"Johnny Knoxville"
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Hey, this is a very quick intro for Smart List. Super, super fast. Can I ask you a quick question, though, before we... No. No, you're Smart List. I know it's quick. We're going to get to it in one second. Go, go, go. Can I ask you a quick question? What is it? What's the rush, man? It's Smart List. Smart. Less. Smart. Less. Smart. Less.

Jason, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Jason. How's your morning been? It's been stressful. I just went through 45 minutes of tech hell because I bought a new laptop. Why did you buy a new laptop? Why did you get the new one? Why did you need it? Okay, well, here's the thing. You've got a couple of kids. Now, the laptops that they're using, are they not your old laptops? Or do you buy them freshies? No.

Both my kids don't have a laptop, only my 13-year-old. Okay, what about him? Do you buy him a new one or do you give him your old one? We got him a new one, his own one, a couple years ago for school. Okay. Well, okay. So I give hand-me-down laptops to my girls and...

Has somebody got construction going on? Is it one of us? It's not mine. It's me. Yeah. Do you like that? Good for you. Is that the work on your house? Yeah. I can open up the windows if you'd rather I open up the windows. Well, you just asked them if they can do it louder. Sure. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Are you...

This is the fucking gang who couldn't shoot straight over here this morning. It's going to be the best episode ever. You don't want to take them to have them powered down while we're doing the record? They're in the trenches of my driveway because there's leakage, and they have to reroute the gas line. I had some leakage this morning, and it didn't affect my start time. Just my laptop replacement did. Yeah.

But otherwise, everything else going good? What about you, Will? Is everything perfect in your world? Yeah, it seems like it. No, well, I mean, sort of. I've been working. I've been finishing off. I just signed off. You know, I'm doing my new show, my Murderville show over there on the Netflix. Oh, let's plug that real quick. What's it called? Murderville. Okay, where can the viewers find that? They can watch it on Netflix. At what time? It's...

What do you mean at what time? It's not a schedule. At whatever time they want. That's the whole point of streaming. What time does it come on? Is it like, what's the slot? 8 p.m.? No, it's not 830 Mountain. Right after Newhart? You know what I mean? What's the lead in? I mean, the local news. When does it premiere? We go local news and then, but it's kind of like you saw it. It's kind of a hybrid improv show. Oh, I want to see it. It comes out early Feb.

Okay. First week of Feb, around the 3rd or something. Short for February. Short for February. I don't have a lot of time. And you saw, Sean, you haven't seen the first episode is Conan and me. And I have the guests. I can catch it in reruns though, right? You can catch it in reruns and guests come on and then they try to solve a murder with me and they have no idea. I don't give them a script.

I love it. And this is a game show, so if they solve the murder, they win money? No, they don't win a car. They don't win money. They just win respect. So it's not a game show. It is an unscripted slash scripted experience. Yeah, experience. And it's a lot of laughter, and we goof around. We have great guests, and...

They kind of improvise. We don't give them anything. And then I improvise with them. And we go and we interview suspects. It's fun. It's just good, clean fun. That was a pretty long plug. Yeah. Murderville. Streaming now on Netflix. What if you were like L.A. Law on NBC? 8.30. Well, I need to get into loose...

high-jinx-y chat mode. Yeah, I know. I'm all stressed out in my tech mode. Well, guess what? This is going to make you very happy then because our guest likes to keep it loose and chatty. He is somebody that you... Jason, I think that you know. Sean, I'm not sure that you do. This is a guy who has done... who's been really sort of like a trailblazer. He's kind of created his own universe of...

and that's very specific and really funny and really different. And he came on the scene, the scene, what scene? Well, the murder scene. Yeah, the murder scene. Andrew Dice Clay. It's not Dice, but maybe he could do a Dice impression when he gets here.

Uh, this is somebody who's super, super funny. Um, he, uh, he has created a whole sort of, uh, um, vibe. Uh, uh, he's a guy who is not afraid to get his hands dirty. In fact, he just gets his whole body in there. Uh, he was born by the, with the name Philip John Clapp.

His friends call him PJ. Oh, dear. You know he's from Knoxville, Tennessee, so you know him as Johnny Knoxville. Johnny Knoxville! Hello, Louise. Hello, PJ. Look at this guy. How you doing? Oh, man. I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. All the tech garbage. I love being a witness to the soundcheck because I like seeing how the sausage is made. Oh.

It was dirty sausage this morning. Real dirty sausage. Did you witness how close to the edge Bateman was? Like how much he was so close to snapping? Like he's never seen a computer in his life.

I had that look on my face last night when we tried to do ads, right? And it totally blew up in my face. He did, and he left. I mean, this man's in charge of people. He runs sets, and he's never seen a computer in his life. He doesn't know what the computers do. And he was excited to have the new Monterey operating system, even though he doesn't know why it makes his life better. He's just excited because he liked it. You like the name. Be honest. You like the name Monterey. Monterey was better than Catalina. And you actually thought that...

He actually thought that the laptop, you can only have it on your lap, never on a table or anything else. Maybe that's what I asked the guys. I said, now I've got my computer on a table. Could that be it? Yeah. They said, yeah, put it on your lap, you dumbass. PJ, where do we find you today?

I'm in the city of Los Angeles. I just got finished recording my radio show with my cousin. I do on Outlaw Country every week called the Big Ass Happy Family Jubilee. It ain't too good, but it's long. And...

