If you do it right, 17 is one of the most formative years in a cinephile’s life. For the first time, there are no restrictions to what you can watch. No more having to be escorted to an R-Rated movie by your slightly older friends. The fears of being carded or having to strategically plan a theater hopping slowly dissipate. If you’re lucky, even NC-17 movies are finally open to you, to witness with a crowd on the big screen. For that first year, the romanticized danger is almost exotic, where you are finally invited into a room where sex, violence, and moral depravity are allowed to run rampant. The small screen is one thing. It’s a nice quick fix. However, being able to sit among a crowd of like-minded individuals amplifies. There’s nothing like it.
For me, 2006 was that year and few films felt like opening the floodgates quite like Jackass Number Two (2006). The trailers alone flirted with the idea of controversy, suggesting that Jackass the Movie (2002) was one of the most morally reprehensible movies ever made. And yet, here was another with a crude title and the promise of wilder stunts. In hindsight, it’s amazing how well that trailer hides some of the more traumatizing moments. Even then, for a 17-year-old growing up in the Mid-00s, there was some mysticism around their brand of performance art. Even the name had this edgy quality that felt forbidden among polite society. MTV was still doing reruns with a planned 24 Hr. Takeover somewhere in the conversation. Johnny Knoxville and crew were icons. They had been since I was in middle school, where students once based a science experiment around a G-Rated version of the stunts to determine something about audience response to physical comedy.
Having watched the series and borrowed the DVD for Jackass the Movie from a girl who loved Knoxville to burn a copy, there was a mysticism leading up to September 22, 2006. For the first time, nobody could stop me. I could leave the Catholic school fiesta that my family was at and have my conservative grandma drop me off at the theater. The feeling of being a small fish in a big pond alone is enough to make stepping into that theater feel magical. Here was a crowd of like-minded individuals eager to watch stupid stunts. There were no pretensions about it. On some level, the allure was as much the mystery of what we were about to see, as the idea that these guys could take a licking and keep on ticking. Even in 2006, it was difficult to see any of this lasting much longer. For example, Knoxville was moving into a more traditional film career, having released the mild hit The Ringer (2005) the year prior. It’s one of those miracles that you want to see play out to its bitter end.
I suppose on some level I’ve been chasing the high that this screening had ever since. While I’ve been with enthusiastic crowds that turned mediocre films into triumphant experiences, there was something special about Jackass Number Two. Part of it was just being 17 and feeling like the world was much bigger than you had ever imagined. Every new film brought with it a new corner to ponder. In the case of this Jeff Tremaine-directed title, it was a chance to witness madmen push their bodies beyond any limits that I had known. Even to this day, I don’t know that any film has felt more dangerous than Jackass Number Two. There was the sense that I was watching a comedy of mortals laughing at death. They have been bruised and concussed, but they had cheated the devil once more. I don’t even know how anyone survived this.
Which is saying a lot. In preparation for Jackass Forever (2022), I rewatched Jackass the Movie to see how the series had evolved. In 2002, it worked on a shoestring budget that was as much painful stunts as it was goofy Candid Camera gags. There’s something amazing about it because, for most, it would be the pinnacle of brazen idiocy. Nobody would want to push themselves further than being shot at with riot test gear and skateboard down a railing so poorly that you wind up in the hospital. Not Knoxville. Given that one of the most painful revelations watching him receive papercuts was that I am just now one year older than he was then, it’s amazing how Jackass the Movie honestly feels quaint. It truly felt like independent cinema whereas Jackass Number Two was an outright blockbuster down to a closing number that referenced everything from La Cage Aux Folles to Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) and Busby Berkeley in a colorful musical number. Rarely have you seen a budget being wasted onscreen in such entertaining ways.
But there will never be another moment of my life that was as amazing as that opening. The lights had gone down and the trailers were finished. All that was left was to have the film wash over me. The footage hadn’t even started yet when that familiar title crawl popped up with Knoxville reading the warning that most of us knew by heart. There were titters at just the recognition of what was about to happen. A few people even imitated the rooster when the Dickhouse Productions title card popped up. Whereas most films required patience and quiet, there was something to sitting in that tinderbox. We were about to witness brief moments that we’d return to our normal lives and talk about forever. This was our final age of innocence.
I would love to have any film capture the thrill of being in a theater better than this. As Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” plays, there is that lingering curiosity of what’s to come. Previously it had been the signature shopping cart, but something had to top that. What would emerge from the rubble? The whole gang was there, emerging with looks of terror on their faces. There was something comic about them, like an old Chuck Jones cartoon. There was thunderous applause as Knoxville emerged first followed by Bam Margera. Then, for reasons that can only be described as a brilliant piece of misdirection, Chris Pontius had the most perverted smile on his face. By then laughter had mixed into the cheering as the bulls from behind the dust cloud were finally shown. This was the greatest metaphor the show ever landed on: a bunch of dudes just trying to outrun danger and barely winning.
