“Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville, welcome to Jackass”.. It was on this day way back in 2002 when the hit MTV show was axed and pulled off air. The 17th of February would be a delightful day for those who had actively campaigned against the programme and fought for its banning throughout the whole duration of it's original run. Well I for one would like to say HA! Yeah you might have taken away the show, but that did nothing more than fuel the fire because since that fateful day, Jackass took their work to the big screen, and have churned out various successful sequels and TV spin offs alike, in 2014 Jackass would also have the honour of getting nominated for an Oscar award for best make up and hair for their picture “Bad Grandpa”, which sadly lost out to “Dallas Buyers Club”, but this further concretes the fact that folks love Jackass! And to make matters even better, a fourth Jackass movie is currently in the works, albeit a delayed production due to Covid and the fact that Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O ended up hospitalised during the first week of shooting.. One whole week, and two hospitalisations, that may well be considered a great start for a Jackass flick. Either way it is happening and I look forward to seeing what they have up their sleeves for this one. Personally speaking I think a Jackass film is what is needed right about now, a chance for people to really switch off and just enjoy laughing at some outright ridiculous shit! That's what I always enjoy about Jackass, its just a group of friends messing around with each-other, and as an audience member you get to be a fly on the wall and witness the destruction and madness of this band of lovable lunatics. I most certainly will be reserving a seat in September at the cinema (provided of course they are open again) to see the fourth instalment, no doubt at all about that! And also because this marks the first time in my life that I will be of legal age to get a ticket and see a Jackass movie in theatres at the time of its release, so it is kind of a big deal for me. So if you are not at all familiar with the Jackass franchise in any way, shape or form, I will do my best to tell you a thing or two about it in this piece. Some of the things described will be a good indicator as to whether Jackass is for you or not, consider that my disclaimer done.
So it was during the late 90s, aspiring and jobbing actor Johnny Knoxville (Phillip John Clapp) had moved himself from his home town of Knoxville, Tennessee to Los Angeles and bagged himself some work in various different commercials (one included Taco Bell, the man has taste) to make ends meet and support his then wife at the time, and young daughter Madison. Knoxville had a whole host of ideas for numerous projects and articles, and one that included testing self defence equipment out on himself, pepper spray, stun gun, Taser etc. The piece was pitched over to magazines, but a lot of them refused the idea due to liability worries. Then one day Big Brother skateboarding magazine (a very notorious and controversial magazine once owned by Larry Flynt, publisher of Playboy) came calling and editor at the time for Big Brother, Jeff Tremaine (future Jackass Director) suggested that it all should be filmed as well. During the skit Knoxville also wears a bullet proof vest and shoots himself at point blank range, the article was said to be a homage to Knoxville's hero, the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. I think ole Hunter would be proud, maybe even impressed, that one would put themselves through such things completely sober.. Or at least I think Knoxville was sober doing them, who knows? Anyway moving on. The self defence footage would eventually go on to be used for Big Brother's second video “Number Two” and then on the first episode of Jackass, though sadly for TV a shortened version got aired, removing the bullet proof vest segment entirely, but if memory serves me well I do believe you can watch this part in its full glory on YouTube. Other segments filmed by Knoxville included him getting hit by a car, and another where he plants pieces of dog poop in his lunch at a restaurant and complains to the waiter, much to their disgust and bemusement, again this skit would end up on Jackass later down the line. Other people who were contributing to the magazine at the time included, Chris Pontius, Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, Dave England, Rick Kosick and Spike Jonze (director of Her, and Being John Malkovich) At that point, a dude by the name of Steve-O was regularly sending in bits of footage featuring all sorts of insane stunts, jumping off of cars on the free-way into the nearby sea, jumping off of large college building blocks and into pools, breaking glass bottles over his own head, eating glass, fire breathing and so on. Steve-O was also a graduate of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, meaning he could also balance various objects extremely well, you could argue that he was somewhat of an athlete in a mad sense. As Jackass began production, Steve-O was still working as a clown in Florida at a flea market. Pretty quickly after Steve-O had wiped his clown makeup off, concluding his last act as a clown, he was in a parking lot swallowing a live goldfish, in hope that he could regurgitate it and the fish would live. The Goldfish trick as it were aptly named, was one of the first sketches Steve-O filmed for Jackass, he was asked to send over his own tapes and material for consideration to use on TV, but none of it was allowed or cleared due to reasons I am sure you can imagine having read the last paragraph or so.
