.
So I kept them out by saying,
"Oh, sperm's been stolen, auction's canceled."
I want to introduce Sunshine.
Sunshine is an artificially inseminated child.
She was told that she was artificially inseminated.
Well, my task was to appear in videos
protesting Joey's celebrity sperm bank,
to be a believable lawyer.
Since then, she has been looking for her father.
She has been on the verge of catatonia.
I don't remember any rehearsal.
I met the young woman who was playing my client.
I might've had a conversation with her
about the circumstances.
It was really an improv.
It was really like Second City.
Everybody had their own part.
And that was all they were told.
I want to know about this because it's very dangerous,
what's going down here, very dangerous!
He controlled things from a distance.
But he let the actors...
He really let them have their way with the script.
There was no script.
There was never a script.
I'm trying to, you know...
What's the best way of looking at this?
You can turn to the camera and say, "We're about to examine..."
We're about to or we already have?
No, we're about to, I guess.
That'd be nice, about to examine.
My only thing is that we've got better questions to ask
if they've already had the examination.
I'm here with Doctors Ing and Croft,
two of the professionals who are overseeing
some of the research being done on Joe Howard,
specifically in terms of his tooth regeneration
that's going on.
I'm sorry, you guys, I am out of... I need to...
This is, like, out of nowhere to me,
and I don't know what I'm talking about.
The way that was, that was, you know.
Oh, well, it was, but I figured...
I thought that this wasn't the first time.
Is this the first time you're ever going to see him?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I mean, that's what I thought.
- I'm sorry, guys. - I'm losing it.
What do you want?
Any other...?
Coming right from the beginning again.
Well, I was hoping to be the scientific advisor.
And so I started thinking all sorts
of elaborate ideas about...
And Joey told me what the basic idea was,
that there was shark teeth.
The guy had grown teeth, yak yak yak yak yak.
So I started thinking, "What's the most plausible way
of explaining that scientifically?"
And I came up with some nice scientific papers.
Yeah, this is possible.
Yeah, it's kind of on the edge of plausibility,
it's a bit wacky, but, you know, it'll probably pass.
Then when I told him, in Hawaii, this is what the process is,
he was horrified.
It was just... It wasn't silly enough.
We use sharks as a source
of sustainable and renewable stem cells.
Stop for one second.
- Do me a favor. - Yeah?
Lie.
You're too honest.
- I'm lying... - I'm lying my ass off here.
I know you're lying.
But here's a lie that I think...
Larry, don't mess with your hair, please.
The lie is, if we can regenerate our teeth
like a shark can regenerate their teeth,
then we can revolutionize the whole dental industry.
Yeah.
And the point of what we're trying to do
is to make it so that humans can now regenerate teeth.
That's it.
Forever.
- That's what it's about. - Fuck the shark.
I mean, it's the ability to regenerate teeth constantly.
Oh, okay.
You're doing a good job.
You are.
Dr. Croft, talk to me about the addition
of shark stem cells in your research.
The teeth re-grow in sharks,
and once a tooth falls out, another one grows back.
So if we can harness the ability
that sharks have to re-grow their own teeth,
we could do the same thing in humans.
And so this would revolutionize the dental industry
and would be a fantastic thing for many people.
Sorry.
There's such a thin line
between, you know, what's plausible
and what's, like, "Get out of here.
I don't believe any of this."
Yeah.
Is it too much ham?
Yeah.
Too much ham.
We'll see.
Comacocoon, may I help you?
Yes.
Yes, you got our press release?
And what kind of vacation were you looking for?
Now there is Comacocoon.
And with recent technological advancements made
in the field of anesthesiology,
we can now knock you out.
They'll hypnotize you and give you, you know,
a computer-generated dream.
You could be a rock star.
You could, you know, be, Don Juan.
You could do your own personal fantasy.
And we could give you a tan while you were out, you know,
You could quit smoking, minor surgeries.
I always try to do something that's challenging to me.
I don't want to do the same thing.
And I thought, "Well, why don't I try
to do two hoaxes at once?"
Depending on the condition of your scalp,
if you have no scars or birthmarks,
a full head of hair.
If you were in a high-risk profession,
I would give you X amount, $1,000 dollars,
and upon your untimely demise,
I had ownership of your scalp.
On this side of the room, I'm Dr. Chenango,
I'm curing baldness.
On this side of the room, I'm Dr. Schlafer,
giving sleep dream vacations.
And then when the time was right,
I reveal that it was a hoax,
and "The New York Times'" Mark Dery
did a wonderful piece.
