Johnny Knoxville Is A Real Jackass, by Tim Nasson
Boston – Johnny Knoxville, who just turned thirty-five, and stands a solid, yet bony six feet, (maybe an inch taller), sure lives up to his image.
His show, “Jackass,” which ran on MTV for three seasons, beginning in 2000 – in which he and his cohorts inflicted pain on each and every parts of their bodies, including genetalia, and rectums – was turned into a feature film of the same name in 2002.
It wasn’t easy getting a show on TV, a show where viewers, (primarily immature teenage boys and gay men who liked to look at the practically naked Knoxville gang), were constantly warned to “DO NOT TRY THESE PRANKS AT HOME.”
But not for the reason you may expect.
“There was a bidding war for the TV show, ‘Jackass,'” says Knoxville. Before the first episode ever aired, Comedy Central and MTV fought it out. And MTV won. (Subsequently, Comedy Central was bought by Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, along with Nickelodeon and just about every other basic cable channel, so it would have been an all-in-the-family event anyway.)
The success of the first “Jackass” movie spawned a sequel, “Jackass Number Two,” which opened recently to a nearly $30 million box office gross in its first three days in theaters. (By the time you read this article, the film, which cost less than $12 million to make, will have taken in over $65 million.)
Knoxville’s favorite scene in “Jackass Number Two?”
“It would have to be the one that shows the horse’s hard horse cock.”
The film is very homoerotic (something the film’s studio, Paramount, has been trying to downplay.)
Expect a “Jackass Trois” in theaters next fall, for sure.
The night I meet up with Knoxville, in Boston, the last stop on his whirlwind U.S. promotional tour, he is sick as a dog (or as one person said, ‘high as a kite.’)
It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that any sane person, or at least those not under the influence of at the very least, prescribed pain killers – Oxycontin, the best choice – would not be able to pull of the stunts that Knoxville and his cohorts Steve-O, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy and Jason Acuna (Wee-Man) do time after time after time.
During the filming of the first “Jackass” movie, Knoxville was knocked unconscious three times.
Knoxville may have a gene somewhere in his body that makes him invincible. At the age of eight he had not only the flu, but pneumonia, and bronchitis at the same time and nearly died. “I think that experience made me feel a little like ‘Superman,'” says Knoxville. “I had all these doctors whispering to my parents, and my parents whispering to each other and I knew something serious was up. I was hacking and coughing and felt like I was going to drop dead at any minute. But, miraculously, I am still here. But now, I am the one in control of my own destiny. Knocking on death’s door every day and running away as fast as a bat can fly out of hell.”
Knoxville isn’t all ass. He has been happily married to Melanie Clapp (and, no, he laughs, “I have never caught the clapp from her, or anyone else,”) for eleven years and is the proud father of daughter, Madison.
Some trivia, for those who aren’t up to date, Johnny Knoxville was offered a featured role on Saturday Night Live in the late 90s. He turned that role down. But, as fate would have it, his popularity grew so fast that he was quickly offered the opportunity to host SNL in 2005 and gladly accepted.
What’s next for the dude who has done just about everything that no one else would ever attempt?
We’ll just leave it at this: Knoxville’s next movie is entitled “Hawaiian Dick.”
