jackassworld

The “Stun Collar” was one of those great moments in jackass history that could’ve gone any number of ways. Fortunately it went in the direction of funny and not disgruntled postal worker syndrome, otherwise jackass would’ve been over long before its three-legged quadriplegic run had ever begun.

Filmed in the summer of 2000, shortly after our staff was fully fleshed out with personnel that actually knew a thing or two about television production, the “Stun Collar” was the brainchild of Johnny Knoxville. I’m not saying Knoxville created the device itself—technically it’s made for dog training purposes—but he’s the one who found it and decided to try and use it on a human, who in this case just so happened to be Rick Kosick (although Jeff Tremaine knew that when all was said, shocked, and done, he’d be the one to catch hell from Kosick). The problem was, over the years we’d inadvertently trained him to not trust us in the least. So, enter Trip Taylor, our brand new Line Producer (although he soon grew into something much more than that because we were all so much less). Kosick had yet to meet him, so Knoxville nominated him to be the perfect candidate in helping to pull the electronic wool over his eyes on this particular prank.

Seeing as we were all going out later that day to shoot the “Skunk” with Knoxville, Trip had us huddle up in the office for a tech briefing on some of the “new” equipment we’d be using. He then somewhat absurdly introduced the stun collar to Kosick under the guise of a recording device specifically designed for capturing sound in nature: the “360-degree sound mic.” Kosick wasn’t exactly the titan of video technology then that he is now (he was more of a photographer in his former working life), and because it was coming from this dude who worked in television for real life his early warning system was sufficiently caught off guard, allowing him to swallow this load of technical bullshit with relative ease. (Although Trip is barely seen in the video here, he’s the wide-eyed guy manning the controller behind the desk.) From there it was just a matter of affixing the collar, applying the voltage, and watching the towering inferno of rage.

Even though Tremaine was correct in surmising that Kosick would blame him for the whole ordeal, which he did, I don’t think Rick ever forgave Trip for taking advantage of him in such a manner. But hey, Trip was just doing his job. Sure, he felt kinda bad about doing this to someone he didn’t even know, but he was also hired to ensure one thing and one thing only: good TV. And that it was up until the “Stun Collar” was forcibly yanked off the episodic grid the following year during the great inquisition.