That was Will's handle in high school, I think. Just like, and then they started calling him Pencil, and then he, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, I mean, okay. Let's acknowledge. Now let's move on. So, DJ, tell us, how long have you been doing this radio show? What are you talking about, man? I've been doing it, we've done over 500 shows. Wow. Yeah. My cousin Roger Allen Wade and I

I do it once a week. It comes on Saturday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 specific. And it's the highlight of my week. I get to hang out with him for an hour and we can play any music we want. Mostly good old 70s, outlaw country 60s. But we can play punk. We can play whatever. And I mean, we played Liza Minnelli. I

I'm in. Will and I played Liza Minnelli a little bit on Arrested Development. I sure did. Yeah, that's right. I think we, didn't we both, we both kissed her. Yeah, we both kissed Liza Minnelli. Something that we never thought we'd do. At the same time. Wow. I've never, I've never had the pleasure of meeting you. I don't think, or maybe briefly once a long, long time. Do I call you PJ? Do I call you Johnny? You can call me that. You can call me Puddin'.

Were you with LW1 back in the day? I don't know what that is. A commercial agency, LW1? Oh. Me? No, I wasn't. Oh, okay. Because you look familiar to PJ, Sean. Yeah. Because you used to get every commercial back in the day. Sure. Sean used to get every commercial. Like, Tostitos Scoopers probably did that, right? Because they're so easy on game day to just scoop, right? Yeah, yeah. That was your whole...

No, maybe I saw you then. No, but do your friends call you PJ? Yeah, PJ or Knoxville, you know, either. Okay, yeah. Every time you say PJ, I look at Jason talking to somebody off camera saying, what time are we wheels up? So listen, PJ, let me ask you this. You mentioned the...

the commercial work. So when you first came to Los Angeles many, many moons ago, did you move to LA to be an actor specifically? Because I know you did a lot of commercials, right?

Yeah, I moved to LA to become an actor. You know, the best thing to come out of Tennessee is I-40 West. So I got out of town two weeks after high school and went to the Academy of American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena for their summer program. Wow, that's so cool. Wow. And I went like two weeks. It was a six week program. I went two weeks, didn't go back. You know, I was just interested in partying and that's all I did for the first six years. Is that true? Yeah, I would, I would take some acting classes, uh,

and kind of pursue acting, but I was more interested in partying. And that didn't stop until my then-girlfriend got pregnant with my daughter, and I'm like, oh, I need to do something and quick. So I lived next door to Antoine Fuqua, and he put me in touch with a casting director who got me an agent, and my friend John Linson put me in touch with –

the editor of Bikini Magazine, and I started writing articles for them. That's what I really became focused when

I knew I had a mouth to feed. Sure. I like the idea that you go, like, my then-girlfriend got pregnant, and I looked out the window, and I thought, I got to jump out this window and film it. That was my best guess, man. Yeah? Like my father told Rolling Stone, they're like, why do you think he does what he does? He goes, well, he's like that Dominican baseball player. He's not going to get off the island by bunting.

So I had to really go for it. Yeah. I mean, tell me a little bit about, so obviously people, you really came into people's,

Well, I'm sorry. Hold that thought for one second. Johnny. Am I too loud? Yeah, it's a little hot. Let's just push the mic back by about, yeah. Now give us a sound check. Check, check. One, two. Rob, you like that? Perfect. Thank you. Great. Thanks, guys. Yeah, I don't know what kind of levels you like on your radio gig, man, but, you know? Yeah. Are you on W Shout FM? Like, what's going on? Dude. Dude.

Dude, so, I mean, but you, you know, everybody knows you from the, knows and loves the Jackass show and the movies. You guys have made, what, three movies so far? Well, Jackass Forever will be our fourth. It comes out February 4th, 2020. I can't wait. Right, that comes out the day after Murderville.

Murderville. I hear so much about Murderville. Is that on Netflix? It's on Netflix. It's streaming. What time does that come on? The day before Jackass Forever at 8 p.m. Oh, okay. What's its lead in? I'm doing all Jason's material. That's it. You've tapped it out. So now, PJ, you're pregnant. You're growing a baby, and you think, I got to start grabbing some money and get the coffers all nice and full. So you start writing for...

for Bikini Magazine. You've got an agent, you're doing auditions and you think, well, let me get a third form of possible income in filming stunts. Was this all sort of simultaneous? It, the stunts grew out of my writing, right? I did a lot of participatory journalism stuff, poor imitations of Hunter S. Thompson. And, um,

I had an idea where I wanted to test self-defense equipment on myself. Pepper spray myself, stun gun, taser gun, and shoot myself in the chest with a .38 while wearing a bulletproof vest. But wait, just pause just for a second there. Why? Why?

- For an article, right? - For an article. - Okay. - Just so you could experience and then write about it. - Yeah. - Yeah, I saw someone get pepper sprayed and a reporter get pepper sprayed on the news. And it was the funniest thing I'd seen. I'm like, what if I do a whole host of things to myself?

And a lot of magazines wanted me to do it. Sure. But they wanted to treat it like a negative pickup and didn't want anything to do with it until I'm done. But I had zero cash at the time. I didn't have enough money to buy the pepper spray, the stun gun, the taser. I had to buy a bulletproof vest. Whoa. So I remember I used my mom's Christmas money that year, which was $300, and bought the cheapest bulletproof vest they made. Wow.

