Steve-O says early years of Jackass were “legitimately a bad influence” on young viewers
The raunchy, stunt-based series first premiered on MTV in 2000
Aux News Jackass
“Don’t try this at home” warnings aside, Steve-O knows full well that the early days of Jackass probably led some younger viewers to test their limits. In a new interview on the Hotboxin’ podcast hosted by Mike Tyson, the actor says the first films were a “bad influence” on impressionable kids.
“I think in the beginning of Jackass we were genuinely worth vilifying because back then they didn’t have YouTube or video on the internet and we were legitimately a bad influence,” he explains.
He continues: “When Jackass came out, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw us doing this crazy shit and they wanted to do it themselves. So, little kids everywhere got video cameras and started fucking themselves up and showing up in hospitals and getting really hurt.”
The first iteration of Jackass aired as a series on MTV in 2000. The premise is simple: Steve-O and the rest of his gang dream up wild, dangerous, raunchy, and straight-up ridiculous stunts. The beloved series spawned multiple feature films including February’s Jackass Forever, as well as an all new series coming to Paramount+.
Although in the past 22 years Jackass’ stunts have only grown more elaborately goofy (Electric Tap Dance with Tyler the Creator, anyone?) Steve-O says he doesn’t think the franchise is responsible for kids’ try-anything habits these days. In his mind, the growing popularity (and accessibility) of YouTube is partially to blame.
“At that time you could really point to us as being a bad influence,” said Steve-O. “But I think over the years, because now that there’s so much YouTube, Ridiculousness, so much, it’s not our fucking fault anymore.”
Now that Steve-O is releasing responsibility, this writer highly suggests readers to set any and all shopping carts aside and climb down from any roofs they may be perched on. You’re not Johnny Knoxville.
70 Comments
Accurate
Fittingly, reviews of the most recent Jackass film seemed to be calling it sweet-natured and almost wholesome.
I don’t think anyone expected this crew to still be genuine friends 30 years on.Anyway, mandatory:
still makes me laugh every time.
Jackass always worked best when it seemed like a group of friends who were trying to make each other laugh or one-up each other in terms of doing something ridiculous. The fourth movie is a lot of that – it almost seems like Dazed and Confused when they haze the kid, but afterwards invite him to parties and accept him into the group.It took me a long time to figure out why the Bam segments were my least favorite, but at some point it dawned on me that he was the only person that seemed malicious. Whether he was or not I cannot say for sure, but he seemed to be the only one who wanted to hurt/embarrass/really fuck with people, including bystanders. In Dazed and Confused, he was Bannion – the person who used hazing as a way to torture people and get off doing it.Incidentally – Bam was only in one brief scene in the fourth movie.
Bam was my favorite as a kid, but rewatching the movies and show on Paramount+, I’ve come to the same conclusion about him. Everyone else is either (mostly) harmlessly pranking strangers, hurting themselves, or both, while Bam is punching his dad in the face and destroying his house.
I also noticed that the first season kind of sucked. It felt really disjointed and outside of a few great bits, it was very weak. It didn’t even seem like most of the guys knew each other (although Paramount+ has some weirdness with repeating segments so it’s possible I missed something). When they start hanging out together in season 2 it’s a lot more fun.
If I remember correctly it’s because the first season borrowed a lot of clips from the CKY and Big Brother videos, which were at the time unrelated to each other. Probably by the second season they were doing more original bits for the show.
Bbecause they didnt know each other. It was 3 or 4 completely separate groups of people, filming independently of each other: Bam and the CKY group from PA, Danger Ehren and Dave Englund from Seattle, Knoxville and the Big Brother guys, etc etc.Also, Bam is awful and anyone who worshipped Bam was equally awful. I was in high school at the time and there were quite a few kids who absolutely worshipped Bam. They were all fucking terrible. Much like Bam.
Ben Affleck was perfect as O’Bannion. Everyone knew that asshole growing up.
great point re: Bam. It’s poignant seeing the others openly rooting for him to get into rehab but I wonder if he would do the same for them. His joy at fucking with his amazingly understanding parents was always a little cringey. And it was weird to realize he was in that one “blink and you’ll miss him” scene with the treadmill but honestly I didn’t miss him all that much; I enjoy the feeling that you’re hanging out with bunch of great friends but adding some new blood always livens things up.
I haven’t seen the latest one (my heart can’t take these guys hurting themselves anymore) but my favorite part of these guys have always been the camaraderie. Even in the early movies you would see genuine concern and friendship among the crew when something went wrong (or right). They put a lot more of those moments in the x.5 movie releases and by the time the 3D one came out, it was a full blown brotherly love fest.
