MTV's 'Jackass': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more. We are your trivial trio. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan Runtalk and welcome to Jackass. Someone had to do it. I'm sorry. Well, in that daring spirit of adventure, Jordan, we have our first ever guest on the program. I am not going to risk death and dismemberment by having her hair, but I'm very excited. Today's guest on our program is Maggie Coglin. Maggie was my editor at both People Magazine and Page six at The New York Post, for which I would like to apologize. Maggie, where are you know? I am at Vanity Fair now overseeing the Vanity section of the website. So it's anything you read about, like Ebody's Royals, beauty style fashion that's all kind of in my wheelhouse. Recently interviewed one of my heroes, Yen's Leachman, the Swedish pop musician I named my college radio show Saturday Night to Drive in Bingo after him. So you are a goddess in my eyes. Were so happy to have well, thanks for having me. I listened to you guys all the time. So this is a true honor. Jordan, that's so funny. I didn't know that about he was going to come by the conservatory and do a bunch of stuff with students. Really and then and then I was over the spring. It was over COVID. But that's what inspired my story. I saw him when he was doing the tour with student orchestras and they were wearing super cool jumpsuits and did a whole story about it. He's a very interesting guy. He was very good over email. I have to say, considering a decade plus of doing my job over email, he was a delight. Um. Okay, so today we are talking about one of the most durable franchises in TV and film history, the Black Eyes, that launched a thousand ships and sent innumerable young and impressionable men. I largely have to assume they were man. Yeah, maybe you can correct me on that later, Maggie to the e R. That's right, we are talking about jackass. Maggie. When we send you a list of possible topic episodes. You kind of jumped at this one as much as one can. Why was that? I mean, I want to say that, you know, the past two years have not been easy for anyone. And when this new movie Jackass Forever came out, I laughed so hard I was crying. And the fact that I'm still laughing at this kind of number twenty years later, I was like, man, do you love this stupid stuff? You should talk to these guys about it. So there's that. But I also kind of grew up pretty close to skateboarding culture. I started my career my career quotes by writing a zine and I sold it in a tiny skate shop in town, and you know, that was like the only place I could sell it, and the skateboarding dudes totally like took money and like would hold it for me and it was great. And then when I was in college, I worked in the skate shop. So I grew up around watching skate videos like do you remember, like really sorry, like that video? I was like, I was more of a girl, like yeah, that was the next one. I was gonna say, all the girls skateboarding stuff. So that it comes again to right, isn't it? Yeah, so he that's another Jackass connection. Yeah, I mean Spike Jones was like super influential and a lot of our what we saw on TV and all this stuff. So I mean later when I was at Page six, Chelsea her, she was one of our fabulous reporters. Alex you worked with her too. She did a big story on Jackass and that was really great to work on. So their personal lives are like as interesting as the stuff they do on camera. I was the exact target demographic for this show and it worked, and I think a lot of my attempts at imitating it stopped with the shopping cart thing. But I also grew up in skateboarding culture, which I was terrible at. I suck at skateboarding. Is that this the reason I can do that from skateboarding. I'm glad you don't want to see that that unnatural finger bend that we just had, which, yeah, that's my party trick. I like to pull that one out. Um yeah. But then I just I I you know, because I was playing Bassed around the same time, I started to take music a little bit more seriously, and I went to one of my bass lessons with one of my fingers and his sling, and my teacher let this like long disgusted sigh out, and he's just like crabby old jazz guy. He's like, he's wrong with you. So that thus ended my flirtation with Jackass re enacting in any way, I've never stopped watching it. It's hilarious if you grew up in the suburbs and there's not a lot to do, getting into a shopping cart with your friends, like when everything else is closed, going to a diner like this was the height of my social life. Yeah, very much. So oh yeah. I think that's one of the things that made it connect with so many people was that it was so suburban. I mean, this was the stuff that kids would do in the summer when they were bored to make the friends laugh. I don't know, there's something like kind of almost sweet or quaint about that, Like our kids board still, Like, I don't think they're bored in the same way that you would risk life and limb okay maybe instead of like you know, getting stitches, I can just do a TikTok dance. Well. I think I think the other thing too, is that they're like the infrastructure for sharing this stuff was not really there, and like you would, you could tape your tape it around and submitted. If you were skateboarding, you can send it to you know, if you weren't, if you were just hurting each other, I guess you could send it to like somebody who deals in snuff films or something. But but like, yeah, you're just doing it for your friends. I mean, it doesn't really forecast a lot of media trends. I mean, in addition to you know, more corporate level ones like MTV moving away from doing music related stuff and moving more towards reality. And also you get that whole string of kind of broy comedies like Old School and Step Brothers and the hangover from the earlier mid two thousand's. But then, yeah, like you said, you have the bigger picture stuff like people broadcasting their jackassy antics on social media. You could really view the Jackass cast as early viral video stars. These nobody's doing stupid, insane stuff. It's like them in sports bloopers. Yeah, the blueprint for the right there, the trifecta. That's what caused YouTube. So from the iconic theme song to the projected medical costs the cast incurred to which icons of American literature inspired Johnny Knoxville along the way. Here's everything you didn't know about Jackass. Though Jackass is clearly a collective effort, and we will get to some of the other players in a minute, it is not really arguable that Johnny Knoxville is the battered face of the franchise. Born Philip John Clapp in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a tire and car salesman father and a Sunday school teacher mother. Which is that appropriate? Does that sounds like, Oh, it sounds like a Faulkner character. The triple triple name gives me serial killer or assassin vibes. That's that's never good, he said, he told Rolling Stone in two thousand one. This is just a right off the bat, getting weird with it. My dad's name is philled too, and he was always pulling pranks on me when I was growing up. When I was seven or eight, he would get a hot dog and microwave it for ten seconds, get it lukewarm and flaccid, and run it through my lips. When I was sleeping. I'd wake up and he'd be like zipping up his pants. I'd say, what are you doing? And he'd explode with laughter. I hate that. I hate that. That is giving me big, big anxiety. Any therapists out there, please get in touch, because I would love to know at what point a prank crosses the line from joke into actual abuse. Yeah, his dad seems like a real character. He apparently would sometimes just throw a glass of water at Johnny while he slept to wake him up. But Johnny apparently loved it. So I guess there's there's that his dad was his real hero, was comedy hero. But Johnny Knoxville was very sick as a kid, and he struggled with a case of severe asthma and couldn't play outside very often, and he was hospitalized free quickly, which sets the theme for the rest of his life. I guess when he was eight years old, he contracted bronchitis, pneumonia, and the flu at the same time. He hit the triple crown of respiratory illnesses and it almost killed him. But this undoubtedly built up his physical endurance and likely sowed the seeds of his personal death. Wish. So, if you care to examine the psychology and psyche of Johnny Knoxville, which I do, you can extrapolate a great deal from these anecdotes, and he's talked about the emotional rush that he gets from doing what he does, not so much the stunt itself, but as he told g Q this year, quote the exhilaration and relief once you get to the other side of the stunt. So it's not the danger, it's the surviving the danger that he gets off. Yeah, basically that seem and not to go too deep into the armchair cycle analysis of Mr Knoxville, but I find it really interesting that he said when he started seeing a therapist in the wake of his MTV success, he told her he wasn't interested in exploring the part of him that wanted to do stunts. He said, I know what and he's looking at but I didn't want to break the machine, which is something you find a lot I feel like with musicians and comedians. They don't want to look under the hood. They don't want to whatever thing that makes them special to go away. They don't want to get better, they don't want to get healed. That's what makes them, you know, in a lot of cases, really hard to treat from a psychiatric standpoint. I mean, if you think about it, this way. If you're a kid and you're laid up with bronchitis, nemonia and the flu, all you want to do is go outside and play. Essentially, this guy made a whole career of it. Wow, that's a really great point. Yeah, alright, therapist, don't weigh in. Honest, we like Maggie here, do your role for you. Uh. Knoxville was an all star baseball pitcher in high school, but when he graduated, he moved out to California to make it ah he appeared in commercials for Core's light Taco Bell, Mountain Dew, among others, or as an extra. He was also had a bit part in the Bench Killers show, ironically playing a life sized Oscar statuette. Um and he's actually apparently a pretty talented actor. He'd earned a scholarship to the prestigious American Academy of Dramatic Arts but quit after a very short time, and during his early days in l A, he lived next door to Heather Graham. I would imagine a