i survived action point: a photographer's tale

Half the fun of wondering if you swing to and fro on the mentally unstable side of life is to pit yourself in a one-on-one, right brain vs. left brain interview, which I'm about to self-indulge in now. The topic of discussion will, mostly, be about my experiences while working on Johnny Knoxville's newly released flick, Action Point, which, if you haven't already heard it about 369-odd times, is based on the old "less-than-lethal" amusement park, Action Park, once found in Vernon, New Jersey, back when rules were really just suggestions—not the legalese letter of the law they are today.

That said, let us begin.

Sean Cliver: Who are you and what do you do that warranted your involvement on a major motion picture?

Sean Cliver: My name is Sean Cliver. Years ago, 18 to be precise, I started shooting photos on the "set" of jackass during its formative MTV years. We'd all segued into Hollywood out of the pages of Big Brother skateboard magazine, so that's how our initial "crew" began—all of which can be seen in the documentary Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine, but only if you have access to Hulu.

Anyway, the joke was then that we were all now considered to be "professionals," and we even had T-shirts printed up that stated so in lowercase Helvetica Bold. That's how I magically became a Co-Producer/Still Photographer of IMDB acclaim, despite my real profession being that of a lowly skateboard graphic artist. It's a crazy world.

Someone oughta sell tickets.

Sure, I'd buy one.

So go on. Skip the boring history shit and get on with it already.

Okay, so yeah, last year Knoxville contacted me while they were wading into production on the movie and said he wanted me to come down to Cape Town, South Africa to shoot some of the cockamamie stunts he was concocting. I guess he thought I'd done a decent job of catching him in some of his brighter moments on jackass--

Excuse me, but why exactly do you think that is, why you?

Honestly, I don't know… I guess it's because we were all so accustomed to working with one another in crazy scenarios—there's a comfort level in that—and I'd always had a pretty zen attitude about everything. And by zen I mean I just go to a cartoon universe while looking through the lens of my camera and reality goes slip-sliding away. That may actually be clinically diagnosed as a dissociative psychological disorder, but fuck, dude, when you've got throw-up, poo-poo, and pee-pee flying around you, what do you expect?

Alright, settle down. Back to Action Point.

Whatever. So they'd started shooting near the end of March or beginning of April in 2017, but I didn't end up going there until the beginning of May. Actually, my primary assignment on the trip was to shoot all the gallery photos of the cast, as well as groupings of them for possible promotional usage, e.g. movie poster, billboards, and all that crap, but I'm really not that kind of photographer. And I tried telling them so. But [Paramount] promised I'd be in good company and that there'd be a couple representatives from the marketing agency to assist me on the day of the formal photo shoot.

Still, I was nervous as a shithouse mouse, and couldn't wait for that day to be over so I could just kick back and relax on-set, waiting for Knoxville to fling himself off, into, or onto things. Well, other than that and any other scenes being filmed, the majority of my days were also spent hoofing it up and down the mountain to shoot the various park structures and rides from dawn to dusk, because if you know anything about movie posters it's that there's a whole heck of a lot of compositing that goes on in Photoshop. I first learned this on the jackass movie in 2002, when they combined two of my photos for the primary shopping cart image of the cast and then cobbled in all sorts of fancy background explosions and shit for the final poster.

So that was your first official movie poster?

Yeah, which is funny, because way back when I was a starry-eyed Wisconsin teenager, I had grandiose dreams of one day doing a movie poster—I was a big fan of Drew Struzan, who did all the kickass posters back in the '80s, and I loved the artwork on the schlockier, B-grade horror and sci-fi posters you'd find tacked up on the walls of video rental stores—but I'd always envisioned my doing so as an illustrator, you know? Not a photographer.

A friend of mine recently quipped that for an illustrator I have "more movie poster photography than most photographers." Again, crazy world, and I've really just been an accidental tourist stumbling through it all. Good times!

Tell me a bit about the set used for Action Point. Was that a pre-existing park?

No. Fuck no. Not at all. From what I know it was just a bare hillside prior to them coming in and erecting the whole damn thing, which really gave it that extra oomph in the backwoods-slash-jackassy department. Most of it, I believe, was constructed by the South African production company, but Knoxville had our longtime shady prop master JxPx Blackmon and his assistant Scott Manning shipped in to help design, build, and oversee everything for that authentic American feel. You'd be surprised what cultural differences can slip by, even down to the simplest of signage details. But it was pretty crazy to first set foot on the mountain… and that's not even because there were zebras and springbok roaming about the adjacent hillsides.

The other fun thing of note about my arrival was that it coincided with the onset of winter in South Africa. That really threw me for a damn loop, because I'd been told to prepare for 110-degree temperatures. So on my first early morning call time at 6:30am, I found myself in the pitch black, freezing my ass off, because the sun didn't rise until well after 7am, at which time I could still see the frosty exhalation of my breath. Total Southern California ass that I am, I'd only packed shorts and T-shirts for the entire trip, so off to the Cape Town mall I went to spend my per diem on a whole new working winter wardrobe. Fortunately the Rand to USD ratio was on par with Monopoly money.

