Jackass director Jeff Tremaine obtains restraining order against Bam Margera
Margera is accused of harassing Tremaine with "disturbing" messages
Film News Jackass
As prophesied by the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo, the year 2001 is upon us once again. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see Jackass making headlines—especially with the fourth (and most likely final) film in the franchise arriving this fall. Unfortunately, the masochistic bros of the peak millennial MTV era aren’t making headlines for the best of reasons on this particular day. Jackass director Jeff Tremaine has been granted a permanent restraining order against former franchise star Bam Margera, who was fired from Jackass 4 over his refusal to adhere to the conditions set forth by production—including routine drug testing and participating in ongoing counseling.
Last month, Tremaine was granted a temporary protection order against Margera— the filmmaker has accused Margera of harassment via text message and social media platforms. In screenshots and documents obtained by People, Margera tells Tremaine that threats he made toward the director’s children come from “the bottom of [his] heart.” Tremaine says that the harassment began after Margera was booted off the upcoming sequel related to behavior following a relapse last summer. “I am in great fear for my and my family’s personal safety,” Tremaine stated in his petition to the court. According to another troubling allegation, Margera called a colleague and claimed “that he has ‘powers as a wizard’ and ‘can create and strike lightning’ while speaking at times using numbers instead of English.”
Margera—whose struggles with substance abuse and mental health have seemingly escalated in recent years—posted a video on Instagram back in May, in which he said Tremaine and Jackass star Johnny Knoxville “betrayed me, abandoned me, rejected me.” Co-star Stephen “Steve-O” Glover, who also notably struggled with substance abuse, responded in the comments:
Bam—the two people you’re saying wronged you [Knoxville and Tremaine] are the same two people who organized the intervention which saved my life. Everyone bent over backwards to get you in the movie, and all you had to do was not get loaded. You’ve continued to get loaded, it’s that simple. We all love you every bit as much as we all say we do, but nobody who really loves you can enable or encourage you to stay sick.
It is truly difficult to watch someone wrestle with substance abuse and mental health, and—in this case—in such a public way that makes their struggles a spectator event that invites public comment (such as this) and opinion. Here’s to hoping Margera will eventually accept the help he needs and deserves.
127 Comments
I hate to go for the low-hanging fruit, but Bam is acting like a real…
dum dum.
Agreed. A total dirtbag.
A dickweed, you might say.
A real jerkoff.
Donkey butt!
Mule’s bum!
I was going to guess “ninnymuggins.”
. . . piece of low-hanging fruit!
I was expectingOF COCK!
I didn’t even know there were Jackass movies, which shows you how well I follow this nonsense.
Does your mom know you’re online?
This is definitely the result of yahoo comments being suspended for a year.
And yet you feel the need to comment about your lack of interest or contribution.
Cool.
Cool, thanks for sharing!
I started college right when the first one came out, and that DVD was so common on campus you’d think they gave it out free during orientation week (along with Scarface posters).
don’t forget copies of Legend on CD
One of the best Tangerine Dream scores
Don’t forget Fear and Loathing posters!
I feel ya. I don’t own a blender.
Wow. You’re really missing out. There’s a whole world of smoothies out there, brother!
You dont have to follow it to know that. You just have to be somewhat aware of the world around you. I dont follow Twilight, but i know there are Twilight movies. I dont follow Fast and Furious, but i know there is yet another movie coming out.But thanks for stopping by just to randomly announce that you are completely ignorant of the subjects of the article. We were all dying to know whether you were aware of it.
I don’t want to call you a liar…but come on.
Honestly, never brag about ignorance, no matter how much you want to. Well, don’t brag, period. But never brag about being ignorant of something – it might make you lucky that you never knew about something, but it doesn’t make you superior.
It’s not going to end well for him, will it? This is one of those sad situations where you know they’re racing for the cliff, and all you can do is stay clear. Honestly, I regret ever having watched Jackass. It wasn’t worth it, for all the consequences suffered by its participants, who were too young and naive to know the havoc they were wreaking on their minds and bodies, and for nothing.
