Today, Explained - Why America loves a Jackass

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

The Oscar nominations are out, but the No. 1 movie in America features Johnny Knoxville and his friends hurting each other. He attempts to explain why, and Vox's Alissa Wilkinson picks up his slack. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Warning, the stunts in this episode were performed by professionals, so for your safety and the protection of those around you, do not attempt any of the stunts you're about to hear. Also, there's some spicy language.

I'm Johnny Knoxville and welcome to Today Explained. The Oscar nominations were announced on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the most popular movie in America is... Jackass Forever. That's right. Came in at number one in the weekend with $23 million. Jackass Forever did something a lot of the movies that got Best Picture nominations did not. It made boatloads of money. And like the movies that got Best Picture nominations, critics really seemed to like it.

And the film industry seems genuinely surprised. The movies inspired headlines like Maybe Comedies Aren't Dead, The Exquisite Catharsis of Jackass, and Jackass Forever Might Be the Most Necessary Movie of the Year. Which is sort of surprising considering it stars a guy named Poopies, subjects cast members to extreme wedgies and exploding porta-potties, and generally features just, I mean...

Miles of cock. There's miles of cock in this movie. We reach out to the Jackass crew's ringleader, Johnny Knoxville, to try and understand the je ne sais quoi of Jackass. How he and his friends manage, time and again again to turn shit into gold. I, man, once, I don't know what we've done. That's not our job to, like, tell you what we've done. You know, it's up to the public to determine our space in the world, right?

And how we're perceived. He wasn't too crazy about the theoretical stuff, but he did have some idea of what keeps people coming back to see the same dudes getting hit in the nuts over and over again. Well, people do love the stunts and the pranks and the slapstick of it all and the absurdity of it all. But I think what they love most is the relationship amongst the guys. You can tell we really love each other and it's a family. And I really was struck by that in this movie. More so than ever, the extreme, gross-out,

anatomical stunts in this particular jackass installment end with declarations of love. You can tell we've been together for so long, we've been through so much, and there's so much care for each other, even though, like, we're giving each other hell, and I'm putting the guys through the wringer. After I annihilate them in some way, I want to show them that they did a good job

and let them know that, you know, how I feel about them. I asked Johnny Knoxville how his job came to be annihilating his friends. I was looking to do an article on self-defense equipment in 97 or so, where I tested pepper spray, stun gun, taser gun, and I was going to shoot myself with a bulletproof vest with a.38 because I only had enough money to buy the cheapest bulletproof vest they had. And I took it to a number of magazines who wanted it, but they want to treat it like a negative pickup. And like, once you're done with the article, bring it to us because they didn't

want to be involved because of the gun. And one magazine who did want to be involved was Jeff Tremaine's magazine, Big Brothers, a skateboarding mag. Jeff Tremaine would become the director and producer of Jackass, along with Spike Jonze, the Academy Award-winning writer and director behind Her and Being John Malkovich. Yeah, they supported me in doing the article, and Jeff said, why don't you film it too? And so we filmed it and put it into a skateboarding video they did called Number Two. And I was wanting to do a TV show at the time, and Jeff was wanting to do a TV show.

And we had this amazing group of characters that Jeff had assembled at Big Brother, and that's kind of how it started. Hi, I'm Johnny Knoxville. Welcome to Jackass. Three, two, one, go! I think the show launched in 2000 or 2001. I can't remember. This is the Shockwave Collar Mic. It's a fenceless dog collar, and what happens is you put this around your neck,

and when you overstep the wire boundaries, it administers a shock. Ow! You okay? Ow! But we knew it was, people were liking it when we first got the ratings back, right? And the ratings were like MTV really hadn't done those ratings before and we were blown away because we were pretty sure this was not going to be on the air for long. I'm Bam Margera and I feel like kicking my dad's ass all day today. Come on Bam. Stop it really took off.

Like, it really set in when they asked me to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. And that was like a big moment for everybody. We're like, wow, this is really taking off now. Hello, I'm Johnny Knox. I'm about to be pelted by three shooters with paintball guns for a Rolling Stone cover shoot. That was surreal. When do you realize you're not just famous, but you're inspiring kids to do the kind of stuff

that you guys are doing in the show? When is it that MTV tacks a warning onto the top of the show, or was that there from the jump? The warning was there from the jump. Warning. The following show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, MTV and the producers must insist that no one attempt to recreate or reenact any stunt or activity performed on this show. But yeah, we did unfortunately have some copycat incidences, which led to the downfall of the show.

