The ‘Jackass’ Origin Story: Inside the Johnny Knoxville Stunt That Launched the Series

Director Jeff Tremaine first met his “Jackass” co-originator and ringleader Johnny Knoxville in 1995 on the set of Spike Jonze’s legendary music video “California” for the band Wax. At the time, Tremaine was the editor for the skateboarding magazine “Big Brother.” Two years later, in 1997, Knoxville pitched Tremaine an article idea for the magazine.

“[Knoxville] wanted to be a journalist, or he was trying to figure out, ‘How can I make money — I want to be a journalist that does this shit kind of a Hunter S. Thompson style,’” said Tremaine on this week’s episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “The first thing he pitched to me was, ‘I want to try self-defense equipment on myself. I want to get pepper-sprayed in the eyes. I want to get hit with a stun gun. I want to get the taser darts shot into me and electrocuted, and then I’m going to buy a bulletproof vest and shoot myself in the chest.”

While “Big Brother” was a skateboarding magazine, there were articles that ventured beyond that world, explained Tremaine. “It was a humor magazine disguised as a skateboard magazine, and it was about finding big personalities and doing things with them.”

Tremaine loved Knoxville’s idea and gave it the green light. At the time, “Big Brother” had also just started to shoot videos, and Tremaine decided to send their cameraman, Dimitry Elyashkevich — who would become a “Jackass” producer and cinematographer — to film Knoxville testing out the equipment on himself.

“Then, I got cold feet about the gun thing, and so I told Dimitry the night before, ‘You can’t go shoot that, but give [Johnny] the video camera and tell him how to use it so he can at least hopefully come back with video footage too,” recalled Tremaine.

In the new movie “Jackass: Best and Last,” which dips into the 30-year “Jackass” archive, we hear Elyashkevich teaching Knoxville and his friends how to use the camera. Knoxville, meanwhile, expresses surprise that the cameraman didn’t accompany them for what would be the most dramatic of the stunts.

At the time, Larry Flynt, the legendary pornographic magazine publisher, owned “Big Brother,” so Tremaine gave Knoxville a stack of porn magazines to shove in the vest as an extra layer of protection, but more as a funny bit for the camera. A bit made funnier, but also scarier, when the magazines fell out.

“It was not the most expensive bulletproof vest on the market, but it was the only one he could afford at the time,” recalled Tremaine. “The reckless humor is those porn mags fall out from under his vest, and he’s got the gun, and he’s pointing the gun right at the camera while he’s trying to pick [them] up. He’s distracted picking up these magazines. It could’ve gone so fucking wrong. The recklessness and just homemadeness of it is what I found so compelling.”

The footage of Knoxville and friends driving to the middle of nowhere to fire the gun is far more terrifying than anything that ever appeared in “Jackass.” Beyond the porno mag slapstick, Knoxville and his friend holding the camera are audibly and visibly nervous — there’s a sense they don’t really know if the stunt will work, and there are moments when it plays more like the start of a found-footage snuff film.

When Knoxville returned the camera, what Tremaine saw blew him away.

“I didn’t have aspirations to be a TV executive, or an executive producer, or a director.  I was just happy making a skateboard magazine and videos,” said Tremaine. “But when I started editing that footage, I realized, ‘Oh, there’s something bigger here.’”

Spike Jonze, Johnny Knoxville, and Jeff Tremaine on the 2013 set of ‘Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa’©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Not knowing what to do with what he had discovered, Tremaine called his old friend Jonze, who had revolutionized the world of skateboard videos with a spirit and style of filmmaking that had catapulted him into becoming one of the most successful music video and commercial directors ever. As Tremaine pointed out on the podcast, Jonze had already had a massive influence on culture in how his videos expanded skateboarding culture, which “Jackass” was “100-percent born out of,” according to Tremaine.

“I called Spike and said, ‘Hey, I think we can make a TV show,’” recalled Tremaine. “I already had [Chris] Pontius, Steve-O, Wee Man, Bam [Margera], to a degree [through ‘Big Brother’].  But it was Knoxville and how compelling that footage was, especially the gunshot, I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is crazy, and it’s bigger than what we’re doing with it.’”

Jonze, Tremaine, and Knoxville pitched “Jackass” as an eight-episode season to MTV, and the rest is history. MTV never allowed the original footage of Knoxville shooting himself on air. Tremaine felt that it made sense to include the footage and what is essentially the “Jackass” origin story in their last film, “Jackass: Best and Last.” Although the at-times-terrifying scene comes with an extra layer of onscreen text, with a warning that far exceeds what has been required of “Jackass” in the past. Truly, no one should ever try this at home.

To hear Tremaine’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.