“It wasn’t worth it, for all the consequences suffered by its
participants, who were too young and naive to know the havoc they were
wreaking on their minds and bodies, and for nothing.”I felt like I was insane at the time because it seemed like I was the only person thinking this.
you self-righteous pussy….LMAO!
I think the original show was underrated as a weirdly subversive commentary of the time. “You want stupid Jerry Springer shit? Don’t get dumber than this.” But it took off, so they had to push it. Get that money while you can, and such. Then it became shtick, arguably with a body count.
It wasn’t entirely just sadomasochism nihilism, they actually had kinda good gags. I forget who it was but someone dressed up in a gorilla suit and went to a convenience store and bought bananas, that’s kinda gold. Also the “High five!” gag from the first movie is incredibly stupid but kind of genius.
Too young? Lol. No. I was quite a bit younger than them, and i was fully aware of how stupid and dangerous it was. So were they. But, they were getting paid and becoming famous. And some of them, like Bam, were always just aggressively ignorant and obnoxious… well, jackasses
“It’s not going to end well for him, will it? This is one of those sad situations where you know they’re racing for the cliff, and all you can do is stay clear.”I thought the same of Steve O back when he was close to the edge, but now he’s sounding like the voice of reason and clarity from his comment. If Steve O can do it, I’ve got to think there’s still a chance Bam can turn this around.
Notably, Steve-O got clean as the rest of them were still very much partying and getting loaded. Tremaine himself said it was really difficult to intervene because at that point they all had a problem. Bam seems to have a better support system around him but he just hasn’t reach step 1, admitting the problem. I saw a doc on Vice about Bam and it really seems like he’s never recovered from Ryan Dunn’s death.
The 10-year anniversary of Dunn’s death is coming up this Sunday. Hold your breath that Bam isn’t in the headlines Monday morning.
The thing about Steve-O is, sure he got clean, but he’s still no role model. He still does stupid stuff to his body, and still alienates those around him with his antics.
Is everyone supposed to be a role model?
Maybe Steve-O was just a plain ole junkie though and not crazy as a rat in a tin shithouse like Bammy here. You can’t really see reason when you’re delusional and paranoid and whatever other stuff he may be brewing up there inside his skull…Also, these guys, utter morons as they may be, were exploited, ruthlessly. Sacrificed on the altar of capitalism, ground up by the money-making machine, then spat out when all of the juicy bits had already been extracted. Those who deserve punishment for said exploitation will never see it, not in this world anyway, and since I’m betting there’s no afterlife it won’t happen in any other either.Ah, such is the way we humans roll… If we can’t take advantage of a dumb motherfucker then what do we really live for? :/
Bam strikes me as very much a “Fuck you, I do what I want” kind of guy. The only way he’ll change is growing up or dying. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear, that like Steve-O, Bam has been subject to at least one intervention. He just doesn’t seem to be someone willing to change his behaviors.
watching it now is as cringey as watching those 70’s-80’s videos of football “bloopers” where players would suffer the worst blows to the head and then stagger around while “Yakety Sax” plays in the background, except the Jackass guys had more of a clue about the long-term effects of TBI then those old football players did. Please let this be the last one and let them invest their earnings from this movie better so they don’t keep this up into their 50’s.
Johnny Knoxville is already 50.
Hey, that’s…not old.
Never said it was! Just pointing out that at least one of the Jackass crew is already 50.
he is 50 but the others are still in their late 30’s/early 40’s, and he seems to have his shit together and better career opportunities than the others that he probably doesn’t have the money problems that the others do. I sincerely hope this is his last one and he does more of the Bad Grandpa movies with more makeup and less physical abuse.