pre boogie nights Heather Graham. But yeah, obviously at this point he has not yet hit his big break, and with his girlfriend pregnant at the time, he needed cash, so he brainstorms other ways to make money and hits upon the idea of testing out various self defense items on himself, which he said was an evil attempt at imitating my hero Hunter S. Thompson. In addition to Hunter S Thompson, Knoxville credits a copy of Jack Cares on the Road, which was given to him by his cousin. There's a singer songwriter named Roger Allen Wade with getting him bitten by the acting bug. So do you feel robbed that we each have like two names and these guys are like John, Philip Clap, Roger Allen Wade. I'm just out here, Maggie Cogland to Hunter, asked Wompson. Yeah you know, Yeah, I do, well, Maggie, you're were you a Catholic school kid? I was a public school kid. But I so you have a confirmation. I have a confirmation. Yeah, but I don't use it. No, No, but I feel like I could if I wanted to go three names, I could go Alex, John Heigel. That doesn't have a good ring to it. Jordan, what about you? Are you confirmed? Uh? No? My middle name is Richard, after my dad who used to love calling me Uh, he goes by Dick and he used to call me little Dick to torment me in front of my friends. Um. So speaking of Dad's with not great senses of humor, putting a pin in that one. So yes, he described this uh idea of testing out self defense items on his himself as an evil attempt at imitating my hero Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah, in his office, you have two framed portraits Hunter S. Thompson and Evil Knevel, the famous stunt, the devil from the seventies. Put them together. You got Johnny Knoxville. That's it. Um. He pitched Howard Stern, who turned him down, and some magazines offering the article along with a supplemental tape of his efforts. Uh. Knoxville would end up meeting Hunter S. Thompson actually in New Orleans at one point through Sean Penn. Uh. They had a quote typically Gonzo Night, and Knoxville remembers that he got a call from a few weeks before Thompson killed himself, and he asked Johnny Knoxville for a four thousand candle power illumination grenade, Big bright bastards, because you gotta do the you gotta do it like Hunter S. Thompson, Big big Bright Baston, because he was coming down to Louisiana to interview a former governor, Edwin Edwards, who was then incarcerated. I don't know why you need a flashband grenade for that, but I'm also not I was Thompson. I think he said four thousand and it's forty. I was trying to downplay it subconsciously. No, No, we got to shoot this one to the more. It's too many candle powers. And this governor guy, he's again quite a character. He was quoted in a national newspaper as saying that biagra is made from his blood. I wonder if he and Charlie Sheen have mutual acquaintances. Yeah. Weirdly enough. Knoxville would then be arrested in two thousand nine for walking into l a X with a prop grenade from a photo shoot still in his bag. Jesus Christ, it's funny because I mean, we're talking about most of the jackass guys come from skating backgrounds, and they have their skating idols, But many of Johnny Knoxville's heroes were actually, in addition to human cartoons, actual cartoons. He said in interviews that he drew inspiration for some of the Jackass stunts from places like Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, and he specifically sighted the scene where Wiley Coyote fires himself out of a cannon, which is something that Johnny Knoxville has attempted in one form another, I think several times in the movies, and the most recent one where he shows the whole where it blew out and he's like, wow, that would have been a couple inches of the right. That would have been a wrap on old Johnny. And then he went in and did it again. Yeah, that was part of the plug for the new movie. The most recent one where he has the wings off is the caption like some people never learned or something like that, sweet man, so Stevo explains in the Magnificent oral History of the show that The Hollywood Reporter published in January. Jackass all started with skateboarding in the nineteen eighties. The skateboard industry was really at the mercy of the approval of mothers, so all the skateboard videos that came out in the early nineteen eighties were very careful to be sugarcoated, not scare off like they wouldn't show very violent falls off of skateboards. Turns out, a gentleman named Steve Rocco decided to break this mold and create a gnarly, rough and tumble skate video, up ending this paradigm. His first video, which was called The Rubbish Heap, was the first video project of Spike Jones, who was then a photographer for Rocco's company, whom Stevo called quote the bill gates of the skateboard un industry. I mean if Stevo says that it must he had this conglomeration of companies and he was just a thing madman, and he would run these ads to promote his companies that were just out of control. And one of them was for this company called World Industries. Was a photo of a little kid with the gun in his mouth and it said World Industries killed herself. This ad, in particular, raised the ire of two of the biggest skateboarding magazines, Thrasher and trans World, both of whom rejected the ad. You know, all these kids are running around in Thrasher shirts. They don't know this is You're doing service journalism, service podcasting right here. Alex and Jordan's so he started Big Brother Magazine as a way to offer a more transgressive view of the skateboarding world, and from that magazine comes much of the Jackass crew. You've got producer Dmitri l Lashkavic, director Jeff Germaine was that mag editor in chief, and he hired Jason we MANQUNA, who he might know. He's in everything Jackass does, and Jason we Man was running magazines to the post office incidentally, we met, says the only stunt he regrets turning down was being bitten on the nipple by a small alligator, since it has become such an iconic moment for Johnny Knoxville. During w Man's Long Dark Night of the Soul, He's like, I really wish I'd let that gator bye bye nipple. Yeah, this is definitely what Snatra meant when he's saying regrets, I've had a few in my way. Wow. I mean, he definitely makes our regrets sound pretty lam That's as other Big brother ers who joined Jackass include on air personality Dave England, cameramanan Rick Kocik, and photographers Ron Cliverer. In the eighth or ninth issue, Chris Pontius, who I believe was party Boy in the Jackass franchise. I love that, Maggie. You mentioned party Boy around. Party Boy Chris Pontius. Maybe this was an early test run for that concept, because by the eighth or ninth issue of Big Brother, he appeared in the mag fully new swinging his penis around in a maneuver he called the Wirly Bird. He was underage at the time. He has talked about this in multiple interviews. So, yeah, transgressive is a good word for Big Brother. Um and then now we must but now we have to bring in the other crew were slowly assembling like the A team, were assembling the different like a soda like multiple multiple screens. Yeah. So meanwhile, across the country in Pennsylvania, Bam Arjarra, another skateboarder, was hanging out with his friends and filming them doing dumb stuff. Is part of skate videos distributed under the c k Y name c k Y Can't Kill Yourself. It was also the name of BAM's brothers band, and they found themselves pulled into the Big Brother orbit when their videos became called hits. So that crew contributed Jackass personalities. Ryan Dunn Brandon di Camillo robbed himself and Raikyon along with Bam. Of course, Ryan Dunn, who tragically died in two thousand and eleven in a drunk driving accident, said, the guys out in l A took notice of us. They were wondering who these little jerks were in Westchester doing this ridiculous stuff, And honestly, so was I because here I am growing up in suburban New York. There's a Westchester here, and I was like, wait, there's another Westchester, Westchester, Pennsylvania. Uh, it's this tidy town. I looked up at the population before we hopped on this podcast, and there's like twenty people. So I was under the impression that like people were just like doing stunts all the time, cragging their parents. And then I look it up and I see this like idyllic, sleepy, little Philly bedroom community. Yeah, so, Jordan, you've called it a camelot for himbos. Yes, idea. I just want to add that the jackass bit player Brandon Dick Camillo set a world record for the video game Mortal Kombat in two thousand and eight. He hit ten point two million points, shattering this previous record by three million points. I think he held the record for a year. So multi talented bunch here. Yeah, good thing he didn't break his thumbs. I was just gonna say that. I was gonna say, Wow, it's really a shame. He went into stunt making for MTV. Back to Big Brother, though, they were among the magazines that turned down or that responded to Knoxville's pitched, and he ended up saying they paid a lot better than Bikini Magazine. Who I guess he also pitched BICKINNI wanted to give him ten cents a word, Big Brother gave him fifty cents a word. Um. And then we also found how Cevo got in Big Brother himself. Maggie, you want to take that one. Yeah, but let me just say, listen, the way that these content farms are paying writers barely any money, fifty cents a word doesn't sound so bad. Yeah, you have three digital journalists in this crowd like salivating the prospect a word years ago. She rejumping anyway. So Steve was introduction in a Big Brother was when the magazine was on a skate tour in Albuquerque. He was a big fan and he was determined to get into the magazine with the routine he was performing at the show. He recalls, I was working with this pro skateboarder. I was like, Okay, this is going to be great. I'm going to spray hair, spray all of my hair and light my head on fire. And that's the torch, and you're going to have a mouthful of rubbing alcohol and you're the fire breather, so you'll use my head as the torch. But I'll have my own mouthful of alcohol, and then I'm going to stick my hand into the fireball that you blow, so then everything's on fire, and then I'm gonna do a backflip and simultaneously breathe fire. But the thing was that the skateboarder blew the fireball point blank into my face, so my entire head was on fire from the shoulders up. And my best thinking in