You may have heard the rumors. You may have seen the eyepatch. Now hear it all from the man himself, Johnny Knoxville, who once again put his ass on the line for all your giggling enjoyment when Action Point opens in theaters this summer. So, without further ado, here's Rick Kosick to kick out the queries…
Rick Kosick: So what inspired you to make Action Point?
Johnny Knoxville: Well, I was sitting in my office one day, minding my own business like I normally do, and Derek Freda sent me an email but I was in a middle of a bunch of things. Derek is pretty laid back, so about 30 minutes goes by and he said, “Did you get my email?” I said, “I saw it, but I haven’t looked at it yet.” He goes, “You need to look at it right now.” I said, “Okay,” and it was a 14-minute documentary for Action Park, the theme park in New Jersey—and it’s amazing. There was this really dangerous theme park back in the ‘70s and ‘80s owned by the genius Gene Mulvihill. It was almost as if me and the guys had made a theme park—it was that dangerous. So that’s where the idea came from. We didn’t focus on their stories—the Mulvihill family—we focused on having a theme park like that and why it had to go away… and it was kind of the same reason for the downfall of the jackass TV show. Washington came down on MTV, then lawyers got involved and started ruining everything and it took away the fun. So that’s where we went with it.
How long did it take for you to get this movie off the ground and into production?
Three-to-four years. I can tell you right now. You want me to go through emails?
You don’t have to go through your emails, but it seems like you’ve been working on it for quite a while.
Yeah, it has been quite a while, since… what year is it?
It’s 2018.
So, yeah… I got an email from a conversation from me to John Altschuler, Dave Krinsky, Mike Judge, and Derek back in April of 2014, when it was us just kicking things around.
What’s the overall premise of the movie?
It’s about my character, DC, trying to save his failing, hyper-dangerous theme park, and also salvage his relationship with his 14-year-old daughter in one summer—in 1979, basically, with the advent of class action lawsuits and the lawyers digging their heels into everything. It was kind of the last summer of fun before all that was taken away from us.
Did you hire a big-time Hollywood scriptwriter to do the story?
We did get some big-time scriptwriters. We had a number of writers. We started out with John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky who are great, and then we were lucky enough to get Robert Smigel to write a draft. He’s an absolute genius. Eventually I wrote the last four or five drafts, so it was a team effort.
Did you recreate any of the rides from the original theme park?
I think we had the power slide and the alpine slide, but most of them parks had an alpine slide back then. I think the one that was unique to Action Park was the battle tanks that shot tennis balls, but all the rest of the rides in the movie were found in any theme park back then.
How was it working with Chris Pontius on this movie, did he deliver the goods?
Pontius steals the movie, he’s hilarious. I mean, you know Pontius, he’s just as funny between takes. He’s amazing. You know how much he loves hatchets, right? So he plays the lifeguard in the movie, so of course the lifeguard has a hatchet because Pontius always carries around a hatchet—at least one or probably two. In between takes he was constantly making different type of weapons, like spears and things for people on-set like the makeup ladies, like they were dying to get a six-foot long spear. But he would hand it to them and put so much time and energy and love into it that they were very touched to receive a spear. But he’s so funny in the movie, and I just kind of let him go. I tried to write in his voice, but most of the time you give him his lines and whatever he says is going to be better than what I wrote for him. And oh my god, you should see his outfits. You will absolutely love them. He was a scantily clad lifeguard. A lot of midriffs, tight shorts, and you know how is butt wiggles when he walks—it’s a sight to behold.
So I heard you got injured a few times during the filming process, what exactly happened to you?
Yeah, you can say I got injured a few times during the filming process. Jesus Christ, I got injured on this more than any of the jackass movies—not combined, but just any one of them. I had four concussions, a broken right hand, a busted left knee, whiplash, and stiches on my head, lost two teeth, broke my orbital lambda bone in my face, and then I had a blow fracture in my left eye, so when I blew my nose my eye popped out of the socket. I think there’s some other stuff, but I can’t remember.
Were you able to do all the stunts you wanted to do or did you leave any on the table?