And we are always stressed, don't try this at home, and we mean it, because we don't want anyone else to get hurt. We want to be the only ones getting hurt. But it was an election year, and Joseph Lieberman made it part of his policy, being tough on Hollywood. But the study that you've released today

reminds us that the problems with our culture and the concerns of parents about its corrosive influence go much deeper and broader than simply the question of violence. They extend to the larger vision of values that the entertainment media presents and promotes to our children. And he specifically came down on our show and me personally and the network. And it led to MTV assigning an OSHA guy to our show in the second season or third season. And it's like, hey, you can't jump off anything higher than four feet and all these really ridiculous things. When it's like, we can't film a show

if we can't jump off anything higher than four feet. So Jackass is absurd and silly, but it means something to us. And so there's no way we could continue with the show. So I gave an interview to my hometown newspaper and said that I quit, essentially. And MTV was not happy, understandably, because I was still under contract. We all were. And there was a lot of back and forth, which eventually led to...

This summer, Jackass, the movie. This isn't gonna work. Which could have meant at that time, you know, that's the end of Jackass. We'll never hear about these guys again. And then there's this turn when you guys decide to make a movie that just launches this whole thing into a whole different stratosphere. Yeah, exactly.

It took the training wheels off. Now we can do whatever we want because it's going to be R-rated, hopefully R-rated, and do all the things we couldn't do on television. It was such a liberating experience. And yeah, it gave us a whole new life. We're here with the 3-6 Mafia, and it's time for the rake jump. Do it! And here we are, over 20 years later, still doing the same silly shit.

I mean, 20 years later, you guys have made something like half a billion dollars and counting. Was there any point when you were making that first movie that you realized it could get this big? It had the potential? No, no. It was, we're constantly surprised by any success we have. We didn't think anyone was going to come to see the first movie, right? And we especially didn't think that many people were going to come to see the first movie. So we're constantly surprised but super appreciative of the success we have.

And that's all because of the fans. Now you're actually 50 years old. I mean, you go up against a bull at the age of whatever it was, 48, 49. Now you're 50. This is bullfighting for dollars. One bull, one dollar, four sissies. There you go. How does it feel to take that hit in, like, you know, your sixth decade of life? We never make any plans or have any forethought about what we're going to do.

And how does it feel to get smoked by a bull at 49? That's what I was then. It feels no different than it did to get smoked by a bull when I was 29. It feels the same. It feels like shit. I've had 16 concussions and this one was a gnarly one, right? Brain hemorrhage, concussion. Took me several months to recover from. I can no longer, I can't take another concussion, right? My neurologist is like, your days with a bull are over. And I hear that because I got kids and I want to be there for them. So no more bull?

Unfortunately, no, because I love bulls so much. Why do you love bulls so much? It's so amazing. One thing, if people don't watch the show or the movies that they should know about you in particular is that the rest of the cast members are typically sitting on the sidelines with clenched fists with their with their hands you know over their mouths with their faces buried in their arms and hands watching you take these hits from bulls and you're out there the star of the show you know first in line to do it. What is that? I just love bulls.

You get the greatest footage with bulls. And I don't really want the other guys to have to deal with that because there's a lot on the line when you're dealing with bulls. And I get too nervous watching the other guys with bulls. So I'd rather take that hit. I can't walk, but I got the money. If your kids came to you and said, hey, Dad, we want to be in, you know,

the next Jackass installment, if there is one, would you be game? Or is this something that you feel like is... No, that's getting shut down. That's getting shut down. Not for your kids, huh? No, I'm doing all this so they don't have to. The latest Jackass movie is different from everything that preceded it in one key way.

