Although Johnny Knoxville and the guys made a third “Jackass” film doesn’t mean that the whole gang doesn’t have a few more extra clips up their sleeves. They did it once with “Jackass 2.5” and are back at it again, dishing out the physical comedy-goodness with “Jackass 3.5.”
Not only did they have enough extra footage from “Jackass 3D” to make another film, they decided to release it digitally on Joost rather than to give it a theatrical run. They clearly have done this before with “Jackass 2.5,” but director Jeff Tremaine wanted to handle it a little differently than before. The last time it was a matter of the releasing in different formats in small segments, but now we’ve got something better with “Jackass 3.5.”
Regardless of what happened with “2.5,” its not like nobody was going to watch something having to do with the “Jackass” boys. After all, the box office numbers don’t lie since “Jackass 3D” made a killing with the theatrical domestic numbers, making $117 million total. The market’s stil there, and the “Jackass” guys were ready to deliver to their audience once again.
That’s when Joost came in that is currently showing off the guys’ continued attempts to do the hilarious, slightly-impossible and sometimes the grossest stunts that you could think of. “Jackass 3.5” gives us a better insight as to why certain stunts did or didn’t work with the interviews that were sprinkled throughout the film with director Jeff Tremaine and the cast. “One of my favorite things about making ‘Jackass 3.5’ different is the explanations for why it wasn’t in the movie when it goes to all the guys,” explains Johnny Knoxville. “Like even when something’s a failure it’s so funny because of it.”
All of the interviews that took place throughout “Jackass 3.5” filled us in a bit more on other fun little devices used in the filmmaking process, the most notable being the beloved phantom camera. Its not a surprise that the one person who was absolutely in love with it was Jeff Tremaine. When it was confirmed that they would shoot the third “Jackass” in 3-D, Tremaine had to make sure that his phantom camera could film the same so he could use every single slow-motion shot to the full degree. “That was our game-changer, discovering the phantom camera. You know ‘Jackass’ is all real and the camera just shows you the impact so nicely that these guys take. We love the phantom camera, we have a lot of fun making up ideas, the stupid things you can do with it and watch it in super slow motion.”
As dangerous-looking as some of the stunts are in any of the “Jackass” bits, there’s never been one that Johnny Knoxville and company have steered away from. “I would say there’s never been an idea that was so outrageous we just would never shoot it,” says Knoxville. “If it didn’t get shot it was because we ran out of time. The most outrageous idea I could think of always gets shot. The scariest ones, the ones where somebody says ‘No way,’ that’s what gets to the top of the list and has to get shot.”
Speaking of outrageous skits that have to be shot, one of the trickiest parts of the entire process is getting to convince the right people to let them use their equipment/facilities/animals in order to go ahead with the stunt. “There’s some people that feel uncomfortable at first and you’ve got to go in there and have to ease them in,” says Knoxville. Then again, Tremaine’s explanation of the process sounds a lot better. “You don’t go in full-frontal male nudity at first. You’ve got to ease them and then the clothes slowly start coming off.”
Although all of these men put their necks and other body parts out there to deliver entertainment to the masses, they enjoy making each sketch that ends up on screen. However, its not like they always want each one of them to work. “We don’t want it to work! Success is not the goal,” says Knoxville.
What Knoxville says is completely true. If each one of these stunts were successful in the non-painful way then maybe we wouldn’t be so fascinated with “Jackass.” But its not just the sketches that have made “Jackass” work for so long, its the guys’ own unique personalities and their overall lighthearted humor that’s kept this afloat for over a decade.
