Who invented jackass

I would be kind of the host, like The Daily Show , and we would have all the guys come on and do stunts. We can do anything. My Buick Regal that my aunt gave me? They were wondering who these little jerks were in West Chester doing this ridiculous stuff. He flew me out to L. They just loved it. Saturday Night Live offered Knoxville a recurring segment, but the crew decided to go with MTV, which promised to give them more creative control. I thought this stuff was only funny in the skateboard community.

A little while later, he told me not a single clip cleared MTV. So my first thought was, What kind of pussy-ass show is this? We were doing it the way we had done our skate videos, just, you know, a camera, an idea, and a group of friends.

I had a pair of cuffs on, and I went into a hardware store. My face was all dirty, and I was out of breath, and I ran back to the saws and the axes and asked anyone if they would help me. Spike and I go out and film Knoxville walking out, and as soon as he does, all these cops roll up and park right in the middle of the street, draw their guns, and yell at him to get on the ground. In the early days of Jackass , we would just go in anywhere and do pranks like that.

Eventually we became smarter and would get a location agreement from a willing store owner first. The stars went from unknown to extremely famous overnight. A few even became fantasy boyfriend material.

They all really love each other, and I think girls like that. And I probably had a little too much fun. Yeah, definitely. Steve-O was all about fame. He wanted it so bad, whereas Pontius could give two shits. And Bam was already kind of a little celebrity in his world. Despite a warning that ran before every show, on January 26, , Connecticut teen Eric Lind accidentally set himself on fire while trying to emulate Jackass behavior. Jackass, the improbable pop phenomenon, became a political football.

We still do that to this day. That always made us laugh, but when Lieberman got on his high horse, I think in an election year, I took that seriously. And MTV got very, very scared. We had safety people there all the time. We never wanted anyone to get hurt. Me in my underwear.

I was pretty bummed, because we nailed it the first time. The first time I fed a bite to Steve-O, and he puked all over my leg. Fuck that. I can only say from the MTV side, it was a gold asset. We pulled out every tool we had to encourage them to keep doing it. Next was a sequel, Number Two.

Jay pulls him out at gunpoint and locks him in the trunk. Jay played it wonderfully, and Ehren just bought it hook, line, and sinker. Pube away. Seriously, anything you can think of, he would do. He was on this path of pure destruction. We were starting to lose him to drugs. Alcohol and drugs. STEVE-O: I felt like the process of using all this opportunity that came with notoriety was immediately causing me to hurt people I loved. We like to go out and get wasted and have a good time.

And that line got blurry with Steve-O. Despite the warning at the beginning of every episode as well as the subsequent spinoff movies, people repeatedly tried to duplicate or create their own versions of dangerous Jackass -style stunts. On top of multiple stories of horrifying injuries—one year-old boy was reportedly " burned over 65 percent of his body " after imitating the "Human Barbeque" stunt in which Johnny Knoxville laid on a lit grill wearing a flame-retardant suit—there are tragic incidents where people also lost their lives.

In , a year-old from Albuquerque died after being thrown from a car and dragged underneath it. We had safety people there all the time. We never wanted anyone to get hurt. It's really sad and unfortunate when stuff like that happens. I'll leave it at that. After a Connecticut teen also suffered burns imitating the "Human Barbeque" stunt, senator Joe Lieberman started publicly calling for MTV to get control of its controversial stunt show.

I recognize the program is rated for adults and comes with general disclaimers, but there are some things that are so potentially dangerous and inciting, particularly to vulnerable children, that they should not be put on TV," he said in a statement according to EW. Combined with a growing list of lawsuits, the attention from a senator was apparently enough for MTV to start tightening the screws on the crazy crew.

They didn't like us drawing lines, which ultimately led to the demise of the show and their going as far as they could," Van Toffler told Maxim. Johnny Knoxville agreed, saying that MTV's new restrictions were creating "a watered-down version of the show," so he quit. The end of the show, however, paved the way for the much raunchier, R-rated films, which broke box office records, and made stars out of almost everyone in them.

When he was first introduced to the world by Jackass , Steve-O seemed like a guy who lived on a couch in someone's trailer who you could pay small amounts of money to do practically anything. And while at points in his life that was possibly true, Steve-O actually has a formal education—if you can call it such a thing—as a circus performer. I have a feeling he learned a lot about timing and reactions at clown college.

And, anyone that leaves clown college is funnier than when they went in. I can't see much else that Steve-O does that reflects anything about clown college, though. While it wasn't unusual at all for these knuckleheads to hurt themselves, most of their injuries weren't permanent. Unfortunately for Steve-O, whose stunts often involved him bringing up his lunch, this wasn't the case.

Johnny Knoxville also suffered long-term effects after famously rupturing his urethra while trying to backflip a motorcycle during a stunt for MTV's hour Jackass marathon special. Part of his healing process involved him cathetering himself twice a day for three years with a tube the size of a number two pencil , just "to keep the scar tissue from constricting down there," he told Vanity Fair.

He also described his unfortunate appendage as "a dog's chew-toy" and "like a sock that's lost its elasticity. That's what my penis looks like.

Please stop describing it. Technically Bam Margera could also be lumped in with Knoxville and Steve-O as far as Jackass crew members who have permanent scars—Remember, he did once sear his buttocks with a brand in the shape of a penis—but he was willing to go even further. In an interview with IGN , Margera said that while sipping red wine on a plane, he came up with the idea to have Mike Tyson bite off his ear, which he was willing to do because of how much "street cred" he'd have.

Amazingly, the production company for the films actually contacted the former heavyweight champ and asked him if he would do it; as Margera recalled, "Paramount contacted Mike Tyson and he got offended and he said no. The Untold Truth Of Jackass. The show's origins stemmed from Johnny Knoxville's unemployment. An Oscar winner helped get the show off the ground. Every major comedy player wanted it. Knoxville sat out a lot of the first season.

The original title was rejected. One cast member was a world video game champion.