A woman joins the group. It's a major evolution, but again, not one that Knoxville wants to spend too much time thinking about. I mean, when people intellectualize jackass, I think they're doing it because that's their job. You know, writers and whatnot. As far as the masculinity part, luckily we're not that masculine. We're more mincing than masculine. I think we're all a bunch of sissies who just want footage. And that's okay. After the break, a writer and whatnot intellectualizes jackass for us. Thank you. and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

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It cost about $50 million to make, and in its first weekend, it made $23 million. Reverse those numbers and you get the far, far more successful opening weekend of Jackass 3D. The latest movie about guys doing idiotic stunts made $50 million last weekend. Its cost was $20 million, presumably including insurance. Today Explained. Alyssa Wilkinson, you write about film and culture for Vox. I just spoke to Johnny Knoxville about why the world loves Jackass so much. And he kind of said it wasn't for people like him to say. He said it was for people like you to say. Alyssa Wilkinson, why do people love

Jackass so much? I mean, there's something really fun about watching, you know, a guy pogo stick on his buddy's crotch. But I think maybe what Jackass actually gives us is kind of a hall pass to our chaos mumpet side where we can engage in all of the crazy impulses that we have or that we might think about occasionally. And we can kind of do it in a harmless way and we can laugh at it. We can laugh with guys who are doing it and then we can walk out the door and be normal again. It makes me think of festival clowns. I am just a lonely, just a lady. Which have been kind of a tradition from the Middle Ages onwards where, you know, they kind of flip the hierarchy and the rules of the world upside down.

And then people get to enjoy that and then go back to their normal lives. And it really feels to me like that's what jackass gives people. And until a week ago, you actually had never seen a jackass episode or a jackass movie. Is that correct? That is correct. Why is that? Is that because you're a girl? I'm sure that's part of it.

You know, I was sort of in late high school, early college when the show was on and then when the movies came out. And I definitely remember friends going to see them, but it definitely didn't seem like something I would be into. I think that there's something about Jackass that fundamentally speaks to the young, creative male. And it wasn't until last week that you finally indulged and you really indulged. I believe you watched every single movie, four movies. So that's like five to six-ish hours of jackass in one sitting. Is that right? That is correct. I showed up at the Museum of the Moving Image, which is a really lovely museum in Queens,

New York at 1 p.m. on a Thursday. And I left around 10 p.m. having seen three Jackass movies and then the new one, Jackass Forever. It was a real experience. I can tell you that for sure. And you wrote an article for Vox based on said experience titled How I Learned to Stop Wincing and Appreciate Jackass. Tell us how. I knew what I was getting into when I got there. Like I am an American. I am familiar with the concept of jackass. I've seen clips on the internet or whatever. So I kind of knew what I was getting into. But I found a couple things. One, it was really, really fun to watch

them with people. Like, I don't think I would have enjoyed them at all if I watched them in my house, but I was in a theater full of people who are super fans. I probably was the only one who's never seen any of them in the room. And so much of the fun of these movies is the noise that people make while they're watching them. The groans, the kind of shouts, the giggles, maybe the anticipation when they know that a crazy thing is coming up. Somewhere in the middle of Jackass 3D, which is the third movie, a tube of super glue shows up on screen. April, what kind of glue is this? Super mighty glue. This is super mighty glue, and we're going to have a little fun with it today.

Nothing has happened with it yet, and everyone just groaned, and I thought, well, this is really fun. Who's got tummy hair? You know, these span 20 years. It's the same guys over 20 years. It's wild to watch them kind of figure out what they're doing, watch their friendships evolve, watch them just, you know, lose it over and over and over again, laughing at one another, but in a really loving way. And then when you finally get to Jackass Forever, Johnny Knoxville is around 50 years old now. It's a very different kind of a situation than it was when he was 30,

when the other guys were in their 20s. But they're really fun to watch. They just have a camaraderie that I think is sort of rare in the movies these days. Yeah. You know, I recently watched all four in a row, too, not quite in one sitting. But, you know, in preparation for my conversation with Knoxville, I sort of reindulged in a lot of the canon out of the library, the archive. And one thing that surprised me was how, despite being these jocular sort of puerile dudes, like, it hasn't aged all that poorly. You don't have as many cringy moments as you might watching, you know, some beloved movie from the 90s or something like that. Please, you know, just go ahead and get changed.

I'll go downstairs and I'll start studying up. Okay. Yeah. There he goes. Now we're in business. Yeah, unlike a lot of the movies, I think, that are aimed at the same demographic, raunchy comedies, basically. They certainly are raunchy, but it's a different kind of raunch. Certainly, it's not about

misogyny. It's not even really about sex, even though there's a lot of genitalia that show up. Mostly male genitalia, we should note. All male genitalia, I think. And it's crazy how kind of pure and innocent it almost is. I said to my editor when I left, it felt like I was at a bachelor party full of 11-year-olds where they don't really have a lot of adult ideas about the world yet. They're just like really purely happy to be with one another, just like kicking each other. And running into walls. Playing with snakes, and jumping in a bullpen.

