Man, how have you been? I swung around to find that he was speaking to the actor John C. Reilly, seated next to us on the patio. Reilly was dressed in a powder blue three-piece suit and boots. His big hat sat beside him. After the two had exchanged pleasantries and caught up a bit, Knoxville told me that he had gotten to know Reilly in the '90s, through Knoxville's then neighbor Heather Graham. Thinking back to those days seemed to animate him.
He had come to Los Angeles from Tennessee after high school with little more than the firm sense that he ought to be famous. Freshly arrived, he fell in with a community of striving young actors, all gunning for first successes, still unsure of what those successes would look like or lead to.
One was Bikini; another was Big Brother, an infamously anarchic skateboarding mag. He dropped his given name, P. Clapp, and adopted a pen name: Johnny Knoxville. I can do this and feel satisfied and engaged. But it was the writing work that switched him on and allowed him to provide for his newborn daughter.
It would also, in its own way, get him on television. He pitched the editors of Big Brother on conducting an experiment—testing the efficacy of pepper spray, a stun gun, a Taser, and a bulletproof vest by using them on himself. The vest test required him to shoot himself with a pistol. Jeff Tremaine, the editor, assigned the story and suggested he also videotape his efforts. Knoxville survived and the magazine released a few videos that included his stunts.
The tapes made their way around Hollywood, and Knoxville, Tremaine, and their director friend Spike Jonze showed a version to MTV, where executives said they wanted to build a show around this sort of thing. Jonze was stunned. What followed, Knoxville still can't quite believe.
It just happened in an instant. Jackass premiered in , a dick-shaped lightning bolt arcing across the firmament of cable TV. I was 11 at the time. I cannot describe how powerfully it reordered my sense of what was funny; nor can I express how rapidly it permeated the fundamental grammar of my friendships. The first stunt that captured my attention, I told Knoxville, was a relatively simple one: Nutball, where participants strip down to their underwear, sit with their legs splayed, and take turns lobbing a racquetball at each other's crotches.
If you flinched, you lost. If you didn't flinch, you won—but also, you lost. In so many ways, Jackass was nothing more than that: the kind of shit boys do to make each other laugh, stretched into 22 minutes. It was a demolition derby starring human Looney Tunes.
Knoxville, naturally, was Bugs Bunny, the stick of dynamite not quite hidden behind his back. His costars were a rowdy band of fuckups: skaters and stunt performers and one enormous guy and one Wee Man and, in Steve-O, one Ringling Bros. They appeared to genuinely love one another—but to only be able to show that love through increasingly baroque forms of torture.
What they assembled was possibly the most efficient show in the history of television: Bits were rarely more than a minute or two long, and some of the strongest topped out at 15 seconds. It was wall-to-wall mayhem. It was easy at the time to describe Jackass as lowest-common-denominator entertainment, a feeble nadir in TV's race to the bottom. With time, though, it became clear that the show was operating at the intersection of a number of ancient American traditions.
If you squinted, you could see traces of Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. Knoxville's outlaw influences were present too. Spike Jonze told me that he and Tremaine and Knoxville hadn't discussed how the stunts might be introduced on the show, so Knoxville improvised what would become a signature opening to each segment.
I was like, damn…no wonder it's so iconic. At the center of it all, of course, was Knoxville, handsome and chatty and willing to both suffer and inflict enormous indignities. Steve-O philosophized that Knoxville's magnetism was rooted in his clumsiness. Knoxville doesn't have any of that, so when Knoxville falls down, it's like, it's devastating.
Later, while conducting a Zoom call from his office chair, he'd pull his left leg behind his head to demonstrate. But Knoxville brought something else to the show, Steve-O said—a kind of unimpeachable courage. It's so counterintuitive. It's just so fucking backwards, you know? That the star happened to be even better at taking the abuse than his psycho castmates basically guaranteed the show's success. Ryan Dunn Self as Self. Steve-O Self as Self. Jeff Tremaine Self as Self.
Mat Hoffman Self as Self. Phil Margera Self as Self. April Margera Self as Self. Brandon DiCamillo Self as Self. Rakeyohn Self as Self as Rake Yohn. Sean Cliver Self as Self. Dimitry Elyashkevich Self as Self. Jack Polick Self as Self. Jeff Tremaine. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Ryan Dunn was also pretty young when Jackass was unleashed upon the world. He was about 23 when the show premiered on MTV, and he and Bam were good friends even before then.
Sadly, in , Ryan died in a car crash when his Porsche veered off the road and struck a tree. Reports revealed his blood alcohol level had been twice the legal limit to drive. He originally met the other guys when he was interviewed for the skateboarding magazine Big Brother. Since then, he has remained a dedicated part of the franchise. For a while he even starred with Steve-O in their spinoff, Wildboyz.
Prior to meeting the guys of Jackass and becoming part of their crew, Dave England was a snowboarder and stunt performer. At 31, he was the oldest among them to join the show, but he was always up for whatever the guys wanted to do to him. I do sense the friendship and the camaraderie amongst these people at the end of the day. With that being said, I just cannot seriously give this film a ten star rating. Even if I did I am missing out on the opportunity to at least address a flaw that somewhat bothered me in this film.
There is a stunt or prank that was filmed in Tokyo, Japan. One stunt involves the cast dressing up as panda bears. Which at first I was like, Pandas do not live in Japan. That is not entirely PC. But upon doing research, there are in fact pandas in Japan but they are not native.
Hoping that clears things up. Jackass: The Movie is not for everybody. But if you are like me, you will find it entertaining enough. It is one of those, love it or hate it type of movies. There is no in between. I cannot bring myself to give this film a ten star rating so how about a seven. FAQ 1. What are the differences between the Theatrical Version and the Unrated Version?
Details Edit. Release date October 25, United States. United States. Hopewell, Oregon, USA. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour 27 minutes. Dolby Digital. Related news. May 25 Indiewire. May 24 Indiewire.
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