If you’re an outsider to the Jackass franchise, not willingly christened in its 26-year deluge of vomit and diarrhoea, it’s tough to explain why fans like myself might feel emotional about it.
Jackass: Best and Last, which hit cinemas last week, is a film in which a screaming man gets a “colonoscopy” from a humanoid robot who uses crunchy peanut butter for lube. People are electrocuted for fun. They skull laxatives while wearing translucent plastic pants. You will leave the cinema having seen Steve-O’s anus more than once.
But I’m not even being a little ironic when I say I was also moved by the film. Reportedly the final movie in the franchise (admittedly a promise that frontman Johnny Knoxville has broken before), Best and Last is a nostalgic assembly of new material alongside clips from the past 25 years. Yes, it’s the most disgusting experience you will have in a cinema this year. But for longtime fans who have followed the group through death and addiction, sobriety and relationship fallout – all while getting older and more complicated themselves – it’s also a surprisingly heartfelt documentary.
This franchise is a living monument to Gen X/Millennial malaise, misspent youth and the surprisingly profound power of doing dumb stuff with your mates. Who knew that watching a bunch of 50-something men kick each other in the nuts could be so wholesome?
How Jackass became a phenomenon
When I was 10 years old, Rolling Stone announced Johnny Knoxville (real name P.J. Clapp) as my generation’s lord and saviour by crucifying him on their cover and pelting him with paintballs. That iconic shoot and the accompanying interview took place just a few months after the premiere of Jackass on MTV. The series, comprised solely of gross-out stunts and pranks, had been an instant hit and was also becoming a source of controversy.
Kids only a little older than myself were emulating the show, with some even ending up in hospital after setting themselves on fire. It was the dawning of a new millennium and an anarchic reality TV revolution. With limited time on the dial-up family computer, we hadn’t really been exposed to stuff like this before. And as skate culture entered the mainstream, this group of what director Jeff Tremaine termed “exceptional f—ups” were destined to become the next big thing.
Jackass came into being via the ’90s skate magazine Big Brother, when Knoxville, an aspiring actor, pitched a story about him “testing” self-defence equipment. The resulting video in which he gets doused with pepper spray and tasered while brandishing the US flag went on to form some of the series’ pilot, when Tremaine (then editor of Big Brother) realised it was worth more than an article. The final part of that footage, however, where Knoxville dons a cheap bulletproof vest stuffed with porn mags and shoots himself point-blank in the chest with a .38-calibre handgun was wisely never aired on MTV.
The Jackass crew was rounded out by guys who were already in Tremaine’s orbit. Chris Pontius was a writer; Steve-O (Stephen Glover), a trained clown, was doing stunts for the magazine; Wee Man (Jason Acuna) was the subscriptions manager. Bam Margera and Ryan Dunn were recruited off the back of similar videos they were making under the moniker CKY (Camp Kill Yourself). And the show was co-created with Spike Jonze, a childhood friend of Tremaine’s who was working as a music video director and provided valuable Hollywood hookups.
Though the show was a huge success, it only ran for three seasons – a total of 25 episodes that aired over the course of 10 months. Besieged by parents and politicians, MTV shunted the second season to a later time slot and pulled back on promotion (although executives recall not needing to promote it at all – “no matter where you put it, it got a giant rating”). Knoxville in particular felt that restrictions were getting too tight, however, and quit because he didn’t want to make a “watered-down version of the show”.
If you have to put on a hazmat suit before frying up and eating someone’s vomit, is it still even funny?
The franchise pivoted to making movies, where you could ensure an R-rating on entry and keep doing pretty much whatever you liked. But teens like myself still received a regular dose of chaos via Pontius and Steve-O’s “travel” show Wild Boyz (2003-06) and Bam Margera’s Viva La Bam (2003-05) – a series which consisted of the pro skateboarder physically and psychologically tormenting his parents.
I was a relatively timid, studious and high-achieving girl, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t drunkenly launch myself down a skate ramp in a shopping trolley at some point in my teenage years. It was simply the done thing – and honestly, I’m better for it.
‘The finale of Millennial youth’
It’s a testament to the endurance of slapstick comedy that most Jackass pranks still hold up today. No matter what age you are, it’s simply very funny to see someone get slapped in the face with a giant spring-loaded hand when they’re carrying a tray of hot soup. And these moments have always had an element of wholesomeness because every one of these guys is ultimately in on the joke. They signed up for the chaos, and they’re (almost) always laughing together at the deranged results.
But with every cut between the past and the present, you can’t help but reflect on what’s changed. It’s not just the grey hair and ageing bodies (Party Boy is still jacked). It’s the fact we know that Knoxville – who now cries “all the time” – is emotional about the fact he can’t do extreme stunts or “play” with bulls after it resulted in a brain hemorrhage in 2022. It’s the fact that Ryan Dunn, who died in a car crash aged 34, doesn’t have the privilege of getting older at all. And Margera, who was lifelong best friends with Dunn and didn’t film any new scenes for this movie, “started to drink to forget”.
Margera spectacularly fell out with Knoxville and Tremaine over a “wellness agreement” mandating sobriety in his contract for Jackass Forever. It was the subject of a lawsuit which was settled in 2022. And this week he told Rolling Stone that a full reunion will never happen, “not in 10 million years”.
His parents, however, attended the Best and Last premiere talking about how well he was doing and their hopes for the group’s continuing relationship. “After all we’ve been through,” Knoxville said, crying again, “I’m just so happy they’re here.” It feels pointed that Knoxville pushed to use Shine a Light by The Rolling Stones for the film’s closing montage, a mournful gospel-inspired eulogy for founding member Brian Jones, who had become estranged from the group. But the track is for all of us too.
A popular (and surprisingly poetic) post on X last week called this new film “the finale of Millennial youth” and that feels weirdly true. It’s a reminder of who we used to be, who we are now and how much we’ve been able to hold on to along the way.
Two decades have passed since my days in shopping trolleys. I drifted away from a lot of those friends who were laughing with me. But I started a family with the right one, and we made a young boy who also loves to do dumb stuff. He’s desperate for his first skateboard.
I’ll try to be understanding when he starts doing stunts on TikTok.
Jackass: Best and Last is in cinemas now. The original Jackass series is on Paramount+.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