Not a corner you want to cut. Yeah. I called and I said, hey, are these really, is this vest really top form? Yeah, this is the best. Great, great bulletproof vest. And I said, good, because this is what I'm going to do. And they said, can we call you back? And I said, sure. And they called me back. They said, we can't recommend you doing that. Well, I'm like, it's too late. I've already said I was going to.

But anyway, I took it around. No one wanted to support me in it except for one guy, and that was Jeff Tremaine, who was the editor of Big Brother Magazine, a skateboarding magazine owned by Larry Flint. And Jeff, you know, went on to create and direct Jackass with me and Spike. So I wrote it for Big Brother Magazine. And the day before, a couple days before I was going to write the article or do the shoot,

Jeff said we should film it and put it in our skateboard video because they were filming skate videos at the time. And I said, all right. And the day of, I went to pick up the cameraman, Dmitry Eliasovich, who became our director of photography on Jackass. Yeah. We have a lot of high-sounding...

titles for guys who don't know what they're doing. But anyway, I, I, I, Dimitri's on the side of the road. I'm like, okay, get in. Let's go shoot. He goes, okay, here's play. Here's pause. Here's stop. Uh, just bring it back when you're done. I said, you're not coming. He goes, no, I can't come because even big brother didn't want anything to do with it. Cause I was shooting myself. Yeah. So you had to pull the trigger yourself. You didn't have some, so it was point blank range, literally, uh,

My friend, beautiful Jason, was supposed to shoot me once we, we just drove out the 14 and pulled off on the fire road because we didn't know where to go. And he got out there, he goes, I'm not shooting you. You should have done it in front of a hospital, dum-dum. You don't drive as far as you can away from any sort of civilization.

We were so far. But I got out there and no one would shoot me. And also, like, the photographer had seen one of his friends die doing a stunt once, jumping off a hotel. So he was really freaked out. And so I had to end up shooting myself and everyone screaming not to do it. And my cameraman is like...

going all over with the camera. Like he almost misses me shooting myself. - Oh my God. - Wow. - Wait, so it wasn't a blank? It was a real bullet? - No, it was a real, yeah, there's no faking it. - Wow. So 38 caliber bullet at point blank range into a bargain chest protector, bulletproof vest, and obviously everything worked out okay. Did it knock you down? Did it hurt you?

What it felt like is someone took a shovel and hit you in the chest with it. It knocked me back. I dropped the gun, but I didn't fall down. Wow. The vest dispersed the impact. Wow, wow. And you liked it so much that you were like, hey, that was a cool experience. Let's see what else I could do. It was fun, but it was more of a matter of like, this is what I know I can do. I feel like I can do this.

But did you grow up doing that? Were you jumping off shit when you were a kid? I wasn't so...

much like that as a kid. I mean, I was a little rambunctious, but not to that point. No, this guy went to the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena. He wasn't coming out to, like, jump off buildings. He was, like, going to do Shakespeare. No, I know, but it's a fucking, it's a pretty late talent to learn that you got, like, you're in your 20s and you start shooting yourself. You know what I mean? He had to feed mouths. Well, he was about to feed the undertaker's mouth. You know what I mean? I come from a very small town in Tennessee, and life moves fast.

Pretty fast. Pretty fast, and it's like growing up in a coal mining town. Did you want to get the hell out of there when you were young? Yeah, for sure. How old were you when you realized, like, I got to get the fuck out of this place? Around 16, 15, 16. Because it was slower than you naturally were sort of ticking.

I just knew if I stuck around, it was going to be trouble because most of my friends either became cops or went to jail. Yeah, instead you went out to Los Angeles for a safer route of shooting yourself in the chest. I mean, it's, you know. And now, a word from our sponsor. And now, back to the show.

So once this happens, you successfully shoot yourself in the chest. It makes for a great video. Don't you, my brain would immediately go to, okay, if I'm going to make a living at this,

by sort of definition, everything needs to be an escalation. Like the next thing needs to be bigger, better, more dangerous than shooting myself in the chest. Were you not overwhelmed with the pressure of that? No, I didn't become overwhelmed with the pressure of that until we thought about making Jackass number two. At the time when I did my first article with the self-defense team,

I just wanted to continue doing things that were in the same vein and interesting and funny. I didn't feel pressure at that time. I felt like I was on to something new. It was the beginning of something. But wasn't it a series? Wasn't it a series before it was a movie, right? Yeah, we were on the air for about nine or ten months, and I quit.

Yeah, because you were like, why am I making this for basically for free for MTV? No. Oh. What happened was it was an election year and we'd had some copycat incidences, which were unfortunate, and Joseph Lieberman...

The vice presidential nominee under Al Gore decided his platform, he was going to get tough on Hollywood, specifically me and MTV. Good for him. So he just lambasted us in the press. And after that...

MTV got scared and so they had to assign an OSHA person to our show and we couldn't jump off things more than four feet high and we had all these new rules and it was impossible to do the show the way that we do it. So I was like,

What we do is silly and absurd, but it means too much to me to do it watered down, so I just quit. Right. You know, it sounds like they should have assigned an oh shit person to this show. Hey, ho, Will. That's wonderful. Wait, so PJ, so you do this show, you do this with Tremaine and with Spike, as you mentioned, the great Spike Jonze.

who we love and adore. And so what was your involvement with Spike before that? Were you guys friendly from, like, skating and stuff? What was that relationship? Sean, tell Tracy what Spike Jonze has done. Spike Jonze... Directed a bunch of your favorite movies. You tell. Being John Malkovich, Her, Where the Wild Things Are, and...

