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Photograph by Julia Johnson for The New Yorker
Molly Young
A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine
A journalist has to be abominably rude when writing a magazine profile. The process involves meeting a stranger (often a famous stranger) and asking questions that would barely be appropriate coming from that person’s priest, spouse, or best friend. A New Yorker profile may look spiffy on the page, but behind the spiff is a series of interactions that can violate the most basic principles of social decency.
Happily, violating principles of decency is an area of expertise for Johnny Knoxville, whom I profiled for this week’s issue. The star of “Jackass” has spent more than twenty-five years running with bulls, riding rockets, pulverizing rental cars, and being shot from cannons. “You look at some of the stuff he does and you think, ‘This person probably can’t tie his shoes or read a menu,’ ” Knoxville’s cousin told me.
On the other hand, that same cousin added, you have to be pretty wily to last a quarter century in the business of daredevilry. Even Evel Knievel retired from performing major stunts after sixteen years. So how does Knoxville do it? And, for heaven’s sake, why?
To answer these questions, I spent time with Knoxville—we surfed, ate burgers, wheeled around Hollywood in his 1970 Cadillac Eldorado—and spoke with his friends, family, and even his physician (who joked, “I need a Xanax to watch his stunts”). The method of America’s most famous jackass, it turns out, is more interesting than his madness.
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