Director Jeff Tremaine knows people will point out that “Jackass: Best and Last” is not the first time Johnny Knoxville and crew have publicly announced this is the last “Jackass” movie.
“Every movie we’ve made has been the last one in our mind,” said Tremaine while a guest on this week’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “But this is the first time I really know it’s done. Like, now I’m admitting it, that it’s done. And part of it is Knoxville can’t do the same stuff.”
In the previous film, “Jackass Forever,” Knoxville got drilled by a bull that sent him out on a stretcher. In the film, cameras capture him coming out of the hospital with a broken wrist and in good spirits, but later it was revealed that the long-term damage was more severe.
“He got a traumatic brain injury on that, and it became apparent we can’t hit him in the head anymore,” said Tremaine. “We can kick him in the dick and punch his body, but it’s risky to get him another concussion.”
“Jackass: Best and Last” digs into the franchise’s archives and shows behind-the-scenes footage of what happened ahead of the fateful bull hit that semi-retired Knoxville, including the fact that he had done a previous take in which he took a significant hit from a smaller bull that didn’t lead to a dramatic fall or laugh that would be needed to make the final cut.
“It sucks because he broke two ribs on that first hit; that bull hit him hard,” said Tremaine. “The worst-case scenario to me is always something is gnarlier than it looks, and that was it. It was a gnarly hit that didn’t look dramatic enough to make the movie.”
In “Best and Last,” we watch Tremaine and Knoxville watching a playback of the first bull hit on an iPad, with Knoxville asking the director if they needed to do another take.
“You’re looking at two guys who both know we don’t have it. He needed me to tell him, ‘We have to do it again,’ and I’m reluctant to say that because I’m not the one standing out there putting my life on the line,” said Tremaine, who reflected on the irony of the situation, which he’s faced multiple times before. “The funny thing about ‘Jackass’ is if you set up a motorcycle jump and he makes the jump, well, they have to do it again. It has to fail. It’s designed to fail. The failure is what we’re after. But how can we make that spectacular without killing him.”
Tremaine, noting he is turning 60 this year, said, “ I just don’t want to keep doing it forever.” Adding he believes the craziest aspect of having to end the series on their own terms is that it has lasted this long.
“It’s crazy that we’re here talking about ‘Jackass,’” said Tremaine. “If you would’ve watched that TV show the first time it aired, you’d think, ‘Oh, this is going to burn bright and fast, it’s not made to last. It is not a marathon for this group. The fact that we survived 26 years is ridiculous.”
The franchise added new and younger supporting cast members to the 2022’s “Jackass Forever,” leading to speculation that it could continue without the core original crew, but Tremaine also threw cold water on that idea.
“We could get new people to come in, and there are gnarly people out there, for sure. But I would need to find a new gnarly me, too,” said Tremaine. “‘ Jackass’ is the guys. It feels like a bigger idea, but really it’s magic because of the guys in it. It would be hard for me to just find that new magic.”
The last shot in the last “Jackass” film is a behind-the-scenes shot of Tremaine and Knoxville in a motel room after a day of filming the first film “Jackass: The Movie.” The two are reflecting on the “chaotic” events of that day’s shoot, admitting they were scared by how out of hand things got. Knoxville smiles and says he loved it, but Tremaine is clearly traumatized — a side rarely shown, as the director is often seen as the merry prankster pushing the envelope with the cast.
“That was the night he had just flipped the golf cart [in 2002 ‘Jackass: The Movie’], and I thought he died,” said Tremaine, who you can hear panicking in the movie rushing to Knoxville in the clip above. “From my angle, that golf cart swallowed him up and broke his neck. I thought he might even have been decapitated by it from where I was sitting, because the golf cart blocked my view of it. It was bad, and then he popped up. I was shook the whole night.”
Tremaine continued, talking about the behind-the-scenes motel clip between him and Knoxville, and why he used it as the last shot in the last film: “It’s so funny because I had no recollection of a camera being on. It was just one of our producers was fishing through footage and saw that, and I really thought, ‘Man, that sums up so much of Johnny and I’s relationship.’”
To hear Tremaine’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
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