As we near the end of the year, a.k.a. list-making season, let’s not forget one of the best movies of 2022: Jackass Forever. The Wikipedia summary alone is Best Picture-worthy: “Stunts and pranks with the main cast include Knoxville facing a bull resulting in dangerous consequences, Steve-O having his penis used as a beehive, Dave England getting pig semen dumped on him, a vulture eating pieces of meat off Wee Man’s body, Ehren McGhehey being subjected to painful tests with an athletic cup,” and so on.
About those “dangerous consequences.” In an interview to promote Hulu’s Reboot, Knoxville told Variety that he had “three or four big stunts planned” until the bull literally gave him brain damage. “I don’t want to say what they were, but they were on the same level as the bull. Even if I had gotten through the bull, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the others. One of them would have taken me out,” he said.
“It’s one of the most serious things I’ve experienced. Of course, I have fear. But that’s more like two or three days out of a big stunt. When it’s time to shoot, I just want to go right now. I’ll be sitting in my car listening to music. When they’re ready to go, they call me in and I go. I think the bull stunt was scarier for other people who saw it. I was out for more than a minute, but for me personally, it wasn’t scary. I go to a different place when I’m doing those things.”
Jackass Forever. Check it out, if only for Knoxville’s brain and Steve-O’s balls.
(Via Variety)