There's a gray area.
There's a time when you do the performance,
and it's going out there.
And then when you do the exposé, and you think it's over.
Well, there are people who don't ever get the exposé.
So I get a phone call from an Italian journalist.
"Dr. Schlafer?"
So I go, "Hello?"
"My name is Sylvia Kramer. I work for 'il Giornale.'
I'd like to do a story about your operation."
I said, "Well, look, come to my home,
and I'll tell you a story that you'll really enjoy."
I was gonna tell her the truth.
She calls me back 10 minutes later,
"Dr. Schlafer, I'm running late."
I said, "Fine, no problem."
Then she calls me again,
"I'm running late, I'm running late."
And then finally the last time she calls, she says,
"Dr. Schlafer, I'm sorry, but I can't make it.
Can we do the interview on the phone?"
Lazy bitch.
You know, I was gonna tell you the truth but, you know...
I'm not gonna tell you the truth,
I'm just gonna continue the hoax.
After it hits the Italian news media,
I get a phone call from the competition.
"Joey, Joey, you screwed Sylvia Kramer!
"We almost fell for the story, too,
but we read 'The New York Times.'"
You think you know when it's over,
and it's not over.
It's not over.
Because the truth is really the hardest thing to get to.
Okay, so, what do you think of this?
I would make the conflict
between morality and science up front, more up front.
And then get into,
"But open-sourcing science has its own issues," you know?
I mean, I have to think about this, because...
- Can we do it again? - Yep.
The operations and implications of this research
and its open-source methodology.
Is this a news report?
It was.
So maybe we don't even need that?
That's what I'm thinking.
I think that this intro is so specific.
Yeah.
Taking you directly into something.
I mean, that's what we thought it was earlier.
Right.
There's a great big difference
between doing what I do, which is a prank,
and doing a film.
I have to be improvisational.
I have to go with the flow.
So whatever it is, I've got to be able to make it happen,
and so it's different than a film.
You have a script, you know, you have the actors,
you're paying these people, you know.
It's all lit, takes hours.
Improvisational theater, guerrilla theater,
culture jamming, hoaxes, different ball game.
So...
I'm having a difficult time
seeing if that's where we're going to end up.
I am not... I don't have a lot of clarity yet,
if this is gonna be a documentary or a news report.
We still don't have a timeline on this thing, you know.
It's still in a nonlinear form,
and we still haven't figured out
where the actual punches are gonna be thrown yet.
Warren.
Hey, how are you?
I'm good, how are you?
I'm gonna say this now, to you personally,
so I'd rather it be in person,
but this is all about, you know, high-tech and experiments
with genetics and gene splicing and all that.
Are you a willing guy to talk about the possibility
or the hopefulness of having reconnective nerve tissue done
through stem cell research?
Warren, who broke his back
in a horrible accident in the ocean
and he has spinal cord damage,
he comes in, and he's the savior for the piece,
because he takes the attention away from my shark teeth.
I want everyone to have a piece to say,
especially Warren.
And he says, at the table...
If stem cell research can make it possible
for someone who has been in a wheelchair for 20 years
to be able to stand up
and walk to the bathroom...
I can't tell you how wonderful that would be.
Warren carries that whole conversation.
It's all about that.
Forget about the ethics of doing the research.
I need it.
This is heartfelt and the truth.
This particular hoax, for me, is personal.
It's not just Joey's art.
He's brought a lot friends together
who have heartfelt thoughts on these subjects
that originally were just the setup.
Now they're the topic.
- Now, to me. - It's more plausible.
And I have to have an element of plausibility.
I mean, it's so fucking far out anyway.
But, you know, now it's concealed.
They've got it.
And we convince them the next 10 or 15 minutes
to accept it and move on, and see the bigger picture.
We got it.
This particular piece really is a stand-by-itself piece.
You know, whatever the length ends up being.
If it's a half an hour, you know, great.
It's really a show.
And we never have to reveal the fact that it's a hoax.
And we're gonna make this into its own film
and then put this out in the world.
We submit it to film festivals
as a mini documentary.
If they air it, if they accept it and air it,
and no one says that it's, you know, bullshit,
fantastic.
The tourists don't know anything.
To them, it's a beautiful, idyllic, tropical island.
It's also the most remote
geographical archipelago on Earth.
We have a secret military base doing underwater research
with a submarine base out here.
There may or may not be nuclear weapons.
It's a fallacy
that science belongs to these chemical companies.
The science belongs to all of us.
I try not to think of any ethical ramifications.
