jackassworld

Today I’m in a very Big Brother frame of mind, so with that sentimental foot forward I’d like to go back in time to 1999. Or maybe it was 1998? Those are some rather blurry years for me, so they’ve pretty much bled together in my memories over time. Anyway, we were still a good year or two off the mainstream radar then and living month-to-month off the pages of Big Brother skateboard magazine and the occasional annual video release. This day in particular was an exciting one because Johnny Knoxville was going to take on the business end of a moving car; however, a lot more of the excitement happened after the stunt, which took all of, I don’t know, maybe 10-seconds from start to impact to finish?

You see, there were three designated camera people on this shoot: 1) Mike Ballard, who was posted up in the street for what was presumed to be the “hero” oncoming shot; 2) Dimitry Elyashkevich, who was mainly there just to get Knoxville’s introduction to camera; and 3) Rick Kosick, who was placed inside the car for an obvious replay angle of Knoxville’s impact on the windshield. (There was actually a fourth unofficial angle: professional skateboarder Mike Carroll was filming from his living room window, a/k/a the grassy knoll, unbeknownst to us at the time.)

Now to be fair to all the cameramen involved, there was indeed a lot of stress going into this because it’s not exactly the kind of stunt you get a second chance on. So everyone was kind of on edge (except for Jeff Tremaine, he was back at the office working on either layouts or his Fantasy Football team stats). On the other hand, we did have a little sit down camera/contingency plan meeting beforehand—for what must surely have been the first time ever—so everyone should’ve been with the program. Unfortunately, once we hit the street and it was officially on, that and everything else flew right out the damn window.

Soon after Knoxville was forcibly bumped up and onto the car roof with a yelp, Ballard exclaimed that he’d missed the shot. For whatever reason he’d locked his camera down on one specific angle and, sure enough, he’d missed the shot. Whoops! Then it was revealed by Kosick that he’d gotten nervous, panicked, and hit the wrong button on his camera (I think he might’ve actually hit the still shot mode?), so he’d missed it, too. That left one hope standing: Dimitry. Now if there’s one guy I have all the faith in the world in, it’s Dimitry, and he didn’t let us down. Not only that but it actually turned out to be the best single in-and-out shot of all (and most likely the one we would have stuck with in the edit bay).

The photo sequence of Knoxville getting hit by a car was later used for a Big Brother subscription ad; the video itself wound up going into our third VHS release in 1999, boob. Why boob after shit and number two? Easy! If you print out a piece of paper with “boob” printed on it, take it to a mirror, and hold it upside-down, what do you get? Poop! You get poop!

So there you go. Another piece of trivial corn from our exceptionally fecal history.

(photo by Sean Cliver; Los Angeles, CA; 1998 … or 1999?)