That's nice, but you do know that we're talking about world currency and the weather now, right? Let's get back to the photos, like how would you describe your shooting style?

My shooting style? The fuck you talking about? I have a Canon Mark III 5d, if that's what you mean, and I have a remedial grasp of apertures, shutter speeds, and ISO—whatever an ISO is? Look, if you really want to tack a name on my "shooting style," I'd best describe it as "click 'n' wish." You know, just hope for the best and let god sort 'em out.

If anyone is actually reading this, they'd probably get the impression you have no idea what you're doing.

Yeah, well, first impressions are everything. Look, can we talk about the penguins instead? I was really stoked to see the jackass penguins waddling about Boulders Beach.

Save it for your Wildboyz fantasies. What was the wackiest thing you watched Knoxville do stunt-wise on Action Point?

Unfortunately I'd missed the power washer, where they blasted him down the water slide, but I got a real good giggle when Paramount gave me a sneak peek of that daily prior to my trip. The catapult—or trebuchet, sorry—was impressive, if only because we'd never managed to build a successful one on jackass and he went through the side of a barn with just a nick and a shave to his scalp. And of course I knew he was going to eat a mouthful of dusty shit on the alpine slide… he had a lot of physics on his side for that one and the whole eyeball-popping aftermath was just a surprise cherry on top.

The one that stood out the most to me was the "branch too far," where he jumped out of a tree and smack-landed on the roof of a shed. I already suspected that was going to be a tough one for him, because it's not like most of the stunts he prefers where things are just happening to him and he doesn't really have a choice in the matter. This one was different in that he alone had to instigate the jump—it's not like anyone pushed him or the branch broke. So commitment-wise that's a pretty big mental hurdle to clear. What was most difficult for me, though—because this is all about me, right?—was not bursting into laughter when he bounced off the roof—and he really did bounce!—because, you know, it's a real movie set and you're not supposed to make any noise, whereas crew laughter was always just another necessary ingredient of the jackass soundtrack. So I really had to rein in that natural impulse and stifle my braying.

Biggest regret?

What, like in life?

No, on the picture, dumbass. We're not here to hear your goddamn life story.

Oh, okay. Well, I guess it would be that by the time I'd arrived, Chris Pontius had already filmed the majority of his Benny the Lifeguard scenes. That was a bummer, because I could listen to Chris improvise lines all the live long day. I did luck out, though, because they had to do a later reshoot on this one particularly sexy scene of his where he finds himself trapped in a newsroom studio. The long and the short of it is that he gets cummed on, so I had the wonderful opportunity to relive that moment in time—again and again and again and again, because to know Chris is to love Chris. He's the undisputed scene-stealer of the movie.

How long were you in Cape Town?

At some point it felt like an eternity, but I was really only there for just over three weeks, whereas a lot of the other actors had been there since March and already created a castaway family of sorts. Luckily I was able to slip in to their circle on the coattails of Knoxville and Pontius, so I had a good time hanging out with all the Shitbirds.

Oh, the one funny thing about Cape Town was that both Knoxville and Pontius texted me soon after my arrival with the warning to not leave the hotel after sundown. It was a great hotel, but it was located on the periphery of a rather sketchy area—mostly because it's a tourist zone and they're easy pickins for ne'er-do-well individuals. I did have a beautiful view of Table Mountain from my hotel room, though, and it spoke volumes to my inner nature nerd.

On the nature tip, where exactly do you find a brown bear in Africa?

The simplest answer is you don't. From what I heard it was a very complex process and something not likely to ever happen again.

That's all I've really got to ask unless you have anything else you'd care to blather on about.

Well, I don't think it entirely came across on the screen, but like three entire days were spent filming the destruction of the park and it was nothing short of unmitigated chaos—and this is coming from someone whose career has mostly revolved around chaotic film sets. The director, Tim Kirkby, would yell action, and it was basically just a fucking free for all with hundreds of extras going total apeshit. The tennis ball-firing tanks were the real wildcard of these scenes, and as a crew member it was exceptionally thrilling, like you were "in the shit" documenting a real life war or rebel political coup. Actually, I don't know why I'm even talking about this, because looking back at my photos even they couldn't convey what it was like being in the middle of all that… I often fantasized that the footage would be quite beautiful if all played out in slow motion and edited to the tune of David Bowie's "Life On Mars."

Okay. Clearly it's time to end this, because I have no idea what you're going on about. I do know you're a shameless self-promoter, though, so you might as well get on with any last whore-ish sentiments you'd like to tack on for anyone left reading this.

Now that you mention it, I do have my hands in a new skateboard company that's about to launch called StrangeLove Skateboards. The timing isn't great, because the website's not entirely ready yet, so consider it a sneak peek of things to come… because they will come, and I don't mean that in an "on-the-hand" way.