I dunno. It’s hard to say and I can go both ways with it. Is it really all that much different than other shows where unknowns become uber famous? Seems like there’s always at least one or two that end up in a bad place. I haven’t gone thru the entire cast so I could be totally wrong here (and welcome a correction), but off the top of my head, most came out ok. Knoxville did the best handling it all. Steve-O got clean and has had a remarkable turn around. Bam and Ryan Dunn seem to bore the worst of it. Dunn, who died when the crashed his lambo while drunk (which I’m sure is playing a part in Bam’s struggles). Then there’s Bam who has struggled for years. So was it worth it? It really just comes down to the individual.I will say that Bam’s spinoff show did feel exploitative though. It was clear that both he and Dunn were all kinds of messed up, taking in all the negative stuff that celebrity can buy, yet they kept filming. Actually they basically built the show off that premise. “Hey, here’s Bam. Watch him do whatever the fuck he wants”
It’s so hard to see it happen, and I certainly feel complicity because I enjoyed that show and those movies, and laughed at their antics. But I wish someone had said, “You know, you don’t have to do this.”I’m reminded of Sandy Koufax’s powerful presser when he announced he was retiring at the height of his career. One of the journalists asked him, quite reasonably, whether he thought he might regret the loss of future income. Koufax put a different spin on it saying (I paraphrase) imagine if you had lost the use of your arm, and someone came and said that they can restore is for ten or fifty thousand dollars. You’d pay that in a heartbeat wouldn’t you? He felt that by quitting before his arm problems got really severe, he was doing just that, he was buying back the use of his arm.
Not related to the conversation at hand, but I just discovered that Sandy Koufax is still alive at the ripe old age of 85. I had no idea. I’m thinking he made the right decision to retire from MLB when he did. Live long and prosper, good sir.
LOL I heard Andrew Luck’s name yesterday and thought the same thing. Could have been a great one but he chose his brain and body over a little fame and a few million bucks, and I applaud him for that. Dude’s only 31 and has a Stanford degree, so he also has more options than the average NFLer who can’t stop playing, but still.
I had no idea about Luck. I was still -somewhat- following the NFL regularly when he got drafted. Good for him on getting TF out while still a functioning human being.
It was a Porsche though
Jackass was split between west coast guys who were already in Hollywood and CKY guys. You get the sense that CKY dudes are who suffered because they’re from upper-middle west Chester and suddenly went from decent to amazing money and had no reference. Knoxville and Co had a clue of how this was going to play out and he’s the only one who’s reliably booked movies to star in…bad ones…but he has starred.
Bam also had the advantage, as proved repeatedly throughout the series-es, of having the worst, least assertive, most indulgent parents on the planet.
Having read this news post about what human wreckage these guys have turned into (not that it really surprises me), I’m glad I never watched any of that shit – because I don’t participate in race-to-the-bottom TV.
I’m pretty sure he’ll be dead within two years.
> for nothingI’m sure Tremaine’s house, and Knoxville’s house, and Steve-O’s house, and Wee-man’s house, etc. etc. are not exactly ‘nothing’ to them.
I mean, was it WORTH the soon-to-be crippling arthritis and possibly CTE, and whatever other horrible side effects rear up after a decade or two abusing your body like that? You’ll ahve to ask them. But a nice SoCal home ain’t nothing.
It’s the natural evolution of our culture. We are two shows away from a real life Running Man.
Dire story. Upshot is that I never expected Steve O to be a lucid voice of reason.
He has a podcast and had a special. Dude has done amazing things for himself since clean. Lots of wisdom can be gleaned from being that low. I think most of his pod is on YT, so find a guest you like and take a peek, worth it.
Thanks, I’ll give it a go! Seems like he had a full-on awakening.
I don’t follow a lot of what Steve-O does nowadays, but I came across an absolutely heartwarming video he did about adopting a stray in Peru:
Also his most recent Hot Ones appearance was incredible.
SIDEBAR: God I wish kinja didn’t suck and I could respond to *good* gray comments.
I starred it. Try it now.
Thanks much!
Right? I almost always responded to a sincere, non-troll gray comment because I felt they deserved that. Do these grays even realize we can’t respond to them? Such a shitty thing for G/O media to do.
So fucking irritating. Thing’s rotting.
I don’t think that was a deliberate choice by G/O. Kinja’s been having various issues for two weeks now.
As a gray comment person, I had absolutely no idea.