that moment was I better hurry up and do this fire breathing back flip. I mean kudos to him committing to the band. Dude, I would have been like, my best thinking is stop dropping roll man. I went to out my your school I don't like to do. So I do the fire breathing backflip and I come up short, and my face is just fucking burning. I ended up with all the skin on my face rolled up like a joint in my descriptive eloquent image. Terrible. But he got in the magazine. Yes, I got in the magazine based on that incident, which was called, and I quote, the Burning Boy Festival. Incredible. My other favorite bit about Stevo this part of his life was that he was accepted into the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College while still recuperating from having huge chunks of his skin burn off. Um and the clown College is free to get into, but you have to buy your own fancy clown suit. Stevo already had one, so he likes to joke to this day that he went to clown College on scholarship. I mean, all the skin on your face is like very very small price to pay, exactly. I mean, that's what the pancake makeups for cover that up. So Stepo remembers Johnny Knoxvill's initial pitch for this article, which was, I want to mice myself with red pepper spray. I want to get stunned by a fifty volt taser gun, and then I want to put on a bulletproof vest and shoot myself with a thirty eight caliber handgun. I just need the bulletproof vest, and it's like five thousand dollars. Nobody would have anything to do with it except Tremaine. Tremaine would buy the stunt gun, the pepper spray, and the taser, while Knoxville used three, his mom and giving him for Christmas that year for the best, that is not what We had a nice new sweater, help out with some groceries. But so by the time they want to shoot the video, Larry Flint had just bought Big Brother, so they stuffed a bunch of free porn they've gotten under nut skills bulletproof vest. The segment went out as part of the second Big Brother video, and Tremaine was convinced they had the roots of a TV show in their hands. Of all the things he'd go on to do, Johnny Knoxville told Benny fair At the pepper spray is quote still one of the most painful things I've ever entered in my life because it's continuous hell for fifteen to twenty minutes. I think his quote in the video was, I feel like my eyes have gone a Rhea so eloquent. He's you know, I don't know how. I don't think I've ever seen a single movie he's in with as a dramatic actor, but his comic timing and that show is incredible. The best one, bar none is when Butter Bean beats the out of him in Tokyo and he's like holding what's left of his face together and just hear him, go is butter being okay? Oh man? So the crew basically decides to remove all the skateboarding from the Big Brother videos and use that as a demo reel to take to a bunch of networks. Their meeting with HBO went terribly. Tremaine says that the two women he met with were offended and just disgusted by what we had shown them, but mt If he loved it and they wanted it right away. What I find interesting about this whole moment is that SNL wanted to give Johnny Knoxville a recurring like pranks and stunts segment, but they wouldn't take any of the rest of the gang, and so he was like, no, it's all for one and one for all and turned Lauren Michaels down, and he's regretted it ever since, Lauren chooses to believe. Apparently, Lauren Michaels went to l A and took Johnny Knoxville to lunch at the Polar Room at the Beverly Hills Hotel and offer them five minutes to do. I can't do it, Lauren Michaels, do what you do, like in very doctor evil voice, which just such a hilarious image of like Lauren Michaels and Johnny Knoxville at the Polar Room there. Yeah. Van Tuffler, president of MTV Networks at the time, told maxim for their oral history, we just knew they were a bunch of knuckleheads out there who had a very high tolerance for stupidity and pain. I mean, MTV had just ended The Tom Green Show in March of two thousand and acas I think premiered in October, so I wonder if they were like looking to fill the Tom Green spot of like fratty gross out, you know, messing with the public type humor stuff. Mm hmm. That tracks um so with the show greenlit. Tremaine then enlists the c k Y contingent and they are off to the races. The proverbial shopping cart races. Dave England brought in his friend Aaron mcgahey. I think that's how you pronounced that guy's name. I've never been a hundred percent on it. And Preston Lacey also came aboard. He had Knoxville met while auditioning for commercial together, which is just adorable. And he started out as a writer for for the show before they got him on camera, which I'm sure he regrets in case their bond forged in blood and fecal matter and vomit. Uh doesn't make it immediately apparent. These guys were kindred spirits in a way that the rest of us will truly never understand. Jimmy Kimmel, who's a close friend of Johnny Knoxville, tells the story of visiting the Jackass offices. He said, it was Knoxville and Spike Jones and a producer and they all have black eyes. I of course wondered why they had black eyes, and they explained that they had to take their lot. I d photos a little car that gets you onto the production lot, and they wanted to make sure they had black eyes for their pictures. So they punched each other in the face for an, I d this was not part of the movie or the show. This is just three crazy people, and you know, a Jackass wasn't even the first name that they wanted for it. Apparently, Bam mar Jara's mom, April, told Rolling Stone that she was just all aghast at that title until Bam told her they originally just wanted to call it asshole. I love that because I recently rewatched the first movie and there is a skit where they put an alligator, a giant alligator in her kitchen. She comes home and opens the door, and at the end of it, she's more mortified by the thought that she might have said on camera than the fact that these people put an alligator in her house. And she's like, oh my god, what did I say? Oh my god, it's very sweet. Yeah, she's such a sweet woman. Interestingly enough, they might have dodged this next problem by actually naming the show asshole, because one of the lawsuits that was connected to the show was from an electrical lineman in Montana with the legal name of jack Ass two Words, who in two thousand two sued Viacom for plagiarizing and defaming his name for ten million dollars. He born Bob Kraft. He changed his name in nineteen seventy seven, years after his brother's death in a car accident. He created a cartoon character and the Ass to Crusade and when she feels like I could have gone the second round of notes there uh to Crusade against drunk driving. Via two websites and a not for profit organization called Hearts Across America, he promoted designated driving and personal responsibility with slogans like be a smartass, not a dumbass. No no notes on that, Yeah, that's good. His case against via Combo was eventually dismissed. Sorry about that, Jack, is impossible to divorce the show from Corona, the minutements song the show always began with, though crucially without lyrics. The lead singer and guitarists of the pioneering California punk band Dee Boon Quote wrote that one on a trip to Mexico. The band's basis, Mike Watt explained the louder sound this year, after all the drinking and the partying. The morning after, there's a lady picking up bottles to turn them in to get moneys for her babies. It really touched him sadly. A year after the album, Corona was released on the certifiable punk classic double Nickels on the Dime came out boone would die in a car accident. When I hear that he plays those motifs, that kind of MARRIATCHI. I mean, it's just everything for me, Wat said Dee Boon in that song. It really means a lot. Music was personal with us. It's how we were together, and then the punk movement, let us do it in front of people. Maggie, do you read um? Our band could be your life? No? Oh man, there's such a chapter in the minutement on there. It is so really cute. Mike Watt and Dee Boon really loved each other there. They're such a fascinating band to me. They are kind of a real outlier in that whole So col punk scene. They were really smart guys. They have a bunch of songs about like American interventionism in Latin American countries, like and it's just so funny to me that they picked Corona to me the Jackass theme song U. But yeah, go listen a minute, man, I mean, there's no way you can hear those chords withoutout thinking of jackets. It's so part of the DNA as you meditate on that. We'll be right back with more, too much information after these messages. Predictably for a concept that was moving from a loose conglomeration of pals shooting in their backyards and parking lots to a major network television show, there were some growing pain. Tremaine told Stevo to compile some of his footage and send it to MTV, and not a single concept Stevo had cleared the network. He would say, we weren't allowed to play with fire, and I was always on fire. We weren't allowed to jump off stuff higher than a certain height, and I was always on fire and jumping off stuff from two ye MTV eventually assigned an Ocean rep to the show, which they said was the beginning of the end um. Well, now we get into some of these skits that never aired, although I did think they all came out on the DVD release. There was one called the Vommelet. I'm like, I'm like, have you seen it? Have you guys seen it? Do you remember it? Okay? Dave England ate all the ingredients of an omelet regurgitated them into a frying pan and then fed it to Stevo. MTV objected to it on the grounds that they hadn't shown that the omelet had been cooked to the proper cooking temperature of a hundred and sixty degrees And then they I love, that's where the buck stop. Yeah, it's basic, it's basic food safety. You come on and h Then they made the other participants were hazmat suits. So I have a question, and I don't know which answer I want to hear. Was Stevo aware that the omelet ingredients were vomited up by one of his colleagues. I don't know if it's better or worse that he didn't know, but I think he's it's like happening in front of him. Oh okay, I say that as if it's a relief. I okay. These Occupational Safety and Health Administration officers, they really had their work cut off form. One of the many things that they wouldn't let the group