jackassworld

Over the years we’ve had the good fortune to work with a number of talented actors—Brad Pitt, Luke Wilson, and David Hasselhoff, to name just a few. But one of my favorites by far was Bam-Bam, a professional animal actor known for his portrayal of a grizzly bear in Hollywood circles. I’d even go so far as to say that I felt a lot more awkward in the presence of Bam-Bam than I did with say Pitt or Hasselhoff. Then again, at no point whatsoever did I think one of those thespians was going to lash out unexpectedly and wipe my facial features clean off my skull. I mean, everyone here has seen that video of Polish origin, right? The one with the bear seated next to the woman where it just flips its ferocious lid for no apparent reason and tries to tear off her lid in the goddamn process? Well, I was afraid that was going to happen to me the day we filmed Johnny Knoxville “wrestling” Bam-Bam.

At some point during the very one-sided match, Bam-Bam tired of Knoxville and decided to exit stage left—stage left being the sole entrance/exit door to his cage where I’d assumed I was safely shooting photos from. Like any good petrified human, I froze accordingly, as Bam-Bam ambled by and gently nudged me with his considerable bulk in passing. Were I not the perpetually constipated fellow I am, I just may have let loose all the contents of my bowels in a blended form at that particular moment in time, but instead I just appreciated the fact that I’d gone toe-to-toe in a grizzly encounter and lived to tell about it. Unlike Timothy Treadwell.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Canyon Country, CA; 2000)