By The deranged and iconic Jackass stunt troupe have finally worn their bodies down beyond repair. Their latest and final outing, BEST AND LAST, appears to be more of a reflection on their ungodly acts than a continuation of them. Makes sense. They’re all over 50 and no matter how professional they may be, their bones are now brittle. As someone who only truly came to appreciate the franchise in the leadup to 2022’s JACKASS FOREVER, a theatrical clip show of the previous outings almost felt like it was mocking me. I never got to experience these guys at their peak in a packed theater full of cackling sickos, something that made me an outlier amongst my fellow 2010s teenage boys. Happily, fate intervened. American Cinematheque decided to give the work-in-progress renovation of the historic Fox Westwood Village Theater (now referred to as the Directors Village, though I’m not sure that’ll catch on) a spin for a marathon of all four Jackass theatrical films. I’ve never missed out on an opportunity to be grossed out for hours on end and I wasn’t going to start now. So there I was—sitting in a crowd of stoned Millennials and Zoomers to experience the full sweep of psychosis that defined a generation of dumb little buddies.
Nobody seemed more shocked that a packed audience was actually willing to sit down for this marathon than emcees Dave England and Wee Man. They repeatedly remarked, “How are you guys still here?” between films, and for good reason. The Jackass franchise is a wildly entertaining, but draining endurance test: a non-stop barrage of mortifying pranks, pratfalls, and mutilations that would make the Jigsaw Killer blush. This is especially true of the first two grimy films, their unpolished DV aesthetics feeling as though you’ve stumbled upon a kink group’s tapes from their most carefree years. They are deeply homoerotic films. The gang spend nearly the entire runtime in various stages of nudity, not so subtly teasing the queer activities that may or may not have been taking place between shoving dangerous items up their asses. In fact, Steve-O has an arc through the first two films in which he talks about how his father threatened to disown him because he was partaking in public anal penetration. His resilience in the face of that is quietly beautiful and those moments clearly hit harder in a crowd full of folks who grew up in an era of rampant homophobia.
It’s remarkable that these films became monoculture during the conservative Bush era and have remained beloved through all of the upheaval since. Many people brought their young kids to this with seemingly no issue. You could tell which fans were old and which were new. Certain stunt title cards elicited dread-ridden gasps from those who knew what we were about to see, perhaps flashing back to disturbed secondhand pain they experienced as children first watching them. This would often create a chain reaction where those guys would set up that this was a particularly brutal one and then a wave of laughter and shock would erupt from all sides of the crowd as the guys paper cut themselves between their toes, put fish hooks in their cheek, or launch themselves 150 feet in the air in a shit-filled porta-potty.
The marathon was merely a suggestion. The theater was never all the way full. The aisles were always full of folks filing out to either take a break or leave. It makes sense. There’s no story progression here if you’re not obsessed with watching documentary footage of these guys’ trials as they grow older. This gave the whole affair a more casual atmosphere than more highbrow Cinematheque events. We were at a nine-hour circus show and people took it in as such. I remained in my seat for every second of addicting footage, although my foundations started to waver after a while. JACKASS: THE MOVIE is easily my favorite of the franchise because of just how raw and simple the stunts are. It also features the best pranks of the franchise, especially the closing sequence where Ryan Dunn shoves a toy car up his ass to the sheer horror of his doctor. The organic reactions from the prank victims often got bigger crowd reactions than the actual banter between the guys, especially since we are so often laughing with them, not at them. Although Wee Man and Dave England insisted that JACKASS NUMBER TWO is handedly the best of the series, I must disagree. The high points go crazy, but there is a mean-spirited edge that really bums me out. I don’t like that Bam was cool with putting another touchy, half-naked man in his mother’s bed, and the bit where Ehren McGhehey pretends to be a Muslim terrorist with a pubic hair beard is just … absurdly racist. JACKASS 3D brings the momentum back big time. Sadly, they did not show it in 3D, but it is still a blast to watch the boys play with that format, and with a budget that allows for significantly more elaborate setups. However, it was around here that I found myself laughing out loud less. After a while, the shock of the transgressions wear off, even though the boys’ resilience remains remarkable. I felt my brain going numb enough to ponder leaving before JACKASS FOREVER, which I did not enjoy at all when it opened in 2022. Thankfully, it played much better this time around, since I can now look past it being a “COME ON, EVERYBODY, COVID IS OVER” movie and enjoy it for the resilient act of joy that it is.
We ended with a Q&A with Knoxville, Wee Man, England, Preston Lacy, and director Jeff Tremaine that set the tone for what we’ll see in BEST AND LAST. These guys are all too aware that this is a bygone era of their lives, particularly Knoxville, who had an air of quiet sadness throughout. They talked about their stories of getting involved with this franchise like a group of old men at a bar loudly recounting their glory days for anyone in earshot. I half expected that afterwards we would get a surprise premiere screening of BEST AND LAST with how heavily this was touted as “the only JACKASS marathon that has ever screened in theaters,” but alas, they sent us packing after they were done trading stories. Thank God there weren’t any audience questions; we would’ve been there all night.
Looking back at my Letterboxd entries from my previous spin through this franchise, I found that I marathoned the first three in the same day by my own free will. Clearly, my morbid fascination is inhuman, but I also found myself agreeing with Tremaine’s observation that these were not made to be marathoned. I wouldn’t suggest it to someone who is hoping to get into these. You have to give yourself a bit of time to recover, so that the horrors each new installment presents can mortify you to the fullest extent. Not a problem for the freaks who put themselves through this ordeal, though. I’m proud to be one of them.
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