And they can do all these things because they're adults, and that makes it funnier. But they also just, it's very sweet in a way that's kind of surprising. I love you, bro. You know, someone always has to kind of be the butt of the joke, but it's not a joke at their expense. It's not bullying. It's like you agreed to be here and we're all just going to make fools of ourselves together.

And so many of the pranks and stunts are like, there was no way this wasn't going to end badly. Like, if you're sitting in front of a bear trap and you decide, wouldn't it be funny if we just all stuck our hands in the bear trap? Like, you know what's going to happen. It's not like a trick. You know, if you're going to superglue yourself

to your buddy, like, then you're going to have to unsuperglue yourself somehow. And like, you know that going in. Okay, pull it. Really? Pull it. Three, two, one. You say, oh, that guy's such a jackass. But what you mean is he's just an idiot, right? And it's a little different from like, he's mean, or he's rude, or he's pranking bystanders in order to make the bystanders look bad. And it's even interesting how I think these movies are adjacent to like a Borat. What is more dangerous, this virus or the Democrat?

Democrats. Democrats. But Borat is more about showing how foolish other people are for the most part. This Clinton, they make this play. Yes, yes. Nice. And that's fine. And it certainly has its place. But Jackass is just like, we're the idiots here. And we are just going to flop all over ourselves in order to make you laugh. That's what we're here for. Which maybe gets back to the idea that, that, you know, Borat is trying to say something about the world and maybe jackass isn't and maybe that's the beauty of it yeah jackass is like you know if you blow up a rubber ball and then you open the release valve and all the air comes out makes a fart noise that's jackass um and it's just sort of letting off steam in kind of the purest way. We're not laughing at anyone.

We're not saying, you know, these kinds of people are bad and let us laugh at them, which, again, has its place. But there's this little corner that Jackass occupies that people really, really love and are more than willing to go to a theater and spend a ton of money watching because it fulfills some kind of a need. And that's always been true for humans. There's always been this sort of role that is fulfilled by someone who's just there to make us laugh and not make us even think. You know, it would be bad if all of our entertainment was that, I think. But it's really good that we have a little corner of it that's been so well maintained by these guys. And I guess that's probably why this movie was delayed, because they really wanted to make sure you could go out and into the theater and see it with a bunch of other people who would appreciate it along with you. Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct. I think there's any number of movies that

you could basically replicate the ideal viewing experience at home. You know, maybe you shut your curtains or you turn off your phone or whatever. But with Jackass, you just need somebody next to you screaming in pain when they watch something happen or laughing their head off or making these crazy noises. Or, you know, in my case, I'm like burying my head in the collar of my shirt because I can't watch somebody get paper cut between their fingers, you know, that kind of thing. Oh, that is one of the worst ones.

There's no good way to do it. Yeah, no. So just deal with it. Take a breath. There's something for everyone in this film series that I think, you know, the beauty of Jackass Forever is that they're bringing a new cast for it and so they're doing kind of the old things in a new way again. And that's just a delight to watch. It's one thing to watch one of them in one sitting, but to watch four of them

in one sitting for even, I don't know, the hardest core of Jackass fan, that might be a lot. How did you feel at the end of the night? Well, I was very hungry. I hadn't had nearly as much tequila as I expected between screenings, but mostly I left with a little bit of a headache. I admit you can't really help it, but it was sort of that headache that you get when you've been smiling too much or you've been laughing a lot. And I thought that was incredible. I loved it. And I hope to never, scarcity, and the emptiness of our soul

Jackass Forever is in theaters now. If you want to risk it all to watch a 49-year-old get pummeled by a bull or a guy turn his guy parts into a beehive or watch a woman make out with a scorpion, you can find Alyssa's article about the series at Vox.com. My name's Sean Romsfer. Welcome to Today Explained. Our show today was produced by Hadi Mawagdi with help from Miles Bryan.

Matthew Collette was our skeptic. Afim Shapiro made us shine. And Laura Bullard had an easier than usual job today. I only had a good Best idea ever. Yes, it is. I'm Johnny Knoxville and I'm going to the moon. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Later!

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