How did a musical number almost finish a member of the "Jackass" squad? Was Johnny
Knoxville's Evel Knieval impression worth three years with a catheter?
And what "Jackass Forever" stunt nearly put an end to a cast member?
Stephen "Steve-O" Glover has had his share of stunts go wrong over nearly 25 years of throwing
himself, often face-first, into one dangerous situation after another — whether the cameras
were rolling or not. In a 2019 video posted to his YouTube channel, Steve-O lays out the history of
his many, many broken teeth over the years. While always self-conscious about his teeth as a boy,
Steve-O had never considered cosmetic dental work until he needed to; in 1995, he jumped
from a balcony at a Miami keg party and broke seven teeth, along with his cheekbone and wrist.
His first set of crowns, installed in 1997, were stained yellow to match his existing teeth. In
2004, after the tremendous success of "Jackass" the series and the first movie, Steve-O had an
all new set of teeth put in. By 2009, however, he had developed a bacterial infection in his gums
that necessitated a new full set of crowns put in — not due to any wild stunt, but rather a
lack of flossing. Further gum troubles resulted in yet another set of crowns installed in 2014,
plus dentures to replace two rotten teeth,
meaning that Steve-O has had a different set of teeth in each of the four "Jackass" movies.
"You still got those million-dollar teeth, that's for sure."
In a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair, Knoxville recalls his department store
"boxing match" with professional heavyweight Eric "Butterbean" Esch.
"Butterbean. He's really strong."
Filmed for 2002's "Jackass: The Movie," Knoxville and Butterbean enter a local swap meet wearing
boxing robes and trunks. The two men duke it out in the middle of the sales floor with shoppers
standing by. Well, "duke it out" isn't quite correct: Butterbean pummels him to the ground,
waits for Knoxville to get back up, allows him to get it in one punch,
and then pummels him again. Knoxville falls unconscious to the concrete floor,
resulting in a concussion, vertigo, and a severe gash on the top of his head.
In the interview, Knoxville praises Esch's kind
spirit and sense of humor — until it was time to put the gloves on.
"Soon as he put the gloves on, I said something to him; he just looked right through me,
like he didn't even know me. It really changed him when he put the gloves on."
After nearly swallowing his tongue,
Knoxville regains consciousness and even manages a solid zinger
"Is Butterbean okay?"
This stunt from "Jackass 3D" begins with Ryan Dunn recreating the famous 1980s Maxell cassette
tape advertisement by sitting directly behind an idling jet engine and getting swept across
a field by the exhaust. The crew wouldn't want a jet engine to go to waste, of course,
so after Dunn's stunt was complete, everyone else takes a turn. Knoxville dresses as
an old-timey football player and takes a jet-propelled pigskin directly to the chest.
Erik Roner dons a wingsuit and unsuccessfully attempts to fly away.
Singer-songwriter and part-time "Jackass" cast member Loomis Fall tries to make like
Mary Poppins via an umbrella and trampoline, but instead is driven straight into the ground.
While the film shows Fall getting up from his splat and appearing to walk it off,
in reality he had a broken clavicle and hand, according to the film's director Jeff Tremaine.
By Tremaine's estimate, it was the most serious injury suffered by any of the gang during filming.
"This is strictly for the purposes of being educational. And a good person!"
So begins a 2013 video posted online by Steve-O featuring a young Machine Gun Kelly,
in which the burgeoning pop-punk phenom gives Steve-O a smiley-face "tattoo"
on his backside using a BB gun. The segment is only a little over two minutes long,
but is one of the most excruciating stunts that any Jackass member has taken part in.
MGK sits at point-blank range with his BB gun while Steve-O bends down in front
of him with his pants pulled down. The impact of the first shot shocks them both;
Steve-O howls in pain while Kelly puts his hand to his mouth in horror. The second shot is presented
in slow motion. With two eyes "drawn," MGK adds five more shots underneath as a wobbly smile.
The final scene of "Jackass: Number Two" is a large-scale choreographed musical number
featuring the cast singing the Broadway tune "The Best of Times is Now."