do was use actual human fecal matter during productions, so they had the substitute dog and horse poop for stuff like the Pooh Cocktail Supreme, where they sling shots Stevo into the air while sitting in a porta potty in Jackass three D. And for those of you keeping track at home, you can cross off human fecal matter off your t M I Bingo card. Yeah. If I can make it through this episode without puking, I'm going to be really impressed. Well, the next test is going to be the injury list. For me. It's all about the paper cuts. We'll get to that paper cut. No, no, okay. Another another early prank that didn't make it to air. It's one of my favorites. Actually. It's when Knoxville runs into a hardware story where an orange l a County jail jumpsuit with handcuffs and starts asking the people in the store for help with saws and axes. Funny, that's like almost quite, that's funny. Yeah, And but predicularly they called the cops who rolled up and held knock till a gun point out in the street. And then apparently the cop cruiser rolled into a lamp pole because the officer forgot to put it in park. So, I mean, even their arrests basically turned into Jackass kits. I'll just say is this is a lucky thing. All those boys were white Uh, Stevo told Hot Ones recently. The first time he got arrested for a stunt, he was quote charged formally with a felony for obscenity in Louisiana for stapling my nutsack to my leg. I mean, while we're on the topic, let's do a quick Stevo arrest lightning round shellery. The second time Stevo was arrested was in two thousand three, when he filmed himself swallowing a condom full of cannabis in order to get it past authorities while flying to Sweden. Who among us? But then he regurgitated it live on stage. I'm not really sure at what point he was arrested. Probably I guess after bombing up weed on stage that probably would do it now that I think about it. Um. Two months later, he was arrested for disorderly conduct after urinating on potato chips in public during a Lallapalooza tour stop in Pennsylvania. But they ut they come so near chips, you're your central p A B. I'm trying to figure out what kind of Pennsylvania who I have to avenge for doing that. Martin's Heartley's um and then he also faced the fine for altar ring the sign for sea World on the San Diego Highway to read sea World sucks, I guess because he's an animal rights activist and he wanted to, in his words, put his foot down for Shambo. Another one of these kids that never made it to air was one in which Johnny Knoxville was taped into a cardboard box full of pillows and pushed down some concrete stairs. Another was when he shot himself with the smith and wesson, and the third one was, as Stevo explained to First we Feast quote he said, I'm Johnny Knoxville and I'm going to get hit by a car real soon, which is maybe my favorite introduction to one of these. It's so perfect. And as Stevo says, the car just came flying, he went through the windshield, rolled over. They asked him what were you thinking when you got hit by a car, and his answer was I wore two pairs of jeans so that I'd be safe. Yeah, exactly, man. I love the whole Hello, my name is I guess they apparently got that I'm Johnny Cash from like listening to to Lives. Yeah, Um, I just love that because there's been so many times in my life where I'm doing really one Dane stuff and I'm like, Hi, I'm Maggie Coglan, and this is washing the dishes, Like just you gotta just power through it, and you set yourself up with that little delivery, and it makes things a lot more fun, it does it. Really, it's the little things, the energy Um. The show is obviously a runaway success. Following its second episode in October two tho, MTV notched its highest Sunday ratings in its history, but with that came increased scrutiny on what the gang was doing. Yeah. The original warning at the start of the show was pretty lighthearted. It said Jackass features stunts performed by professionals and or total idiots. MTV insists that neither of you or any of your dumb little buddies attempt the dangerous crap in this show. But then they change it to something a little less flippant once they started getting words of kids hurting themselves by imitating these stunts. Yeah, without getting two GHOL issues a quick run down. UM January two thousand one, a Connecticut team named Eric Lynn accidentally sets himself on fire imitating his stunts. In two thousand two, fifteen year old from Alburquerque died after being thrown from a car and dragged underneath it, attempting to imitate a stunt from the first Jackass movie, according to Albuquerque police. In two thousand eleven, Michael Smith used his suv to tow his friend, who was sitting behind it in a shopping cart, and unfortunately the cart hit a bump, catapulted his friend into the air, and he died. His father had said that the kid had been a Jackass fan. Uh, this is probably the most sinister one. This kid from New Zealand, Matt Dillon Shannon was sentenced to three years in prison in November two twelve on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm for his role in an incident from the previous year in which a sixteen year old was dowsed with gasoline and set on fire. H Shannon's lawyer claimed that this was inspired by the Jackass series, despite the fact that no such stunt ever aired on the show. So maybe jury's out on that one. Well, Jerry's not out. The guys in prison, so or wasn't prison So Jerry's on the Internet. Jury's out. STEVO on the Hot Boxing with Mike Tyson podcast in June, which to be able to we were a fly on that wall. We got the podcast, but when the cameras stopped rolling, that's when I want to see Steve O and Mike Tyson hanging out. He said, we were genuinely worth vilifying because back then they didn't have YouTube or video on the Internet, and we were legitimately a bad influence. When Jackass came out, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw us doing this crazy and wanted to do it themselves. So it being an election year, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, Yes, Joe Lieberman new friend of the Pod. Joe Lieberman. Everyone who appears on the podcast, whether or not they did a good or bad thing, has become a friend of the pod. By the way, you all may remember him as Al Gore's running mate. In two thousand, he singled out Jackass and TV in a statement decrying the state of film and television, saying it is irresponsible for MTV to air these kinds of stunts on a program clearly popular with young teens, but Stevo said there wasn't ever an actual big lawsuit, but there was just the fear of one. So MTV's reaction was to start not approving for us to film. Chris Pontius gave an example. He said, if we were filming and we had to step off the sidewalk and you couldn't see the street was blocked off, they wouldn't let us use the shot. Uh. Dave England would say after every single episode would get a list of at least twelve to fifteen notes from the lawyers saying you can no longer do this, this, this, or this. According and Johnny Knoxville, the network would the longer let them jump off of anything taller than four ft um and MTV moved the show to later in the evening from nine PM the ten PM to try to get an older audience. And plus I think just the network went quiet on Jackass and pulled back on promoting the show. According to Spike Owns and this uh defanging, I guess, is probably the only word I could think of, for it would ultimately spell the end of the show. And that's why they ended up moving into movies where they could do more and have it be rated are so they wouldn't have to worry about kids of an impressionable age seeing what they were doing. Yeah, so now we have to get into some of the darker side of Jackass. It's not all bulls ramming into your testicles and upended porta potties. There's also a downside um eron, Aaron mcgaiey told The Post in was this the article that Chelsea wrote Maggie, I believe that he had had twenty five surgeries as a result of his work on the franchise, including nine knee surgeries and three broken backs. Rab himself had to pull out of Jackass, he said in the same piece, I didn't do the second and third movies. I got paranoid about friends, and I got darker into drugs and drinking and wanting to be alone. And this is definitely something that many other members of the cast have struggled with, most notably and lickally Bam march Era. I mean, it's very sad because out of all of the Jackass guys, Bam had all these spinoffs. Do you remember that he had like BAM's One Holy Union, which is supposed to follow him to his wedding and you know, in and out of reality TV stuff. So basically Bam was in his early twenties when Jackass first began. If you watched like the early stuff, he looks so young, and he's had quite a rough couple of years. He lost his best friend and fellow member of the Jackass crew, Ryan Dunne, in a drunk driving accident in June, and since then it seems like he's been arrested and in and out of rehab repeatedly, and TMZ and other sites are kind of clocking his every move. Leading up to Jackass Forever's release back in May of this year, there was a ton of drama surrounding Bam. He took issue with being fired from the film because of his addiction issues, and he sued Johnny Knoxville and the company as a result. Yeah, he posted these really upsetting videos the Instagram that I think have since been deleted, claiming that he was subjected to these, in his eyes, pretty draconian rules after being forced to sign a wellness pledge, and this included blowing into a breathalyzer three times a day, submitting to a your analysis test twice a week, having his hair follicles tested on a regular basis and taking antidepression medication every morning while on a FaceTime call with the doctor hired by the studio, plus apparently checking into not one but two treatment facilities with his own money, and he alleged he was fired from the production after testing positive for adderall, which he says he takes to treat his attention deficit disorder. So all in all, a really complicated, unpleasant, sad situation. So back to that Hot Boxing with Mike Tyson interview that we referenced earlier, Stevo Cevo explained how the Jackass grew felt about Band being let go from the movie, saying the way that Jackass treated Band by making him take drug tests, by telling him that his contract required him to be sober for the movie, what that was was that I loved him, They cared about