When I think about Jackass, I think of when that stunt between Steve O and Knoxville went wrong and I believe Knoxville accidentally stabbed Steve O with a knife or something. Then Steve O is on camera showing off a bouquet of flowers he got from Knoxville with a card saying something like “Dear Steve O, I’m sorry for stabbing you in the back and I want you to know I would only ever stab you in the back literally, not metaphorically”These dudes all love each other so much and you can really tell when they’re not actively fucking around.
It kind of is. They emphasize their age and their friendships having lasted so long over really everything else. Jackass 4.5 is a better movie overall in my opinion, though, mainly because it presents itself as more of a documentary than just another Jackass movie. I enjoyed Jackass Forever, but Jackass 4.5 is a much different format that works a lot better.
I am a 51 year old adult who recently started watching Jackass and while definitely not an impressionable kid it influenced me to do dumb shit.
They can all fuck themselves. This show never should’ve been aired. Because it was a bad influence but also because it sucked.
You seem fun.
Werewolf in an elevator disagrees vehemently.To this day one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen.
Guessing this is a sketch I didn’t see. That’s fine.
Bam Margera, is that you?
Guessing this is a sketch or something that I didn’t see. I’ll be fine.
In the future they will be listed among Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
Dear God I hope not.
I think you are looking for the Kardashians article.
That too. More than one show can suck and be a cultural drag on modern civilization. In fact there are hundreds.
Lighten up, Francis.
You seem fun.Just kidding, you seem fucking awful.
He just figured this out? What did he put on The Magick Glasses of Common Sense or something?
Sobriety has a helluva way of putting your past in perspective.
It is also disingenuous. He is basically saying that yes, we were the first to do this terrible shit, but now everyone does it because of us, so we are not to blame anymore.
Is that what he said? I’m not sure that’s what I got from it; but then, I don’t look to the men of Jackass for anything like a coherent statement about anything.
The irony is that, having seen many of your comments, I can say with full confidence that “the men of Jackass” are far more capable of coherent and intelligent statements than you are.
There is no way they were the first ones to do this. They did get famous for it though.
Fair enough. But they certainly were the first to record it and try to become rich and famous for it. That’s what I meant when I said “the first to do this.”I don’t think it is a stretch to say that if it weren’t for Jackass, we wouldn’t have thousands of YouTubers and TikTokers trying to replicate or one-up those stunts. And without that, you probably don’t have Ridiculousness.
Jackass was a bad influence at the time because it had an unusually wide reach, but it didn’t invent the grand tradition of “hey y’all watch this” and widespread personal video sharing was inevitably going to lead to its proliferation with or without Knoxville and crew.
He doesn’t seem TOO concerned, considering he kept whatever money was made off of it.
Did Tyson cop to doing anything that could be construed as being a “bad influence”?
shorter list might be anything that couldn’t.
people in recovery are honestly the best at owning their shit.
meh. I find them the best at making excuses for why they can’t pay you back yet.
girly let it slide.
He’s absolutely right. I was an impressionable kid at the time, and my buddies and I did make our very own Jackass video. It wasn’t anything remotely close to the level of what they were doing, but we still got injured. There’s footage of it out there, but, I don’t think I’ll ever get it from my buddy.
Well he’s certainly had one too many knocks to the head.
And lines up his nose.
It was never worth vilifying. If parent’s let their kids watch that stuff and go out and act like idiots, you can’t blame the Jackass crew anymore than you can blame TV in general, or video games, or rap music. It’s just a boogeyman made up to absolve disinterested and unattentive parents from responsibility.
I love Jackass but c’mon. I was jumping over my friends on my bike in the 70s-80s. Unsuccessfully I might add. The only difference is, we didn’t have video cameras. And access to gallons of horse semen.
Ok, but would you have tried to jump your friend your bike by jumping off a roof and having a second friend shoot you with beanbag rounds out of a shotgun? No, they didn’t do that exact stunt, but that’s the level of stunts they were pulling off.
You would be amazed at what me and my stupid latchkey friends did.
Did you take home cobbled dirtbikes into the forest preserve, hack your own trail off the paved bike trail to the river, build up a big dirt jump, and try to jump the bike over the edge of the river and grab the rope hanging from the tree branch?If you hung on, the rest of the guys had to fish your bike out. If you failed, well, you were wet anyway.Cuz that’s what we did.
Well, we drove mopeds off a roof into a pool, AND we had guns, so not out of the question.
Evel Knievel is the true bad guy here.
Very, very good point. And as half of your name bears witness, Fonzie jumping over the shark was an influencer as well!
