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It has been more than 25 years since a small band of daredevils, amateur stunt performers and skateboard kings revolutionized the entertainment business with the over-the-tops antics, off-the-wall pranks and borderline insane shenanigans of the now legendary “Jackass” franchise. Now these hilarious hooligans prove once again that there is method to their madness in the new feature film jackass: best and last.

The years have not mellowed Jackass mastermind Johnny Knoxville and his friends as they undertake some of the craziest, crudest and downright grossest sequences in franchise history. Anarchy reigns as fan favorites Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Jason “Wee Man” Acuña, Ehren “Danger Ehren” McGhehey, Preston Lacy and more test their endurance and their gag reflexes in the latest installment of the franchise that changed comedy.

“This one’s the best because we picked our favorite bits from all the shows and movies and shot a bunch of strong, new bits,” says Knoxville. “It’s the last because we can’t do this forever. A stuntman has an expiration date just like milk. After 16 concussions, I can’t play with bulls or get shot out of rockets or anything like that anymore, so it seemed like the perfect time to stop.”

jackass: best and last is not a straight-up documentary, but it does offer audiences a look at the characters and relationships that helped create the phenomenon. “They’ll get a good look at the dynamic of the group and how it’s evolved over the years,” says the director. “We show where we’re all at in our lives now. You get a sense of the collective whole in this one, more so than the other ones. In many ways, it is the cherry on top. Everyone is just getting their last hurrah out there.”

“This is the world’s best and last chance to see all these guys doing Jackass stuff,” he adds. “There are plenty of surprises, for sure, even with the older footage. We went into the archives and re-examined everything. We’ve added new material that no one’s ever seen, different angles and different moments that happened. Even if you’re a superfan, there’s so much stuff that you haven’t seen before.”

Back at the Beginning

Tremaine has helmed every version of the franchise since it began. When the TV series officially premiered on MTV on October 1, 2000, he had already been running a successful skateboarding magazine called Big Brother for several years. “Big Brother was an insiders’ magazine,” says Tremaine. “If you were in the skateboarding world, you knew about it, but it wasn’t any bigger than that, right? Our magazine was big on comedy. We had the most outstanding characters from skateboarding. They weren’t necessarily the best skateboarders, but they were for sure the most outrageous guys around. We’d made our own lane, but I thought our sense of humor was a little too raunchy for the mainstream.”

The magazine was also releasing skateboarding videos to supplement their magazine content. “You didn’t see skateboarding on television in those days,” Tremaine explains. “Social media was just getting started. Every team put out a video of their best riders. People would pass around these videotapes. Sometimes that was the only way that fans could see skateboarders in action.”

In 1997, an actor and writer named Johnny Knoxville approached Tremaine with an outrageous idea for an article unlike anything he had ever imagined. Knoxville wanted to test a variety of self-defense equipment on himself: pepper spray, a stun gun, taser darts. For the big finale, he wanted to put on a bulletproof vest and shoot himself in the chest with a .38 caliber bullet. Tremaine was so impressed by the entire idea that he asked Knoxville to film it.

“Johnny had pitched us a few ideas, but that one hooked me,” says Tremaine. “Frankly it wasn’t that funny. In fact, it was pretty scary to watch and we never released the last part of the video. This movie opens with it. I’m pretty excited to show it, but I really want to stress what an incredibly dumb idea it was. We wanted to include it because it is the exact moment that ‘Jackass’ was born.”

After viewing that footage, Tremaine saw the potential for a TV show inspired by the anarchic spirit of the skateboarding world. He enlisted the help of his childhood friend, Oscar^®-winning writer and director Spike Jonze, and they agreed to produce a pilot along with Knoxville. “I had never aspired to make a TV show,” he says. “I was happy running a skateboarding magazine, but it seemed like there was something bigger here. We sold it to MTV, but to be honest, we had no expectations. I didn’t think the general public would respond the way they did. When it actually made it to air, I thought, holy shit, I’ve just won. Even if it went away after the first eight episodes, I figured I got Chris Pontius’ butt on TV. I’m good. But it just took off from there.”

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The New Kings of Hollywood

Shot with a tiny crew and a modest budget, the show premiered on a Sunday night in 2000. Along with Knoxville, the original cast featured a motley group of buddies including Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn, Bam Margera, Dave England, Wee Man, Danger Ehren and Preston Lacy. To the shock of everyone involved, it was an instant hit.  

