Every fans of Jackass has a favorite stunt or funniest moment in both the series and spin-off movies. And with the release of Jackass Forever, chances are fans will be reevaluating that. After all, Johnny Knoxville and his crew of miscreant deviants are always trying to push the envelope. Whether it's an outlandishly expensive stunt or something simple and painful, they know how to make fans shift uncomfortably in their seats or full-on gasp.
While the young men behind the show never thought that their collection of short stunt videos would even be made into a feature film, they didn't really think it would make it to TV either. The show, which debuted on MTV in 2000, was an absolute sensation. It put Johnny, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Jason "Wee Man" Acuña, and the rest of the team on the map. It sent the concerned mothers of America and few elected officials into a tizzy. And it was a mega-money-maker that fans still love to this day. But how did it really all start?
How Skateboarding Culture Inspired The Jackass TV Show
According to a fascinating article by The Hollywood Reporter, the origin of Jackass came from skateboarding culture. In the 1990s, Steve Rocco, who created Big Brother skateboarding magazine, took the industry to the next level. Instead of producing "safe" skateboarding videos that wouldn't freak parents out, he went for something far more hardcore. And these videos and crazy photo shoots were what inspired Steve-O. He loved that skateboarding could be "criminal and reckless" and he wanted to emulate that.
"In 1997, I was living in New Mexico and Big Brother came through Albuquerque, where I lived. They would go on tours with skateboard companies. In this case, it was DuFFS shoes. I was just so in love with Big Brother that I made it my mission to track them down. And I found them at a skate park, and I went up to Dimitry and basically said, 'I don’t care if you guys like me or like what I’m just telling you right now, I’m going to get f***ing gnarly tonight and I’m going to be in Big Brother magazine.' And I ended up in the hospital that night with second-degree burns on half my face," Steve-O explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "I was working with this pro skateboarder. I was like, 'OK, this is going to be great. I’m going to spray hair spray all in my hair and light my head on fire, and that’s the torch. And you’re going to have a mouthful of rubbing alcohol, and you’re the fire-breather. So you’ll use my head as the torch, but I’ll have my own mouth full of alcohol, then I’m going to stick my hand into the fireball that you blow. So then everything’s on fire, and then I’m going to do a back flip and simultaneously breathe fire."
Of course, it all went spectacularly wrong. And that was the appeal. Big Brother saw the genius in that and continued to feature Steve-O in the magazine. Around the same time, other future members of the Jackass crew were either working for the magazine or trying to get in it. All of them had a love of skateboarding... and an even greater love of injuring themselves for a laugh.
Johnny Knoxville's Love Of Stunts Meshed Well With The Team Assembled By Big Brother
No one had a bigger love of self-injuring for a laugh than Johnny Knoxville. After all, he had a concept for a video he pitched around town. It was constantly rejected. Even by Howard Stern, who later became one of Jackass' biggest supporters. Johnny wanted to be an actor and got his then-girlfriend pregnant, so money was absolutely vital. He was thrilled when Big Brother took him on and introduced him to the group he would later call a family.
Their first stunt, which was Johnny's concept and executed by the team who would later become Jackass, was a sensation. There was so much that was working about it that they decided to create a second video... This is what gave them the idea to produce an entire show based around these outlandish stunts. With the help of filmmaker Spike Jonze, who also worked for Big Brother, they were able to land a deal with MTV.
"Within two weeks, it was officially the highest ratings MTV had ever had, outside of VMAs or anything," Steve-O said. "It shattered all their records and presumably with less of a budget than they were used to. And they were running reruns at 5 p.m. It was crazy."