John­ny Knoxville: ​‘It’s not Jack­ass unless you’re stand­ing on your own dick’

He’s worked with John Waters and played a two-head­ed alien in the Men in Black fran­chise, but John­ny Knoxville’s first love will always been Jack­ass. After the wild ride began in 2000 when MTV first aired their pio­neer­ing, scat­o­log­i­cal show, all sorts of hijinks ensued, push­ing the lim­its of human endurance and media cen­sor­ship in pur­suit of laughs. Twelve years after Jack­ass 3D broke new ground for motion pic­tures, Jack­ass For­ev­er sees the gang – plus some new faces – get back to rais­ing hell.

LWLies: What was behind the deci­sion to make a fourth Jack­ass movie?

Knoxville: The urge was pure­ly to make anoth­er one. When I final­ly decid­ed I want­ed to make anoth­er one, every­one else was already on board. They’ve been want­i­ng to make anoth­er one. I was the hold­out. But we had no idea what it would look like after all these years, if it would look sweaty with the old guys. So Spike Jonze said, ​‘We need to do a test,’ and we did a two-day shoot with the old cast and the new cast, and it felt great. And it looked great. That’s when we decid­ed we could do anoth­er film. We can’t pre­tend that we’re not old­er, so let’s just talk about it, and that became part of the film.

Where did the new cast come from?

We reached out to peo­ple, most­ly peo­ple we already knew. Eric Man­a­ka, who’s from Lon­don, Pon­tius and I had done Action Point with him and knew he’d be per­fect. Jasper Dol­phin was on Loi­ter Squad which Jeff did, so we knew him. And Zack Holmes, whose Insta­gram is Zack­ass, he does crazy stuff on the inter­net. Steve‑O had shot with him. The were only two we didn’t know: Tripp Tay­lor, our pro­duc­er, intro­duced us to Poop­ies, who was heav­en sent; and Rachel Wolf­son, I was just a fan of her Instagram.

Was there any hes­i­ta­tion for you guys? Obvi­ous­ly, the dynam­ic was so strong with the orig­i­nal group.

I felt like we need to bring oth­er peo­ple in and Jeff was on board with that too. And Spike. I think the old cast was a lit­tle appre­hen­sive about bring­ing on new cast because they felt like they were get­ting replaced maybe. But that last­ed for maybe an hour or two into the test and they start­ed get­ting along great and they love each oth­er and every­one gelled pret­ty quickly.

You and the Jack­ass guys have always been very open about the fact that Jack­ass is quite pure. Don’t think about this too much. Don’t intel­lec­tu­alise it. Some­times it’s just very fun­ny when some­one runs into a wall or someone.

It’s clas­sic slap­stick comedy.

Exact­ly. But the recep­tion in the media has changed so much from when you guys began, and Jack­ass For­ev­er, in par­tic­u­lar, has had huge­ly pos­i­tive reviews. What do you think’s changed about the per­cep­tion of Jack­ass in the time since you began?

Well, they say old build­ings, politi­cians and whores even­tu­al­ly become respectable.

Which are you?

Oh, we’re def­i­nite­ly in the whores cat­e­go­ry. [laughs] I think this is why, and I might be wrong, but the crit­ics who are now writ­ing were prob­a­bly in high school when the first week came out, right. Now they’re the ones run­ning it. They grew up with this – I think we grew up together.

And Jack­ass speaks a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, even though there is some­thing quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can about it.

It’s one of those movies you could run with­out any dia­logue, which I think is why it works well in oth­er coun­tries too. Because you don’t need to know what we’re say­ing. Noth­ing we’re say­ing is clever. Except Pon­tius – any­thing he says is gold.

Speak­ing of Pon­tius, the open­ing scene is pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar. What was the gen­e­sis of that idea, to do a Godzil­la riff?

We’d always want­ed to do Japan­ese mon­ster movie open­ing. And I had this idea where I want­ed to put a hula skirt on Pon­tius’ cock and make a hula girl and have some­one pup­peteer it. And my friend, Derek Fre­da, said, ​“Well maybe you should com­bine those two ideas,” so we did. And then Jeff came in with his ideas. And then Spike came on and went nuts and sud­den­ly it was this huge, beau­ti­ful Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly it was just a bit in the movie, it was going to be a 45 sec­ond bit, but when we were film­ing it, Jeff said, ​“This could be the open­ing”. And I was like, ​“I don’t know…” because I didn’t want to shoot it and then have the MPAA shoot it down and give us an NC-17 Yeah. But they were like, ​“It’s cute! There’s noth­ing sex­u­al about it. It’s just cute!”

How is Lance Bangs doing? He spent a lot of time throw­ing up into his mask.

Oh he’s great. We only put two pukes in the movie. He puked six times dur­ing the film. Every time into his mask. He claims to not have a weak stom­ach! But Lance, you puked six times! And he’s a prop­er film­mak­er, makes great doc­u­men­taries. But still, some­how he wants to shoot with us. He and Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Spike Jonze. Like what’s he doing? He’s mak­ing our movie bet­ter. We’re so lucky to have Spike.

I loved the intro­duc­tion of Jasper’s dad, Dark Shark, who is just comedic gold.