It's not often you see shark's teeth in a human,
but, you know, they're functioning perfectly.
If open-source science can make it possible
for someone who has been in a wheelchair
to be able to stand up,
I can't tell you how wonderful that would be.
I would say go ahead and play God.
This is a huge Pandora's box.
Nobody has the wisdom to conduct this thing safely.
- Pass the bill! - Pass the bill!
- Sarah. - Hello.
Hey, there you are.
Hey.
Can you see me?
Good to see you.
Your hair is longer.
It looks good.
Yeah.
I imagine your beard is probably longer, too,
but right now it's half frame.
I've got a little bad news.
Yeah?
Holly Shorts got back to us.
And they did not accept "Pandora's Hope."
That's okay.
So they sent consolation...
Saying that it was a record year.
They had 1,400 submissions.
So one more down.
Right, that's why it's a shotgun approach.
You know, we do a whole lot, and, you know...
it's the odds.
Yeah.
It's just a waiting game, Sarah, you know.
I said to everyone when I did the hoax,
the hoax part is the easy part,
and the hard part is waiting
to see if anybody, you know, bites.
There's no P.
It's not here.
They picked a lot of films, but we're not one of them.
Oh, well.
The big one I'm hoping for is the Hawaii Film Festival.
That's the one I hope we make it into.
That's when the shit will really hit the fan,
because everyone is gonna realize who these people are.
You know?
And the local press will go bananas.
It'll probably go wire service, AP,
which will then make it a global story.
Maybe we can make it a newsworthy event
and get some media coverage that way.
I'm just concerned that our friends
will laugh their asses off, and then it's all over.
We've come this far,
and we really don't want to blow it at this stage.
All we have to do is get these film festivals covered.
Mama, Papa!
Hello?
Can you hear me?
Hello?
Sarah, hi.
We heard from the Hawaii International Film Festival.
No?
Oh, well.
I'll read it to you.
What do you say about that?
It's okay.
It's just a difficult challenge.
And I'm, so far, you know, disappointed
because I haven't been accepted into film festivals,
but I can understand that, because, you know,
it's not that it's a fantastic film.
It's, you know, a bunch of people
talking about serious issues,
which could be made, I guess, into a great film
by a great filmmaker.
But I don't consider myself a filmmaker.
I feel like I locked myself into a corner,
trying to do a very difficult thing,
limiting how I can get attention to the piece
by only having it available to film festivals.
I've rarely heard him say, "That was a mistake.
"I wish I hadn't done that.
If I could do it over, I would do it this way."
I think he really has a lot of self-confidence.
He trusts his instincts,
and he knows that he can pull a rabbit
out of a hat if he needs to,
and I've seen him do it.
He'll enter into a project
because of very strong beliefs about it,
even if they are conflicted beliefs
or if there's no way to know the actual truth
or the actual outcome of what's gonna happen.
You know, as long as you're excited
and fascinated and curious, you're alive.
You're really living.
And he's really living.
He's often described it as being a surfer.
You know, you have no idea if you're gonna catch the wave.
You have no idea, once you're on the wave,
how long you're gonna stay on the wave,
and you don't know when your ride is over.
And for him, that's hugely exciting.
Have you ever pulled something that's failed?
No.
No, really?
Is it that easy?
Is there a... I mean, is there any kind
of surefire thing you can do?
It's like producing a theater piece.
You conceive, write, produce, direct, stage, act in it.
It's very complicated.
There are many techniques to gaining access to the media.
If you know how the media works,
it's kind of easy to give them the hook.
I know that he will never stop being creative,
doing projects,
coming up with outrageous, outlandish, hilarious ideas.
I know he won't.
It's just his nature.
It's what he'll do.
You never know what he's gonna come up with next.
You never know where he's going,
but I'm going with him.
I'm gonna be there every time he calls,
even at this age.
I'm gonna follow him through the streets of New York.
It's okay because I know, wherever he's going,
it's gonna be fun.
And, you know, we were leaving one of the houses recently,
and he said, "I'm so lucky.
"I'm so, so lucky
"that all of my friends are here doing this for me.
Like, it doesn't escape me for a second how grateful I am."
And then he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said,
"And you're one of my new friends."
I've been really lucky that I've been able
to live the life that I have lived
and with the people that have come into my life,
and to feel a part,
that we've all created something,
because, you know, it's just not all me.
It's me involving everyone I can involve,
and everyone doing it.
And that, I love.
That's the we. It's not the me.
Good morning.
Good morning!
It's August 22nd,
and in the past 12 hours or so,
we've been accepted to two film festivals.
