Steve-O's Interview

Whatever you do, don't try this at home

Steve-O's 'Jackass' tour schedule as painful as his outrageous stunts

By DENISE L. SCOTT

Better known as Steve-O of MTV's "Jackass" fame, the professionally trained circus clown turned gross-out stunt man is bringing his stage show, "The Don't Try This At Home Tour" to Club Neptunes in Fort Myers on Sunday night, Jan. 12th 2003.

"It's a grueling touring schedule through January in the U.S. and February in the United Kingdom," he said, his voice a gravelly mumble. "I'll do five nights in a row and have a night or two off, then do four." That would be a tough schedule for most performers, but it's downright masochistic considering what Steve-O puts his body through during a typical hour-long performance, accompanied by several others from the "Jackass" crew.

Steve-O's previous stunts for "Jackass" and his own DVD videos have left him bruised and battered at best. At worst - during stunts such as setting his head on fire or skydiving over water without a parachute - Steve-O wound up with a burned face, cracked skull and broken cheekbone, teeth, wrist, collarbone, jaw, ankle and hand. "I stopped chewing up all the glass," he said, referring to a portion of his stage show. "Now I just slash my tongue open and bleed everywhere. I have staple holes all over my body from an industrial staple gun." The name of the tour reflects the warning that precedes each episode of the stunt-filled TV show. Not all teens heed that warning, though, and botched stunts around the country gained national attention for injuries and several deaths. Skateboarder Mike Garrido, 15, of Cape Coral, said he wouldn't imitate the extreme stunts on "Jackass." However, his 18-year-old brother was inspired to ride a shopping cart down a hill. He wasn't injured.

"I'm not out to share the spotlight, so I'd wish they'd just stop," Steve-O said about copycats, sidestepping a serious discussion of his influence on impressionable children to talk about his adult fans. He admitted that he doesn't attract the most responsible demographic."I've had trouble respecting, over the years, my overwhelming influence on people," Steve-O said. That doesn't stop him from getting fans to voluntarily punch their own faces into a bloody pulp. He invites hecklers on stage to kick them in the crotch. "They agree they're aware of the risks involved and won't hold me liable in any way," he said. "It's videotaped testimony. It's important to me for my stage show to be as ludicrously inappropriate as possible, yet within the boundaries of the law." Speaking of the law, Steve-O got a continuance until February of his Louisiana court date for obscenity charges after stapling his scrotum to his leg during a summer performance. He declined to discuss those charges but said he retains four criminal lawyers as well as entertainment and business lawyers. A bachelor, Steve-O live on the road but shares an apartment with a male stripper in Hollywood, Calif.

He calls home wherever his mother is - currently Lake Worth. He grew up the only son in a wealthy family that moved from England to South America, the United States and Canada before returning to England for his high school years. "My dad was never really home," he said. "My mom was always drunk. I grew up rich. That bummed me out. I was embarrassed the house was so big." Early on, Steve-O became passionate about skateboarding, heavy metal music and video cameras. After graduating high school in 1992, he studied advertising at the University of Miami and dropped out within a year. "I traveled around and followed the Grateful Dead and sold drugs," Steve-O said. "I struggled a lot. My home videos got me into clown college." At 23, he enrolled in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. That led to jobs on Royal Caribbean Cruise Line and Hanneford Family Circus in south Florida. His skateboarding home videos led him to "Jackass," which debuted in October 2000. "I didn't think it would be so popular," Steve-O said. "Everyone told us we were going to be a flash in the pan." That flash lasted for two seasons and is now in reruns on MTV.

The spinoff "Jackass: The Movie" earned $22.7 million its opening weekend in October. Garrido said his parents tell him not to watch "Jackass." They aren't alone. Kay Wingert, 55, of Fort Myers won't allow her 13-year-old son to watch it either. "It's as if parents have given up monitoring what their children see," she said. John Hiltebrand, 10, of Fort Myers saw the movie, but he didn't sneak into the popular R-rated film. His mother, also a fan, accompanied him. "My mom thought the movie was really funny," he said. Wingert said she has only seen snippets of the TV show. "Frankly, I was flabbergasted that anyone would call this entertainment," she said. "The language was offensive, and the things they were doing - it was self-mutilation. It makes no sense to me." Club Neptunes Manager Gaye Levine said Wednesday she's sold about 70 advance tickets for the bar's 700 capacity but expects strong sales at the door. "We don't get a lot of pre-sales for rock shows either," she said. "They just show up." Whatever the method to the "Jackass" madness, it has created a fascination among a much broader audience than just teenage boys.

Troy Herr, 27, a salesman at Extreme Rage Alternative Sports in Fort Myers, knows fans ranging in age from 22 to 40, both men and women. He has also seen local daredevils imitate stunts, riding bikes off the roof of a house. Herr said "Jackass" is the next step in vulgar TV, with real people evolving from cartoon characters such as "Beavis and Butt-Head." His theory isn't far off from that of Ann Sell, a certified family mediator in Fort Myers. She blames gory video games for desensitizing children. "Everybody has to top another," she said. "We're living in a world of 'Entertain me. Make it as outrageous as you can, and I'll watch it.' It has to be more dangerous, more gross, more bloody to hold people's attentions." The performance at Club Neptunes is restricted to ages 18 and older, but Steve-O said kids come to his all-ages shows despite content more extreme than on TV. Steve-O, paid well and having fun, is filming his third DVD stunt video, negotiating a new MTV series and appearing in the upcoming Val Kilmer movie "Blind Horizon." Although movie is a drama, don't expect to find Steve-O slipping into the realm of the serious.

"I'm probably going to keep doing radically dumb things," he said. A turning point came in Steve-O's life at age 13 when he met Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. "I called every hotel room asking for the name of their manager," he said. "I finally got through, and they gave me backstage passes. That was the day I discovered I can do anything I want, if I want to badly enough." His fans have proven that's a plan Steve-O can take to the bank - even if he has to make a quick stop at the hospital on his way there.

Denise L. Scott interviews Steve-O

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