the official chris pontius "action point" interview

Rick Kosick: So how does it feel to be in a movie with Johnny Knoxville again?

Chris Pontius: It felt great. I was so stoked that he asked me to be in it, because it’s the biggest role I’ve ever had in a scripted movie and just filming with any of the jackass guys is like the funnest thing in the world to do. If I could do it constantly I would. We got to go and film in South Africa and that added to the adventure of it. Being in Africa reminded of filming with the Wildboyz… you know, some exotic place, and there’s nothing better in the whole world.

What’s the character you play in the movie?

I play Benny the Lifeguard. I’m like this really irresponsible lifeguard, and the main character, DC, who’s played by Knoxville, is his best friend. I’m just totally irresponsible and reckless, but without trying to be. I’m just a nice guy and always getting into trouble. I was really stoked ’cause I don’t have a lot of people asking me to be in their movies, because I haven’t proved myself that I can act. They just think I jump off buildings and run around naked. I’m so thankful to have someone believe in me and have faith that I can do a good job.

When you were on set shooting, would you stick to the script or improvise?

Knoxville encouraged me to improvise. He said we would use the script as a guideline. I do my best when I’m thinking of stuff on the spot. Sometimes, when there are lines and you actually speak them, it looks right on paper but sounds different when you speak it. So I like it when they allow you to not stick to the script. Sometimes stuff falls from the sky and I get lucky and I think of great stuff on the spot.

What’s the backstory of your character in the movie?

The backstory is that you assume that Benny and DC have been friends forever. They’re pretty much brothers. In the movie, DC’s daughter comes to visit and stay with him. He hasn’t seen her in a few years and Benny has known her throughout her whole life. He’s like an uncle to her and part of their family. There’s a lot of heavy stuff in the movie and my character does a lot of the silly stuff. I’m not saying it’s a heavy drama movie, but it definitely has a lot of heart—it’s not just madness.

How was it filming this movie in South Africa?

Being in Africa was just awesome, like it’s a wild place. I love how Africa is still untamed. I went to Malawi during our break, and it was the most primitive country I’ve ever been to out of all of my travels. When you walk into an airport, you can tell how a country and their modernization is and it was hard to even get a rental car there. We visited Lake Malawi, a giant lake where the water is crystal clear and you can snorkel like in the ocean, and there was barely anyone there. To me it’s fun being somewhere you’re not around a bunch of white people, like I enjoy being the only white person in the country. It’s cool. I like going outside of my familiar places to see what happens and have adventure.

Were you close enough to go on a safari where you were filming?

A lot of the movie was filmed on this land 45-minutes outside of Cape Town. Like we would be filming and all of the sudden there would be zebras in frame in the background or an antelope jumping through the shot and someone would be like, “Cut!” because it just wouldn’t make sense. How awesome is that? It was wild enough that there were zebras running around where you’re shooting. There wasn’t like worries of lions mauling anybody on set out of nowhere, but there were a few instances where people almost stepped on a pit viper, which is a gnarly-like rattle snake and I think they have long fangs. So you had to watch out for them.

Did you interact with many of the other cast members?

In the downtime when we weren’t filming, the whole cast got really close. The characters who are called the Shitbirds—the young kids who are employees of Action Point and kind of like DC’s kids in the movie—they were all like in their twenties. So we all became really close and were like a little family because we were away from home.

Which one was your favorite?

I loved them all. One day we made a teepee near base camp, so in the downtime we’d hang out in there and make spears. Johnny Pemberton and I became really good friends. Josh [Hoover] was awesome and Conner [McVicker], a total trippy kid but so great. Brigette Lundy-Paine was so good. She’s on the show Atypical. She was such a good character on the movie and just an awesome person and a badass chick. There’s also this kid from England named Eric Manaka. I don’t know how Knoxville found him, but he’s this awesome 17-year-old skater kid. He found out I was friends with Andy Roy and he got really stoked because he loves Andy. He was just a badass kid to hang out with. We would all run around Cape Town together, and it was a really good group. While we were making the movie, you know it’s going to come out good if it feels good while you’re making it and having fun. I can’t wait to see it.

You haven’t seen the film yet?

No, I haven’t. I’ve only seen the little parts I had to do ADR voiceover stuff on. I have no idea what the movie looks like. I’m excited to see it, but I’m nervous. I just get nervous watching myself.

