Dressed in a punkish tattered T-shirt and green military jacket combo, surrounded in his Hollywood office by memorabilia from his movies (a droopy pair of prosthetic testicles among them), and with a gleam in his eye, Johnny Knoxville seems as rascally as ever.
“There’s always going to be an adventure to what I do,” he says. “That’s the part I’ll always love.” But Knoxville, who’s starring in and co-produced the upcoming stunts-packed and oddly charming comedy Action Point (he plays the proprietor of an anything-goes theme park) is also feeling his 47 years. “How much longer can I be the stunts guy?” wonders the erstwhile Jackass ringleader. Then he lets out a loud laugh. “Oh, well! Too bad I didn’t go to college!”
It’s been a few years since you’ve done a stunts-heavy project. What made you want to get back to that with Action Point? Getting older can’t make the prospect of physical pain any easier to deal with.
God help me, I love stunts. But after this one, which I got hurt on more than any film I’ve done, I started to think, Why do I love it? Am I addicted to it? Is it coming from a good place? I don’t want to overthink things, but I don’t want to underthink them either because in this line of work you only get so many chances.Did you land on some good middle-ground thinking then?I’m in the thick of mulling it all over. I do love the idea of an actor really doing his stunts with no cuts in the action. That adds so much energy and immediacy to a film. Some other actors do their own stunts, but the difference is that their stunts are designed to succeed.
And yours are designed to fail?Yeah, that’s the only way mine are designed. I still get scared to do them beforehand, but I can override that fear. Maybe it’s not so good that the producer side of me convinces the performer side that we need the footage. Yeah, it’s also — my mom passed in the fall.
I’m sorry to hear that.That’s okay. We all have to deal with it at some point. But you know, it got me to thinking about how that feels for a kid. Wow, we started off really heavy.
I know. Usually it takes a minute for people to get to the heavy stuff.[Laughs.] I’m just being honest!
And I appreciate it. So your mom’s passing made you think about the work you do?One-hundred percent.
Tell me about that.
Things can go seriously wrong at any time with a stunt. I always know I can get to the ramp, per se, but after that, I don’t know what’ll happen. And thinking about that made me fearful of making my children feel like I felt about my mom when I knew I was going to lose her.You were still in the middle of filming Action Point when things were going south with your mom?
Yeah, we were. I had a fall and I knocked out three of my teeth and I got a concussion — my fourth concussion of the film. It made me think about how on one hand I love what I do, but I also realized that at some point I’m not gonna be able to do it anymore. And when that time comes I want it to be my choice.So Action Point is probably the last time you’ll do a bunch of stunts in a movie?
I — I don’t know.It’s hard to stop doing something you love.Honestly I may have a little left in me. But for my sake and my family’s sake, I should start winding down.
Since we’re already into the heavy stuff: At 47 years old, do you have a clearer sense of why you were driven to put yourself on the line the way you did? I know that in old interviews about Jackass, when people would ask you that question you’d always brush it off. But I don’t believe you haven’t done that kind of introspection.
Right, well, I didn’t want to discuss it with journalists back then. Or with anyone really. Even my therapist. When I first started going to her, I’m like, “There’s some things I want to work on but let’s not fix that side of me.” And she said, “I would like to talk about if you want to talk about it.” I just said, “I don’t want to go there.”Were you worried that talking about why you do stunts would make you stop doing them?Yeah. I thought if I fixed that side of me then stunts would go away. It’s not like I don’t get how crazy it all is. I do. I get it. But I guess you could also argue that shutting the discussion out is not getting it.
That depends on what you want your life to be. Obviously this is tough to talk about. But it’s something I need to talk about. It’s just odd doing it in the press and not with my therapist. It’s like, I already give up so much of myself to the public. I can’t give up all of it.
I understand.You know, what I do probably comes from a number of things. There’s the open, fun, adventurous side of the coin. I was always a little inclined that way. But I opened that side of me way up as I came into adulthood. And then there’s the other side of it: I’m sure some of wanting to do stunts comes from an unhealthy place. You know what I mean?
(Excerpt) Read More at: Vulture.com
