Most of us would call it a nightmare. Steve-O called it a dream.
It was sometime around 2009. Steve-O, the stunt performer known for his work on the “Jackass” TV show and movie series, was asleep. In his slumbering mind, a vision appeared: The “Jackass” director Jeff Tremaine stood before him. In Tremaine’s hand was a permanent marker, which he was using to draw a dart board on Steve-O’s face. The rest of the cast looked on in anticipation.
“The implication in my dream was very clear,” Steve-O said. “They were getting ready to blatantly throw darts at my face.”
Steve-O woke up. Then he had a thought that few people would have, a thought that helps explain why he’s a good fit for “Jackass” in the first place:
“I was like, ‘Oh man, I have to do it.’”
The dream was the seed for “Fart Darts,” a segment in “Jackass 3D” (2010), the last time the “Jackass” gang came together on the big screen. On Feb. 4, the crew — led, as always, by Johnny Knoxville — will return with “Jackass Forever,” which puts the guys through new stunts, pranks and Rube Goldbergian torture devices. (Well, most of the guys: One of the original cast members, Bam Margera, was fired by Paramount in 2020 for breach of contract. Margera has since spoken out against his co-stars and filed a lawsuit claiming wrongful termination.)
Knoxville has said that this will be his final “Jackass.” Over the years, he and the rest of the group have developed soft (and, surely, tender) spots for some standout stunts. In separate interviews, Knoxville, Steve-O, Tremaine and the filmmaker Spike Jonze, who, with Knoxville and Tremaine, created “Jackass” and produced the new movie, each recalled one of their favorites.
Spike Jonze, ‘Butt X-Ray’
“Jackass: The Movie” (2002)
The success of “Jackass,” which ran for three seasons starting in 2000, led to a feature. This opened up new horizons. “It can be R-rated,” Jonze remembered thinking. “We can do whatever we want and not have to deal with MTV censors.” That included “Butt X-Ray,” which became the finale of that first “Jackass” movie.
Like most other concepts from the franchise, it’s a wince inducer.
In the bit, Ryan Dunn throws his legs up and inserts a little toy Corvette into his derrière. Then he goes to a doctor’s office to get an X-ray. When he’s informed that there’s “something extra” inside him, he plays dumb. (Jonze thinks he came up with the idea but isn’t certain; he is sure that he originally suggested that the bowel-bound object be a miniature skateboard. They changed course, he said, when a medic advised against it.)
“It instantly became one of my favorite things we did,” Jonze said.
One element that made the bit stand out, he said, was the way that it’s divided into several parts. On a first watch, it appears that the segment is just going to be Dunn getting intimate with the toy car. The X-ray isn’t revealed until later. “It became the gold standard for pranks that have multiple chapters,” Jonze said.
But perhaps what makes the stunt unforgettable for Jonze is its focus on Dunn, who died in a car crash in 2011, at 34. Watching the bit, Jonze said, “just makes him alive again for me. I remember conversations, and I remember moments with him.”
“I just love seeing everyone so young,” he said.
Johnny Knoxville, ‘High-Five’
“Jackass 3D” (2010)
“High-Five” begins with Knoxville standing next to a doorway in the “Jackass” offices, cradling a giant sculptural human hand that’s connected to a metal pole. “Hi, I’m Johnny Knoxville,” he says, “and this is the High-Five.” He lets go, and the hand hurdles into the doorway, propelled by a spring mechanism. The goal, naturally, is to use the spring-loaded hand to thwack unsuspecting cast members.
“There was a lot of padding on it,” Knoxville said. “So you could hit them with great impact and it’s probably not going to — maybe not going to — break a rib or something.”
(The setup might remind you of “Tom and Jerry,” which is by design. “I draw a lot of my inspiration from cartoons,” Knoxville said. “Much to my body’s dismay.”)
Knoxville’s first victim is Dunn. When the hand hits him, Dunn goes flying onto his back. He looks shocked for about three seconds, then he bursts into laughter.