“Our expectations were pretty low at the beginning,” says Knoxville. “None of us thought it was really going to be on TV and if it was, it would probably go off the air pretty quick. We were constantly surprised and grateful for the success of ‘Jackass.’” 

In 2000, social media was in its infancy, according to Steve-O. “You couldn’t watch much on the internet, so all eyes were on TV. I saw the first commercial for it during the Video Music Awards and I thought that was like the biggest thing that could happen. Bam was riding down a hill, face first into a port-a-potty. Something like 10 million people saw that. Overnight, life was completely different.”

Danger Ehren, who first caught Tremaine’s attention with his homemade stunt videos, admits he never had high hopes for the series either. “We filmed the first season in Portland, then three months went by and we didn’t hear anything,” he recalls. “Finally I got the VHS tape in the mail. I watched it and I was so bummed because I thought this would never be on TV. And then like three months later, I got a call saying the show got picked up. At that point, it didn’t really matter if it was successful. We made it onto MTV! But from that first episode, the word of mouth got people talking and engaging with it.”

England joined the production thinking it would make it to TV screens once and disappear. “Even when it premiered, we all thought that ‘Jackass’ would be a very short-lived thing,” he says. “By the third season, I was like, wow, are we going to do this forever? But no — then we did the movies. When we went out to bars and clubs, we felt like kings in Hollywood.”

The TV show ran for three eight-episode seasons. Its explosive success brought some unwanted attention. Political figures including influential U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman were pressuring MTV about the content. “We were getting a lot of heat for being too naughty,” Tremaine says. “They said that the show was dangerous. MTV was intimidated and their solution was to bring in an OSHA [Occupational Health and Safety Administration] representative to oversee safety. It was a very strange idea and it didn’t work.”

For Tremaine, the last straw was a segment called “The Vomelette.” “It was hilarious and gross and great,” he says. “Dave England ate all the ingredients for an omelet, vomited them into a frying pan, cooked the omelet and then ate it. It got flagged, but not because it was gross. They made us reshoot it because we didn’t test the temperature of the eggs before he ate it. For me, the show had lost its spirit, but ironically leaving MTV led directly to the movie franchise.”

With Tremaine directing and the original cast still in place, the first film was released in theaters by Paramount in 2002. Made for $5 million, Jackass: The Movie took in almost $80 million worldwide and launched a film franchise as well as a media empire that includes a long list of videos and spinoffs.

The Originals

For the last 26 years, an ever-changing group of daredevils and show-offs have broken taboos and destroyed the boundaries of decency with their scandalous escapades in the name of Jackass. But when their journey started, they were just a group of friends doing whatever they could to make each other laugh, according to Knoxville. “We already knew each other when this got started,” he says. “We’ve added to that over the years and the family has gotten bigger, but it all stems from friendship.”

Every cast member has a unique personality and talent, says Tremaine. “We’ve been together for so long, we know just the right buttons to push. It’s definitely much more of a family than a group of friends at this point. And it goes deeper than just the stars of the movie. It’s the whole crew. Most of them have worked on many of our projects.”

Steve-O is one of the most popular members of the original cast, appearing in videos, spinoffs and his own live show. “I am what’s left of Steve-O, at this point,” he says. “I had started hearing rumors that Johnny Knoxville had the itch to make a new movie. And I thought, man, I never would have thought that. But if it was going to happen, I was ready to be the MVP. I mean, Knoxville is always the MVP. I feel like I’ve had some strong moments in all the installments, but I don’t think I could ever claim that I was really the MVP. I had a chance to step up and just do it. Don’t want to give away too much but I’ll tell you this, Pontius’ penis is again a big star in the movie, but my butthole might have ran all the way home with it.”

Steve-O shares this much: “I have been trying to do big butt tricks to promote colon health and prostate health. When we got to the creative meetings for this, I told Knoxville and Tremaine that, while I didn’t want to overpromise, I felt rather confident that I could shoot a ping pong ball out of my butthole.” 

Lacy remembers first hearing about the new movie when Knoxville sent a group message asking if the guys were up for one more. “We didn’t know how far it would go or what it would mean,” he says. “It’s a super-rowdy movie. It reminds me of when I was a kid, we’d go see the Cannonball Run movies, and the whole audience would just roar laughing. That’s the way all the Jackass movies are. Back in the beginning my dad would watch and say, ‘You need to go ask those guys if you can get a job painting sets. That’s probably a good career for you.’ I would say, ‘Well, I prefer the other side of the camera.’”

