In the week before Steve-O was supposed to be placed in protective custody, Rick Kosick sat down with him and his menagerie of animals to talk about standup, animal activism, and the finding of oneself. Since that time, Steve-O spent less than eight hours in jail before being released back onto the streets—well, maybe a few less streets as now required by law, but he’s a free man just the same.
Kosick: I’m sitting here with the one and only Steve-O and his dog Walter who’s trying to attack and bite me. So, it seems like you’ve been consistently on the road for work… or is it pleasure?
Steve-O: Oh no, dude, I’m always on the road. Except for this past week because I just taped my comedy special, which I’m thrilled about. It went really well. I had a week off and I’m getting ready to go to Atlanta. Then I come home from Atlanta and then I go to jail. And then I guess I go home and visit my family for the holidays. Then from the beginning of the year it gets fucking stupid.
Standup comedy is your main focus right now?
I always have time to do dumb stuff, like if I want to make a video, but other than building the social media and putting content online it’s been standup and, of course, the special. Now my focus is going towards a movie project that I’m trying to get off the ground. I’m really excited about it. I got a deal with a movie producer guy who does super legit shit and we got a rad idea.
You’re definitely a shaker and a mover.
I’ve never been lazy. Even when I was all fucked up on drugs and alcohol.
You were so productive back then, too.
Haha… yeah, but just when I was fucked up on drugs and alcohol I was producing a lot of garbage. But things are good now. I’m living clean and I got my house, I’ve got my animals.
What’s the name of your comedy special?
Guilty As Charged. It will come out in March. I’m really psyched on how I did it. I arranged all of the material in chronological order, so it’s a one-man show where I tell my story. I’ve been doing stunts and tricks in my standup the whole time, but always at the end of the show until recently where I’ve woven them into the show itself. So at pertinent story points I do crazy stunts and I went all out for the special. The first few minutes in I choked myself unconscious and dropped on my head onto the stage. Haha… Like really violent and my head bounces big time and I’m twitching, like totally out. I know Knoxville and Tremaine won’t be huge fans of that, but that was one of my specialties early on, you know, and I was talking about when I was getting my start and I said I had a vision and I have special skills. Haha…
So does this mean you’re going to have to write all new material?
Yeah, for sure, but I’m excited to do that. You don’t want to go around doing the same shit forever, plus the nature of the circuit is such that I go back to places. I’ve been back to places four or five times, and I always feel self-conscious if I go back to a place and do the same shit. I mean most of the time that I’ve been back to a place I’ll do some of the same shit, but largely if I’m not bring new material then I feel like a fraud. So yeah, it’s important to be a comedy factory and not a comedy warehouse.
That’s a good analogy. I hang out at The Comedy Store here in Hollywood and I try not to go to often. I like what I see, but I don’t want to see the same routine.
Yeah dude, it’s been over five years now that I’ve been on tour. My first headlining gig as a comedian was November 7, 2010, and it just popped off, you know, the way it worked. When I went to rehab and got sober, from that point on it didn’t make sense for me to be hanging out in nightclubs or bars. I just had no good reason to be in a bar or night club, but when I got sober it’s not like you never want to go out anywhere and you want to have a life. So part of what I would do would be going to a comedy club to sit and watch the show, but every time I would go I would be sitting there thinking, “Man, I should be on that stage.”
The first interview I did for jackass 3D was at the Four Seasons Hotel for this thing called Young Hollywood and Dane Cook was there cycling interviews through. They said, “Dude, go crash Dane Cook’s interview,” so I walked in there and I was like, “Dude, I want to get serious about doing standup.” He said, “Yeah, cool, we’ll get you up next week at the Hollywood Improv.” We exchanged phone numbers and I spent that week writing material. I went and met with Dane Cook, and I went onstage, then he went onstage, and then we sat down and he gave me notes. Two days later we did it again, and then after that, and it was like a regular routine where we would both perform in a comedy club and he would critique me and give notes on that night’s performance. The fact he took me under his wing that way and really gave a fuck about helping me, it really encourage me so much.
When jackass 3D came out, by that point I was just going to comedy clubs and getting onstage all the time nonstop. When I was on Howard Stern promoting jackass 3D, I said to him, “Hey man, I want to get a gig and do standup in NYC tonight, let’s announce it and try to get me a gig.” And I did that night, but what happened is all of the sudden my lawyer calls up and says, “Hey dude, we’re getting calls and they want to hire you here, they want to hire you there… ” and I didn’t have an agent at the time because I’d fired him—I’ll be damned if I was gonna give that schmuck 10-percent of jackass 3D and nothing is happening. So I went to take a meeting and signed with ICM. This guy Chris was so hilarious. He said, “I know we don’t represent you yet but I made a few calls just poking around, asking some questions, and if you did want me to represent you… ” and he just dropped this folder on the boardroom table with a full blown fucking headline tour. You know, I just had 15 minutes of material at the time, but because jackass 3D was in theaters, people just wanted to hire me. So I went out on the road and just kind of figured it out as I went. I’m not going to say I did really bad shows, and I’m not going to say they’re great, but one thing for sure is that I never slowed down and I never stopped.