Some of the greatest videos ever made, the Buddy Holly video for Weezer, the sabotage video for Beastie Boys. A visionary, incredible taste. He made a great video for Pretty Sweet for a skateboard company that was, I don't know, featuring some guy who was really hilarious. He had a small arc on Todd Margaret. Am I wrong?

No, we did two seasons of Todd. I'll tell you my favorite story about Spike when we were doing that show with David Cross over in the UK. What was it called? Called The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. And we're doing these scenes and we're trying to investigate this crime. So Spike's character starts acting like Sherlock Holmes. And he's got this hat on, this stupid pipe and stuff. And he's got this notepad.

And he couldn't remember a lot of his dialogue anyway. And then he would always break. He'd start laughing all the time. And you know Spike, he just kind of giggles, right? So he's like, I got this notebook anyway. And he's like, I'm just going to write my dialogue in the notebook. I go, yeah, great. Yeah, let's do that. So then we walk into a scene. We're standing there. We got to talk to this other character. And Spike's holding his notebook and he starts going, I think, oh, God, what is... And I go...

You're reading, you've got it written down in front, you can't go up on your line if you're reading it, man. Couldn't read his own writing. What are you doing? This is when he went full tilt direction. But so you and Spike, how, what was that relationship, what did that come out of? I was friendly with Spike, right? He directed a couple videos for my friend's band Waxx.

So he was in the same kind of friend group, but I didn't have that much, like we didn't hang out alone. We just like all hung out in a group. And when we were, Jeff and I, we knew after the number two Jackass, excuse me, the Big Brother video, we're like, we got a pretty, Jeff recognized we have a really good group of guys and we talked about doing a show together.

And he goes, should I call Spike to see if he wants to do it with us? Spike and Jeff went to the same high school in Maryland, Walt Whitman High, together. So Jeff called up Spike and, you know, thank God he was up for it. Yeah. Right.

So then you went from a show to a film. Yeah. And that was obviously wildly successful. And now you're coming up on releasing the fourth. What's the process like to come up with these things? And I apologize if this is a question you've –

answered a million times. Yeah, I'm fascinated. I'm such a massive, massive fan of movies. And yes, Jason's question, I've always... Do you sit around a table and just, you know, share a nice beverage and think up crazy ideas? Or is it a little bit more sort of structured than that? Like, is there like a writer's room kind of thing? Um...

Personally, I write best when I'm alone, but I can. We do have writers meetings, Jeff and I. We just kind of sit there and kick things back and forth. I get a lot of ideas from cartoons, Tom and Jerry especially. Of course, of course. What about Coyote and Roadrunner? Yeah, yeah, there's one bit.

In the new movie, straight coyote and roadrunner. I look at real life like it's a cartoon. Yeah. And that's cost me quite a few times. Yeah. But for Jackass Forever, after Jackass 3, I didn't know if we'd ever do another one. If you ask the cast, they would say that I would never do another one, so they didn't think it was ever going to happen. But I kept writing for 10 years, so I had a stack of...

I don't know, 40, 50 pages of ideas. Yeah. Which I threw on the breakfast table a couple years ago and said, Jeff, I want to do another one. And it was completely out of the left field and he was like, oh shit. He didn't, he wasn't excited. He was, because he was in the middle of another movie and he was in the weeds and he just, I could just see pressure go across his face. Oh,

I would imagine that every one of these ideas that are good ideas, the first instinct is, oh, well, that's just too far. We can't do that. That would be awful. And then you have to think another 30 seconds about it and you go, yeah, but it's kind of like that's what we thought on the last one. But then it worked and it was painful, but it was funny. So at what point – and imagine because we're all about the same age –

The body's ability to rebound and recoup from these things physically and a little bit mentally starts to become taxed a little bit. Do you start to cast younger guys as part of the troop so that they can take on some of these things? I mean, how does all that work? Well, we...

What was the first part of that question, sorry? - The first part about it is, well, the first time you-- - By the way, that's a really valid question, PJ. - Yeah, sorry, I'll pack a bunch in, I apologize. Let me slow down a little bit. Or should I speed up? - No, no, no. - Or just go, I'll just go quiet. - The first part, sorry. - So when you think up these things, doesn't it seem that it's too much? - Oh, got it, okay. The line is constantly getting drawn and erased.

Right? Right. Because Jeff and I will have, when we come up with an idea that's like riding that line, we're like...

let's shoot it and see how it works. We have that luxury of just shooting so many different things. And if we view it afterwards, like that's a little too much, then we cast it aside. But we always err on the side of, uh, having it and not needing it aside from needing it and not having it. Right. And as far as the body's ability to recoup, I can only talk about me personally. Uh, I'm not very in touch with my body. Uh,

I mean, I'm not even trying to be funny. Right. I'm just not very in touch with my body. But I knew coming into Jackass Forever, I've been doing this for 20 years, and this would be my last film where I put my life on the line, right? Is there a stunt that you...

didn't do because you just thought it was for whatever you wanted to do it but never did just because you're like, you know what, that's just gonna be what somebody's gonna get really hurt. Well, we put my biggest stunts to the end of the film so we can get what we need. And I did a stunt on I know the date because I had to spend the weekend in the hospital. It was December 18 of 2020. I, I wanted to prank an animal.

Right? Sure. He really wanted to prank an animal. Yeah, they deserve it. So what he came up with was I was going to do a magic trick on a bull. And boy, was that not a good idea. Because he... I had to do it twice, by the way, because the first bull, like, didn't... He hit me hard, but it didn't look good on film. It was one of those, like, oh, I'm going again. But anyway, the...