him. And it's the same exact people who organized an intervention which saved my life. Yeah, I mean, I really do feel for the guy. He said that one of his relapse has occurred when he went on a trip to Columbia in August. He hailed a cab at the airport and the driver pulled a gun on him, and he didn't speak English, so that this driver apparently took out his phone and typed empty your wallet and typed it in the Google Translate, just held out the phone for Bam to read while also pulling a gun at him with the other hand. So, I mean, yeah, poor guy, he's apparently after this trauma that he uh kind of sparked a relapse. So in a recent g Q profile, Johnny Knoxville gets apparently visibly emotional when Bam is mentioned, So clearly they care about the guy a great deal, so prayers up for Bam. Addiction was one of the occupational hazards for the Jackass crew. Johnny Knoxville himself has speculated that the work that they do attracts a certain kind of adrenaline junkie who was often more susceptible to substance abuse. But from a practical standpoint, the frequent injuries result in frequent prescriptions for painkillers, which, as we all know living in America in two, are notoriously difficult to wean off of. A fascinating and harrowing page six story by Chelsea Hirsch Fromen featured this insight from one time jack as performer Chris Rob a k Rob himself. If you got hurt, you were like, oh, I can just take a pill for that. I broke my ankle, I need this, And then you justify it to yourself. If you broke your arm, you need another pain killer too, And before you know it, you're just so caught up in it. Then what happens is people are like, Rob, you have a drinking problem. You're doing too many drugs, and you're like, I'm not as bad as this person and this person, and you're surrounded by a bunch of drug addicts and alcoholics and you're just pointing the fingers at each other. Pretty dark. Yes, Stevo had been as has been sober for like fourteen years, I think I read in the press run up for the new film, So good for him. Um back into the lighter realm of genital mutilation. Um. It should come as no surprise is that Johnny Knoxville has suffered a lot over the years. As he said many times, half as stuntmen don't think long term. He suffered sixteen concussions throughout this franchise, and study from Nova Legal Funding claimed that the Jackass crew has accumulated around twenty four million dollars in medical costs over the course of their careers. The study is really incredible. They actually go line by line by each cast member itemizing their injuries. It's pretty thorough. Uh. Predictably, Johnny Knoxville has the most. His medical expenses cost and estimated eight point six six million, following a number of extremely intention injuries, including an alligator bite which cost a hundred grand, the sixteen concussions which all told four million, and a scalped head a hundred and fifty grand. I don't know what that was for. His single most expensive bill, however, was one of his more recent injuries during filming for Jackass Forever, in which he suffered a brain hemorrhage that costs two point five million during a stunt involving a bull, which we'll talk more about shortly. The comedic masochist as he calls himself, has been hit by a riot control mine, knocked unconscious by a four hundred pound heavyweight boxer called butter Bean which you mentioned earlier, and molled by bulls on multiple occasions. And let's not forget the time while he was filming Jackass three D that he had one of his teeth knocked out by a flying sex toy. The boxing thing, I guess had serious long term effects. The concussion from getting punched by butter Bean gave him vertigo, and for years he got the spins whenever he turned to make turns in his car when he was driving, and so for years he had to take turns really slow, and thankfully, I guess he got medication to correct it. But damn ah. Yeah, another injury that stuck with Knoxville. And this is funny didn't even happen in the course of a jackass. Is it funny? Tragic? Um? Yeah. So a friend was filming in an MTV tribute to Evil Kinevil, one of Knoxville's heroes, and this was in two thousand eight. He tells g Q that he was visiting the set one day and quote, I wasn't even supposed to do anything. I think I just showed up that day and someone kind of threw out that I should try and back from the motorcycle, which warning sign if somebody just pitches that to you on the visit your first day to a set, you want to try enough motorcycle? No, No, The answer is always no, And I'm like Oh yeah, I got that. Of course, he says, let's give it a whirl. What's the worst that can happen. It's not like I'm going to break my dick or something. And then you get the narrator voice. This is exactly what happened. The stunt coordinator, Warren Knoxville, who could not drive a motorcycle. This both surprises me but also doesn't surprises me for the sake of this anecdote. Of course he would agree, despite the fact that he can't ride the vehicle. The guy says, or whatever you do, just don't like go of the bike in mid air because it's heavier than you it you know, it can fall on you. Uh. And during the fourth take of the stunt, that is exactly what happened, Knoxville told People magazine. The bike goes about fifteen ft in the air, comes down and breaks off the handlebar on my crotch. The doctor said, a couple of centimeters down and it would have been out of commission. But I've had two children there since then, so it's in great working order. On his way to the hospital, he apparently moaned the paramedics, I injured. The only body part that needs anything to me, ah Man. Part of his recovery for that was self administering a catheter twice a day, every day for the next of years. I don't know if this is the best or the worst time to ask this question, but does this man have an Emmy? Because I almost feel like he kind of deserves it. Did the Oscar noms come out? Yeah? His Jackass forever up for Best Picture and Actor and Supporting Actor and Actress, and it should sweep. Honestly, it's been a pretty weak year from movies. M give it to give it to Jackass. On the slightly sweeter side, Johnny Knoxell's love of evil Kinevil is kind of adorable. Evil had a great expression that Johnny Knoxville co opted. Nobody wants to see me die, but they don't want to miss it if I do. That's pretty good. I mean, I'm sure it'll be on this team, yeah, which will be in the shape of like the crossed crutches and the skull um. The motorcycle incident wasn't the first time that trying a new scale backfired on Old Johnny knox In the show's second episode, he attempted to jump a portion of the l A River on roller skates despite having never ridden roller skates before. And you can see this. All the b roll from that is him stumbling around like a baby deer on roller skates which are not there's there's a learning curve to them. He fractured his ankle and consequently, for the rest of that season can be seen in a cast and on crutches. And then there was a time I actually came here if it was that season or one of the movies, that he super glued his face onto BAM's father Phil's Harry chest, only to realize after the fact that he couldn't breathe anything but super glue fumes and nearly passed out. Just such a comedy of airs. Oh, Maggie, do you want to tell us about the bull? Oh? Yes, sure, that would be my pleasure. And when making the most recent film in which he has a run in pun intended with a ball aka that bulls named Mr Mean And so listen to quote who is at Maya Angelo When someone tells you who they are the first time believed them, his name is Mr Means. Do not get around that. Bo I was waiting to see who's going to bring my Angelou into the conversation on Jackass. I'm happy he's got guest, So excuse me. I believe that's when someone shows you that they are God tells me, you know. Anyway, So he has a run with Mr Mean this Bull who sent him flying into the air, and Johnny told Howard during this year that he suffered a brain hemorrhage and a neurosurgeon tested his attention after he sustained the injury, and he only scored seventeen out of a hundred. Yeah, that's that's that's really not that's bad. And honestly, I wouldn't be telling people that I kind of continue to um in any worth, mentioning that he obtained this injury while trying to do a magic trick for Mr. Mean the Bull. It's a great scene. I mean, it's it's so I feel so bad laughing, but it's so funny. In the press cycle for Jackass Forever, Johnny Knoxtell talked extensively about his apparent brain damage. Is there his words? He told Howard Stern Mike cognitive abilities were in steep decline after that hit, which he's classified as the worst injury of his career. He also said the injury not only impacted his focus, but also made him severely depressed and over focused on things, which he thankfully treated with the combination of medication and therapy. But the injury understandably freaked him out, and he said that Jackass Forever is almost certainly the last Jackass film. He told g Q, I can't afford to have any more concussions. I can't put my family through that. And uh, God, Shohnny Knoxville and bulls, I mean, you know, he's like like he's Captain a Hab and the bulls are his Moby Dick. He's faced off against them in numerous stunts dating back to his Big Brother days, and he said in the same g Q interview, this truly beautiful quote about bulls. You know exactly what you're gonna get with bulls, very much like Maya Angelu said, they hate you. They hate anything that moves. If you're moving, they get very angry. And whether you're a person or an inanimate object moves, bulls want to make it stop moving. But he also, you know, as with Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, there's a begrudging respect between Johnny not So and the bulls. These bulls are he he res he relates to them in a way. Johnny Nuxwill says that he relates to the bulls in a certain way because they are, in his words, born performers. There's a respect he has for them. I don't think it goes the other way around. That's fair. Um. He is not alone when it comes to grotesque injuries, however, to the bathing suit area. Uh. Aaron mcgae has a testicle related trauma story related to the stunt that he did in Jackass Forever. He said, quote the doctor said, I probably won't be able to have children because I exploded my testicle. Let's gonna let that hang there, and then the blood that it doesn't