Dark Shark is just the best. Jasper is down for any­thing, and so hap­py to be there, but Dark Shark… we made his time on the set very very trou­ble­some because he’s scared of so many things. Like he was a gang­banger who did time in prison and is not scared of anoth­er man. He’ll fuck some guy up. And he’s super strong. But he’s ter­ri­fied of birds. Any­thing he’s not famil­iar with. Just absolute­ly terrified.

It’s also just very sweet see­ing the fam­i­ly dynam­ic at play. Even with the chaos and the ter­ror­is­ing, there’s an under­ly­ing sense of how much every­one cares about each other.

Oh yeah, we all love each oth­er. Even when we anni­hi­late one of the guys, I’m Mama Bear. So I’m first to go in and hug them. I hug more peo­ple in this film than ever. Even though they may not want to do it by the time we go to film, they know what we’re doing. They know the goal.

How do you decide who’s going to do what? Do peo­ple volunteer?

Oh, vol­un­teer­ing doesn’t hap­pen that often. With the Cup Test in Jack­ass For­ev­er, I did the orig­i­nal over 20 years ago on the TV show. And it was meant for me in this film, but I had a her­nia surgery right before we start­ed film­ing. So I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But Ehren shows fear in such a fun­ny man­ner, we had to get him to do it.

Poor Ehren then gets the bear too!

Oh yeah. We had Dark Shark with the bear as well – Oh my God, that was so fun­ny. Like the bear comes out. And you can see right away, he’s so scared. He pulls his sweat­shirt above his face. He thought he was hid­ing. And then he just runs into the cor­ner and starts try­ing to climb the fake trees on the wall. I’m say­ing, ​“Dark Shark, those trees are fake. You can­not climb those.” He just stood in the cor­ner in a fear lock.

Are we going to see more of Dark Shark in 4.5?

Oh there’s a lot of Dark Shark in 4.5. We might just call it Dark Shark Forever.

The sight of him hold­ing you and Jules [Sylvester, ani­mal train­er] in a death grip dur­ing the Spi­der Hel­met scene was pret­ty incred­i­ble too.

We couldn’t move! We had had to cut it down. He grabbed us for like five min­utes. He’s so strong, so I couldn’t do any­thing. And Jules, by the way, is also hilar­i­ous. We start­ed hav­ing to hide him when he came on set, because the guys would see him and start pan­ick­ing. They knew some­thing shady was about to hap­pen. After we filmed the Qui­et Game, and Poop­ies got bit by the snake, I could see he was still look­ing very wor­ried, and I said, ​“Poop­ies, you know that snake wasn’t ven­omous, right?” He’s like, ​“Real­ly? Oh my God, thank good­ness.” He filmed the scene think­ing it was ven­omous. And he was so relieved after I told him. He’s like, ​“Thank God because I want­ed to go surf­ing tomorrow.”

Was there any­thing that Para­mount said no to with regards to stunts?

The insur­ance com­pa­ny shut some­thing down, but Para­mount always tries to work with us to make it hap­pen. We have such a good rela­tion­ship with them that after all these years, they know we usu­al­ly do pret­ty well and no one dies. Although we may get close. But they trust us. There’s such a high turnover that I don’t think there’s any­one at Para­mount now who worked on the orig­i­nal movie. They don’t remember!

I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed Tyler the Creator’s cameo scene, and how he clocked onto the prank straight away, but sat down and did it anyway.

That was the first thing that hap­pened. He got to set and he looked under the seat. And he asked me, ​“What’s this?!” and I knew but I pre­tend­ed I didn’t. He didn’t sit down on the stool for most of it, but in the end, he said ​“Fuck it” and sat on the stool. I tried it by the way – it was awful. You saw Jeff, he went flying!

Do all the stunts still hurt as much now as they always did?

All the things we do, we plan hop­ing they do hurt a lot. We’ve got to get that reac­tion from peo­ple. So it hurt just as much in the begin­ning as it does now. Doesn’t hurt any differently.

What was the most painful thing to endure this time around?

Def­i­nite­ly the bull. I broke my wrist, my rib, had a con­cus­sion and got a brain haem­or­rhage. I left that out of my injury list in the movie because as soon as you say brain haem­or­rhage that’s just not as fun­ny. It changes the whole tone of the bit. I still had like three big stunts to do after that. I couldn’t do them though because my brain was scrambled.

Do you guys have anoth­er Jack­ass film in you?

We def­i­nite­ly have enough cre­ative mate­r­i­al, like there are so many great ideas. But we nev­er make any plans. We shoot every­one like it’s the last, but there could be and we have a young cast and a tonne of ideas.

Do you think it could just go on for­ev­er with a rolling cast?

It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble. We could be like the comedic Menudo.

If you could give the John­ny Knoxville of 2000 any advice about life, what would it be?

Oh, my good­ness. I have so much I’d want to say. But I think Willie Nel­son said it best when he said, ​“It’s okay to step on your dick. Just don’t stand on it.” I would have stood on my dick a lot less.

In a metaphor­i­cal sense?

Well, I guess it’s not Jack­ass unless you’re stand­ing on your own dick.