Wee Man was already a well-known skateboarder when he joined the Jackass crew. “I heard about this one when Knox sent a text to everybody saying, ‘Hey, I’m feeling frisky. Let’s do another Jackass movie.’ We were all like, ‘Hell yeah!’ We started throwing ideas around, and lo and behold, there we were.”

Making one of these movies is always a painful experience, he admits. “The stress level is redlining all the time. I always say just get the footage. ‘The Escape Room from Hell’ segment in this was intense. So the quicker you do it, the quicker it’s over. In the Escape Room, the first thing you have to do is put your hand into a hole in the wall containing who knows what. With this crew and cast, you never know what it’s going to be.” 

Pontius says that while filming, he wasn’t sure the movie would ever be finished. “The whole experience was amazing and extreme,” he says. “I thought somebody might tear the set down halfway through. But we stuck to it. A lot of disgusting stuff went on and it was pretty rough on some of the guys, but also really funny. We did this amazing trivia game with our best and brightest. The loser of the game ended up having to … let’s just say it was super gnarly.”

Pontius’ big moment came when he recreated an athletic event in the style of the original Olympics. “We did a high jump sequence, which normally might not be funny,” he says. “But as in the original games, I was naked. I had to make up some new moves, some new tricks. I think it was a success. I’m not very good at high jumping, but I did have my penis and that made it awesome.”

A few of the original stars of Jackass appear only in archival footage, including Bam Margera and the late Ryan Dunn, who passed away in 2011. Dunn appears in one of Tremaine’s all-time favorite sequences. “It’s the end of the first movie and still one of the funniest things we ever shot,” he says. “Ryan puts a toy car up his butt and goes to a doctor to get an X-ray. Nobody wanted to do that bit, except Ryan. Now Steve-O is just shoving everything he can up his butt.”

Sean “Poopies” McInerney joined the franchise for Jackass Forever and became an instant legend for fans when he attempted to literally “jump the shark” and failed. “This time, one of the things I did was have filler injected in my lips on camera,” he says. “My lips came in nice and plump, not lumpy at all. They’re looking good. I’m kind of enjoying them. When I showed my dad, he couldn’t stop laughing. He thought it was hysterical.”

So did Pontius. “It was fucking funny,” he says. “We’ve all seen some women who have gone a little bit too far. They went as far as possible with Poopies’ lips, but I think he looks better with them to be honest.”

Before joining the cast for Jackass Forever, Zach Holmes was best known as the creator and star of MTV’s “Too Stupid to Die.” He remembers watching the show back when he was in elementary school. “My friends at school told me about it,” he says. “My parents said that I wasn’t allowed to watch it, which made me want to watch it a lot more. I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.

“I got a random DM asking if I wanted to be a part of this movie,” he continues. “Next thing you know, I’m in an office with Knoxville and Tremaine. They actually didn’t tell me what we were going to do, but I started pitching ideas anyway.”

When Davon “Jasper” Wilson and Compston “Dark Shark” Wilson joined the cast of Jackass Forever, they became the only father and son combo in Jackass history. Jasper was elated to hear that there would be another movie. “And then I started to wonder exactly what I had gotten myself into,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it’s always a good time to hang out with the fellas.”

Asked to name the most dangerous bit that he participated in personally, Jasper has no trouble choosing. “Me and the boys got a little wild and I ended up having sex with this guy Ron’s wife,” he says. “Then at the office later that week, Ron attacked me multiple times. He tried to take my knees out and send me to the hospital.”

He remembers watching “Jackass” as soon it soon as it began its run on MTV.  “Whenever it aired, I was on the couch tuning in every week. So being on the show is a big deal for me. I think the first time somebody actually recognized me, I was at Venice Beach at the hot dog on a stick stand, and I’m like, ‘Why is this strange white man staring me down?’ I thought he was trying to kill me or something.” 

Rachel Wolfson became the first and only female member of the crew when she appeared in Jackass Forever. “I remember watching the show for the first time when I was 15 years old,” she says. “I would have to go to my friend’s house because my mom wouldn’t let me watch. We would reenact some of the things that we saw, like we would take shopping carts and push each other around. One time I walked into a class with underwear on my head. But Jackass is an incredible family and I feel so honored that I get to be a part of it. I feel like these guys have been with me my whole life, and now I actually do know them, so it’s magic.”