I spent the week in the hospital because I broke my wrist, my rib, I got a concussion, and a brain hemorrhage. Oh, my God. So... Fuck, man. But see, like, to me, I would just think of the... just the math of the stunt itself and know that...

At a minimum, that's what's going to happen. Right. So like there's no version of this stunt that goes perfectly. So talk to me about what is the percentage of pain and problem you're willing to accept as a fait accompli for this thing? Um,

You know, it's like, how do you get hit by a bull and expect to just kind of walk away? So you're accepting some kind of damage on every stunt, yes? Well, I'm doing things where I have no idea how they're going to turn out. So I have to mentally...

walk into the bullring and be okay with however this is going to turn out. Oh, my God. That is so soft. I don't even take a risk on hotels. I know. I just, I can look at three stars and know it's not going to be pleasurable for me. Right? It's just easy. Well, I got a five-star hit out of it, so, and I'm sitting here today talking to you guys. I'm walking around. You're my hero, man. I've been experiencing,

I'm extremely lucky for all the things I've done. - You're amazing. - And Johnny, or sorry, PJ, you know, you've done so much great work as an actor, but you're most known, I would say, I would guess, for the "Jackass" franchise. Do you miss being that guy who came out to become an actor and be known in that way rather than what's made you famous? - I mean, you've made a lot of movies too. - Yeah, tons of movies. - As an actor.

Yeah, I just consider, man, I am lucky to be here. I am lucky to be where I'm at. I've gotten to work for the last 20 years with –

the same cast and the same crew. It's just a group of friends. Yeah. And I wouldn't trade that for anything. And everything else is just gravy. Yeah. When you do, how did you like doing, so, but Jackass did, you've done a lot of movies and a lot of those doors were open because of Jackass and everybody's like, wow, this guy's funny and he's talented and he's handsome and blah, blah, blah. Oh, shucks. When you, when you started working on those movies, you know,

I don't know, Dukes of Hazzard and all these things. Like, did you... Men in Black, were you like, oh, right on. Like, this is what I love doing more? Or were you like, fuck, I miss hanging with my guys? Uh, I...

wasn't torn like that. I was just happy to be able to have the jackass career and to be doing movies on top of that. Yeah, doing both. From a kid from East Tennessee who probably had very, very, very low chances of making anything out of himself. I get the joke. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, talk to me about your family, PJ, because when I was a kid, I think one of the reasons, I'm guessing one of the reasons people connect so much and love the Jackass movies is because they, it's like a wish fulfillment. You get to be a kid again and do all these pranks and run around like a, like a jackass. Yeah.

And when I was a kid, we, you know, single mom, dad left when I was young and there was no parenting. Talk about that. We would have knife fights in the dark. We would literally throw steak knives at each other. This is with your dad before he left. Yeah.

One of my brothers, like, built darts out of, like, needles and threw them, and they stuck in my back. Wow. There was a bunch of stuff not nearly as dangerous as what you do. No, knife fights in the dark is pretty, like, we wouldn't film that. Yeah. No, no, you wouldn't film that. And...

It was called Tiger in the Grass, and we'd turn off all the lights in the house, and it was dark, and we'd whip knives at each other. Anyway, so that's why. I love the movies because they remind me of being a kid, but did you do any of that when you were... By the way, brothers, sisters, like how big, small was the family, and did you do any of that? I had... No, I never did Tiger in the Grass. Hello, my name's Sean Hayes, and this is Tiger in the Grass. No, I never did that.

I had two older sisters, eight and ten years older. My dad told me I was one of those M&M babies. I said, what's that, Dad? He goes, you came between menstruation and menopause. Oh, wow. Wow. He said, the best part of you ran down your mama's crack, boy. Wow. Wow.

And then my mom, which would make it worse, she'd go, oh, honey, it did not. I'm like, mom, that was a completely throwaway line until you, like, justified it. Stretch it out, yeah. Yeah. Now, is Rocco watching these things and doing the same thing and jumping off stuff and you're having to rush him to the hospital? No, you know...

most all of Rocco and Arlo's friends have seen Jackass. And they didn't even know about Jackass, right? Growing up. No, really? They knew Men in Black. They knew Dukes of Hazzard, but you didn't show them this. No, I don't even think they knew about that. They knew Daddy was an actor, but Daddy was nice enough to never have to make him sit through his films. How old are they? They're 10 and 11. Rocco will be 12 in a few days. Anyway, we were sitting at the dinner table one night

Rocco was like, I don't know, eight or nine. And he just goes, jackass. And we're like, what? It was just out of the, it was like a reflexive. And so I had to like tell him, yeah, dad does this. And I've shown him a couple of things, but since he's kind of wired like my father, I don't want to show him a lot of things. Yeah.

Because you're afraid that he's going to say, what the hell are you doing? No, I'm afraid he'll go, that seems like a good thing to do. Right. Got it. I don't want him to get hurt. I had a moment a little while ago with Jason and I did this thing that Sean had done a couple of years ago, this live sitcom. We did an episode of The Facts of Life. And so Jason and I had these terrible wigs on and stuff. And I remember one time I had my 13-year-old son

We were driving from the trailer, like, to set or whatever, and I'm wearing this crazy wig and this stupid costume. And I looked at him. He kind of looked at me, and I was like, I said, is it pretty weird that this is what your dad does? Exactly, yeah. And honestly, I thought he was going to go like, yeah, it's fucking bonkers, man, because you look like a lunatic or whatever, and I'm 51, and I'm his dad. And he said, no, I think it's okay.

