Comedy legend Steve-O has long been famous inflicting damage on himself over the years, most notably in the Jackass movies.
He most recently made his return to the big screen in Jackass Forever but for the last decade, Steve-O (whose real name is Stephen Glover) has been putting in work as a stand-up comedian-taking his life experiences and delivering them to audiences around the world.
That will include Odessa this week when the comedian will perform Wednesday and Thursday at the Ector Theatre as part of his latest leg of “The Bucket List Tour”. The Bucket List Tour is a multimedia comedy stunt show where Steve-O will do a variety of super crazy stunts from Jackass. “Of the stunts and what’s exciting about it is that it’s all stuff that I would never have been allowed to do for jackass because of various laws and stuff,” Glover said in a phone interview. “I just have no rules at all. … It’s such a crazy show that we have dudes passing out in the audience. That happens in most cities that we go to. It’s this weird phenomenon. Guys faint in their seats. It’s pretty wild.”
Glover gave a few examples as to what to expect from this show, one of which includes a stunt where he actually has a medical professional administer general anesthesia drugs to an IV in his arm while riding a bicycle. “That was my idea,” Glover said. “I wanted to get knocked up by general anesthesia while riding a bicycle and to me, it’s so awesome how nuts that is.” For him, it’s high level stuff. He says it is a lot of fun too. Steve-O has been doing this comedy show and various incarnations of it for 12 years now. “I’ve developed this craft of performance stand-up comedy over the last couple of years,” Steve-O said. “Granted, it evolved to where all of my world’s converged. All the crazy physical stunts, all of them are rolled up into this show. It brings all my strengths into one event. It’s a completely original approach which I’m proud of. It’s totally unique and I’m ready to raise the bar.” People have known Steve-O for creating those crazy moments but with each stunt, he raises the bar for craziness and that’s something he says he’s happy and proud of.”
“Doing this show is so much fun for me because it’s so shockingly good and I so enjoy how people respond to it,” Steve-O said. “The last time the Jackass comedian was in the Permian Basin was right here in Odessa in 2013 for a standup comedy show.
“I had a huge turnout,” Steve-O said. “It was one of the more popular markets for me. That felt really good. The shows went pretty well and I was pretty thrilled about it.”
For Steve-O, Texas has always been one of his favorite states to perform.
“I’ve always found that the audiences in Texas are very respectful,” Steve-O said. “I don’t have to put up with a bunch of disruptive people or like that. That’s fun. I appreciate that fact so much that the crowds in Texas had such good energy but are also respectful.”
Because of that reason, he said he chose to film his first standup comedy special at the Paramount Theatre in Austin. “Of course, I’m not saying that all of Texas is the same but generally, my experiences in Texas have been so positive that that’s specifically why I wanted to film my first special in Texas,” Steve-O said. “I assume that Odessa will be such a pleasure to perform in.”
For over 20 years now, the Jackass franchise has churned out numerous movies and spin-offs. Created by Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze and Johnny Knoxville, it originally aired for three seasons on MTV between Oct. 2000 and Feb. 2002. Along with Steve-O, the show featured a cast of nine people carrying out stunts and pranks on each other or the public. The movies would soon follow with Jackass: The Movie in 2002, Jackass Number Two (2006), Jackass 3D (2010) and this year’s Jackass Forever, just to name a few. However, the origins of Jackass go back to the 90s to a skateboarding magazine called Big Brother. “It was almost like the skateboarding was secondary and where just having really funny, wild, random antics was the priority of it,” Steve-O said. “And this magazine was my favorite. They also made videos as well as the monthly issues of the print magazine.” The videos would become wildly popular. “At a certain point, the guy in charge of Big Brother, reached out to spike Jonze and told them that if they were to subtract the skateboarding from Big Brother videos, then what was leftover would make a good TV show. Spike Jonze agreed and they took the Big Brother videos and when they removed the skateboarding, what was left was me and Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius. It was just about that simple.”
It wasn’t long before they got a deal with MTV and the rest became history. From doing stunts that included a porta-potty slingshot to having a fish hook in his face to walking across a tightrope across an alligator pit, Steve-O says the more severe the stunts, the greater.
“If we’re going with the more memorable ones which had more of an impact, I would have to say the porta-potty slingshot which is called the poo cocktail supreme,” Steve-O said. “I think that one was the most memorable. And then the fish hook in my face, being cast as bait for sharks, that was a big one. There was me on the tightrope over the alligator pit, that was pretty memorable. I think the tattoo of my picture on my back is iconic. I love that I have an iconic tattoo on my back. Those are probably my biggest ones.”
However, he’s well aware that the older he gets, the less likely his bones are going to withstand the stunts. “Clearly, our bones are more brittle,” Steve-O said. “It takes less to make our bones break now. there’s a lot more concussions, like we can withstand less head trauma, like if we get hit in the head, it’ll be longer for us to wake up and those are all scary realities but that’s just is what it is.”
During his life, Steve-O has dealt with addiction and has been in rehab. He’s been sober for about 14 years now. “When Jackass started over 20 years ago, I was already in the grips of drug addiction and alcoholism. It got progressively worse and worse as it does,” Steve-O said. In 2008, it reached a point where Knoxville stepped in and reached out a physician and got Steve-O into a hospital. Soon after, an intervention for Steve-O was mapped out. “I think it’s funny that for all those years that Knoxville helped me hurt myself and now he was helping me so it was a weird irony,” Steve-O said. “But yeah, it was something that saved my life. i really needed that. I’ve been sober since then and it’s something that I’m beyond grateful for.”
He didn’t think he would be able to do another Jackass movie but he had fun shooting the latest installment in the franchise this past year.
“I thought that ship had sailed long ago,” Steve-O said. “I was quite comfortable if that was the case because I put in so much work into getting my own stuff going. I’m very fortunate to get myself to a place where I wasn’t relying on Jackass for my livelihood. Once it happened and once we did it, shoot, it was a blast. To be doing it was crazy and the fact that we did it better than ever before because if you look at the reception, it would suggest that it’s the best movie of them all, of course that’s subjective concept but I don’t disagree. I think we did a lot of our best work on this movie.”
Whether or not they make another Jackass movie is yet to be determined. “There are no plans as of yet but given that it was commercially successful and the fact that they brought in a bunch of fresh faces with new talent, I have to believe that kind of leaves the door open for more to happen,” Steve-O said. “If they freshen up the franchise with these new faces, I can’t say that I’d be surprised if they got to make a new movie rather than later.”
As for his Bucket List tour, he’s not sure about what lies beyond it. “I know that I’ve got after this Bucket List tour, I have one more tour that will raise the bar once again,” Steve-O said. “ I can’t speak for anything beyond that but I really mapped out what my follow up tour to my bucket list will be and it’s hilarious and horrific in equal measure.”
