Jackass Number Two director Jeff Tremaine
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

On camera the Jackass cast and crew, always come off like psychotic eight year olds, which they are. But it also takes some talent to take this very motley crew, have them do all these insane and disgusting things to themselves and each other and still be able to formulate it all into a movie. That’s where Jackass co-creator and director Jeff Tremaine steps in. Before the Jackass phenomenon, Tremaine was best known as the editor for Big Brother Magazine. Tremaine was the one who put all these lunatics together into the major franchise that they are now. They’ve just released the unrated version of Jackass Number Two on DVD.

Check out the official website for Jackass Number Two

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today if I may ask?

Jeff Tremaine: I’m doing a show called Rob and Big right now on MTV and we are just doing the sound mix for our last episode of the season.

DRE: Have you been picked up yet for the second season?

Jeff: Yeah, we got picked up for a second season so we’ll start soon that soon.

DRE: So I got the impression from watching Jackass 2 that the stunts might be thought up in a similar way like the writer’s room of a TV show where people pitch ideas.

Jeff: Some of it’s organized like that. A lot of times we’ll just go over to [Johnny] Knoxville’s house and we’ll start drinking and playing pool and shit. We’ll just get a few of the guys over and start just shooting the shit. Do that enough times and poof, you’ve got a movie.

DRE: How is it decided who does what?

Jeff: A lot of the ideas are specifically written to the talents, or lack thereof, of the individual that’s going to perform it. We discovered Bam [Margera] was afraid of snakes so clearly that had to be done to him. But there are some ideas that are just generic and then whoever’s going to psych up does it or if I think someone needs footage, I’ll put the extra pressure on that person to be the guy. But the guys were so gung ho this time around that the bar just kept going down and down and down.

DRE: I loved seeing Bam’s sketch of Preston and Wee-Man attached by a bungee. Does he do a lot of those?

Jeff: So many. They’re so ridiculous. They’re so primitive and yet so funny.

DRE: Do you ever look at these sketches and go “Bam someone’s definitely going to die if we do this.”?

Jeff: No, he didn’t have any that seemed too deadly. He had a couple that backfired on him because he wanted to brand somebody and then he ended up doing it. The brand was the word Jackass and we switched it to being a dick and I said “Bam, it’s got to be you because nobody else wants a brand.” So he did it.

DRE: You made a joke before about people’s talent or lack thereof. I think the audience can sometimes forget just how talented some guys like Steve-O actually are.

Jeff: Yes, Steve-O has all kinds of acrobatic type skills. His even bigger skill is his ability to vomit on command, so we take full advantage of that. But then there are the other guys. I wouldn’t say Knoxville’s too talented. We’ve discovered how to best use his lack of coordination. We just say “just stand here” or “hold on to this” and that tends to be the extent. His talent is being a shit talker so it’s fun to cut him loose out in the world but he’s so recognizable that you have to do extreme things like put him in the old man makeup or take him to India. You can’t really shoot him out on the streets without putting him through a pretty elaborate ordeal.

DRE: You guys did have a lot less pranks on the outside world this time.

Jeff: It’s gotten very difficult. We tried a few and they just kept getting recognized. But the second movie took on a life of its own and the double crossing and sabotaging of the cast became such a big part. That wasn’t really preplanned, it just grew into that. I’d definitely say that the fact that all those guys, pretty much top to bottom, are so recognizable now that it’s very difficult to pull any pranks.

DRE: Did you have a lot more freedom with this second movie?

Jeff: They’ve always been really been great about leaving us alone and letting us do whatever we want. We do turn in a lot of the ideas and we run them through legal and safety people, but they sound a lot safer on paper. We have really good creative ways of wording things to make them sound a lot safer. We always say we’re surrounded by experts but the guys we hired are more than willing to experiment with these guys’ lives.

DRE: How did you make the crowd dispersing device sound good for the safety people?

Jeff: I just say “Oh yeah we’re going to go try out some self defense equipment. Keep in mind it’s all less than lethal. It’s all under the supervision of experts. They wouldn’t try this if they thought it wouldn’t be safe.” You just put on a nice little face. The riot control guys were super-psyched to have a human test dummy.

DRE: I know years ago with the Jackass TV show, Knoxville wanted someone to shoot him in the chest.

Jeff: Yeah, that never aired but that was how Jackass really started. I was doing a skateboard magazine called Big Brother and almost everyone on Jackass was somehow contributing to Big Brother Magazine either as a writer or was a pro-skater like Bam and Wee-Man. Knoxville started writing for us and he had this idea to test self-defense equipment on himself like pepper spray, a taser, a stun gun and eventually he bought a bullet proof vest and went out and shot himself point blank in the chest with a .38.

DRE: Who said no to shooting him in the chest?

Jeff: There was no one to tell him yes or no. I just said “Hey, while you’re doing all that stuff, take this video camera and have someone film you while you’re doing it.” Then we started doing videos to come out with the magazine periodically. Once Knoxville came back with all that footage, I was like “Holy shit. I think I can make a TV show out of this.” So we made a little tape. I grew up with Spike Jonze so I said to him “I think we could make a TV show out of all this” and poof.

DRE: Will we ever see the footage of Johnny getting shot or does MTV have it locked away?

Jeff: MTV doesn’t even own it, it’s Knoxville’s. I think it’s on a Big Brother video called Number 2. I’m sure you can look that up on YouTube.

DRE: Were there any moments like the gun thing in the second movie?