Meanwhile over in West Chester, Pennsylvania skateboarder Bam Margera was quickly becoming a cult hero in the world of skating due to the success of his “CKY” videos, again following the same formula as Big Brother, a nice blend of skateboarding mixed with various different stunts, pranks and other very silly behaviour, with a cast that included Ryan Dunn, Brandon DiCamillo, Raab Himself and Rake Yohn. The videos would also mark the first time that the world was introduced to April and Phil Margera and the very infamous Uncle Don Vito. And shopping carts! The not so subtle art form of sitting in a shopping cart and having a friend fling you full speed into a curb! Shopping carts (or trolley wherever you come from) became quite a staple in the Jackass portfolio, the opening scene of the first movie alone takes it to a whole new level, it introduced us to a cart that could fit nine guys in it, and oh man, what an intro it was indeed. I remember when I was a kid, at the top of my street was a shop and it sold all sorts of movies on VHS, and right at the very top shelf, which I was way too small to reach, but could see, was a box and on the front was this image of some strange looking fellas riding this huge ass cart. The box was also plastered with warnings and disclaimers, my young mind was intrigued, but it wouldn't be until a while later that I saw the movie, and of course discovered the Jackass craze. I went off topic a little there my bad, so after seeing the CKY videos Jeff Tremaine thought those guys would be a perfect match for a stunt/prank show that himself, Knoxville and Spike Jonze had in mind and were planning. The main Jackass crew was starting to take shape, Dave England would also bring in his friend Ehren McGhehey who was a snowboarder and extreme participant. Knoxville would also bring on-board fellow commercial actor and former Truck Driver, Preston Lacy, who auditioned at an open casting call, by eating four bananas with the peels on. This would go onto be the core group of Jackass as we know it today. With the flow well and truly in motion, the show got pitched and sent to all sorts of networks. It came down to Comedy Central and MTV, but it would be MTV that would go on to bag themselves Jackass, Knoxville stated that it was due to creative freedom and control that swayed them towards that particular network.
A pilot was ordered and work began, a lot of season one of Jackass was made up of clips and footage from the CKY and Big Brother videos, but new skits and ideas were to be filmed and pitched in as well. It wasn't all plain sailing though, as Johnny Knoxville broke his ankle filming one of the very first stunts for the show as he was trying to roller skate over and across the L.A river, he hit the small ramp and nearly cleared the river, but landed very awkwardly, rolling and breaking his ankle in the process. If you watch back over season one you can see that he is in a cast pretty much throughout the whole run of episodes. To make things worse, a sketch was filmed titled “The Convict” a scene which featured Knoxville dressed up in a bright orange convict jump suit, entering a tool shop and asking if anybody can help him cut off his cuffs with a saw. The skit would land the whole team in extremely hot water, as the police were informed and arrested Knoxville on site believing he was an actual escapee, and this led to MTV threatening to cancel the show before it had even been made. So thinking about it we are pretty lucky Jackass made it on air in the first place. The skit sadly never made it to air due to different legal reasons and clearance problems, stills and very brief clips from the bit did surface over the years on various sources and behind the scenes of Jackass etc, but the full scene was never anywhere to be seen, until now, again thanks to YouTube, you can now view the piece in full! I was always under the impression the tape of this was under lock and key and would never be seen by anyone in the public domain ever, so whoever you are that found the clip and posted it online, I owe you a beer. Sadly a lot of the stuff shot for season one we will never get to see, on the documentary “Jackass Where are they now?” Director Jeff Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville state that during the first season they didn't know what the fuck they were doing and just filmed whatever they wanted and what they found funny, not really taking into regard production procedures and matters etc, and due to their production ignorance, as Tremaine put it, at the time a lot of footage just couldn't be cleared, which is a real damn shame indeed, as I am certain it would have been spectacular.
