Eric André details the terrors of being friends with the Jackass crew
A peaceful Christmas Eve becomes a home invasion thriller, for example
TV News Jackass
You’d think that Eric André is constitutionally immune to pranks at this point. After all, the comedian and actor (who has a recurring role as a Randy “Macho Man” Savage-style megachurch preacher on this season of The Righteous Gemstones) has built a lucrative career out of making people very uncomfortable by fearlessly hurling himself into gonzo stunts. The Eric Andre Show, whose fifth season of absurdist chaos premiered back in October, routinely sees André putting his body on the line for his comedy, with André’s most recent show-related hospitalization coming at the hands of wrestler/actor John Cena, who hurled the much smaller host right through an inadequately gimmicked shelving unit.
With a concussion being merely another day at the office for the seemingly fearless André, one might imagine that his inevitable friendship with the similarly self-destructive guys of the Jackass franchise would be nothing to worry about. Not so, according to André, who, appearing on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, admitted that, when the call came to be in the latest Jackass movie, “It was, like, the quickest I’ve ever said yes to a project, and then immediately—terrified.”
What, you might ask, could scare Eric Andre when it comes to prank-based entertainment? After all, he did his own, Jackass-but-with-a-plot feature film in Bad Trip, where André memorably courted disaster by asking a very unamused barber to separate his and co-star Lil Rel Howery’s penises from a conjoining finger trap. (The resulting, caught-on-camera near knife-attack made for good film, but found the two comics literally running down the street from an angry guy with a knife.) Explaining that his brand of confrontational comedy owes a big debt to Johnny Knoxville and his Jackass crew, André told Kimmel, “Oh my god, they raised me. They shaped my worldview.” So that explains a lot.
So what could make even the intrepid André fearful when meeting his idols on the Jackass set? The old exploding porta-potty gag was one thing, with André describing a Jackass set as like “the Vietnam war of comedy,” since there might be literal landmines littering the ground with each step. Being friends with that lot is even more unpredictable, as André shared the time when he—recovering from contracting the Omicron variant over Christmas—was startled from his lonely, sick, and stoned Christmas Eve by a maniac in an Andy Warhol wig hurling toilet paper over his house.
It was Knoxville, naturally, just trying to cheer André up. André told Kimmel that, before Knoxville revealed himself, the police had already been called, with André screaming at the intruder that he was getting his gun. Knoxville, again naturally, was thrilled at having caused his pal such panic, noting that it would have been great and fitting publicity for Jackass Forever (which explodes into theaters in October) if André had either shot him or had him arrested. Or, hey, both. Anything for a pal, and a gag.
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Comedian known for obscene stunts freaks out at the least obscene prank imaginable.
Seriously, he called the cops and was getting his gun because…his house was getting TP’ed? Like, the thing that teens do on Halloween?
Plus it’s east to get TP out of your trees. All you need is a match.
Jackass Forever explodes into theaters in February. It was originally scheduled for October 2021.
That scared the hell out of me…I couldn’t believe it was pushed back again!? Glad to see that’s a typo! Or a AV Club we can’t be bothered to hire editors-ism.
Jackass Forever drops on February 4th, not in October.
There’s a difference between doing dangerous things to your own body for the sake of comedy, and having someone else put your body through dangerous things for the sake of comedy. That’s why the Jackass crew never really resonated with me. Because they weren’t just putting their on bodies on the line, but putting other people’s bodies on the line. It’s the worst kind of frat humor that creates the worst kind of toxic work environment because “noone is safe”.
Everyone involved in Jackass knew what they were in for. The pranks were never on random people. That was the magic of the show, it was a bunch of Jackass hurting themselves in funny ways for our amusement, it was almost a modern clown show. Where other prank shows loose me is when they do things unsuspecting civilians, but that wasn’t Jackass.
This is the most overdramatic take on Jackass I’ve ever seen, and those early days of the show were filled with a lot of bad “think of the children” takes.
In the new Jackass movie one of the new young cast members got his arm shredded pretty bad by a Shark. He got serious real quick when he saw his arm and felt the pain. Blood was everywhere. They kept it in the movie of course.
That was Poopies. He was on the Hawk vs. Wolf podcast w/ Tony Hawk and Jason Ellis. He explained that the incident occurred while he was doing a literal “jumping the shark” bit for Shark Week on Discovery in promotion of the Jackass Forever movie.Here’s the link: