jackassworld

Typically we spotlight a single segment with these “Flashback” programs, but this particular one is more of a strange day in the life of jackass when a seemingly shitty setback yielded two golden moments of televised glory: the “Mullet” and “Goldfish Trick.”

Towards the tail end of summer 2000, a trip was scheduled to Florida with the intent to primarily shoot with Steve-O (Johnny Knoxville was already in Miami at the time, filming on location for Big Trouble, I believe, and Chris Pontius came along for the comedic ride to wrestle alligators). Up until this point, Jeff Tremaine was the only one to have any prior firsthand exposure to Steve-O; the rest were only familiar with him through phone calls, rumors, and his assorted tapes of home video atrocities/footage. So when the crew picked him up at this janky sideshow flea market circus it was a real treat for all—especially when they had to load up the van with bins of maggot-infested elephant poo for Steve-O to jump in later that day.

However, that’s right about the point when the curveballs started flying. On the way to his mom’s home in Boca Raton, Steve-O’s junker of a car broke down in a Haitian stretch of suburbia, throwing a quandary into the day’s shooting schedule. Tremaine is never one to let the sun set on production, though, so his sixth sense for footage immediately picked up on a hair salon in the nearby strip mall. Minutes later, while Trip Taylor ran off to find some goldfish for this fanciful stunt Steve-O claimed he could do, Tremaine was sitting in a barber’s chair getting the most fucked-up haircut imaginable. I mean, he thought the idea of a “mullet” in Florida would be fucked-up to begin with, but then the Haitian barber took it to a whole other unimaginable level. Another thing Tremaine didn’t see coming was the adverse effect this haircut would have upon his dictatorial directing style, and for the duration of the trip no one could look him straight in the face and take anything he said seriously.

Shortly after walking out of the salon with a 50/10/90 fade, Tremaine rallied everyone together in a parking lot behind a store to shoot the “Goldfish Trick.” Although Steve-O is now beyond world famous for never being at a lack of words on camera, he did in fact prove visibly nervous at first—so much so that Knoxville even had to introduce him and the bit. Not that it mattered much in the end, though, because Steve-O’s marathon of retches did all the work necessary to cement his place in the formal jackass line-up.

The goldfish did, incidentally, survive its trip into the interiors of Steve-O’s wasteland. Not only that, but after going there and back again it immediately found a welcoming home with “Sleepy,” an entirely random sideline spectator of the event, and was last seen leaving the scene in true Hollywood fashion: walking off into the sunset.