I was like, oh, cool. All right, all right. Because that's what they've grown up with. Yeah, they've grown up in the circus. Right? Right with us. I saw one of those things where you guys were in the wigs and you slapped the cow walking shit out of Jason. And you guys were background. You guys weren't even in the main guy. He's trying to steal the thunder. Yeah.

Well, his mouth, he's got such a mouth on him. I was running my mouth. The night before we'd done a dress rehearsal and he tried to jam my hand on the table in the background and I moved it. So this time I went on the offensive. I was like, shut the hell up. And I slapped him. It was so good. It was so funny. You got to stay awake if you're in the background. Yeah. We'll be right back. All right. Back to the show.

PJ, is there anything that you haven't done in the entertainment world or a role you've always wanted to play or something, something that you haven't tackled yet that you want to while you still can? Well, I love making documentaries and I want to continue doing that. There's a couple we're circling right now. A role I've always wanted to play, you know, I always wanted to play Johnny Cash, but that got canceled.

That got taken. Yeah, that got taken care of. Are you digging any documentaries that are on right now? Like, do you like the murder ones? Do you like the sports ones? The whole gamut. You know, I watched the other day, I think it's Operation Odessa. Have you seen that? Oh, yeah. Oh, wait. Yeah, that's about the submarine, right? Yeah. Yeah, the guys who tried to scam the Russian mob.

and the Cali cartel. Down in Florida, right? Yeah, the guy Tarzan who owned the place where Porky's was shot at. Yeah, it's very good. That thing's great. I love that shit. Did you see that 100-foot wave? Did you see that one? You know, I saw that and I loved it

Yeah. I was so in and episode six, it ends. And so I keep checking for episode seven and it never happened. I thought there was more going to happen. It just kind of just went away. What's it about Laird Hamilton? No. No. It's about that other guy. Forget his name. The guy, uh,

It's incredible. Jason, you got to see it. Sean, you got to see it. It's incredible. But it's literally about a hundred foot wave about a surfer? Yeah, it's about a guy who's like looking, the idea that there's this hundred foot wave out there and they end up in Portugal. The wave is Nazarene Portugal. Oh.

It's so... Oh, Will loves Portugal. I sure do. Ask him about Portugal. I want to move to Portugal. This has been my thing for about the last year. Tuck in, guys. Well, no, it's great. Murderville, February 3rd on Netflix at 8 o'clock, and then Azrae, Portugal. These are the things I talk about. The guy's name was Garrett McNamara. He's still going for it. Him and all his buddies. Really?

Yeah, not a young guy. Like, he's our age, right? 50, mid-50s. Looks incredible. And he's the first guy, some dude reaches out to him and says, there's this incredible wave here in Nazare, Portugal. And so he goes, and he grabs these two yahoos out of Ireland who have been doing, like, big wave surfing off of Ireland. He's like, hey, do you guys want to tow me into this crazy wave? And they're like, yeah, sure. And the big wave only happens in the winter, right?

So like the conditions are brutal and they go in and he tackles this huge fricking, it's nuts, man. It's nuts. I mean, just, just driving out to the wave on the jet ski is perilous. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty amazing. You know, one time you, Jason, you want to tell them about the thing that happened with your Tesla that time?

Yeah. Because we're talking about stunts and taking chances. Oh, man. This one time I was trying to pull my golf bag out of the back seat of my Tesla real fast. Real fast. Too fast. Yeah. And I hurt the very tip of my ring finger. Oh.

Oh, man, I couldn't swing a golf club for about four or five weeks. Nor play flamenco guitar. Oh, man. No, you couldn't do anything. And, Sean, you hurt your fingers once, right? You were doing the music from Oklahoma, and you went too fast. Too fast. Right? Right, too fast. On the keys. I can't say no during the number. I can't say no. So, Will, what else are you working on? What's your new show, Will?

It's Murderville. It's on Netflix. Wait, so enough about Murderville. Let's get back to Jackass, which is coming out on February 4th. February 4th, yeah. So this is, you're hanging up the jackass. You're hanging up your spurs or whatever? I don't know what you'd say. Well, you know, after the first couple of films, we're like, this is it. And then we did a three and...

And now here's a four. So we're never going to say never again, but I would step back. Yeah, I was going to say, could you infuse new talent into to keep the franchise going? We have. Like, there's new cast in Jackass Forever. We have five new cast members, and they're great. Isn't it time for other people to get hit in the nuts? Like, you've been hit in the nuts enough, you know? Right. Yeah. So we folded some young blood into the...

PJ, was there ever that white whale of a stunt or thing that you always kept in the back of your mind like, I'd love to ride on the back of a space shuttle or some shit? You know what I mean? Jump from a hot air balloon. Jump over the Snake River. Sure, there's a lot of ideas that we really...

There's this one idea that we've had an idea for, I don't know, the last 10 years. I can't really say what it was, and we got so close on this, but...

It went to the top of Paramount and they came back and they said, if you shoot this idea, it's going to be at least like $10 million for insurance. Wow. And it just was prohibitive and it broke my heart because I thought we were actually going to get to pull it off.

But maybe one day we can. And, you know, I became obsessed with getting the jackass flag on the moon. Right. It's not really a stunt or a prank, but I really want to someone plant the jackass flag on the moon.

