The boys are back in town, but this time without the porn and with Steve-O firmly on the wagon. Ten years on, the prankster template remains – excrement, angry mountain goats, killer bees – but, having had traumatic brushes with the Jackass lads in the past, TARA BRADYis taken aback by the older, somewhat wiser Johnny Knoxville she meets in Dublin. We did say "somewhat"
JOHNNY Knoxville gazes off for a moment. “If the crew have changed it’s that we’ve grown closer,” he says, smiling politely from across the coffee table. “We’re more like a family now. I think you can tell that watching the new movie. The spirit is really special in this film.”
Huh? Am I in the wrong hotel room? Have the bodysnatchers been in? I should explain. This is my third time meeting the Jackass ringmaster. The first occasion involved a penthouse suite, pornography and a very hungover Jackass crew. The second will remain between my therapist and me.
Can this chatty, co-operative, sober interviewee really be Johnny Knoxville? What gives? “We’re older now,” he says. “Not wiser exactly, but definitely older.”
More than 10 years have passed since Knoxville and his merry band of locker-room pranksters made their MTV debut with a show fashioned around the eternal appeal of groin injuries. Age has not wearied them.
“If anything I’m more up for doing stunts than I was when I was younger,” says Knoxville. “It still hurts, but no worse than it did back then. I don’t love pain. I’m just kind of indifferent to it. Maybe I’m just too stupid to dwell on it.”
Perhaps it's the cumulative effect of all those head traumas, but Jackass 3Ddoes indeed see Johnny and company pushing back the messy boundaries they call their own. Where once the gang were content to overturn a Portaloo with one of their colleagues in it, now they shoot it into the air on a bungee rope to ensure the occupant is completed soiled from head to toe. The effect is impressive enough to leave most of seasoned cast vomiting on camera.
“It happens by itself,” says Knoxville. “That’s what we thought was funny 10 years ago, and this is what we find funny now. It’s a process.”
It may not be big. It may not be clever. But the third Jackassmovie has just sailed past the $100 million (€72 million) mark having squatted on top of the US box office for two successive weeks.
“We said we were done after the TV show,” recalls Knoxville. “Then we thought we had closed the book on it with the first movie. Here we are with the third one. So we’re not making any more predictions. It’s like every few years we need to go and do this.”
“It’s crazy,” adds Jackass director Jeff Tremaine. “We never expected the first film to open at No 1 and we certainly didn’t expect this one to open at No 1 with $50 million in one weekend. I mean, frankly, we’re still surprised they let us on TV in the first place.”
Their coffers may have swollen but the Jackassmethodology remains the same. Until the watchful eye of Tremaine and co-producer Spike Jonze, a raggle-taggle bunch that includes Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn, Preston Lacy, Chris Pontius, Ehren McGhehey, Dave England and Jason "Wee Man" Acuña perform a series of proudly idiotic stunts involving excrement, killer bees, charging bulls and one very angry mountain goat.
“When we use animals we look for the pissed-off ones,” says Knoxville. “You see the look in that goat’s eye? He’s looking for a fight way before anyone climbs in the ring. Same thing with the bull. He’s used to rodeo clowns dancing around him and jumping out of his way. I stand there and let him take a run at me and he can’t believe his luck. We pride ourselves on using the jerks of the animal kingdom.”
The formula has proved remarkably durable. Never mind the movies, spin-offs and the 2007 video game: repeats of the original series continue to dominate late-night TV schedules along with a gallimaufry of imitations. Indeed, Knoxville and Tremaine are producers on The Dudesons and Nitro Circus, two of the most successful Jackass clones.
“We don’t care who started what,” says Knoxville. “If we think it’s awesome, we’re good.” Unsurprisingly, said Dudesons pop up to wreak havoc in Jackass 3D. Other cameo performers include Tony Hawk, Beavis and Butthead and Will Oldham.
Hang on a minute. Will Oldham? "I'm a fan of Will Oldham's music," says Tremaine. "But I would never have guessed that guy was a Jackassfan. One of our cameramen, Les Bangs, was working with him and Will told him he really wanted to be in the movie because he used to watch the show with his dad and it was this great bonding moment and his dad had just passed."
“And you know what Les did?” laughs Knoxville. “He said ‘I’ll put you in contact with the guys if you write a song about my life’. And he did. But it turned out that Will was great in the movie. Pontius knocked him out for a minute and he was happy about it.”
Whatever one might say about Jackass, there's no doubt about the camaraderie that exists between people who beat the hell out of each other for a living. Today, as the gang recover from a wild Halloween night spent at the Dublin premiere of the new movie, Knoxville is covered in multiple facial injuries. "Oh you know, wrestling with the fellas and drinking and doing our Irish thing. We like it here. You guys get us."
In this knockabout affectionate spirit, the Jackass crew pulled together to support original member Steve-O on his quest to stay clean. He has been on the wagon for two years and counting.
“Because Steve-O is sober we all made an agreement that there’d be no beer on set this time,” says Knoxville. “He always had a sober person to travel with him. We tried to provide him with as much structure and support as possible. I think he proved a lot to himself and to us.”
I do wonder about Knoxville. A father to 14-year-old Madison and infant son Rocko – neither of whom are allowed watch Jackass– he's a capable actor who has earned plaudits for his work in Grand Theft Parsons, Daltry Calhoun and the John Waters trash classic A Dirty Shame.
Away from the towel-snapping antics of Jackass, he speaks affectingly about his father – a fellow prankster who was his “main inspiration”; he has his daughter’s name tattooed across his chest; and he gushes about the people he loves.
“The guys who run the Museum of Modern Art in New York put us right next to John Waters,” he says excitedly. “I almost teared up. I’m such a huge, huge fan. I can’t think of a better place to be.”
Doesn’t he have an agent or manager hoping that he’ll grow out of Jackass and in to proper acting? “I don’t care about that stuff,” he says. “I don’t care about the business or critics. I just do what I do.”
He admits, however, to getting a kick out of reading reviews: “The critics who hated our first two films now have a new angle on it. They used to say it doesn’t belong in theatres. Now they’re saying ‘Wow, Jackass 3D really doesn’t hold up like their first two films’. We really like reading reviews; they’re funny.”
He erupts into mischievous laughter. Perhaps the bodysnatchers haven’t made it around after all.
