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If he'd been born a hundred years ago, P.J. Clapp might have made a decent living for himself as the fourth best performer in the geek show of a travelling circus. But since he entered this world in 1971, Johnny Knoxville, instead, has turned the intentional abuse of his body, and of those of his friends, into a launching pad for his acting career. These are strange times we live in, when a man can nearly kill himself in an overturned golf cart one year, and play the third lead in a $56 million movie the next. (Stranger still when you recall that the movie's first lead also made his bones intentionally abusing his body -- in The Rock's case, in the wrestling ring).
Like Jack Black, Johnny Knoxville is a polarizing celebrity figure; those who like him tend to like him a lot, those who don't loathe him, and there's no one in between because no one else is aware of him. What Knoxville has is microfame -- a great deal of renown in just a couple of demographic verticals (teenaged boys, skateboarders, high-school drop-outs, potheads). Jackass won Knoxville a lot of goodwill among those particular demos, but it couldn't last forever: the skateboard crowd would have moved on to some less-mainstream diversion if Jackass had stayed on the air any longer, and anyway, Knoxville had to try to grow his microfame into macrofame before any further stunts finally killed him. Literally.
Now Knoxville has to figure out how to embark upon a legitimate acting career without alienating the nitwits and stoners who embrace him as one of their own. So choosing the right vehicles in this new career is critical: as entertaining as it may be to comtemplate Knoxville as Captain Von Trapp in a remake of The Sound of Music, that's probably not quite the direction he'll want to go. (Riff in West Side Story? Sure. It's not like we've never seen him in pegged pants and hig-tops before, after all.)
Knoxville's other challenge is his somewhat limited range as an actor. Maybe it's just that he's never had the chance to show off his chops; maybe he's been having all kinds of behind-the-scenes talks with Broadway producers about busting out his Stanley Kowalski or Biff Loman or Caliban. (You know, the more we consider other roles Knoxville would be unlikely to play, the more we'd like to bag this Fame Audit and just keep running down the CV of the parallel-universe Johnny Knoxville. But we must soldier on!) So far, Knoxville's fictional characters have all borne a startling similarity to the real Knoxville -- or, at least as real as a man can be when he's pretending to drive his van with a baby in a car seat teetering on the roof, or taking an old lady around various taxidermists' shops to find out what they'd charge to stuff and mount his grandma. Knoxville became famous by playing himself, and so, it is fitting -- and kind of a relief -- that the roles he's played are a lot like the guy we know from Jackass.
And what, those of you who are not Jackass fans may be asking, is that guy like? He's not what you might expect of a man who is willing to be shot at point-blank range with a rubber bullet. While bluster and trash talk are obviously common in a setting like Jackass, Knoxville isn't a macho blowhard, nor a fearless Evel Knievel type. He never made any effort to hide the fact that he delegated the tasks requiring either the most agility and skill, or the most tolerance for pain or humiliation, to his colleagues. Knoxville did let himself get hit in the balls with a croquet mallet, lit on fire, and covered with live bees, but he (apparently) drew the line at such feats as eating an omelet made of ingredients he'd eaten and then vomited up; getting his buttocks pierced and joined with a barbell; or shoving a toy car up his ass and going to a clinic for an x-ray of same. (You guys, seriously? It's a pretty great show.) Knoxville comes across as someone who, while he will gamely attempt some kinds of physical punishment, but not others, knows his limitations, and can manipulate attention-seeking simpletons (Steve-O) into doing his deranged bidding. And, despite his line of work, he's not really all that tough, exactly; when Knoxville is injured, or apprehensive, or just plain pissed off about some crazy-ass bit he's been tasked to do, the audience is very aware of it; it humanizes him and makes him that much more likable. Plus there's nothing funnier than someone doing stupid shit against his will and better judgment.
Which is not to say that Knoxville comes across as the sort of fellow you'd want to invite to your mother's birthday party. He enjoys a tipple. He doesn't look like he showers, other than with tomato juice after getting intentionally sprayed by a skunk. So really, he's TV likable -- fun to watch from a safe distance, even as he's probably not that fun to hang out with in real life.
On Jackass, on talk shows, in magazine profiles -- when Knoxville is being himself (or "himself"), he has a lot of charisma and magnetism. He's blended reasonably well with the ensemble casts of movie flops like Big Trouble and Deuces Wild. His exposure, as supervillainess Lara Flynn Boyle's sidekick, was wisely limited in Men in Black II.
And now he's in Walking Tall. Knoxville's Ray is a character so close to his celebrity persona as to verge on parody; it even looks as though he supplied his own wardrobe, for Christ's sake. As we said up top, we neither expect nor especially want Knoxville, now that he's styling himself a thespian, to overreach to the degree that he'd embarrass himself. And, as we've already made nerdily clear, we thought Jackass-era Knoxville was just dandy. But here's the thing: new episodes of Jackass the TV show haven't been produced since 2001, and Jackass: The Movie was in theatres over a year and a half ago. Johnny Knoxville's continuing to behave as he did when he was a ringmaster for a crew of barely socialized man-children is unseemly. It's like he graduated high school two years ago but is still coming to all the seniors' parties, trying to make friends by bringing beer and hitting on all the impressionable freshman girls. Except in Knoxville's case, he isn't even going to the parties; he's just hanging out, on his own, by the showbiz fence, acting like he knows his best years are behind him and it's probably all downhill from here.
But we think there's still more success and fun for Johnny Knoxville to look forward to, even as a grown-up, and not just a sixth-year senior. It's time for him to justify our love again -- to do something new (but not too new), to remind us of what we've liked about him, and to prove that he's capable of being more than just King Geek.
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