Now I’ve been through material, ditched this and that, and it’s been a process of evolution. It’s also been an uphill battle a little bit. I mean it’s not in one sense, because I’ve got an built-in fan base of jackass fans who want to come see Steve-O even if they don’t know what I’m going to do—like half of them think I’m going to punch myself in the balls for an hour. So it’s cool to have a fan base of people who will come see you, but on the other side of the coin they don’t think of me as a standup comedian. So for me to try and get into venues to establish myself as a comedian, it’s a bit tough, and for a long time I always felt self-conscious, like I would never say “I’m doing standup comedy” on my social media. I would be like, “Hey, I’m going to Utah, come see me here!” I was kind of sneaking around just doing it, but now I’m so stoked that I’ve got a special coming out on Showtime. It’s fucking awesome. I really feel like now if all this goes well—and I think it will, I think I did a great job with it—that it will open doors for me
You’ve become quite the animal activist and on the attack with SeaWorld this past year. Do you feel like your message is getting across?
Sure, man. It has been almost ten years since my first campaign when I spoke out against animal abuse in the circus, like around 2006, when I started changing. I stopped wearing leather in 2009 when I became a vegan and it’s been a process of evolution. But yeah, I really did some high profile protests against Sea World and the most recent one I got sentenced to 30 days in jail—even though from what I have gathered I won’t be in jail anywhere that long.
What were you thinking when you climbed up that crane in Hollywood?
I thought I would get trespassing ticket and it wouldn’t be that big of a deal… I thought they would know it was me and would be like, “C’mon, dude.” I didn’t expect fucking 80 firefighters, 18 cops, a helicopter, and a SWAT team. So yeah, I climbed up the crane and got arrested, and it was so dumb… like to think that I’m going to protest SeaWorld at a random construction site nowhere near SeaWorld is just idiotic to began with. Then to bring an inflatable killer whale up a 150-foot tall crane—and by the time you’re up 150-feet in the air with a fucking toy whale, you know, so that was even more pointless. I’m up there trying to inflate it and now there are all these cops and firefighters, a helicopter and a SWAT team, and I’m like, “Man, I better hurry up and blow up my fireworks to save the whales!” None of it made any sense, which I think it kind of beautiful. I mean I’m not proud of wasting all the resources of the city. I get that was bullshit. It wasn’t my intention and the way it panned out it got really out of hand. So I deserve to be in trouble. But I got a lawyer to represent me for the case and I asked him, “Do you think you can get me just jail time?” and he was confused. He asked why and I explained that it was the only part of my plan that made any sense at all: how better to punctuate a statement about captivity then too become a captive. It’s a little bit poetic.
But the thing is now they struck this crazy deal with the prosecutor and my lawyer. There are all these weird things and there’s a certain quadrant in Hollywood that I’m not allowed to walk through from La Brea to the 101 Freeway and from Selma to Argyle for three years. I get why they did that. It’s not about me climbing a crane, well it is, but it’s more about like all the nonsense I’ve been up to. Like if you look at my YouTube channel there’s a lot of wasting cops time and the premiere spot where I did pranks was in the area of Hollywood Blvd. So I get it. I fully deserve it and have no qualms whatsoever. That’s why I was so happy to accept the term of my probation, but the main thing is it would be a story that Steve-o goes to jail and I was sentenced to 30 days. When that news broke, within two days California banned captive breeding of whales at SeaWorld or anywhere in California, so that was really kind of cool. I don’t know if me being in the news helped California legislation make that leap, but I like to think I helped. Then more recently, SeaWorld of San Diego announced they’re going to phase out the theatrical orca show, which truly is a bunch of bullshit. They’re still going to keep them in captivity and they’re still going to have some stupid show. Nothing is going to change for the whales, but I think I helped a little bit.
Do you have any concerns about going to jail?
None at all. I have no concerns about going to jail because I’ll be in protective custody. That means no one is allowed to be in the cell with me and I’ll just be on my own.
You might just end up snuggling with Suge Knight.
Well, I won’t be with him because I won’t be in the same cell, but maybe we will be next-door neighbors and I can ask him if he killed Tupac. Haha…
So you’ve taken on SeaWorld, what’s next?
Since the whole SeaWorld thing went down, I’ve been working with the Humane Society, going around East Los Angeles and offering free vaccination and spayed and neutering services to pet owners, and I’ve been doing meet and greets where I invite fans to come and meet me at animal shelters to promote animal adoption. I’ve done that a couple times the last few weeks, and the one time a bunch of animals got adopted. The second time I was the only one. I’ve adopted two cats in the past three weeks. Now my house is turning into a little zoo I guess. Walter and Bernie are my dogs, and Olivia and Francine are my cats.
That’s nice.
The way I want to live is all about feeling good about who I am. Like my past, like particularly before I got clean and sober, I was a shitty guy all the time and I did a lot of shitty things. That was evidence of me having a low self-esteem. I think it’s a spiritual axiom that the way we treat others is a reflection on how we feel about ourselves. And very clearly I felt like shit about myself because I treated others like shit. My journey in sobriety has really involved building self-esteem through estimable acts. When I say that, I think of having a more compassionate lifestyle, my diet… I think I’ve been pretty successful in rearranging the way I feel about myself by rearranging the way the way I treat others, animals included. It’s crazy… att this point I’m now a dog- and cat-rescuing, meditating, Hybrid-driving, clean and sober vegan who doesn’t like to fool around with random chicks—and I’m happy too! Haha…
Words can't explain how happy this interview makes me. :)
Posted by: Nyte | 04/23/2016 at 08:34 PM