On its face, there is no good reason why anyone should be emotional as the credits roll on Jeff Tremaine’s “Jackass: Best and Last”; the culmination of a nearly three-decade saga of genital mutilation, excrement and vomit spewing, and injurious self-regard for good taste. Discharging from the primordial ooze of a pre-9/11 twenty-first century primed and ready to blow the old world sky high, “Jackass” was once proclaimed as the nadir of culture; an abomination that surely would herald the end of civilized life as we know it. Led by cackling ringmaster Johnny Knoxville, this band of empty-headed lunatics came into their own right as America was punching itself in the face just to feel something. A god’s-eye view of the era’s media shows a nation flailing in active self-immolation. By the time the TV show was kamikaze-blasted across US theaters with “Jackass: The Movie” in 2002, we were in the traumatic aftermath of a monstrous act of terrorism and embroiled in an already catastrophic war, with another bouncing baby WMD snipe hunt waiting in the wings as active shooter drills began being implemented in schools across the country. We had “Fear Factor” making Joe Rogan and Madagascar hissing cockroaches household names as the fetid abomination of reality television was steadily gaining sentience for a national populace eager to ogle at anything that wasn’t dead bodies in New York City, Afghanistan, or their local high school. Amidst the din of millennial madness, “Jackass” felt like an infectious symptom that both time and topical ointment might eventually eliminate like so much venereal disease. And yet, those idiot boys persisted. Two more movies followed within the next ten years, with a fourth film produced that straddled the COVID-19 pandemic, each one not only expanding the levels of deprivation each member was willing to subject themselves to, but also the titular Jackasses’ camaraderie for one another. Every new installment also leveled up its ambition and filmmaking prowess; with the third film taking full use of newly developed, high frame rate cameras for a slow motion flatulence fantasia and the second film ending with a grand cinematic extravaganza that overtly homages both Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930’s and the patron saint of “Jackass”, the great Buster Keaton. The movies became less freak shows than they were feats of daring do; not unlike the antics of famed stuntman Evel Knievel, who himself came to prominence in the early 1970’s when America was similarly ripping itself apart from the inside out. As a core group of punk rock layabouts, Knoxville, alongside Steve-O, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Danger Ehren, Wee-Man, and Preston Lacy, had bonded into a cohesive whole; a distinctive unit with their own personalities, specialties, and quirks. Steve-O was the blockhead, just as willing to snort wasabi as he was to stick a hook through his cheek and go fishing for sharks. Margera and Dunn were the slapdash best friends, often content simply to prank each other to their own mutual delight. Pontius was the man for penile punishment, England was the pooper of the group, Ehren was the picked-on kid brother, and Wee-Man was often paired with Lacy as a big guy/little guy tag team. Through it all, Knoxville was Captain and in many ways the most eager to flirt with death, as evidenced by his habitual insistence on placing himself, sans protection of any kind, in the path of rampaging bulls. As the years and injuries piled up, they not only tormented each other but supported each other as well; unashamed of orifices or bodily fluids, flying rainbow colors while cross-dressing and wearing thongs without a hint of mockery. Their freak flags flew proudly long before it was cool, and they were having fun for an audience of each other, with the implication that they would be doing this whether we were watching or not. Together, fulfilling the edicts laid out by the Roger Allan Wade song “If You Wanna Be Dumb You Gotta Be Tough”, which became as much an anthem as a rallying cry, the Jackass guys seemed untouchable by even their most moronic pursuits; crash test dummies for whom head trauma was their morning cup of coffee. And perhaps, if they had called it quits back in the early aughts, as the internet was parlaying death-defying stunts into an everyday commodity, that may have been how we’d remember them; an antiquated relic of mindless nonsense. But as “Jackass: Best and Last” so prominently presents for us, time is the great equalizer that comes for us all; and sometimes the most painful stunt of all is knowing when to call it quits.