Now Jackass performers getting hit by bulls would become old hat, but at this moment it felt like the bolts had been blown off the door. They hadn’t done a stunt that was this big, let alone felt this dangerous. Everyone ran into corners looking for safety. Dave England ran into a padded trash can and was catapulted by a charging bull. Wee-Man was chased by a smaller one while Pontius landed in somebody’s backyard inflatable pool. What was this madness? It all felt so elaborate, like nothing they had done before… and we were all there in awe. It was funny, but I was as much invested in seeing how they survived.
Then came the moment that every Jackass property needed. You couldn’t start the show without it. As Knoxville and Margera ran into a house, there was a clear rumbling outside. Margera quickly jumped through a window while Knoxville stopped to face a camera. His feet still in panic mode, he composed himself and said “Hi, I’m Johnny Knoxville, and welcome to Jackass.” In the moments following this greeting, he would fly out of a window followed by four bulls. As the logo appeared and The Minutemen song played, the crowd assured me that we’d be in for a good time. It had only been three minutes, and this was the most laughter and excitement I’ve experienced in a theater in, well, ever.
It can be argued that Jackass Number Two is among the cruelest and most nihilistic moments in the franchise’s history. I’m not well-versed enough to argue for or against that. What I will say is that everything that followed, I wasn’t prepared for. Sure I knew to expect Knoxville being charged by a yak, maybe even the big red rocket bit that nearly killed him when loose shrapnel went flying. But there was so much more. Wikipedia lists 52 stunts in total. Some of them are forgettable, but every now and then you get bits like “Puppet Show,” “The Fish Hook,” “How to Milk a Horse,” or “The Anaconda Ball Pit” that were so profane that they just linger in your mind. How can the human body possibly take such punishment? Were these people even real?
To some extent, Knoxville has always been a fan of applying cartoon physics to the real world. Some bits are even references to Wile E. Coyote or Tom & Jerry routines that look like they would pulverize lesser men. Instead, he was there taking hit after hit, always inches from death to the extent that him laughing at his friends getting injured felt justified. Here was a man that one minute got bitten by an anaconda to the point that half of his arm turned red and the next stuck his arm in a bear trap. How could one man take such a beating and still get up to laugh about it? The audience was as much in shock as they were amazed. To think that someone would go to those extremes seemed baffling. The fact that amid injuries and concussions that Knoxville would sustain worse injuries AFTER Jackass Number Two only makes you realize how much of a trooper he was.
Walking out of the theater, there was a feeling like your life was transformed. Even critic Richard Roeper, whose negative review for the first film was used in marketing, gave the blurb “God help me, but I’m giving this a thumbs up.” I was behind two strangers talking about the “Terror Taxi” routine and discussing how it was one of the best. The whole room had gotten what they paid for, and on some level, you believed this would be the last time that we’d be in a room together enjoying new Jackass. Again, this couldn’t last forever, could it?
I’m not entirely sure what part of the 16 years since is the most shocking. Is it that Jackass 3D (2010) AND Jackass Forever exists? Is it that Bad Grandpa (2013) is an Oscar-nominated film and longtime collaborator Spike Jonze actually won for Best Original Screenplay for Her (2013)? Maybe it’s even the fact that for as much early 2000s nostalgia that runs rampant, the show remains a vital talking point. The news of a fourth film was met with celebration and many arguing that these stunt performers have created something more resembling higher art. It’s a critique of modern masculinity, an allegory for society’s crumbling infrastructure, or even a celebration of queerness. So much has been read into the films, and I can’t deny that there’s some reason they continue to endure.
For me, it’s as much the shock of seeing the human body surviving so much torture as it is the camaraderie. It’s the nostalgia of being a preteen and watching those episodes in shock that people were breaking the confines of society before my very eyes (they kidnapped Brad Pitt!). The curtain had been pulled back and what I had mostly seen in cartoons was happening in the real world, showing real life results in ways that play as a crasser, grosser version of Buster Keaton. While I wouldn’t call all of it art, enough of it has been lodged into my memory that every now and then I’ll revisit it and admire that anyone thought half of that was a good idea. Most of all, I’ll keep chasing that time I saw Jackass Number Two on opening day and had the time of my life. So much has changed since that day (R.I.P. Ryan Dunn), but some things like “Bicentennial Bmxing” stick in your memory, waiting to make you laugh when you’re feeling down. I don’t know that any of this was necessary, but I’m so glad they did it anyway.
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