Jackass Number Two’s Riot Control Test stunt begins with a few of the jackasses considering committing one of the ultimate faux pas of the series. After seeing how intense the explosion of small rubber projectiles is, and how painful it’s going to be, they are considering bailing. Ringleader and emcee Johnny Knoxville is turning up the charm to try and coax his crew back into line. “C’mon,” he teases, “It’s just loud…It’s gonna hurt really bad, but it’s just loud.” We fade to black, mid-coaxing, and when the jackasses reappear, they are standing dutifully in front of the riot gear, ready to take the hit they are so deeply dreading.
For those unfamiliar, Johnny Knoxville is most known as the emcee and head honcho of the Jackass franchise — a collection of television and films spanning over twenty years dedicated to footage of the most painful, stupid, lowbrow stunts and gags one could conceive of. Knoxville is often the mastermind behind Jackass’ most atrocious and gross-out humor, professing his desire for life to be “like a cartoon.” While he often is the one doling out kicks in the nuts and sadistic electrocutions, he is far from the weak link or least scathed member of the group, opting in to the biggest and baddest of stunts, the kinds that could leave one with broken bones and brain hemorrhages (as they frequently have left Knoxville).
I often turn to the Riot Control Test because it is, in many senses, Knoxville at his most Knoxville-like. After convincing his buddies to take the hit, he stands in the center, dressed in his signature dark blue Dickies and some sort of graphic tee (this one specifically has the logo of the convenience store “Kum & Go” emblazoned across it — an innocuous brand appropriated, one can only assume cheekily, by the jackasses). Where Ryan Dunn and Bam Margera are protected by both goggles and a mask, Knoxville opts for goggles and a hand over his face (the other hand carefully protecting his groin), a visual marker of his general devil-may-care machismo.
The explosion of the pellets is brutal: everyone goes down for at least a second. Knoxville is the first to pop up, though, recovering with impossible speed. “Did it get me in the face?” Knoxville gestures to his handsome face, back to being charming and funny. “If it’s okay, then we’re good.”
In this two-minute clip, Knoxville’s full range is on display: his charismatic pull that both draws in his audience and keeps his buddies committing to painful stunts, his ability to land some laughs, and his quiet assertion of his seemingly unshakable toughness. I happen to believe Johnny Knoxville is of a dying breed, perhaps one of the few tried and true remaining movie stars we have left.
Writing about how much one loves a celebrity is cursed in a way akin to tattooing your partner’s name on your body. I am perhaps simply welcoming something terrible to happen by gushing about my beloved Johnny Knoxville. I’m choosing to trust him anyway (I’ve never been so great at either of these rules, anyhow. I have more than one tattoo on my skin dedicated to people I no longer am on speaking terms with. Such is the life of a hopeless romantic).
The notion of a celebrity is a slippery one; it’s hard to place. It’s one thing to have some fame, a whole other to pull off being a readable, tangible, movie star who successfully taps into a unique aura. With the rise of influencer culture, we are now in an era of individuals working toward a “brand” — celebrities want to appear as readable in a distinct way. More often than not, they want to read as “good people,” while often fumbling those optics in their virtue signaling eagerness (one can look to the universally mocked “Imagine” pandemic video, or to the eye-rolling responses to the rich and famous who create a quote retweet chain of small donations instead of just handing over a chunk of their own rich people money quietly).
In a twisted sense, Knoxville reminds me of the movie stars of decades past, having a distinct aura that draws you in without being pedestrian or nervous about being “right.” You’re surprised by how endearing his schtick can be, as he straddles some impossible, beautiful line between giddy debauchery and mannerly, polite charm. He’s macho without being proud; he’s handsome in a believable way, often compared by fans to the likes of a younger Jack Nicholson. He sits somewhere between quiet Southern gentleman and charismatic, domineering force. In Jackass, he frequently cockily walks in the direct line of an enraged bull, prepared to take whatever hit it can give him with a self-assured charisma. In the early aughts, he starred in the John Waters picture A Dirty Shame, playing a sort of sexual Jesus to his fetishist disciples, and it works. He’s tongue-in-cheek about who he is and what he does. In the newest of the Jackass franchise, Jackass Forever, he wears a shirt with “Daddy” emblazoned across the front, and when he broke his penis during a biking stunt years ago, he mourned the fact that he had hurt the only part of him “that mattered” (in one of my favorite quips of Knoxville’s, an interviewer asks him if he intended to retire after the incident. “No!” Knoxville returns. “I had two more kids after that!” The interviewer clarifies that Knoxville misunderstood the question — he was referring to retiring from stunts).