Evel is certainly the culprit for me.
I blame Buster Keaton.
And access to gallons of horse semen.You poor, deprived suburban kid.
Yeah kids in the 70s and 80s were throwing knives in the air and seeing who could wait the longest before moving out of the way.
And lawn darts. Don’t forget about lawn darts.
We didn’t have…access to gallons of horse semen.Well, that’s because you’re obviously lazy.
Agreed. I grew up in the mid-90s. We filmed ourselves skating, skiing/boarding, mtb, etc. We LOVED seeing each other bail more then we loved seeing ourselves land. As long as everyone was semi-okay it was great to re-watch over and over. I literally know that we had the same reactions that these guys had: watch someone bail, freak the fuck out, and when they talked and got up, we would laugh hysterically. This isn’t new, someone just got the genius idea to put together the best part of skate videos – the blooper/bail outtakes during the credits – and make it a show. The rest was history.
A group of four kids set one of their number on fire due to a Jackass stunt when I was in high school in like 2002. While the guy who was set on fire was a willing participant, the three that assisted/video taped all were charged with aggravated assault. So I do think there was at least some, clearly and obviously unintentional, bad influencing going on. I don’t think that’s Jackass’ fault by any stretch but it did happen.
I’ll freely admit the show inspired my friends and I to do stupid shit. Nothing too extreme–the most dangerous thing I did was sled off his roof after a snowstorm. Getting to the top of the roof was way more terrifying than the actual sledding part. (I landed face first into a pile of snow and it perfectly molded my face. It was pretty amusing.)
I blame them for ridiculousness
Never watched it. Low brow reality has never been my thing (for those it is, love what you love.)But yea, young men (and some young women) doing stupid stuff when we were kids is normal. It’s not a bad influence so much as some kids just have to learn things the hard way.Even things that are considered more “legit” like maybe being a Metal musician in the 80’s, still has a huge amount of young, stupid energy working out your issues with substances. That’s just youth.Maybe a bigger question is just why every generation is so obsessed with youth programming, but that’s largely advertiser driven in my estimation. There’s very little that seems new when you look at generation after generation of youth programming.
Nobody seems to remember it, but I thought Nitro Circus was way more dangerous.Most of their stuff was too elaborate for kids to copy though.
Dumb kids were going to do dumb stuff (me included) but seeing Jackass definitely emboldened some of us more.
I will speak to this: I am in the demographic for this and my highschool friends and I legitimately filmed like two hours worth of footage which we titled “Bullshit” and the sequel was “horseshit”. I was the member that would continually get hit in the balls in creative ways.
My boss is close in age with me and after I saw Jackass Forever this year, my boss told me that him and his highschool friends had a video camera and did the exact same thing.
I’ve yet to learn whether or not all that balls-smacking will be an issue when I try to have kids.
Good call, Steve-O.
Yes, there does exist a video of me in grade 9 riding my bike down a grassy hill shirtless with a cowboy hat on, straight threw a chain link fence slashing myself with cuts, thank you very much.
I think Steve-O is giving Jackass too much credit. A quick look back at history shows TV shows have been blamed for shitty parenting since day 1. George Reeves was blamed because kids put on bath towels and jumped off their roofs imitating Superman. Every mass shooting gets blamed on video games. Blaming TV for real world problems is white noise for me and should be for everyone else.
I was too old by the time Jackass came out to be influenced by it. As a kid the one show did that influenced some mayhem was actually MacGyver. I forget exactly how old I was, but it had to be very early teens. There was an early episode where MacGyver makes a fertilizer bomb out of few household items, which I took from my parents shed, and me and friends tried to replicate in the woods. We were, at least, smart enough to put it on 3′ tall boulder so it wouldn’t set the woods on fire. Unfortunately, we grew impatient as nothing happened and kept squirting starter fluid at it from a distance, which was running down the rock, and soaking into the leaf litter below. Eventually that all ignited. To our credit, somewhat, we tried hard to put out the spreading fire. We were smacking it with our coats and trying to snuff it, but it spread quickly and then we panicked and ran. The fire got big enough that people in houses and apartments near the woods saw it. The fire department came with a bunch of trucks and put it out while we watched on a rise from a few hundred feet away.
I actually knew a guy in high school who broke his arm falling off a ladder trying to do a Jackass-like stunt. He wasn’t very bright, but he was fun to hang out with.
my biggest takeaway from this article was that Mike Tyson has a podcast LOL.
Is the next interview the one where realizes water is wet?I mean, I love you Steve-O, but we all knew this at the time, right? Did they even try to claim otherwise back then?