According to Tremaine, Knoxville became obsessed with adding a new cast member to the franchise this time around: a four-foot-tall robot named 1W Larry. “There’s so many videos of humanoid robots online,” says Knoxville. “And it’s so funny when they go haywire. When I first thought about it, there was no plans to do another movie, but I thought it might be worth doing a whole new movie for that idea. Let me tell you, 1W Larry did not disappoint. He’s not the smartest robot you’re going to come across but I absolutely love him. He serves as kind of like an extra means to inflict pain and cause confusion and verbally assault people.”

“It seemed like a really funny idea, so we all embraced it,” Tremaine says. “We played around with having AI write some ideas. But when AI did it, it added so many safety precautions, it didn’t work for us. It was funny to hear Larry pitch his ideas but he is creepy. When he walks up to you, you know he has bad intentions.”

“Oh come on, Larry is so funny,” says Pontius. “He’s really witty, but also super-aggressive. The way he moves is really intimidating, so everyone’s scared of him. He’s pretty strong and he’s a pervert who talks about sex a lot. He gave Steve-O a prostate exam with his crazy robot hand, which was pretty gnarly, but Steve-O took it like a man.”

Standup comedian Adam Ray provided the voice for 1W Larry, improvising dialogue on set. “Oh man, Adam is one of the funniest guys in America,” says Knoxville. “I’m so grateful that he agreed to do it. Paul Walter Hauser also agreed to be in this movie for some reason. This man has a career. He’s won an Emmy and all kinds of other awards, but he’s a bit of a nut. He’s also a professional wrestler so he’s a very complicated person, but a sweet person and we were glad to have him.”

Time Waits for No Man

All these years later the Jackass legacy still stands proud, even if the cast is a little less steady on their feet. “My role in the franchise has changed a bit for this movie,” says Knoxville. “In the past I have taken on some of the most dangerous sequences. I guess I’m just wired for it. Eventually I learned to love it and look forward to it. This one I was just the ringleader most of the time.

“But last time out, my brain got erased by a bull named Pecker Wrecker while doing a magic trick,” he says. “That sent me offline for six months and ended my half-assed stuntman career. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain, but I know nobody wanted to see me get another concussion.”

One of the standout stunts in jackass: best and last acknowledges the changed circumstances of some of the guys. “What all the cast members have in common is that they love being in front of a camera even more than they mind being tortured — but just barely,” says Tremaine. “We’re now in our 50s for the most part and we’ve all had to have that colonoscopy. You have to drink this prep drink that flushes you out. I thought it’d be funny if we put the guys in some sort of clear pants, had them drink it and then play our version of Twister. Preston, Steve-O, Dave England and Chris Pontius all agreed to do it. Let’s just say that the wheels completely fell off in a truly disgusting way. You have to see it to appreciate it.”

Tremaine is looking forward to the fans’ response to seeing their favorite bits mixed in with the new ones. “I’ve been doing this for a quarter century,” he says. “That’s pretty much been my whole adult life. We were just filming with our friends and trying to make each other laugh, never really thinking that anyone’s going to see it. I can say this has been a fun, crazy journey. The lasting appeal is that you get invited into this group of, well, let’s just say idiots that love each other and love pushing each other’s buttons on an extreme level. That’s what makes it work.” 

Knoxville thinks that fans just enjoy hanging out with a group of friends and seeing what new and outrageous stunts are coming next. “In the end, Jackass has maintained its appeal because of how close the cast is,” he says. “Even if sometimes we are a little mean, you can tell we love each other. We’re incredibly lucky and very grateful that Jackass has come to mean so much to people.

“I think we’ve made a hilarious film,” he concludes. “It’s the last Jackass  film, the last chance to see us doing what we do together. It is a movie you want to see in a theater so you can laugh with your buddies and trauma-bond with your buddies. That experience doesn’t come around often. It’s like our love letter and gift to ourselves and to the audience.”

JEFF TREMAINE (DIRECTOR / PRODUCER) got his start at Big Brother Skateboard Magazine, where he — alongside Spike Jonze and Johnny Knoxville — laid the foundation for jackass. The franchise spawned five box office number ones and, including Bad Grandpa, grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide. Tremaine has remained a creative force in television through Nitro Circus, Loiter Squad, and Ridiculousness, and in film with The Dirt, the Mötley Crüe origin story, and Netflix’s Bad Trip.