Luckily Jackass did not get closed down during its early production stages and would air on MTV on the 12th of April 2000. Overall it was an instant hit and an overnight success, the first episode drew in viewing figures nobody could have quite imagined, despite all of this, controversy and outrage soon followed. Although each episode starts with a warning not to attempt anything performed in the show, and numerous warnings throughout the show itself and the end, the number of copy cat incidents were on the rise, and Jackass came under some very intense scrutiny, some citing that the show encouraged dangerous behaviour and was the reason to blame for various injuries and even death sustained by children copying what they had seen on the programme. Eventually Congress Senator, Joe Lieberman stepped in and pressured MTV to either cancel the show, edit it or show it at a later spot, after a Connecticut teenager set himself on fire recreating a stunt seen on the show. Lieberman said in a press release, “It is irresponsible for MTV to air these kinds of stunts on a programme clearly popular with teens, I recognise the programme is rated for adults and comes with general disclaimers, but there are some things that are so potentially dangerous and inciting, particularly to vulnerable children, that they should not be put on TV”. MTV responded to this by pushing back the show from its slated 9pm slot to a later 10pm one, and even stopped airing repeats of previous episodes, thinking this would somewhat appease the opposition, and diffuse the situation. Unfortunately this would not be the case, and by season two of Jackass, MTV were constantly telling the Jackass team what they could and could not do or depict on their show. Due to this, a great deal of discontent grew between Jackass and MTV, and the censors who had really started to come down hard on the show. With all of this, and the sudden loss of Bam and the CKY crew, it was decided Jackass would end after its third season. No big finale got created to bring Jackass to a close, it would merely just end as quickly as it had started. Jackass season 3, episode 9, “The bed Wetter”, would be the last ever episode of the very popular show. It was a real shame because the show was genuinely popular, even celebrities started cropping up here and there throughout episodes, Brad Pitt filmed with the guys for a couple of skits for the show, one where he is abducted in front of a cinema to the disbelief of the members of public in the area, and another, “Night Monkey 2” where he dons a monkey outfit and runs around joining in with the mischief, to his credit, Brad did not at all seem out of place, he even took a pretty damn hard slam in true Jackass fashion, at his own choice he threw himself into one of the cast as they drove by downhill on a speeding go kart, much to the delight of the cast and Knoxville, a true honourable member of Jackass. The films would each have various cameos from from different celebs and icons, from John Waters to Sean William Scott, and many many more.
It was a disappointing way to end, but that would be short lived, as the movie soon went into production. On August 18th 2002, a special episode aired entitled, Jackass Backyard BBQ movie special, and was basically a behind the scenes of a screening/party of Jackass the movie. It previews clips from the movie, and reactions from a very star studded audience and guests such as Slash, Tre Cool, and Lara Flynn Boyle to name a few, were all in on the fun, some even got pranked by the boys in typical Jackass nature, I think it is a great episode, my favourite part being Preston and Ehren getting set up with a dud driver who ends up driving them around the same places for hours on end, Preston as you can imagine starts to get highly irate, and when the cast inform him it was a prank, he's just that angry he starts ranting and refusing to go to the party. Of course he ends up going though and great fun is to be had by all concerned. I mean I guess we all would go a little crazy trapped in a car for such long periods of time with someone like Ehren.. Following up on the BBQ special, on the 25th of August 2002, The Making of Jackass: The Movie hit the small screen ramping up the hype. Jackass the movie premiered on the 21st of October 2002 in the states, before a countrywide release on the 25th of October. Originally the idea was to bring a close to Jackass completely with the release of the movie, making up for their lack of TV finale, and enabling them to go out in a blaze of glory, and show off a hell of a lot of man ass on the way, completely uncensored as they had always dreamt of! It was four years later during the filming of “Wildboyz”(an extreme nature show starring Chris Pontius and Steve-O, also directed by Jeff Tremaine and features plenty of familiar faces from Jackass) that the idea for a sequel to Jackass the movie started to take shape. Knoxville tagged along on a few adventures during the filming of Wildboyz, and one trip in particular, in Russia, Knoxville was throwing himself through hell (as always), So Jeff Tremaine took him aside and pretty much said if you are willing to go this hard for television, why not get the guys together and make another Jackass movie? What a decision that turned out to be. And out splashed Number Two.. Followed by Jackass 3D. A 2.5 and 3.5 would follow on from both films, both made of material shot and not used in Number Two and 3D respectively. Not bad for such a renegade bunch of misfits huh?.