Explain what happened to Scott Manning.

The sun is really powerful in the southern hemisphere and Scott has pretty light skin. He’s not responsible about wearing sunscreen and he got burned super bad and basically had an allergic reaction to the ultraviolet light. He had to cover himself from head-to-toe where you could only see his eyes. He was also on steroids to help fight the sun infection, so that made him kind of aggro. The Assistant Director called him the Angel of Death. Yeah, that was kind of hard on Scott. You have to be careful in the sun when you’re down there; even black dudes cover themselves up because the ozone is so thin.

What’s Cape Town like once the sun sets?

It’s awesome. It’s one of the funnest cities I’ve ever been to with the best food out of anywhere—and its cheap. If you go to Nobu Sushi, you can eat a lavish meal for like 200 dollars, where if you where in London you would spend like 2000—it’s that much cheaper. But you had to watch your back if you went outside. There’s a lot of people who will jack you if you’re not careful. Nothing bad happened other than a few of the cast members getting mugged, but they were asking for it by walking around in a neighborhood by themselves where they shouldn’t have. Sometimes the girls would want Kentucky Fried Chicken at three in the morning after a night of being out, and I would volunteer to go and get food for them. I would walk and I was the only white dude from miles around. I always enjoyed it, because it’s an adventure, and I always have weapons—an axe or a knife or my expandable baton—so if I had gotten into trouble, I was ready for it. I think something about that gets me off, too.

Did Knoxville beat himself up pretty good making this movie?

Yeah, he got two of three concussions at least, and his eyeball popped out of its socket after the final concussion. He was filming this thing on the alpine sled where he goes flying off it and it was a pretty big jump. I think he was going to try and run out of it, but the first step he took he went right to his face, knocked himself out. We ran over to him and he didn’t know where he was. He asked if we were in California. He got a CAT scan, but he was okay. When we got back to the hotel, he sent me a text that said: “I sneezed and my eyeball popped halfway out, and I pushed it back in.” A few days later, we were walking back from dinner and I made him laugh and his eyeball popped out again. It was so awkward. But the stunts are awesome. There’s this one thing where he jumps out of a tree and lands on a shed, and the catapult was gnarly. The catapult stunt was something Knoxville wanted to do all through jackass, but we could never get a catapult or there was always some issue. But the guys built one and it was gnarly. It was powered by hydraulics and sent him into a barn. It was one of those stunts where it could be really bad—you know, the night before you are nervous just thinking about it. Luckily he was all right, but god, it was gnarly. It was up there with the rocket in jackass number two. When you make a machine to send your body hurling unnaturally… it’s just fucking gnarly.

Do you think he craves that kind of abuse?

I don’t think any of us on jackass are like adrenaline junky-types. It’s more like testing yourself, where maybe you’re scared but you do it anyway. That’s what it’s about. It’s not like we’re going, “Yeah! We’re so gnarly!” It’s more like, “I’m scared as hell, but I’m going to do it anyway.” I think a lot of what this movie is about is going back to the era like when we were kids, when our parents would probably let us do stuff that they would be frowned at today with everyone so concerned about safety. It was so much more reckless back then. There wasn’t as much entertainment. Kids didn’t have iPhones and a bunch of video games or other things to keep them busy, and when you’ve got nothing to do, that’s what got us all into skateboarding growing up. Being bored and not wanting to play football and finding something else to do with your energy. That’s what skateboarding and punk rock music was all about, and I think that is what’s missing in our society today. Everyone is so concerned about wanting to be safe, but really it's just an illusion… it’s more like people are into feeling like they’re safe. Or it’s about money—someone stubs their toe on a crack on the sidewalk and they sue the city. Just like when we were filming jackass the TV show. They started censoring us so much, because some mom blamed us for her son getting hurt doing something silly, saying he copied us, when really it’s just what kids do and have always done. I think people miss that a lot, and I think there’s something inside us that wants to go back to things being a little bit wild. That’s why all of these survival shows are popular on TV. At the end of the day, you take away all of our computers and phones and put us on a mountain—we’re going to go tribal really quick, and in a matter of hours we can go primitive, because we’re animals. So the spirit of the movie is all about that, going back to that time of not so many rules.

When does Action Point hit the theaters?

The movie comes out June 1^st. You can buy tickets at your local ticket seller or you can contact me directly at ticketsfromchris.com.