jackassworld

Strange though it may seem there was the occasional jackass shoot that fell a few good feet short of genius. By in large these follies were total bullshit and never cut into a show, but there was one in particular that bears memorializing, an epic segment entitled “Homeless Camping,” where Chris Pontius spent a night outdoors in downtown Los Angeles.

His objective was to become one with urban nature and bond with the drifting populace of Skid Row. Outfitted with top-notch camping gear, of which included a tent, chairs and portable grill, Chris staked out a site near several other “campers” located on a street of cardboard box housing projects. Throughout the course of the night Chris grilled hot dogs and veggie burgers, beckoning any passerby that happened upon his campsite to join him in a meal and swap tales of adventure, love and wanderlust. On two occasions he attempted to get a party started by stripping off his red one-piece pajamas and slipping into his “Party Boy” persona for a few vagabond ladies (the best of which you’ll see above in this metro quickie edit), but this proved to be a rather unwelcome activity, as did his serenade of traditional campfire songs in the wee hours of the morning.

At the crack of dawn, Chris emerged from his tent to break camp, donating his supplies to a fellow down the row whom he had befriended earlier that evening while discussing the urban wildlife scurrying around in the gutters. The man was quite overjoyed since his own tent was nowhere near the rugged durability of Chris’s.

In all, eight continuous hours of footage was logged, but could not be easily condensed and crammed into a neat and tidy three minute segment without seriously compromising the scope of the piece. Although the Editors and Producers struggled with it for some time, “Homeless Camping” refused to break the agonizing six-minute mark and soon became a ball and chain dragged from one day to the next. Finally, Knoxville walked in to view the lengthy edit and deemed it wholly unbearable, a polite way of saying it simply did not fit the fast-paced format of the show.

Oddly enough, “Homeless Camping” was nearly salvaged by the presence of Dimitry, the cameraman assigned to document Chris’s every move in and around his tent, regardless whom or what it may involve. A diehard “germaphobe” at heart, Dimitry was less than enthused with his nomination for this potentially disease-carrying task and stubbornly refused to do so unless issued a full body Haz-Mat suit to operate from. His request was granted and every so often a camera staked out across the street in a van would pan over the weird urban setting to reveal an even more bizarre stark white blob standing and perspiring with video camera in hand. When asked by the other local campers why Dimitry was dressed as such, Pontius offhandedly dismissed their suspicions by saying his friend was afraid of mosquitoes.

(This text comes practically verbatim from the booklet accompanying the jackass DVD box set released in 2005. The words, however, were first written in 2001 for a book about the jackass television series that was ultimately killed on delivery by a paranoiac hullabaloo over anything related to the show at MTV.)