Johnny Knoxville and crew have already shoved toy cars up their butts, eaten urine snow cones, shot bottle rockets out of their rectums, run amok in Japan wearing giant panda bear costumes and tight roped over an alligator pond while tempting the gators with raw chicken stuffed into their jockstraps – all in the name of comedy.
“It's safe to say that we suffer from a progressive illness and it's only going to get worse,” Steve-O says.
Having already stooped about a low as one could possibly imagine for a few laughs, is it possible they can stoop even lower?
Apparently so.
While an overwhelming dose of defecating, vomiting, degrading and humiliating stunts have already been documented on camera between the three seasons of MTV's half-hour show and Jackass: the Movie , Jackass Number Two goes where you didn't think they had room to go or even wanted to go for that matter.
When filming of the first movie wrapped Knoxville admits, “I was done.”
But after making a few excursions with Steve-O and Chris Pontius on “Wildboys,” Knoxville began itching to get the gang together again.
“To get everyone to do the movie, I was like ‘it doesn't have to up the last one, all it has to do is be funny,'” says director Jeff Tremaine.
And in that sense, the movie succeeds.
They've taken more of a beating this time around – they have the permanent scars to prove it – and even put themselves in some life-threatening situations.
“I always thought that we were just on this show called ‘Jackass,' but I just realized, we are the jackasses,” Dave England remarks.
Jackasses they certainly are. They come head-to-head with bulls, yaks and snakes, and inflict insurmountable amounts of pain upon each other (see Bam Margara get branded) where some are brought to tears and others to the hospital.
“I was almost 35 forever,” says Knoxville in reference to a rocket ship stunt gone wrong. “If [the rocket] would have went three inches to the left it would have went right through me. I couldn't believe we didn't even know it at the time it happened, but when we watched it on the playback we were all like, ‘oh my god.'”
The movie doesn't shy away from its tradition of homoerotic themes either, with Steve-O being at receiving end of a good chunk of them. (Beer enema, anyone?)
“I've read stuff about us is gay magazines and it's weird to hear them refer to us as their straight older brothers that mess around with homosexual behavior,” Pontius jokes. “I don't even think they know that we're not even pool jockeys. Except for that time Steve-O kissed the head of my penis.”
When not sticking things up his anus or dealing with fecal matter, Steve-O tests the waters in a stunt called “Man Bait,” where he mistakenly kicks a shark on its head. But even the danger of the deep blue sea is nothing compared to what he considers his everyday life.
“It's funny because the stunts are crazy and anything could go wrong at anytime, but what's threatening, which pretty much applies for all of us, is our lifestyle,” Steve-O laughs. “The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, that's what is going to get us. My dad tells me, ‘son, with your lifestyle and your alcohol and your drugs, I feel like I have to worry more about you than if you were in Iraq' and I'm like, ‘dad duh, I'd be fine in Iraq.'”
He continues, “Honestly, my appetite for amphetamines and ecstasy and nitrous oxide, percocets like Xanax, marijuana, booze, uppers downers half way in betweens, is pretty amazing.”
Ryan Dunn, the self-proclaimed mountain man, agrees.
“Steve-O is the biggest disaster I ever met, but he celebrates it every day. He models himself after Mötley Crüe , but he's not musical.
Upping the anti on danger meant putting each other's lives in jeopardy, but that was a risk the cast members were willing to take.
“With the first movie, we said no to a few things, but with this movie, we were like, ‘we said no in the last one, this time around, we're doing everything,” Wee Man says.
And that they did. At least until authorities stepped in and said no.
“Ninety-eight percent of my stuff was cut from the movie for legal reasons, Dunn says. “Dave [and I] are convinced that it's for aesthetics. Who really cares about a long-bearded guy that really doesn't care about his physical appearance whatsoever.”
But in all reality, a lot of the stuff is too imitate-able, an issue the members of “Jackass” have faced since day one.
“A lot of the stuff we do, we [have to] try to make too complicated, so hopefully the kids are too lazy and are like ah, I'd like to do it but we've got Nintendo so I'm just not going to do it,” Dunn says.
After seeing what ensues in Number Two it's hard to imagine there's anything left in those twisted minds of theirs, but idiotic idea after idiotic idea keeps on coming.
“We have enough ideas in our stupid heads to support us for a long time,” Pontius says.
Jackass Two was never supposed to happen, so is a third installment possible?
“Knoxville wouldn't go past that. We don't want to sink someone's career that actually gets movie parts,” Wee Man says.
Whether or not, the ideas are brewing.
“First thing were going to do is take danger Ehren's pinky, which needs to be amputated, and we're going to shove it up my ass and chop it off with a machete or something and it's going to be called, “The Stinky Pinky,” Steve-O says.
And what about the animals?
“Were going go to town on some four-legged critters. We're going to break into the zoo with Viagra and water based lubricants and just go cage to cage and just tear every animal a new one.”
To all those people who might not see the humor in the mindless “Jackass” pranks, “We're doing what we like making people happy at our own expense, so what,” Steve-O says.
Jackass Number Two releases in theaters Sept. 22.
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