Idiots, rejoice!
The Jackass team is back and more damaged than ever.
In celebration of the release of Jackass 3D on Blu-ray this March 8, we had the good fortune to speak with the Grand Caliph of moronic behavior, Steve-O. Here are the highlights.
Radtke: The Jackass stunts you participate in are often the grossest, most dangerous and many cases the funniest bits ever filmed. Is there an effort to one-up each other on the team?
Steve-O: Yeah, sure, I think that we like to think of it is less about out-doing each other since the goal is to keep ourselves amused. Granted, you have to out-do or one-up to accomplish that. Say Jackass 2, I personally felt like there’s no way we could ever out do that. It was so outrageous, that I just couldn’t possibly imagine that there would ever be another Jackass movie. We pushed it just way too far. So then when Jackass 3 came along, the way that we sort of dealt with that fear was like, “Hey, let’s not worry about whether or not we’re outdoing ourselves, let’s just have a good time.” The measure of whether something we’re doing is working or not is whether we’re all laughing and reacting to it. If you think of it that way, it really takes the pressure off. If all of us are cracking up, and howling, reacting, or wincing, then we know what we’re doing is working. I hate to be cliché, but we just go one day at a time, and we just start to have a good times ourselves, and that’s what made it possible.
Radtke: What’s harder to work with: Midgets or animals?
Steve-O: Obviously we have no problem with midgets.
Radtke: Midget is probably the wrong word to use.
Steve-O: You know, I get permission from Wee-man. I think that midget is a much better word—calling someone a little person is completely offensive to me. Take Wee-man for example. Wee-Man is not the tallest person I know, but to call him a little person is inherently belittling. Another example of politically correct terminology being a huge step backwards, you know? So anyway I have permission from Wee-man to call him a midget, and I love working with him. I’ll answer the question, definitely midgets, but when it comes to working with animals I’m a vegan now, I really care about practicing compassion and reverence for all life and stuff, so I don’t want work with animals anymore, man. I was always pretty good about letting the animals attack me and not really doing anything to harm them, but even that, I don’t know. I kind of want to let animals do their own thing.
Radtke: Are you more willing to do certain stunts or less with your recent life-style changes?
Steve-O: Yeah, I feel like in one sense being sober and clear minded doesn’t make doing Jackass stunts any easier, but on the other hand at the very same time it was so important to me to prove to myself that I still had that in me. I wanted to prove that sobriety hasn’t robbed me of my personality or my sense of humor, it hasn’t made me into a boring lame pussy, you know?
Radtke: What are your plans for the future?
Steve-O: It’s a memoir, it’s an autobiography, it’s called Professional Idiot: A Memoir, and it comes out on June 7th and I’m just so happy with it man, I’ve worked on it for 2 years, and it’s great, man. I’m also doing a comedy tour. I go to Pittsburgh and then the following week I go to Edminton, and then the week after that I’m in Boston, and the week after that I’m in Calgary. So that’s pretty much all I know, just the book and the comedy club tour.