Jeff: Yeah like when he got on the rocket for the second time. The first time we didn’t even realize how hairball it was. There were smaller rockets powering the big rocket he was riding and one of them failed so a big steel rod shot through the side of the rocket. We couldn’t even see it because it moved so fast. We had a high definition camera shoot in slow motion and we watched it frame by frame and we saw that it went right under his arm. If it just flew down any other direction, it would have blown right through him. So to put him back on that was scary. Also bulls hate human beings so that’s terrifying.

DRE: Does anyone ever ask you guys to ever do something with CGI?

Jeff: No. No one asks us to anything. It’s all me and the crew. No one’s asking, “Hey can you guys do this or do that?” Paramount never even asked us to do a second movie. I just talked to Knoxville because he was coming out on these Wildboyz trips. He came out on the last one to Russia and he was so excited to shoot that he was really laying on the line. I said “Look dude, if you’re going to go this big, then let’s not do it for cable television. Let’s do it for the movie.” So at first he wasn’t very open to another movie but I showed him a bunch of ideas that I’d written out and then he wrote a bunch of ideas and we just came up with enough ideas to where he felt confident doing it again. Then we went to Paramount and said “Hey we want to make another movie.”

DRE: I interviewed Bam a couple years ago. I asked him who he thinks is the craziest and he said Steve-O is by far the craziest of anybody that does these things.

Jeff: Different levels. Like I think if someone’s going to do a stunt where there’s a good chance it could to kill him, I’d say Knoxville by far is the most gung ho to do it. Steve-O and Bam do a lot of crazy stuff but the stuff they do they’re usually in control of. Bam’s really good at skateboarding and he’ll take any slam off a roof but he’s usually in control. Steve-O is really acrobatic and he’ll do a lot of gross things but with the death defying stuff they’re not so gung ho a lot of the times. Knoxville’s just like hey, I’ll do it.

DRE: It’s funny how hard it is to ignore the homoerotic undertones of Jackass.

Jeff: [laughs] Undertones?

DRE: With these guys it seems like it is okay for a tough guy to be put into homoerotic situations.

Jeff: It's just funny. I've always said that a lot of these things that we're doing are funny but they'd be so much funnier if the guys are naked so sure enough, they always are.

DRE: But these guys don't seem to have a huge amount of trouble being around each others' balls and assholes.

Jeff: No, not too bad. They're not trying to be macho or anything. They're trying to be just idiots.

DRE: I’ve watched a lot of stunt tapes and skateboarder tapes but it's interesting what stunts you can do when you actually have a budget.

Jeff: Right, although the most successful stuff we do isn’t that expensive. I think usually when we spend more money, it's less successful than when we just totally ghetto it. I think the charm of Jackass is the backyard nature of it.

DRE: With the four-person teeter-totter, do the engineers that build that stuff, ever go "why do you want this"?

Jeff: Well some rodeo guy built that thing.

DRE: I thought you had it built.

Jeff: No, he had it. Our bull guy came to us and was like "Hey we have this thing called the Toro-Totter if you guys want to try it" and we were like "Oh shit, yes we do.”

DRE: I only saw one stunt with you and that was when someone farts some powder on you.

Jeff: Yeah, I try to avoid it but I get caught a lot. A lot of times they don't even film it when it’s me. We were in Florida on our first day of shooting and everyone was so gung ho that we all went to the bar. At one point I was really wasted and I look down and my whole leg is on fire. Ryan Dunn is standing there with a lighter. He threw a shot of 151 on my pants and lit it. Luckily right next to him was Wee-Man with his dick out and he just peed the whole thing out, so I get my share.

DRE: How did the bees in the limo prank come about?

Jeff: We were trying to figure out a way to get the guys in a place where we could throw a beehive on them. Knoxville had the idea. He loved the idea of the marbles so the two ideas just converged to lay the marbles out while they were trapped in the limo. The limo just became the device. We did that really early on so the trust was still somewhat there point.

DRE: Where did Dave England come from because he seems like the grossest guy on Earth?

Jeff: Dave's a pro shitter man. If you need someone to shit on demand, Dave's your guy.

DRE: I know. It's very upsetting. Did he come from the skateboard culture as well?

Jeff: Yeah, he did. Actually I'd known him for a really long time. As we were doing Big Brother, we also inherited a snowboarding magazine called Blunt, which was Big Brother for snowboarders. Dave was the editor of it. He wrote articles about snowboarding but mostly about fucking around. Skateboarding isn't just skateboarding. It's the livelihood that goes around with it and Jackass was born of that. We didn't invent anything new.

DRE: So you can’t be at every shoot.

Jeff: We split a little bit but for the most part I'm at every shoot.

DRE: Does a movie like this come together more in the editing?

Jeff: There's a lot in the editing because you don't know what works and what doesn't. A lot of times you throw 90% of it away. We always end up doing that, just cutting it down to just the gist of it. But there is some directing that goes on. I have to do a lot of convincing of the guys. I have to tell the cameraman where to be and we have to predict how we think it's going to go so we get the coverage right.

DRE: I asked Stacey Peralta about Jackass and he told me that’s he's not such a big fan of it. He thinks it's too easy and not smart. What do you think about what Stacey said?

Jeff: I couldn't agree with him more. It's not smart. I like Stacey and this kind of stuff is not for everyone.

DRE: Do you have straight up narrative things you want to do?

Jeff: I do but I don't have them planned out yet. I'm trying to develop a couple ideas but I don't have anything right now that I'm super excited about.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Jackass+Number+Two+director+Jeff+Tremaine/