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[title]If Jackass 3D just left you wanting more anal volcanoes, poo-cocktail supremes and beehive tetherball high jinks, here’s a bit of good news: Jackass 3.5, featuring an extra 85 minutes of stunts, premieres Friday 1 as a series of webisodes on the video site Joost.com. We talked to America’s most beloved sadomasochist, Jackass ringleader Johnny Knoxville, about getting hurt for a living.
Is the material in Jackass 3.5 just the throwaway bits?
No, we knew we were shooting two movies. Goddamn, I got six or seven staples in my head filming the opening to 3.5. The whole cast was running through Spain carrying a bunch of luggage. There were these rocky stone streets and I tripped and Bam [Margera] fell on my head and off I went to the hospital.
The ER is kind of your second home.
Yeah, yeah. I had asthma growing up, too, so I was in the hospital all the time. When I was eight I almost bought it. I still carry an inhaler with me.
In what special ways do your testicles get damaged in 3.5?
Have you seen those great basketball shots on the Internet, a guy kicking a basketball into the hoop from a crazy distance? We do that, but we use my nuts instead of a basketball hoop.
Eat your heart out, Harlem Globetrotters!
Some of those nut shots took hours and days to hit. Over three days for 13 hours we shot just trying to bounce the ball from the Fourth Street Bridge in Los Angeles and hit me in the nuts.
Whenever you make a TV appearance, you’re always reflexively protecting your crotch with your hand. Do you expect Bam to pop out with a boxing glove?
Yeah, always! Even when I meet someone, I always have my hand over my crotch. I’m like a dog that’s been kicked too much. That’s how all the Jackass guys walk around, with our hands over our nuts.
So the psychological toll of Jackass might be more damaging than the physical injuries?
Oh, yeah. It’s probably why there’s four years between films. Everyone is frazzled at the end of the fuckin’ shoots. Physically you can recover in weeks, but mentally and emotionally it takes a while.
Have you gone to a shrink for Jackass-related issues?
I go to the shrink for other stuff, but not from any fallout from Jackass. But, yeah, maybe some of the guys should. [Laughs]