The team behind Jackass certainly finds the most creative ways to get you to want to watch their content. This is even true of Steve-O's recent comedy special or the time he teamed up with chef Gordon Ramsay to make omelets. Actually, come to think of it, Steve-O has been doing a lot since the days of Jackass. But the franchise is still his bread-and-butter... as it is for Johnny Knoxville and the rest of the guys.
With a new movie in the works, now seems like a good time to take a spin back to the past and learn a little more about why their MTV show ended in the first place. Thanks to a revealing oral history by Vice, we've learned a lot about how the reason the Jackass television show was canceled actually led to the creation of the first movie.
But why did the show end? After all, it was successful... But that was the problem... It was TOO successful...
Everyone Wanted To Be Part Of The Jackass Team And That Angered A Lot Of Important People
Ultimately, it was copycat incidents that ended the Jackass television show. According to Vice, there were too many kids who tried to emulate some of their Jackass heroes (such as Bam Margera, Wee-Man, Steve-O, and Johnny Knoxville). This meant they were putting themselves in harm's way and creating quite a bit of havoc. A lot of parents were concerned, especially after more and more kids got hurt. According to Entertainment Weekly, this encouraged a campaigning senator, Joe Lieberman, to 'wage war' on the MTV show.
"I recognize the program is rated for adults and comes with general disclaimers," Joe Lieberman said in a press conference back in the early 2000s. "But there are some things that are so potentially dangerous and inciting, particularly to vulnerable children, that they should not be put on TV."
All of the national heat caused MTV to put a number of harsh restrictions on the creators of the show. Quite simply, they could no longer make the show they set out to create.
The Success Of The Show Was A Surprise
In the Vice interview, almost all of the team members behind the Jackass TV show said they were surprised by the influence of the show.
"When the show came out, nobody expected it to last more than the first eight episodes that MTV had paid us to do," Jackass producer and legendary filmmaker Spike Jonze said. "We just thought we were getting away with murder by getting somebody to give us money to put whatever we wanted on TV for half an hour on national television."
Related: What Fans Can Expect From 'Jackass 4'
"I seriously thought maybe one or two episodes would air, and then the network would cut it off," Wee Man admitted. "Next thing you know, it was f***ing huge, man. We couldn't even put them out as fast as people wanted them. When it first came out, we showed it every Sunday night, and it was to a point where people were like, "Jackass is destroying America, one Sunday at a time!"
Because of its wild popularity, kids did start showing up in the hospital, according to Steve-O.
"There were a lot of copycat incidents. It was crazy," Steve-O said. "There weren't particularly lawsuits at that time, but there was certainly a great deal of fear in the corporate world of MTV and legal that the liability was a problem."
Senator Joe Lieberman's singling out of the MTV show ultimately changed the creation of the show... making it a miserable and limiting experience for the team.
"We had a safety guy assigned to our show—we couldn't jump off anything higher than four feet—and it just became ridiculous to the point where it was no longer possible to do the show the way we wanted to," Johnny Knoxville admitted.
"I'm not going to exaggerate: After every single episode, we'd get a list of at least 12 to 15 notes from the lawyers saying, 'You no longer can do this, this, this, or this,'" Dave England claimed.
This was such a change to how things operated beforehand. Basically, MTV had given them free rein to do whatever they liked... And so much of it ended up on national TV. On top of this, the network also gave the Jack-Ass team permission to cancel their own show whenever they wanted. And that's exactly what the Jackass team did a year after the restrictions started... right at the peak of the show's success...
"So, a year later when we were like, 'We're gonna cancel the show,' they were like, 'What?' I don't think most TV shows have that, where the producers can cancel the show—but we did," Spike Jonze said.
Ultimately, Jackass meant too much to them for it to be altered so drastically. So stepping away from their baby meant that they could preserve it for what it was meant to be... And this decision ended up forcing them to find a new medium for their creativity... cinema.