hang so well anymore. Uh, And then the blood was going into where the semen is, he told screen ran in February, And once that happens, it kills the seamen forever, and then you'll never have a child. But happy ending. I proved him wrong because I had a child while filming Jackass Forever. I can't I can't really articulate why, but I read that entire quote like a blink on two song lyric like I heard Tom DeLong in my head singing that yeah and the name of that song would be happy and oh my god, I love that. The first Jackass movie and maybe even the future ones, they weren't even insured as a whole production, I'm guessing because that would have cost too much. They just went stunt by stunt and Steve Oh, the show's resident vomitter, revealed during a Reddit m a that all of his gross out food and vomit segments led him to contract something called Barrett's esophagus, which he described as quote a pre cancerous condition in my third slash esophagus for which I blame all my vomiting, drug abuse, and generally bad living in the past few years. Um, they drowned, and now they're in the find out portion of the program. Um. You know. There really seems to be no limit to what the Jackass crew won't do, But apparently they do have a limit. Stevo told Vice that he won't try anything that would put my spinal cord or my life in jeopardy. Paralysis and death are not on the table. Johnny Knoxville tries to avoid cold weather or cold water. He says he hates speedoes because he's too self conscious Um. He summed up his stunt preferences by saying, quote, I don't do too much gross stuff. I like more of the things that deal with gravity and blunt forest trauma. Blunt force trauma is his kink, okay Um bammar jare I meanwhile, quote felt weird about anything that required him to get naked. It's very sweet that these guys like actually chased in a certain way. There there are boundaries here, that's what. And Bam also says he prefers not to deal with bulls, presumably after a career of watching Johnny Knoxville deal with bulls. Um and Chris Pontia said quote, I don't ever want to do anything mean all it's supposed to just be mean to us. That's the only rule that's very nice. Uh. We touched on this earlier. I just have two words for you all right now. Paper cuts. Yeah, I put my hands over my eyes during the Maggie what's your what's your least favorite? But also I'm so squeamish, and uh, anything with bodily fluids or that of an animal, I'm instantly gagging and having to cover my eyes and then looking through them, and well, you guys are not alone. The cameraman, Lance Bangs, who is seen a lot more than either of you, two have nearly passed out as a result of that piece. And fun fact, Lance Bangs is married to Karin Tucker, who was in Slater kidding, I did not know that. Yeah, I love that. Um mine is you know what's mine? With Sabby Snooters? Really? Oh my god, just because there's so much puking, Like he's just immediately like curled up on the floor like wretching repeatedly. I was just like, why did you expect I have a I shouldn't share this in public. I shouldn't share this to either of you, my dear friend and my new friend who's still forming a new impression to me, but I will. Um. It was finals week my senior year of college, and I had one of those awful like headaches where you just can't think. Everything in my sinuses and him was just clogged. And I was desperate, like I had all this stuff to do for you know, final studying and final papers and stuff, and so I went down to the dining hall and got sushi and just was having you know, dinner while I tried to work. And I saw the big glovel with Sabby and thought, I need to clear my scinence is out. I don't know, take one for the team. I didn't realize that it was like the super concentrated with Sabby, Like not the kind that they have at restaurants, but just like the kind where you really only need a little bit. I came to about five minutes later on my bathroom floor, UM, yeah, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. And for all of that, the show didn't pay very well, at least to start. Stevo, on his own YouTube channel, said, I didn't make very much money on the first season. I got paid per bit that I shot, and if the bit was dangerous where I could get hurt, I was to be paid five hundred dollars. If it was just kind of funny, I was to be paid two hundred dollars. At the end of the day, I made less than fifteen hundred dollars after taxes for the entire first season of Jackass. No residuals, no nothing, And by the time the show came out that money was long gone. God and TV man, I mean This is like MTV paid the Osbournees like five thousand an episode for the first season The Osbournees, and it worse. Jersey Shore the cast members were paid in two hundred dollar gift cards to The Shore Story each week and they didn't even get real money. It's like a company is like a company mining town. They've paid him and stuff you can only spend in town. Yeah, like what like sunglasses with like Italian flags on him and stuff. Um, I guess. Even when Jackass made the movies, Stevo said that he only got paid sixty five grand for the first one, which grossed eighty millions. I hope they negotiated for points on the rest of this. I mean, I hope they're represented by powerful Asians at the stage in their career, because I'll tell you one thing, at this stage in their career, John Knox, you can still get it. I remember seeing that g Q spread. He's just full on silver Fox. I was like, the lady will have to um, yeah, I just love him so much. I always thought he was a real cutie cutie Petuti and then he's a real Maggie walk us through the fame years, Oh man, those were glorious years to have an interest in celebrity until later go into it as a career, you know. So Jeff tremain aloud that after the success of the show, some people were handling success better than others. Surprisingly, Stevo was all about fame, he wanted it so bad, whereas Pontius could give two he didn't change at all, and Bam was already kind of the little celebrity in his world. So this brings me to my favorite part of Jackassler, which is Jessica Simpson and Johnny Knoxville's relationship maybe should which maybe ship situ relationship. We don't really know what happened between them, except she gave us the gift that was her memoir Open Book, which I was locked in with during the pandemic. So I read and I read and I read, and it's just amazing. So in two thousand and five, Johnny Knoxville started Dukes of Hazard in the remake as bo Duke, and you might remember Jessica Simpson playing Daisy Duke in the film, and so off camera they struck off a pretty interesting relationship while a movie was being made. Jessica Simpson was of course married to Nick Lash of nine Degrees fame. The relationship was super big for the TRL and the tabloid crowd, and they dated for years before marriage. And you might remember she spoke about waiting until she was married to Nick to lose her virginity. But in her memoir she talks about some very romantic scenarios with Johnny. I'm going to read a bit from it. So she's recounting an instance in which she is kind of pouring her heart out to Johnny Knoxville. Here she said, I just feel like I'm going through so many changes. I said to Johnny one night over Scotch. It's hard. No change is easy, he said, Staying the same is a lot harder on you. I lifted the maccaalun to toast that and held it in the air, lifting it higher to see him through the amber of the drink. Don't be looking at me through whiskey colored glasses, lady, he said, too. I know, too late. I said, let's just promise to be there for one another in our imminent and during times of trouble and thunder deal. I said, So this is cute and sets the scene. And then later in the book, I'm going to Readdo. Another clip, she basically tells her best friend Casey Cobb her biggest secret, which is quote that I was still in touch with Johnny Knoxville. We wrote these flowery love letters back and forth, often at night, with Nick passed out in bed next to me. Thank you, that is the appropriate response, oxycle clunching my pearls and you can see me right now. We talked about music, and I would listen to the Johnny Cash songs he suggested, just to feel like we were still together. Whenever I wanted to read Casey some gushy letter from him, she would refuse. It was like Johnny and I were prison pen pals too, people who wanted so much to be with each other but were kept apart by bars, by our stars, by respective spouses. I would delete every email, convinced Nick would find out. I rewrote each text and email in my knee journal, the sanctity of which my husband respected, even if neither of us were doing a good job of respecting the rest of our marriage. That's I've felt something hits. Yeah. I just love that detail that he was like her safe space while she was going through all this drama with Nicholas. I sadly read somewhere on the trivia section of Dukes of Hazard that he pitched for the shot where the camera does the pan up from her legs for the introductory shot of her. So maybe you know he had kind of a mixed influence on that. But he took a line detector test on the Stern. Yes, on one of the Stern's interview, he took a lie detector test about Jessica Simpson. It's worth reading the book. I'm just saying, Open Book by Jessica Simpson is like one of the top three celebrity memoirs. Well, the so on high praise on Stern. He uh Stern asked him whether or not they had sex, asked her if they had ever kissed, and then a third one, that's gross and I don't want to go into it. And Johnny Knoxville said no to all the question. However, the polygraph tests indicated that while he did not sleep with her, it went off when he said he didn't kiss her. So I imagine they had this like whole uh heathcliff On the More thing where they like embrace passionately in the right No, we can't. I love that. Oh man, um Stevo, for his part, once told Howard Stern that he uh pleasured himself while laying in bed next to Nicole Ritchie. Once, I would just move on, just move uh Stevo. Stevo's thirst for fame came with an attendant thirst for everything. Knoxville told Access Hollywood in two thousand and ten, we all had our eye on Stevo because he'd gotten to a really bad point in doing all kinds of crazy drugs. During a two interview on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Stevo claimed that he started drinking at just twelve years old, saying that his mother would