I am not even ashamed to say that I absolutely love Jackass! My first exposure (a most fitting word for the subject I must say) to Jackass was way back in the day when the first movie was getting premiered on television for the first time, I was very young at the time and probably under no circumstances should have watched Jackass at that point, but thanks to my big sister, she recorded it herself off TV and onto tape (back in the day as you did) and did not hesitate to let me watch it with her. My little mind was hooked, I just found it all so amusing, it was slapstick comedy, but real! I laughed hard. This led me on the quest to devour all things Jackass, I wanted to see what else this band of crazies would do. After a tiny bit of research, I found episodes of the show on the television, screened on MTV 2. Again just like the movie, I loved it. So much so, I used to sneak downstairs, blank cassette in hand and set the VHS to record. Usually two episodes were screened one after the other, so pretty soon I had near enough every episode from the three seasons, all compiled neatly onto tapes, ad breaks removed as well, I was a right wizard I thought. Then one weekend I found myself in CEX, armed with my weekly pocket money, I managed to find myself a Jackass DVD, titled Jackass Volume Two. Of course I needed an adult to purchase it for me at the time, but my mother kindly obliged after not so much resistance as I had expected, I think she just figured it was just “another one of those strange things David likes” and didn't stop to question it. I was just super stoked that I was able to get myself a Jackass DVD and still have enough pocket money to grab a comic book and a bottle of fizz afterwards, my weekends were wild! Unfortunately though, the DVD turned out to be a pretty big let down, as it was completely censored and thrown together in a show reel, best of, sort of format and not full episodes. I was gutted as well because I noticed that there were clips I had on VHS that did not feature on the DVD, as well as shortened and trimmed ones for the DVD release. Another big gripe I had was the music and songs had also all been changed for the DVD version, and some of the songs used originally I thought made the skits even better, and just worked for the bits they were used in. Soon after I learnt that the episodes shown on UK TV were also cut and not in full, all that wasted tape I thought. This didn't sit well with me because I have always been somewhat of a completest and I wanted to see it all, unedited and how it went out on air originally. The TV box set would offer no reprieve either, as it was again just made up of volumes of each season, this time though each volume was extended and we got a few more sketches for our money, but still no full season releases, and a chunk of sketches missing. I google searched a lot to see what was missing and what I had not seen, turns out it was a hell of a lot. If you watch the opening credits of season 2 either on DVD or TV, you will hear the unmistakeable sound of a guy spewing and retching his guts up, but no one can be seen puking, turns out this was part of a segment called “The Milk Challenge” where the goal was to see who can drink the most of a gallon of milk in one hour or as fast as possible, as you can probably tell, it ends in the most disgusting but funny ways, and that's a full on vomit fest, and a clip from it was originally used in the credits, until the powers that be decided not to show it, but kept the audio playing for some strange reason. Other segments excluded from the DVD releases included, “Satan VS God”, “Fast Food Football”, “Roller Jump”, “Bear Wrestling” and many more. It wouldn't be until 2009 that this small issue of mine would be resolved, as Jackass: The Lost Tapes hit the shelves, it plugged the gaps in the previous releases and featured the missing bits, the DVD also allowed us to see all of the opening and closing credits from the show, as a bonus feature, as again the DVD was put together in one big best of. I was very much so appeased, I thought it was the best it was going to get in terms of owning the Jackass show on DVD, in its complete and full version. It is worth noting though that there are still a few sketches that have still not seen the light of day on any home media releases, there is “Up in Flames”, a bit where Knoxville is hit with a flame thrower, and “Human BBQ”, again starring Johnny Knoxville, he is covered in a suit of meat, and is literally barbecued with it on, once the meat is cooked the gang all tuck in. Now these two stunts I can understand as to why they were not included, as I am led to believe that these stunts caused a great deal of imitation amongst youngsters and got themselves seriously hurt, these skits have not been aired on TV since. And the last bit is a scene named “ The Poo Hug”, Dave England covers himself in beans and a mix of chocolate, to give off the impression he is bathed in genuine shit, and casually stands offering out hugs to passers by, the many different reactions make this one true gold.
Well ladies and gents, that is all she wrote, though you might be glad to know that after all of this time, I do now finally own full seasons in its original format as intended, all thanks to gent who recorded them when they were first on air and digitised them, and soon after telling him of my years of struggle, was more than happy to send the files over so I could enjoy them for myself! What a guy, and a great example of when the internet can be a fantastic tool! I guess now, we just sit and wait to see Jackass 4, although now due to event events, it looks like Bam is off the team for various reasons, will they still go ahead? Maybe, although I was already thinking how odd it would be to see Jackass minus Ryan Dunn, but now also Bam? Only time will tell really, I am hoping things can be ironed out though, as I look forward to seeing what is next for the Jackass team, and come September, I hope I will be sat in a cinema, waiting in anticipation for the next chapter of this much loved series. Whether it happens or not, Jackass has already firmly stained itself onto the lexicon of popular culture. Thank you for reading.
-Otto.
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