I got the first email last night...
right before I drifted off to sleep.
I was pretty excited.
And then this morning, I wake up,
and what do you know?
We're accepted to another film festival!
Two!
Hi!
Hi.
Can you believe it?
We did it.
Yeah!
Now the fun part begins.
Now it's gonna be the juice.
We'll take...
The plan for today is, we're gonna poster the town.
My name is Kit.
I've got a card if you'd like.
- Hello, Miss. - Farrell.
I'm a filmmaker
who has a film here in the film festival.
It's a short film. It's just 20 minutes.
Let's stop by the cinemas
to see if our big movie poster is up.
Yeah.
There it is!
Oh, my God.
Hey, everybody.
Right now, Kit Farrell from "Pandora's Hope"
joins us right now.
Tell us about this wonderful movie.
Oh, I'm so excited about this... my debut project.
Hawaii's island of Kauai is many things to many people.
Things that you normally only read about
in "Discover Magazine" or something.
It's not often you see shark's teeth in a human.
But, you know, they're functioning perfectly.
I was wondering, do we push this?
Do I go up there and serve wine?
- With the teeth? - With the teeth.
To me, it's another level of absurdity
that I can't stop myself from wanting to do.
People might find it odd
that you're using the stem cells of a different species
for your research in humans.
I had no idea that the teeth would regenerate so quickly.
Every test that I did on him was, you know, 100% normal.
It was as if Joe was born with those teeth.
I'm Kit Farrell.
That group was basically to make it more transparent,
as they say.
The man with the shark teeth?
I'm just curious,
why do the teeth regenerate and...
Yeah, yeah, so this is xenotransplantation,
which I have come to find is actually not that uncommon.
It has to do with stem cells.
My stories may take off and be an instant...
Everyone has to read it.
Or they may be a slow, in the back burner, you know,
takes time for this to come around.
And I have to have the openness,
the flexibility to let that happen.
I have planted seeds of thought.
And seeds of thought hopefully will grow.
"Pandora's Hope" is now a film.
So it has a life.
It's not a newspaper article
that, you know, is yesterday's news,
buried and gone.
- Joey? - Yes, yes.
I'm actually calling to tell you
that our film, "Pandora's Hope," has just been accepted
into the Big Apple Film Festival in New York City.
You're kidding.
Isn't that amazing?
That's fabulous.
In my heart, I've always been the person
who is disturbed by things,
wants to see a change,
and looks for a way in which to reach people
to ring the bell
to make those changes.
I'm gonna send out the press release
with a flyer announcing "Pandora's Hope"
in the film festival in New York to the news media
and generate some buzz about the film.
Is it possible for you to get some friends
to be protestors and protest the movie
because there's animal stem cells being used in humans?
We're gonna have a demonstration against the movie.
So I'm planning on that.
I'm getting protest signs printed up now.
Frankenfood, Frankenpeople.
Frankenstein.
Just don't tell anybody that it's a hoax.
I won't, I won't.
Okay.
All right, 'cause I've got, like, two years worth of my life
in this thing.
Bye.
I don't remember if I told you about my first-grade teacher,
Ms. Davis, who said to the class,
"Class, I want you all to think about something.
"Just open your minds.
I'm gonna tell you about a big picture."
She started out telling the class,
"Oh, let's, you know, look under a microscope,"
and we see this little amoeba.
And then, you know, the amoeba grows,
and we have, you know, bigger life,
and we grow, and now we have people.
But people are really, you know,
just a grain of sand on a beach.
And she said, "Just imagine all the beaches in the world,
"and then planets and galaxies in a big universe.
And it goes on and on and on and on."
And she just kept getting the picture bigger and bigger.
I felt really frightened.
I just, you know... I lost my grasp of reality,
where I was, my place in the universe.
And I realized how insignificant I was.
Well, that's it.
That's our evening at a cathouse for dogs.
And it is for real,
and it is run by Mr. Joseph Skaggs.
No kidding around.
This is it, right?
Satisfaction guaranteed, Alex.
Satisfaction guaranteed.
I want to get you a live shot.
This is a protest,
according to at least one press release,
organized by an artist named Joey Skaggs.
He has led this band
of outraged consumers dressed as Muppets
down to Goldman on West Street.
He's also peddling
what they're calling his mobile homeless homes prototype.
It's what they're calling
a low-cost alternative living space
for the millions of underwater
or foreclosed homeowners in this country,
but Goldman clearly is not done hearing about Muppets.
Is this the last of your hoaxes?
Oh, sure.