SteveO getting clean is probably one of the greatest success stories in rehab industry history. Although in old interviews, he’s definitely a lot smarter and more self aware than he initially seems so he definitely always had it in him to get better on his own terms.
Legit fucking rad.
I’m genuinely happy for him and he seems to be doing really well.
Right? Never expected I would be impressed by Steve O.
Steve O as the wise voice of reason. I guess it is true what they say, truth really is stranger than fiction
really sad outcome. the shit bam has been posting has been manic at best and disturbing at worst. such a far cry from his epicly laterd video a few year ago. hopefully he gets help eventually.
Or dies.
Bam needs to address this, ideally in the form of another guest appearance on Cum Town.
“Unfortunately, the masochistic bros of the peak millennial MTV era aren’t making headlines for the best of reasons on this particular day.”I’d say the original show (2000-2002) was more of a younger GenX/older millennial thing–the performers are certainly all GenX–so just slightly too old to be considered “peak millennial” TV.
Yeah, I am a real median millenial and even by the time of the movie, the only way you had heard of or were watching it was a friend’s skeezy older brother.
As a Gen-Xr, this definitely a Gen-X era show.
I mean, this is the guy in the group that got famous for beating his overweight father while he was taking a shit.None of this is particularly surprising.
I can’t be the only one surprised to learn that he’s alive.
Sadly those who deserve to die the most are rarely the ones who do.
Everyone deserves to die the most, though, and everyone dies. So it kind of works out.
Sadly those who deserve to die the most are rarely the ones who do.Jesus. Shut up dude.
Yeah, but it seemed so innocent back then….
Bam has always seemed like a pretty awful person, so this is not very surprising.
Jeez man he’s getting worse. I’d say I feel sorry for him, but I think it’s more pity than anything else. What a mess.
I had assumed Bam had hit rock bottom around the time of his Cum Town appearance but I guess not. I hope Bam gets the help he needs and is able to turn his life around much like Steve-O did but that’s up to him.
I’ve never been so torn as to whether I want to know what something is before…
You’ll be disappointed that it’s just the name of a podcast Bam appeared on before his very public meltdown.
Thanks. I was gonna google it on my work computer.
Shitty podcast done by shitty people, usually with shitty guests.It’s shit.
Totally thought about googling it, then cam to my senses!
Turn on safe search first is probably a good suggestion… ;)I always keep it on these days, after I got some raunchy shit as a result to a completely benign set of search terms.
It may be all the rage right now to look back in 20/20 vision and wring your hands about it all but I love the cinematic intros of all of the films.
“while speaking at times using numbers instead of English.”uh it’s called being 1337. G3t pwnd n00b.But seriously, fuck Bam and his entire family. They’re all losers. In 2003 I would never have thought steve-o would be the wisest and smartest one out of the whole bunch.
Bam is starting to really look a lot like his dad.
I wanna say it was the DVD commentary for the first movie where Preston Lacy (the fat guy) said to Bam (paraphrasing), “You talk a lot of shit for a future fat guy.”Truly astute stuff.
Is his dad Jack Sparrow on meth? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting from that photo.
Meth, pills, crack, coke. When you’re rich you can do it all – at once.
This is such a bummer. I was a fan of Bam from the old CKY videos days and when he was on Toy Machine—and then Jackass of course. It hit at the perfect time in my life and when skateboarding was finally getting respect and mainstream attention.Seeing what has become of some of them now makes me feel old and sad.
Is he the guy who thought it was funny to surprise and slap around his father?If so, he can fuck right the fuck off. No sympathy.
Do we know for sure that Margera isn’t a wizard?
Charlie Sheen would have told us.
