The Absurd Way Steve-O Got Out Of Jackass' Harsh Pranks
For most of the early noughts, Johnny Knoxville and his crew of shoddy-stunt-making lords of chaos spent a hefty time in the hospital because of what they did in front of the camera. Among them was Steve-O, who took a hell of a licking many times and kept ticking, both in the TV series and the films in later years. The Jackass legend with that signature rasp put his name down for stunts that made him famous as the danger-defying hero he is today.
From drinking a goldfish to fish-hooking himself through the mouth, the limit to what he wouldn't sign up for could fill a matchbox. With that said, though, when it came to pranks among the Jackass posse, Steve-O managed to avoid being an unexpected painful punchline like the rest of the group thanks to a pretty radical maneuver he came up with. Steve-O dared to make himself a pointless target to keep off the radar for any secretly planned hijinks.
While looking back on his career, the former Jackass star revealed that he took drastic measures to basically double bluff his way out of being caught in the comedic crossfire for other members of the stunt team by making requests of his own and, specifically, requesting to be hung upside down and tortured for a whole day. You know, sometimes sticking a fish hook in your mouth isn't enough.
The Jackass team deemed Steve-O unprankable
During a recording of his podcast, "Steve-O's Wild Ride," Steve-O recalled that he contacted his Jackass buddies early in their career, giving them a suggestion that immediately took him off the list for any future pranks. "I established early on that I'm just down," recalled Steve-O. "I remember at the very beginning of Jackass, one of the very first emails I ever sent, I was like, 'I want you to hang me upside down from a tree and torture me for like 24 hours.'" It proved to be an intelligent method to the madness as he explained, "And they were like, 'okay, so we're not gonna be pranking Steve-O.'"
There was a string of logic behind Steve-O's demand, as he explained that it was an option worth considering whenever he got slightly out of commission. "There was a distinct motivation for it where I had just been like partying like for so many days straight and took like a bunch of pills to sleep, and then when I finally did fall asleep, nobody could wake me up."
In Steve-O's mind, the only course of action was what he requested back then. "When I'm in that state, I want to be hung upside down from a tree and just do whatever." For someone like that it's safe to say that run-of-the-mill pranks were just never going to do the job — or alarm clocks for that matter.