The opening moments of “Jackass: Best and Last” leap backward in time to 1999, to the moment when the first hint of what “Jackass” could become was blasted to life, literally. Knoxville, young and spry with a full head of black hair, brings a camera crew out into the desert to film an experiment which he hopes to write about for a magazine. Wearing a piece of police body armor, he plans on taking a snub-nosed pistol, pointing it at his own chest, and firing it to test its lethality. Clearly nervous, Knoxville still can’t help but lean into his instincts for showmanship by drawing a Looney Tunes target on his white t-shirt as the cameramen are vocally eager to bail on this endeavor in favor of seeing their friend commit accidental suicide. Knoxville places a bullet into the chamber, points the gun, and pulls the trigger. But the bullet won’t go off. He tries again, nothing. What began as a poorly conceived act of self-destruction has morphed into Russian Roulette, the tension ratcheting up with each pull of the trigger. Finally, the gun goes off; the shot echoing through the desolate canyon. Knoxville lives, the body armor stopping the low-caliber bullet, and the gang scampers to their cars like underage kids fleeing an unsanctioned high school party. As they drive off, it’s easy to intuit a glint in Knoxville’s eye; a delight in being alive amid the afterglow being less than a hair’s breadth from death. Not only did he tempt fate, but he placed himself willingly in its path and lived to tell about it; thus an addiction was cemented. It’s easy, with hindsight, to see this as an endearingly stupid act; he survived after all. But there’s clearly a world where that bullet penetrates that armor; the name Johnny Knoxville means little to anyone except the poor men burdened with having filmed his death, and “Jackass” does not exist. The worst possible thing could have happened; no one would deny that. But it didn’t. It’s in that ambiguity where not only the structure of “Jackass” was born but its soul concocted; an appreciation for life by placing oneself in the path of oncoming death. Is it smart? God no. Is it human? Perhaps, the most.
“Jackass: Best and Last” is less a sequel than it is a swan song constructed of fond remembrances, fresh obscenities, and free-flowing tears. From the opening sequence, featuring the old guard alongside the newly recruited generation of acolytes taking their fair share of hits, zaps, and stings while sliding effortlessly along an antiseptically white floor à la Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity music video, audiences are placed in the familiar confines of what makes these movies so comforting, endlessly rewatchable, and beloved. The film is as much a retrospective of past glories as it is an excuse for one last rodeo of nut shots, fecal fountains, and taser battles that attempts to hold up the whole of “Jackass” and contend with the friends and compound fractures it made along the way. There are a fair share of new bits that are worth mentioning, including a laxative-spiked game of Twister and Steve-O receiving a prostate exam from a robot, framed around a best-of style recap of some of the series’ best, and most disgusting, stunts. We see the “Butt X-Ray” from the original film where the dearly departed Ryan Dunn stuck a toy car where the sun don’t shine, the “Poo Cocktail Supreme” where Steve-O strapped himself to a porta-potty attached to a fifty-foot-tall bungee, and Knoxville’s worst, and final, one sided battle with a Bull from “Jackass Forever”, after which he had to be hospitalized after. As these friends find new and novel ways of desecrating themselves and each other, there’s a somber note that hangs above the good humor and the puke. Near the end of “Jackass: Best and Last”, Knoxville, strapped to a lie detector electric chair, is asked by Steve-O if he’s sure that this will be the last film. Knoxville chokes up as he admits that it is; one last hurrah, less death-defying than oblivion embracing. As the film’s final set piece unfurls, a recreation of the opening sequence from “Jackass: The Movie” with the boys rolling pell-mell through explosions in an oversized grocery cart, the loop closes itself in riotous fashion. The stunts are only funny when you can walk away, and the “Jackass” crew have finally done just that. They’ve walked away while they can still appreciate the applause.
The other day I was talking to my father, who would often watch the MTV cuts of “Jackass” movies with me when I was a teenager. As I told him about the movie, I described it as wholesome, which confused him. What could be wholesome about this nonsense, of urine and blood and testicular contortion? It is fascinating how, at the end of their run, the “Jackass” crew has evolved from gutter trash that kids should be steered clear of to a prime example of positive masculinity; of brotherhood bonded by consensual idiocy. They rarely, if ever, punched down, though they often punched below the belt. Perhaps it is the transfiguration that only time provides, but it’s hard not to watch them today; greying and wrinkled with fewer teeth than they once did, and feel almost jealous of the kinship they fostered with one another. It’s easy to say you would take a bullet for your friends, but would you eat cow feces for one? And not even for any good reason, but simply to make them laugh? In some ways, that desire can be seen as representing the best of us, and as far as a template for friendship goes, you could do a whole lot worse.
“Jackass: Best and Last” will be a movie that I cue up habitually for years to come, just as I have done for each of the previous films, and I assume the tears will threaten every time. Art is what you make of it, the passion that goes into it, and the love that is fostered from it. That subjectivity is a fickle thing and firmly in the eye of the beholder. Is strapping yourself to a makeshift hang glider and leaping into a pile of cacti art? In a vacuum, perhaps not, but what if you’re filming it? As the final coda, we see Knoxville from the early days of the “Jackass” show sitting in a hotel room speaking with director Jeff Tremaine. “Well, I guess that didn’t exactly go as planned,” says Tremaine. But Knoxville disagrees, saying, “That’s pretty much exactly how I hoped it would go.” In the end, it’s hard to argue with him.
If you’re going to be dumb, don’t forget to be tough.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Jackass: Best and Last” is playing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