After doing the alpine slide where I got that terrible concussion and broke my face, there was another one I was supposed to do the next filming week but there was no way I could do that because I could have lost my eye. So we waited until I got back to Los Angeles to do it, because I still wanted to do it. Then we started editing the movie and realized we didn’t need another stunt, but we might need to do something else. So when we did some reshoots with me as the old DC character, I got my fourth concussion in the film and lost some teeth doing a chin-up on a bar that broke and came down and hit me in the mouth. Meanwhile, I landed on my head AGAIN.
You just love hurting yourself don’t you?
It’s not that I love it, I just want good footage and to get good footage certain things need to happen. And you know those things.
Why did you choose to film this movie in such a faraway place like South Africa?
We wanted to save a lot of money, and by doing this we saved a ton of money and built a theme park. We found a hillside in South Africa that had a nice bottom where you could put a bunch of rides, and the hill was perfect for the slide we built. When we got down there, we wanted to make South Africa look like New Jersey, but we didn’t have enough money. Then somebody said, “Hey, how about Los Angeles?” Now there you go! We can make it look as dry as it was. And just about the stunts, I asked the stuntmen to do them like I did them, like no cutting on the action and no pads. They were actually excited, because they never get to do that and it provided a great energy down there.
What was it like living in Cape Town for three months?
It was almost like four months. I don’t like being away from the family anymore. It was fun, I just don’t like being away from my kids that long. I think I am almost over that kind of travel for that length of time.
So who are the Shitbirds?
They are a group of juvenile delinquent kids I hired to work at Action Point. Basically they’re outcasts from the high schools they go to, and the only kind of place they fit in is at Action Point. We got a really great group of actors to play the Shitbirds.
Are you talking about some of the co-stars of the movie?
Yeah, Eleanor Worthington Cox plays my daughter Boogie in the movie and she’s wonderful. Johnny Pemberton, who’s great, plays a pre-vert named Ziffel. Bridgette Lundy-Paine plays Four Finger Annie and she’s fantastic. Josh Hoover plays a guy named Hot Head Pete. Dan Bakkedahl plays the bad guy and he is goddamn terrific. Matt Shulze is in it, too, and he basically plays himself: a gnarly dude who loves to fight. He loves it! And Eric Manaka plays Rodney, the voice of reason. I’d asked the casting director in London to go around to different skate parks to find someone who would fit the part of Rodney, and she found Eric. He was 16- or 17-years-old and he’d already been making his own films. He came in for an audition and was great. It was his first film he ever did and he was fantastic. I like giving someone that chance and they deliver.
So you brought JxPx Blackmon on as the shady prop master, but how would you rate his acting skills?
Haha… JxPx did an awesome job, as did Scott Manning and Charlie Grisham who was the stunt coordinator. Sean Cliver came down to shoot pictures for a while and he got some great shots for us. But JxPx as an actor? He was amazing! He played the shady janitor and Scott Manning and Charlie Grisham played cops since we were down in South Africa where most of the people had accents. They all did great, and it was so funny to have Scott as a cop because he’s so not a cop. He actually got sunburned really badly down there and I think his arm got infected or he’s allergic to the sun? So he would walk on set with his face covered and full sleeves and it was hot as hell. Poor guy. He worked his ass off though. Everyone did. Did I bring anyone else from our group down there?
No, you didn’t! And I don’t have any more questions for you, so when does the movie come out?
Friday, June 1st, and I hope everyone comes out to see it. If you like to see me get broke off, you’ll like this movie.
(Top photo and sequence by Sean Cliver; Water hose photo by Coco Van Oppens; ©2018 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
hi guys,
my name is malte, i come from austria and i am a huge fan of your work. the reason i am writing to you is because we have a cool stuntvideo project and we would like to show you our work. it would be a great honor if knoxville would see this. also any response would make us so happy :) we also collect videotaped greetingts of artists, who we are fans of and having one from knoxville would mean the world to us.
anyways here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueypdEzJ-K0
greetings from austria,
malte
Posted by: Malte | 05/10/2018 at 11:48 AM