The scene takes Knoxville and company through different styles of musicals,
and ultimately ends with an "Oklahoma!"-style hoedown featuring Knoxville, Margera, and Ryan
Dunn. In classic Jackass fashion, the guys take the phrase "horsing around" to a whole new level.
Despite the sequence's relative professionalism and polish, this ended up being one of the most
dangerous stunts in the film. Dunn landed on his shoulder and developed a nearly fatal blood clot,
and while bedridden with that injury was also diagnosed with Lyme Disease.
In 2008, Knoxville appeared in the direct-to-video spinoff "Jackass Presents:
Mat Hoffman's Tribute to Evel Knievel." He was not supposed to perform a stunt in the show,
but Knoxville has never been one to sit out a good time.
"I got to Oklahoma and everyone was having so much fun,
and I decided, 'Well, I want to have some fun too.'"
Knoxville's intention was to backflip a motorcycle, despite the fact that he did
not know how to ride a motorcycle particularly well. As he put it,
"Sometimes when people are explaining how to do something before a stunt,
I'm not listening 'cause I just wanna do the stunt."
After several unsuccessful attempts to flip the motorbike up the steep dirt ramp,
Knoxville let go of the handlebars too soon — just as he had been told not to do.
"Whatever you do, do not ditch the bike right away cause if you go like this and ditch the bike
then it goes 40 feet in the air and lands on you." "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
The bike spun into the air and came back down directly on top of him, specifically on his
crotch. Knoxville was rushed to the hospital, and subsequently diagnosed with a torn urethra.
For the next three years, Knoxville had to wear a catheter;
the injury could have been much worse. He told Variety in 2022,
"The doctor said a couple of centimeters down and it would have been out of commission.
But I've had two children since then, so it's in great working order."
"Jackass" is at its best when a simple task is carried out in
the most outrageous way Knoxville and his band of knuckleheads can imagine.
Such is the case in "Lamborghini Tooth Pull" from "Jackass 3D."
Former professional snowboarder "Danger Ehren" needs a tooth pulled. So naturally,
the chosen method of extraction is a length of extra strong fishing line, with the tooth on
one end and Bam Margera's Lamborghini on the other. Ehren sits in a dentist's chair in the
middle of a racetrack while Margera floors his sports car in the opposite direction.
It's difficult to tell what the most horrifying element is in this stunt: The distinct pop
sound that accompanies the tooth being pulled from Ehren's mouth, his screams of agony and
inability to regain composure afterwards, or the fact that the stunt didn't just pull his tooth,
but, as he told the Willamette Week, broke his face, quote, "all the way up to almost [his] eye."
"Jackass Forever" arrives in theaters in February 2022
after a nearly year-long delay, and a full twelve years after "Jackass 3D."
The film is filled to the brim with guest stars and new additions to the gang, though not all the
series' original stars will be returning. Ryan Dunn passed away in 2011, and Bam Margera was
fired from the production in 2021 due to his erratic behavior and substance abuse issues.
Through it all, however, Johnny Knoxville has been the steady hand on the oversized shopping cart.
His natural charm as host has always helped smooth over the show's rough edges,
and his boyish enthusiasm for making his friends do stupid, stupid tricks
is still infectious nearly 22 years after the first episode. "Jackass" may be mean at times,
but it isn't mean-spirited. It helps that Knoxville is always willing to
put himself at risk before anyone else. As Steve-O told GQ magazine in 2021,
"There's nobody else on the cast that's ever going to roll the dice with their life like that,"
Knoxville rolled the dice once again in "Jackass Forever," nearly dying in a stunt that involved
him performing a magic trick for a bull. Bulls have been a part of many "Jackass" stunts over
the years, and seem to have a special fascination for Knoxville. He told GQ,
"You know exactly what you're going to get with bulls. They hate you ...Which is great for us."
The run-in with this bull put Knoxville in the hospital with several broken bones,
a concussion, and a brain hemorrhage. Was it worth the damage? As always,
the resulting footage promises to be both hard to watch, and impossible to look away from.
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