give him quote just a little booze on planes to stop of him crying. And also during this interview, he mentioned the time during the depths of his addiction that he resorted the snorting cocaine that had been mixed with his dealer's HIV positive blood. I don't even know how you let's not even getting the mechanics of that. He told Stern in two thousand seven that he once injected five ounces of vodka intravenously. Oh I can't do with I VS no no, that's my line. But don't worry because there was a nurse there and she told him it would be fine. That's three and a third shots, which isn't a ton, but probably getting that directly into your bloodstream. Yeah, get you where you're needed to be. Um. Oh, they eventually. This is really sweet. What Steven mentioned earlier, Knoxville assembled ten of our closest friends, big guys, and went to his house and said Steve, oh, you know, we're here to take you to rehab and if you don't go, I've instructed the guys to knock you out and then we'll take you. And he's like, okay, dude, I'll go. As we mentioned earlier, he notched fourteen years of sobriety earlier this year, which congratulations Steven, really I am. I do not say this with sarcasm. I am very proud of you. We'll talk more about this later. But the whole element of camaraderie in this show is something that I think is the secret ingredient that isn't touched on enough. The fact that these guys clearly care so much about each other. There is there is a weird, perverse sweetness there for all the you know, all the abuse. Oh man, I thought of my new least favorite skit. It's from Forever. It was the silence of the lambs one whether they're all in the dark. Oh god, it's it is really bad. It's because is it mcgahey, who's like locked in at the end and he just doesn't know it's over and he's like, is it? Is it done now? Are we still doing it? Is it done now? I like that. My heart went out to him in that moment. I mean, it's like trauma monding essentially. Yeah. Um. Incidentally, that scene in the first movie where Stevo gets a tattoo from Henry Rawlins while they're off roading, that was supposed to be Motley Crue bassist Nikki six, for which Stevo initially prepared for that scene by snorting coke off a picture of six. I want to launch a secondary podcast to figure out why Nikki six wasn't involved with that, because that would have been incredible. I guess Stevo was terrified of ultimately getting this tattoo from Henry Rawlins because he was dating and I'll use that as the polite euphemism Henry's X, and he thought he was going to get beaten up by head, right, there's a reasonable fear. It's a very very reasonable fear. So MTV was caught off guard along with everyone else when Knoxville, put off by the increasing restrictions on the show, announced his intention to quit in an interview with the Knoxville News Centennial in August two thousand and one. Wait to give your home paper scoop. He's a far at local journalism, Alex, And you know what I was gonna say, he told the paper. MTV will continue to air repeats of the twenty four existing episodes of Jackass, but we'll edit out the segments that have been protested. The most objectionable things will be taken out, all the funny things will be gone. I mean, was he wrong? Yeah? Anyway, Stevo later told The Hollywood Reporter, when we all the supporting cast members learned of this, we were like, Um, what do you mean, Knoxville, what are you talking about? Bike Jones told Vice Ineen that a concession MTV made to them at the beginning came back to bite them. We set it up so we could cancel the show whenever we wanted, and I don't think they remembered that. I don't think most TV shows have that where the producers can cancel the show, but we did. They're just like frantically flipping back the contract we signed what And we touched on this earlier. This is the part when they started developing the first movie with MTV Films, which they could rate are so they wouldn't have to answer to the strict Television Standards and Practices Department and kids wouldn't see it. Basically. However, they did get quite the get for the show's finale, and that was Brad Pitt forgot this. It's amazing, right, he was saying he really wanted to do something with us. Johnny Knoxville told MTV News in September two six, we were filming the last episode at the time. We didn't even have any ideas, just that he wanted to be on the show. I love how much Brad Pitt loved programming. Yes, I mean, is this how he also got on Friends? He just wanted to be on Jeifer don't say no to that jaw line. Did he also like go up to Jack Osborne at the MS or something and say like, oh, yeah, man, Jack, I love your show. Yeah. Me and Jim like got all the tapes from MTV. We watched him at night in bed before you go to sleep and just blew like tween Jack's mind. So cute. What did they go with? Maggie? So they so they settle on the skin in which they kidnapped Brad Pitt in full view of a number of bystanders. Imagine just like being a bystander and like, Brad Pitt is kun kid after? Like should I help? Famous history of that? Yeah, it deserves one for sure. But Knoxville told Hot Ones that Pitt was also game for a much more dangerous idea. He said, we had him for one night. We were doing these go carts bombing the hill on Vine and we were all like, oh, we don't really want him to get hurt because he's Brad hit but he did not care. He was ready to do it. He was the first one in the middle of the street. We're like, no, no, no, no, don't do that, but he didn't care. It is vinus t I don't see this where that's up by by the Capitol records stilding that slopes down towards sunset. That's quite a hill. Good for Brad. Uh. Yeah, somebody who didn't get to be on jackass, though Bruce dern Is once upon a time on Hollywood co star George Spawn and that. Yeah, and didn't he win for um uh Nebraska. Yeah? Yeah. He wanted to be a jackass forever and they couldn't make it work because he's older than dirt. He's a bild bag of bones. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Bruce? Come on? Just know your role man. Who did they go with instead of they had like machine Gun Kelly, they had like Eric Andre. Like, we couldn't got Bruce Turning. He would have died. Any one of those things would have killed him. Why didn't they could do like one of the bad grandpa things? But like, actually just using it's just Bruce turn could you pick up could you pick Bruce Den from other Grandpa respect to Bruce earned? Well, I know we were going to mostly focus on the TV show. Uh, we're ninety minutes into this and we all have lives, but we should touch briefly on the movies I Don't Have a Life, which was the logical extension of the franchise after it became too controversial for television. The head of MTV Films, subsidiary of Paramount, also owned by Viacom, pitched Spike Jones on the idea after the show ended abruptly. Jeff Tremaine never thought his quote stupid little show would translate to the big screen, and uh neither did Paramount. Uh Stevo says that Paramount funded and produced the movie, but did so through a fake name or ghost company. So he said, if anybody died, they wouldn't even be affiliated with it. And then once we were done, they found out about it in air quotes and bought it. This is like the studio equivalent of like, you can't tell anyone we're dating. Yes, this is the studio equivalent of a situation ship. Ah. So they shot the majority of footage in Japan, where they were not as famous and they wouldn't be recognized when they did their stunts in public. Most of the later episodes were filmed on private property, plus the comparatively lax Japanese privacy laws meant they didn't have to blur out people's faces. Louis Fall came up with the idea of the night Pandas segment because he wanted to go to Japan. The crew. I know it seems you know convenient making a movie. You want to go to Japan, Here you go. The crew agreed to bring it along simply because nobody had the heart to tell him that pandas are actually from China and knock Japan. The scenes of Japan feature, you know, maybe a fan favorite, the Massabi Spooters. So simple, so effective, so stupid. Incidentally, that skit took place during Johnny Knoxville's birthday dinner. Um where we we got a few things. I like more than when your crowns have discussed on this show. I've read it with American Pie, I've heard it with Margharitavill. Oh, now I've heard it with Wassabi Snooters. It really just lights my soul. I just that's like burned, like watching that on my my home DVD Playler with like my parents, Just why would you possibly watch this with your parents? My dad thought it was funny, and then my mom would like came in and was kind of like, oh, these idiots is funny. And then at the second it got to the gross stuff, they were both just like whatever son I was eighteen, they couldn't stop me. Uh. Speaking of iconic jackass moments like the Wassabi Shooters moment. We have the incredible opening with the guys on a giant, oversized shopping cart, and I just always love that because it's just the perfect way to telegraph the tone of the movie. We're taking sketches from the TV, and we're just doing them bigger. They are just physically larger with a crazier budget. And incidentally, the giant shopping cart was actually an old prop used in the film The Incredible Shrinking Woman and I Preston Lacy, one of the Jackass crew people, spotted on the studio back lot and incorporated into the film. And predictably, reviews of Jackass the movie were unkind, to say the least. The New York Times dismissed Jackass the movie as quote a documentary version of Fight Club, shorn of social insight, intellectual pretension, and cinematic interest. Finish him. Yeah, I respectfully disagree. I don't want to wax poetic about Jackass anymore than I already have, but the bits in this are just truly tremendous, both in their economy and in their execution. You know, as I just mentioned a second ago, I used to be embarrassed as a kid with my parents would catch me watching this show because on one hand you could argue that it is rock bottom, lowest common denominator entertainment. But I just I thought at the time, I mean, first of all, I thought that it was so funny, and now looking back on it, it really does follow in this continue you um of like silent film stars like Buster Keaton and then the Three Stooges and then Loony Tunes and then Jerry Lewis. Like I wonder, in all seriousness if Jackass is