Yet while Knoxville is regularly tough and crass and funny, he blushes in a recent interview when Jackass newcomer Rachel Wolfson playfully calls him “Silver Foxville,” as if the mention of his appeal is too much to bear. At a red carpet, when Beyonce tenses in his presence, he assures her he’s not going to mess with her, opting instead to turn up the charm. He’s somehow the leader of a group of degenerate goofballs and a gentleman’s gentleman. I’m not saying it’s not all a little effortful, a little curated — it certainly is! But such is the work of any great movie star.
What makes it all work so well is the way Knoxville does not pretend to be what he isn’t. He unabashedly loves his freaky little niche of gross-out content. He unabashedly likes picking on his friends. He likes a dirty joke. He’s unafraid to poke fun at his affinity for whiskey and tequila and a life of partying (although, like many of the greats before him, he has had a bit of a marketing shift with age — the lenses on his glasses grow thicker, he lets his silver hair grow out, and he spends more of his time touting the value of therapy and speaking lovingly of his wife than talking about his party days).
He lets his general kindness speak for itself; he wastes no time hand-wringing over proving that he’s a sellable “nice guy.” Jackass is known as a queer and trans haven for many, gracing the cover of 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men, being screened in gay bars, frequently being written about (especially in its current renaissance, as it is being lauded as a beacon of positive masculinity, a safe space for queer exploration, and even a space where some personally made sense of their gender and sexuality). Knoxville and his team happily accept their label as a gay franchise, and despite Knoxville often pushing against the notion of intellectualizing or touting the artistic merits of Jackass, he makes concessions for uplifting the voices of his queer and trans audiences, using some time on his first-ever NPR appearance to mention Niko Stratis’ article “Jackass Made Me the Trans Woman I Am.” He carves out a space for the queer audience that pushed their way in, and then uplifts them without fussing over whether his efforts will be praised, rewarded, or beneficial. When deciding to bring a woman into the mix for Jackass Forever, Knoxville handpicked Rachel Wolfson, uplifting her voice through interviews and focused screen time. He puts in the work without it being part of his persona, without it being a desperate grasp at “proving” himself to be nice or good.
A few months ago, I drove 45 minutes just to see him introduce a screening of Jackass Forever in person — a small pilgrimage for someone who has so enthralled me for the past five years. Before I saw him, I heard him, as someone says something outside the theater that rips one of those distinctive cackles out of him. I feel something stir within me akin to what people probably felt in the midst of Beatlemania. A few minutes later, I talk to him outside of the theater for no more than 15 seconds. He speaks incredibly softly, I pride myself on keeping my cool, on not continuing to lean in nearer and nearer and nearer to the sound of his warm, Southern drawl. We take a cute enough photo. I pride myself on not absolutely losing my shit.
I had a feeling that when the fourth installment of Jackass was released Knoxville would get the attention I feel he so deserves. I feel relieved as I see frequent tweets lauding his special brand of comedy and cinema (or even posts just downright thirsting about him). I see people talking about that special something he has, that showman’s appeal. The notion of celebritydom seems to be rapidly shifting, oftentimes, in my opinion, for the worse — I see more bland, virtue signaling, and sometimes privately creepy “influencers” than I do my preferred batch of curated famous people with distinct, often almost strange, vibes. He’s perhaps not our expected savior, but Johnny Knoxville seems capable of helping us hold onto that indescribable aura of a movie star. We owe him all the love he’s currently getting and then some.
