We sat down with the producer and director of Jackass: Number Two
to talk about the most dangerous sketches from the upcoming film, who's the craziest of the bunch and of course, pubic beards.
CRACKED: How'd you get into film and TV? You started off as a professional BMX rider so, obviously, you used to take some risks yourself.
Jeff: I wasn't exactly a professional, but I was good at it. Yeah, I took some risks. I wasn't a smooth rider. It was more like I would go as high as I could and hope for the best. I rode a little bit beyond my ability.
Do you ever participate in any of the stuff that Knoxville, Bam and the rest of those guys do?
I'll do a lot of it. There is definitely some of it that I would never do, but somehow I usually find one of the nine guys that is willing to try my bad ideas. Fortunately, a lot of the bad ideas come from the guys themselves. Knoxville is willing to do just about anything dangerous. He' been really ridiculous on this movie.
How has he been more ridiculous than he was on the first one? Is that even possible?
Well, factor in that he makes $5 million for movies where he is not in any kind of physical danger. For him to come back to doing this is pretty crazy.
Why do you think he came back?
We were doing (the MTV show)
Wildboyz and periodically, if his schedule allowed, Knox would come on a trip. So he came to Russia with us and we were out shooting in a really remote suburb of Moscow with this anti-terrorist training group. They agreed to show us some stuff and kick our guys' asses. The first thing they showed us was a gun fight between two guys where they're shooting rubber bullets out of .38 calibers, and they have all of this ghetto body armor on. There was a car window that got hit by a rubber bullet and shattered, which is when we realized, 'Holy shit, you don't want to get shot by rubber bullets.'
So we watch this go down, and we're all horrified, and all of the sudden Knox was like, 'Just shoot me in the ass with it.' And I was like, 'It' going to go right into your ass and we're going to have to get it surgically removed.' And he' like, 'Come on, just shoot me in the ass and we'll go to the bar and have fun.'
So I pulled him aside and said, 'Know, if you still have this in you, if you want to really put everything on the line, the let's not do it for MTV2, let's do another movie.'
A lot of these guys are now famous in their own right. It seems like there' a huge physical risk to any one of them coming back to do a sequel.
We don't fake shit. We don't rig shit. If one of them puts knee pads on, or some sort of padding, they get ridiculed by the other guys.
Does anyone ever come up to you and say, "Jeff, this is too risky. I'm just not going to do it."
I get that quite a bit.
Really?
Luckily, there are nine guys so when one passes, it usually trickles down to another one who' willing to do it.
Who would you say is the craziest one out of the bunch?
They all have their certain expertise and lunacy. I'd say Knoxville is the most willing to do a death-defying stunt. But, you know, I was really surprised on how big and ridiculous Bam has gone on this movie. Because
Bam is a huge show for him, and he is just growing and growing to the point where I thought, 'Shit, he might not want to do half this stuff.' On his show he plays my role where he bullies friends into doing things he doesn't want to do. But this time around, more than ever before, he has just thrown himself on ridiculous grenades.
In another interview, you compared yourself to a used car salesman who has to figure out who' best to do one of these bits, and then how you're going to get them to do it. You have to sell them on it.
I would even up used car salesman to a psychologist. I got called out by Aaron in India. He pulled me aside and I was sort of talking him into something and he said, "You know what, you're just a used car salesman and I've bought five cars off of you already and three of them have worked." I was trying to get him to lay down on a bed of nails and we were going to put cobras on his chest and have snake charming-combining all the stereotypes of India.