huge in France because they love Jerry Lewis and all that, like Jacques Tatis stuff, Like I could see the humor. Really it's a kind of thing where you don't really need to know the language even. Sure that's something, Yeah, it's something that's really interesting me. Uh. Two bits from Jackass three D, which I think is the best Jackass movie stick out the High five where they build a giant foam hand that waxed people onto their butts. It's spring loaded. The way it builds is just so perfect. They call Ryan Dunn into the room, smacks him down. Then they call Aaron carrying a tray of soup guy carrying a thing a secret smack down. It's so perfect. I mean, this is like comedy one on one that the way they just distill it down, and then they finally raise the stakes for Bam, who gets hit after they strap bags of flower to the hand, which sends them flying amid a cloud of white powder. I think they call it antiquing in the world of the show. It's just such a simple logical bit. But I I think I think my favorite bit of all time is the jet engine bit, which is just perfect. They just set people in tableaus up behind the jet engine of a plane and watch them get blown away by a blast of air. They set up a dinner scene and they have a guy in a top hat and tails walk across the jet stream with a tray of clocktail goblets and then he gets blown away. It's beautiful. I mean, it's like a cartoon brought to life. It's live action cartoons. And I think I also really like this one because it's one of the few jackass stunts where no one appears to get seriously hurt and it's not especially gross, so it's very pure. Yeah. I love that, and it comes full circle for Knoxville's heroes being like Tom and Jerry kind of like slipping on a banana pele. There were, however, a few stunts that did not make it into the film, surprising to no one. Have you been listening to this podcast? So Bear war Jarak came up with a sketch that, upon reflection, he called quote one of the stupidest things ever. He wanted to hire Mike Tyson to bite off his ear. You may remember something that has happened involving a vander Holyfield. Producers went so far as to reach out to Tyson, who apparently was deeply offended and said no. And also there was a stunt planned with Chris Pontius dressed as his devil character and dropping in on a Pentecostal church service where the congregates handle live venomous snakes. However, the insurance coverage for the stunt would have nearly doubled the six million dollar budget, so they dropped it. Oh yeah, nothing like parachuting into a bunch of riled up conservative Christians and they're snakes. Good lord, h Jordan, I'm you know, I've never seen bad Grandpa, so you should take this one. Yeah. I just want to give a quick shout out to bad Grandpa from It's the movie that featured Johnny Knoxville in disguise as as Irving Zisman character. Not my favorite entry in the Jackass franchise. I thought I'd tried too hard to be bored at by shoehorning in a plot. But it's also the only entry in the Jackass franchise to garner an Oscar nomination. Yes, we got there, we did it, Joe h. Granted this was not for Best Acting or Writing or directing or shockingly Best Picture. It was for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Johnny knox was reaction to the nomination. Am I a stunt as anyone else? We didn't get them? Hodd for Best Picture? Well, of course, uh um, they lost the Dallas Buyers Club. I cannot think of another movie that's is far emotionally spiritually from Jackass. Um, so it's probably for the best of the Dallas Buyers Club one for that award. But Johnny Knoxell keeps a pair of I don't think I've ever said this phrase. Extra long prop testicles mounted like a work of art in his home office from this film. So during a screening of Bad Grandpa at an Arizona frat house, Johnny's beer was spiked with ecstasy. Fun that's a nice little button on that anecdote. While mentioning Jackass to a number of friends over the course of my research for this episode, each and every one of them spoke passionately about a little scene from the first movie with Ryan Dunn and the toy euphemistically ingesting a toy car. Johnny knoxele has cited this as the best GIT shot for Jackass. I think it was just one attribute video to Ryan Dunn. I was surprised to learn that this stunt nearly turned out very different. This is per vice is very very good oral history on Jackass. Spike Jones originally one of the toy car to be a cell phone, but they were too big back then. I think there was some kind of plot about calling it. Yeah, I don't, I okay. Anyway, moving on, The stunt was imagined was Steve l in mind, but he backed out because he said his father would disown him for use your imagination. Uh. Then Ryan Dunnes stepped up to the plate and Tremaine said, it all just fell into place, and everything about it, it was magical. The Jackass epitaph, everything about it was everything was magical and nothing hurt excepted all of it. It all hurt us so much. UM. Jackass is just it's not a shortlist of the most influential media properties of that part of the era. You know. UM. John Waters has talked about how much he's loved it. He's been in the movies, Quentin Tarantino said, and I didn't. I did not know that until researching this. Quentin Tarantino said that the first Jackass film inspires the gross out elements of the fight between Daryl Hannah and Uma Thurman in the trailer and the second kill Bill, like when she's like steps on the eyeball that she plucks out. So just friends and high places. Um. In two thousand three, the UK created its own show in that mold called Dirty Sanchez, which I will never forgive them for making me say. Finland had the much more whimsically named The Dude Sins Like that. Did anybody see The Dude Sins this on? UM? I would venture that the biggest place that their influence can be felt is on YouTube, which has seen any number of prank channels proliferate like mushrooms in the dark. The logical native of which is almost assuredly Logan Paul, who made international headlines in January when he uploaded a video of himself laughing and joking after finding a dead body in Japan's so called suicide Forest. But my personal favorite of this show is these guys avowed attempt to normalize homo eroticism, which it sounds like a sounds like I'm putting people on. I am not. You will remember that they are all in various stages of nudity throughout the entire show, and they're all very comfortable with it, Pontius and Stevo in particular. And it really comes through Wild Boys, which was like really my favorite of this where they're just like having the best adventures and just all kind of naked. But they have said that they were trying to do as much. Stevo told Vanity Fair, Maggie did not tell you, sadly, and I was not there, he said. We always thought it was funny to force a heterosexual MTV generation to deal with all of our thongs and homo erotic humor. In many ways, all our gay humor has been a humanitarian attack against homophobia. We've been trying to rid the world of homophobia for years, and I think gay people really dig it to uh. And he said much the same on a site called Gayety this year. He said, I think what is kind of driving all of that humor is making fun of homophobia. We're poking fun at people who are insecure and people who are negative and hateful. And it is worth pointing out that John Waters is not the only queer icon they had in their movies. They also had a ripped Taylor cameo in one of the films. You know, for all our talk about flying porta potties and bottle rockets launched out of butts, toys shoved up rectums, and milking male horses and bee hives being batted around like a tether ball, I don't think we talked about that many of these. And cheeks pierced with fishing hooks and different kinds of cheeks burned with cattle brands, and teeth pulled with Lamborghinis and rent a car smashed up in a demolition derby, and buckets full of vomit, and uh, well, I forgot where I was going with this, but oh yeah, the most important part of all this jackassery is, of course the friends we made along the way for all of its sophomore humor and shock value, the camaraderie is the seldom appreciated element that makes Jackass so enjoyable. There's a fantastic piece and vulture by Bill A Beery that was published earlier this year called The was a Catharsis of Jackass, and in this he writes, individually, each of these stunts or pranks would seem breathtakingly mean spirited, but because the films ensure that every cast member watching and giggling at one comrades misfortune will soon get their own moment of cinematic disgrace. They become something sweet, a group journey of pain vomit in tears. Maggie, you mentioned trauma bonding earlier. Quote. The films have so effectively created a communal atmosphere that the audience often feels like a part of the Jackass team. This is me editorializing. Sometimes that would come back to haunt them with all the people who tried to recreate some of those stunts. But we'll try to keep things positive for this. Johnny Knox Phillis is getting back to the quote and his pals provide Catharsis by letting dogs bite them in the ass and by trapping each other in limousines full of bees. They take our despairing reality and turned it into entertainment by presenting a vision of loyalty and fellowship. The world was left and everything hurts, they seem to say, but at least we have each other. That's very sweet, well said. I mean, what is life but a group journey of paying comics into Maggie before we sign off there, before we get your thoughts and sign off. Where can people find you? You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Maggie Cogland c O U G H L A N. Otherwise you can check out Vanity fair dot com. I write some stuff for them sometimes and I'm editing the rest of the time. Did you have anything else you wanted to say about the Jackass Boys and this wonderful franchise and all the gifts it's given us. I mean, if anything, it's a testament to lifelong friendships and how they can get you through really ridiculous stuff. Maybe it's surviving a pandemic, or you know, drama in your personal life, or maybe it's doing a stunt where you're covered in bees. Well. Thank you, thank you folks for listening. Thank you Maggie for being our first guest on the show. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and I I have Jordan Runag. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.