What happens next is a good encapsulation of the attitude of “Jackass.” Jason Acuña, better known as Wee Man, goes up to Dunn, who is splayed out on the floor. He laughs in Dunn’s face. Then he holds out his hand.
“We knock each other down, but we’ll help each other up,” Knoxville explained.
By Knoxville’s calculation, that camaraderie is what sets “Jackass” apart.
“We’re just thinking about making each other laugh,” Knoxville said. “Am I going to be looking over at Jeff and he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe? If that happens, we’ve got gold.”
Jeff Tremaine, ‘Silence of the Lambs’
“Jackass Forever” (2022)
“I was pretty much doubled over laughing the whole time this was going on,” Tremaine, the director, said of this prank from the new film.
Previous “Jackass” movies have all cycled between segments shot on sets and ones filmed in public. (A memorable bit from the first film involved Dave England making “use” of a display toilet at a hardware store.) Much of the new movie, though, was shot during the pandemic, which “eliminated a lot of the public pranks,” Tremaine said. “So that meant we were in a bubble, just torturing each other.”
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In the “Silence of the Lambs,” that bubble is pitch black.
The segment begins with the stars arriving in a windowless room. They think they’re acting as audience members for a stunt in which Knoxville will be tasked with removing a cookie from a rattle snake’s head. After they’re briefed on the stunt, the performers leave. They return in pairs. That’s when the lights snap off and the door slams shut.
The stars think they’re alone with a rattlesnake, unable to see in a dark room. The cameras are equipped with night vision, so we see Knoxville emerge from a hiding spot, armed with what Tremaine described as “a whole arsenal of different things that were going to terrify the guys,” including a rubber snake. Tremaine sat in another room, watching Knoxville torment his victims and giving suggestions via Knoxville’s earpiece.
Tremaine came up with the idea for this segment. Like most “Jackass” bits, though, his original premise was built out. Among the added elements was a second room, which some of the performers try to escape to as Knoxville torments them. Unfortunately, the second room is no safe haven: The floor is covered with marbles, heavy cookware dangles from the ceiling and mouse traps are littered everywhere, with a small number of rat traps thrown in for good measure.
“We call it the hell room,” Tremaine explained.
If that makes Tremaine a Lucifer, at least he’s a Lucifer with a benevolent side.
“I didn’t want to put down too many rat traps,” he said. “Rat traps can break fingers.”
Steve-O, ‘Fart Darts’
“Jackass 3D” (2010)
This stunt, Steve-O said, is “one that I would consider silly rather than gnarly.” While his original idea of having darts thrown at his face would have fallen into the gnarly camp, there was a problem: Not only would that have been too dark, he said, but it also would have been too easy to imitate. “From a legal standpoint, there’s always been an issue with stunts, the level to which they are imitate-able,” he said, referring to potential injuries.
The solution: Hiring a man who can break wind on command to launch darts at Steve-O from a flatulence-powered dart gun.
That’s how Steve-O found himself, on the first day of filming “Jackass 3D,” standing buck naked (except for socks) in front of the crew, an inflated bright orange balloon clenched between his glutes. When the “fart dart” pops the balloon, everybody in the room erupts with glee, including Steve-O.
“Even though we put ourselves in harm’s way, and we put each other in harm’s way, we’re very clearly willingly participating in it, reveling in it, delighting in it,” he said.
The “Fart Darts” segment, Steve-O said, is “wholesome, it’s humiliating, it’s ill-advised — it’s all of those delicious things rolled into one.”
In other words: It’s an archetypal “Jackass” stunt. For all of the “how’d you come up with that” moments in every “Jackass” movie — how’d you think to attach a bundle of fireworks to a pair of roller skates and ride them as the fuse burns down? What kind of person decides to let an alligator snapping turtle bite their rump? — the formula for a successful segment, Steve-O explained, is pretty simple.
“You take something that nobody would ever want to have happen to them,” he said, “and then you arrange for it to happen.”