PJ, are you like a health food nut? Do you do that kind of shit? Do you eat well? You always seem like you're kind of in good shape. Are you that kind of thing? I'm not a health food nut, but I try to eat good. I grew up eating so poorly in Tennessee. I never drank water really growing up. We would get... We drank Coca-Colas all day long. You know, we'd go... That was what we drank, and

mom cooked with like so much sugar and butter and around 13 or 14, I'm like, God, this doesn't feel right. I need to start eating like chicken and rice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jason? Uh,

Yeah, chicken and rice sounds great except for the rice part. Now, Jason, you won't eat rice. Is that right? I will eat rice when I'm looking at rice and it looks great when I'm at a Japanese restaurant or something. But yeah, no, I don't have like a bunch of carbs and starch as a general daily three meals a day, you know, stuff me full of garbage. Yeah, rice is really garbage. You're right. But it's like, it's just, it's just...

What is it? It's just like substance. I want protein and I want vegetables and I want fruit. Right. And what's the name of the dance troupe you're in again? Sorry, because you're a professional dancer, I'm guessing, by the way you talk. I think Jason, I said, I accused Jason the other day that his goal is he just wants to just barely dip below 100.

He just wants to get below 100 pounds. I want to look ill. That's what I'm, that's the goal. I had one time I was working on this thing in this costumer and I was like losing a lot of weight and she goes, Will, you can't get too skinny. And I said, that's what I always say. LAUGHTER

No, I just, I don't know. Don't you feel better when you got gasoline in your car? You pour orange juice in your tank and your car won't move. I'm trying to put in my body what it needs to run right. What? I just had a massive glass of orange juice before this. What are you talking? Orange juice in the car? None of it adds up. It's a tough thing to follow there. Sean, you eat kind of whatever you want, right? Yeah, carbs in the morning, carbs at night.

The marshmallow spread. Yeah. I just had like three s'mores last night. Oh, great story. So did you... Thanks for sharing that with everybody. Our listeners... Do you want me to teach you how to make them? Our listeners are going crazy. Yeah. Did you listen to this week's Smart List? Sean had three s'mores and never expanded on it.

How do you expand on a s'more? It's two graham crackers, marshmallows. Were you on a fucking camping trip? No, I do them over the stove. I roast the marshmallows over the stove. Wait a second. And I use two of them. This is a true story? Yeah, this is a true story. You and Scotty made s'mores last night.

- No, he doesn't eat them, he doesn't like them. I put two marshmallows. - Just by yourself. - Takes two and then you put a big chunk of Hershey's chocolate bar and two graham crackers and you just stuff your fucking face. - Because you felt like, well, you know, I want a little treat. I'm gonna make this. - Yeah, you know what? Now I'm talking about, I'm gonna have it after this.

You know why? Because there's something about being an adult where you don't have to ask permission to eat sweets. Yeah. Right, but you've been an adult for over 30 years, you know, so you're acting like a kid who escaped from fat camp. I mean...

What do you... Jason said the other day, he was like, hey, look, I mean, humans... He said, humans are the only animals that eat more than once a day. And blah, blah, blah, we should only eat once a day. And then immediately everybody's like, what about cows? They graze all day. Oh, yeah, whatever. He's like, oh, yeah, I guess...

You go through every animal. I'm not smart. I just have ideas. They're not great ideas or good ideas. I just get ideas and then I spit them out. They're a jumping off point. Yeah, just start a conversation. Enjoy. You don't smoke. Do you smoke cigarettes?

I tried to when I was 19. Yeah. I did it for like a month. I would go to the Hollywood billiards every day and shoot pool, trying to be like fast Eddie Felsen in The Hustler. Yeah. But when I bend over to shoot, the smoke would get in my eyes and they would start running and then I would start sneezing and I'm asthmatic. Yeah. And so I just, I stopped that. And honestly, I didn't,

even know at the time that people inhaled. I would just suck in the cigarette and blow it right back out. And years later, they're like, you inhale it down your lungs. I'm like, I had no idea. Well, good. You avoided a lot of stupidity. Oh, I wouldn't say that. What about pot or gummies or...

That kind of thing? Anything like that? You know what? I love the idea of weed. I love the idea of weed, but it hits me wrong. It makes me dizzy. It makes me go deaf. I can't... I lose my cognitive skills. Yeah. Yeah. Not Sean. Sean just goes right to the s'mores. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I'd love to just creep in with a camera and shove, you know, from Sean's back door there, just come in and just catch him standing over the stove. Cover my face, yeah. I want to know what song he's humming when he's making his s'mores. You just walk in the Buffalo Bill headset, you know, the night vision goggles. Right from Silence of the Lambs. It's hilarious. It puts the s'mores in the basket, am I right? Yeah. Yeah.

By the way, we did do a takeoff on that bit, and it's one of the best things we ever shot in Jackass Forever. We lured the cast to this room. We staggered their call so it would be two at a time, and they thought they were watching me do this stunt. Stunt.

So they would get in the room, we would lock the door, turn out the lights, and they couldn't see anything. And we psychologically absolutely tortured them. And physically, too, a little. But mostly it was psychological. And just to see how they interacted with each other made the whole bit worse.

