‘Broken wrist, broken ribs, concussion and a brain haemorrhage’: Knoxville’s last Jackass movie

At age 50, Johnny Knoxville knows Jackass Forever will be his last Jackass movie. Then it’s time to for some therapy.

Ever since Johnny Knoxville and his co-stars became a global phenomenon more than 20 years ago for the reality stunt TV show Jackass, viewers have been asking themselves one question – why?

Why would grown men willingly capture themselves on camera doing the most extraordinary, painful and humiliating things to each other and themselves – from acts of physical violence, to elaborate torture contraptions and stunts with bodily fluids that would make a billygoat puke.

But Knoxville, who created the original 2000 MTV series with Jeff Tremaine and acclaimed director Spike Jonze, and oversaw the hit movies that followed, doesn’t want to know the answer to that perfectly reasonable question.

“You know, I’ve never even talked to my therapist about that,” Knoxville says with a laugh over Zoom call from his Los Angeles home. “Because when I got into therapy, I was like, ‘OK, I want to work on myself but this is one part of me I don’t want to fix’. And they’re like, ‘OK, we’ll respect that boundary’. But maybe I should take a look at that now that we’re done. It’s just fun, man. It’s me and my friends … it’s just fun.”

Jasper, Sean “Poopies” McInerny, Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man, Steve-O, Zach Holmes, Tory Belleci and Eric Manaka in Jackass Forever from Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment Studios. Picture: Supplied

After five Jackass films, the most recent being 2013’s Bad Grandpa, Knoxville and buddies including Steve-O, Wee Man and Chris Pontius, are back in Jackass Forever, with a new collection of death-defying stunts and skits designed to make audiences laugh and wince in equal measure.

Knoxville had been jotting down ideas for a new film for a decade – and his co-stars had been bugging him to do it – but this time he swears it’s the last hurrah. At the age of 50, after what he’s already put his body through in the name of entertainment, he knows he’s lucky to be alive and functioning and doesn’t want to push that luck.

Johnny Knoxville, Ehren McGhehey, Preston Lacy, Sean "Poopies" McInerny, Steve-O, Dave England, Wee Man, Dark Shark, Chris Pontius, Jasper and Nick Merlino in Jackass Forever from Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment Studios. Picture: Supplied

He’s had more concussions, gashes and bruises than he’d care to count, broken bones and lost teeth, and famously tore his urethra when a motorcycle flip went wrong, forcing him to use a catheter for three years. But apart from some ongoing lower back issues from blown-out discs, he says he’s pretty much fine.

“Everyone knows more about my urethra than they should,” he says. “But I have had two kids since then, so my urethra is fine. But to be still be walking around and have all my wits about me, I am very lucky and I get that.

“Going into this, I knew that this is the last time that I can risk my life in a film. You can only take so many chances before you’re forever affected.

“Of course, there were quite a few injuries in this one, but I made it through. Just doing one stunt, trying to do a magic trick in front of a bull, I got a broken wrist, broken ribs, concussion and a brain haemorrhage. I spent the weekend in the hospital to recover – but I’m fully recovered.”

The calm fashion in which the laid-back Knoxville talks about his encounter with the bull in Jackass Forever is very much at odds with the footage from the trailer, which shows him hurled into the air and going through one and a half rotations before crashing to the dirt. Indeed, when pressed for details, the crazy stunt, which was put towards the end of the shoot because it was so dangerous and turned out to be the last one he was able to do, appears to be even worse than it looks.

“You don’t even see that I was so close to the iron fence behind my head and didn’t miss that by much either,” he says, wryly. “Usually a bull ring is like really soft dirt because of what happens when you get in a bull ring, but this bullring was just cold hard ground … that cold, hard ground didn’t treat me very nicely. I was knocked out for over a minute, snoring, trying to swallow my tongue …”

Johnny Knoxville in Jackass Forever from Paramount Pictures and MTV Entertainment Studios. Picture: Supplied

Knoxville struggles to come up with a definitive answer as to why Jackass first struck such a chord and its enduring appeal, but says that physical comedy never gets old and audiences seem to respond to the genuine bond of friendship between the main players. They never expected the show to be a success but audiences kept turning up in droves and the rise of social media outlets such as YouTube and TikTok have helped keep the flame burning as everyday punters (often unwisely) have tried to replicate the stunts for themselves.

“There’s a lot of people out there doing what we do and sometimes they’ll shoot our exact idea,” he says. “But that’s fine, whatever. I feel no animosity towards those people and I feel secure in what we’ve done.”

However, Knoxville is adamant that he doesn’t want his three kids to continue the Jackass legacy. For years he tried to protect them from the madness, but as they got older their friends started to get into Jackass, leaving their father with some awkward questions to answer.

“One day, (my son) Rocco just blurted out ‘Jackass’ at the dinner table,” Knoxville says. “And we’re like, ‘what? I never brought that up once’. They’re probably the only ones of their friends who haven’t seen it. I show them some things but they’re sheltered from it. I don’t want them getting into it … they don’t need to follow in my footsteps.”

Jackass Forever opens in cinemas on Thursday.

Originally published as ‘Broken wrist, broken ribs, concussion and a brain haemorrhage’: Knoxville’s last Jackass movie