I have fond memories of moving into my first place on my own and that first night (before any furniture was there), watching reruns of Bam’s Unholy Union with a pizza on my sleeping bag. Not that it was a great show, but it was on at a cool time in my life. And Bam was never my favorite Jackass guy, mostly because of all of them he was the only one who seemed kind of mean-spirited. Part of the reason Jackass worked was they all seemed like legit friends trying to get a laugh out of each other (and by extension, the audience) by doing crazy/dangerous things rather than a bunch of sketch players doing a bit. Bam was the only one who seemed to find fun in making people miserable.That being said, this is all pretty unfortunate. He seems to be actively resisting attempts to help him and the fact that he does not see a problem is troubling. Other commenters have pointed out, something bad is going to happen to him and no one will be surprised. He has the means and ostensibly the support system to turn this around, but not the desire and that is sad.
Good thing Bam saw Dr. Phil a few years back, imagine how bad he’d be now if he hadn’t!
It should be the ultimate moment of clarity when Steve O is telling you to get your life together.
Can he die already? He was a spoiled rich kid from the suburbs who rode the coattails of his brother’s stuff with CKY that helped make him a star via Jackass and then unto his own show. It’s clear when Ryan Dunn died Bam had an unrequited love for him, whether it was platonic or romantic, who knows and it really doesn’t matter per se. Dunn’s death was what sent him spiraling and that’s where we’re at now and he’s going to finally drop dead here sooner rather than later but sometimes you do the world a favor by exiting it in a timely fashion.
Sad to see this. He seemed to be one of the more well adjusted members of the crew. Emphasis on “seemed.” Strange to see Bam fall so hard while Steve-O has gotten his life together.
Ryan dying in the accident was definitely the start, that was awful and Bam basically cracked because of it, I don’t think it’s ever left him 😞
Really? To me he’s always seemed like the most mean-spirited and self-serious of the bunch.
Ditto. Ryan Dunn always seemed like the mellow, likeable one of the group to me, RIP. I was quite honestly never a fan of Bam Margera at all, but if it’s at the point where he clearly needs help, then I certainly wish him the best. (Not that you wouldn’t as well, of course.)
Bam was probably the cruelest in terms of the shit he would put his friends and family through, and when they turned the tables on him, he did NOT handle it well. He seemed to lose himself completely once he started drinking and doing drugs and he’s never come back from that.
Maybe Bam will die in jail like his pedo uncle.
Bam could use a Snickers.
“Bam Margera made headlines today… but not the good kind, like you want.”
Shocking, the guy who used to torment his mom with dead animals, beat the shit out of his stepdad when he was trying to sleep, and tore up their house ended up being a drunk, coked-up jerk who has exhausted all of his friends and “business partners”. Never liked him.
He’s never been the same since his best friend passed away. Hope he gets help.
So, he’s turning into Uncle Vito unfortunately…
I know it’s just a dumb stereotype on my part but it always struck me as kinda sweet but surprising that Knoxville and Steve-O turned out to be the level headed ones.
20 years ago, Jackass was appointment viewing for me and my roommate. We’d drink some beers and howl at the idiocy we were watching. Great memories. But even back then, when all of the cast seemed like benevolent, lovable goofballs, Bam always stuck out to us as kind of a prick and the one guy who struggled to laugh at himself.I don’t wish ill on him, but he’s also a really tough guy to root for.
The Bam/Dunn axis of Jackass segments were always the most skippable for me, barring a couple of dad pranks.
Utterly mental what happened to Margera. I remember him being a waif-like, skinny thing and being mega jealous as my first ever girlfriend fancied the pants off him when we were 14. As awful as some of his actions are, he’s clearly not a well man. Hope he manages to sort himself out.
Unfortunately there is only one person who can help Bam. The way he treated his parents and uncle is telling.
That one person? You guessed it… Frank Stallone!
look at his hands in that picture–they look like what you’d expect to see on a homeless drug addict. Wow I hope he gets help and gets clean. I just keep thinking of his mom and how nice and normal-seeming she is, and I can’t imagine the pain and anxiety she must feel about this.
For some reason I have a mental image in my head of what the intervention looked like and I see Chris Pontius dressed as Party Boy.
“You know, the AV Club turned into TMZ so gradually that I didn’t even notice.”
I would get Margera SUPER fucking high, then leave his ass in the woods. See if he wants to bother me with stupid shit.