Like Dave England and Aaron McGee, he acted like an old married couple and they were just screaming at each other the whole time. And clearly I'm the one who's causing all the chaos, but they took it out on each other. It's, I can't wait for you to see that one. I can't wait. Wow. That's you just film it all with like night vision goggles. Yeah. Yeah. What's it like insurance? You talked about a high insurance with Paramount, like,

It must be a fucking nightmare for them because these guys, everything in this world is run by lawyers. And so everything is prohibitively expensive. Like when you go, yeah, we want to make another jackass, they're like fucking call legal because they're the first stop. Right. Well, I think on the TV show we lost our insurance at one time. And on the first movie, they didn't insure the entire movie. They treated obviously, back then they treated the whole movie as a negative pickup. They're like, here's some money.

We don't have anything to do with it. Yeah. So they insured per bit.

So one bit we wanted to do with Pontius to take him to a Pentecostal church dressed as the devil and handle snakes with the, you know, the congregation. It was going to be like $5 million to insure, and our first movie cost $6 million. So we couldn't do that. Wow. But after that, they just insured the entire movie. Wow. You know, they didn't insure it per bit. But I did bring up the example of the one bit for Jackass 4 that was going to be like $10 million worth.

Yeah. Deductible or something. But that's like one of those things, you know, like we all know when you're going to do a job and you got to fill out that insurance thing and they'll be like, do you plan on operating a motor vehicle between now and the time you're shooting the movie? That seems pretty goddamn tame compared to like. Yeah. Yeah, not only do I plan on being in a motor vehicle, I'm jumping one off a parking garage while I'm shooting myself.

It's so funny. Like on our movies, I can do whatever I want really. But if I go on a Hollywood movie, they have a stuntman lined up for me and they don't want me to do any stunts. And it's frustrating. How do Hollywood stuntmen –

How do they deal with you? Like, when you, do you meet stuntmen and they give you like a, all right, man. I remember on the first movie I did, Jackass was just coming out and it was lunchtime and the stunt guys were like, hey, Knoxville, you can come sit with us. And it meant so much to me. They're like, we don't let actors sit with us, but you can sit with us. And so I was so touched.

Yeah. Because they've always been super nice to me, and I really – what they do blows me away. They're so talented and gifted and trained and –

So we get along very well. That same thing happened with Jason. The hair and makeup department said the same thing. They were like, you can come eat with us. Wait, just one last question, PJ, just about the injuries. I know you get asked this all the time, but you had touched on, by the way, thank God you're doing well from all the things you listed back in December, almost a year ago, the brain hemorrhage and all that. Is there anything that's lasted that you have to now live with because of that?

I have to live with all my past injuries and we'll see where that comes out. You know, I've had like 16 concussions. But my biggest one, and by the way, like I said earlier, I'm not very in touch with my body. And I figured I did this to myself.

Right. So I get up every morning just thankful and grateful. But my back, I have two blown discs in my lower back. So that's something I have to deal with just with exercise and anti-inflammatories. And but I'm so lucky. I've had some stunts that

almost had forever consequences five or six times. I almost died five or six times. Jason, didn't you have a very successful day with two blown dicks? What were you saying about that?

You had said, what was the word that you said? I have to live with it. And that's all I'll say. Is that so wrong? That's a high class problem. BJ, you stay safe, please. Yeah. We appreciate your sacrifice. Yes. We sure do. My goodness. What a lot of fun you've given us.

We will see you personally very soon. Thank you for spending an hour with us. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for coming on. All the best with the movie. Hope it kills. And I'll definitely be watching. You're the best. Thanks, man. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. Thanks, PJ. All right. Bye-bye. See you, pal. Bye, pal. You know, I don't think I've ever met him.

He's really funny and he's really personable. I didn't think he would be that. Yeah, that guy's just... There's no Hollywood in him whatsoever. Yeah, he's great. He's super engaging. And I love how sort of honest he is about...

Everything, every stage of his life and then coming to LA and doing the Jackass and doing all of that. And he's just very sort of open, which is nice. And how wild that everybody has like a different journey. Like he came out here to be an actor and he did. He's done tons of great movies, but he's known for being this like stunt,

Crazy person. Everybody, you just don't know where you're going to end up. Yeah, I wonder what the percentage of people, I wonder what the percentage is of people who go to, let's say, college, studying up on a career and actually do that. Yeah. I feel like a bunch of success comes on the way to doing something different. Yeah. As long as you're pointed in a direction, forks will emerge.

It's become huge for him. I can't wait for that movie. I've seen all of them. Boy, they're laugh out loud. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I can't, I would be so anxious going into one of those things, even just thinking up.

The stunts like, well, you know, that feels safe and like I wouldn't be worried about that. But then it's like, well, that's not going to be entertaining footage. It's got to be something that is really frightening in concept. And then to actually execute, it's even more frightening. But also like what about that notion you were saying about getting, you know, the bull in

playing a trick on a bull. Forget it. It really hurt, but they didn't get it on camera. Take two. So yeah, take two with the bull. Yeah, no thanks. And again, there's no way that nothing happens when you stand in front of a bull. And I think I know the one he's talking about, right? Where the bull charges you and flips you over its back. I mean, how do you, you can't land that. I don't care what a great gymnast you are or whatever. Yeah.

That's what they're selling, you know? And God bless them. I'll watch it. I wouldn't do it. I do not have the backbone for that. I'll do it. I'll do it, too. I can't watch it. It does make me uptight, too, when I see it because I get—

With stuff like that, I get a little bit nervous, so I can't watch that stuff at night. So at night, I'm not going to watch that because at night what I'll do is before bed, I'd rather, you know, listen to a lullaby. Lullaby! Whoa, that was a good one, Arnett. That was good. That was very good. Smart. Yes. Smart. Yes.

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