Your bag is empty.
“Watch your balls,” Steve-O advises me with a chuckle. Indeed, the moment I realize I could be in for a world of hurt is when I find myself seated on a very white, and very leather, couch next to the Jackass alum, with a virtual-reality headset on my face. His words of caution, followed by that signature scratchy laugh, send a chill down my spine. After all, this is the same dude who put a black widow in his mouth for fun, who once made himself shark bait, who once got his butt pierced shut.
What exactly am I doing in a random penthouse suite in the heart of Hollywood? Well, I’m glad you asked. This all began as a sneak peek at Headset Hotshots, a new prank series that premiered this week on YouTube. Created by VR producer and filmmaker Sam Macaroni, the first two episodes are hosted by Jackass mainstays Steve-O and Chris Pontius.
“I got obsessed with VR, because it’s such a powerful medium,” explains Macaroni, who produces the show with his company Thundership. “What I think is amazing is being able to put something on someone’s head and watch them scream so hard, they fall out of a chair. I wanted to make a show that curates everything in VR, but is funny and interesting, and every week, you get to see stuff that’s cool.”
“I just did naked skydiving for my first time, where I masturbated and actually ejaculated on my way out of an airplane.”
Macaroni and Steve-O have been friends for a long time, they tell me. And it sounds like this collaboration was more a favor than anything else. It may be worth noting that Macaroni recently lit his buddy on fire for a crazy stunt that left Steve-O with third-degree burns, requiring him to eventually get the skin of multiple dead people grafted onto his body.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, though. On March 9, 2018, the stuntman extraordinaire celebrated his 10th year of sobriety. Stepping away from drugs and alcohol has profoundly changed his life, for sure. But after all these years, he’s still performing insane feats … or as Steve-O himself likes to say, “Doing dumb shit.”
“I think the fact is this: I never really was driven to do dumb, dangerous shit because I was loaded,” the 44-year-old explains. “Rather, I did it because I’m an attention whore.” And as I bring up his knack for shedding his clothes in front of the camera, he once again points to the audience’s reaction as his reason for pretty much doing anything.
“I think that whatever you’re doing, if you’re naked, it’s going to be funnier than with your clothes on. My experience in life is secondary to how I think others will perceive it.” He takes a pause to really make me feel what he’s feeling. “External validation is my higher power.”
One of the many things Steve-O became famous for during his time with the Jackass crew was, well, puking. It’s a bone I am ready to pick with him as, from this writer’s perspective, I am comfortable with neither being naked nor vomiting in public … let alone on camera. He may have put these days behind him, but it seems he has his own bone to pick, as well. “I’m just mad as hell that the Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t seem interested in honoring my having puked on television more than anybody else,” he says. “That’s got to be a record! I don’t think there’s anyone out there that can touch me.”
All this talk leads to the inevitable question: Will there be a Jackass 4? “I don’t think so. I actually am leaning towards definitely not.” He doesn’t ultimately know which direction Johnny Knoxville will take the franchise, but Steve-O seems perfectly fine putting the series behind him.
Heck, it’s not like the man isn’t staying busy. While maintaining his popular YouTube channel, Steve-O has started making a name for himself in the stand-up comedy world. He describes his transition to the stage as an uphill battle, but he persevered. Now, with two self-produced comedy specials under his belt, he’s not only developed a loyal fan base, but he’s honed his craft.
“After I taped the first special, and I was putting together the new act, it occurred to me that all the stories I was telling actually initially happened on camera,” Steve-O tells me. “So then I thought: What if I make a comedy special with the stand-up, but with footage of the stories I’m telling edited into it?” The result is a multimedia experience where the audience sees the incidents as he provides the commentary. And that’s all just the tip of the iceberg.
“This brings me to my third sort of act, or whatever, which is going to end up being my third comedy special,” Steve-O says, giggling. He’s now on the edge of his seat, really painting a picture. “Now, it’s just come full circle. Now, it’s just full-force, next-level Jackass shit.” Remembering his earlier warning, hearing the words “next-level Jackass shit” immediately inspires me to cross my legs. (I probably should’ve worn a cup …)
“I’m simultaneously filming marquee stunts as I develop the stand-up material around it. It’s called Steve-O: The Bucket List. I’m finally taking care of ideas that were just too ambitious, illegal, etcetera—you know, whatever the case may be—to do,” he continues.
Too ambitious? Illegal? Prepare yourselves, because it sounds like Steve-O is really pulling out all the stops for this one. He teases a few items on said bucket list, which he says are already in the can. “I just did naked skydiving for my first time, where I masturbated and actually ejaculated on my way out of an airplane.” I guess that’s one way to cure your skydiving phobia.
He describes other stunts he’s completed, including the “General Anesthesia Olympics,” where he performs “Olympic sports while passing out on general-anesthesia drugs.” And then there’s “The Vasectomy Party,” a segment where he goes bareback horseback riding at a children’s party right after undergoing the procedure.
With everything he’s put his body through, it’s hard not to wonder if Steve-O is a masochist. But he insists that he doesn’t like pain—just the attention. It’s mind-boggling, until he talks about his passion for animals and animal rights. The same type of selflessness he describes in the torture he puts himself through—call it external validation, or the act of putting the needs of others before himself—well, it shines through here as well.
Before he was a world-famous stuntman, Steve-O worked in the circus, and it was that experience that shed light on animal abuse under the big top. “Fairly shortly after I became a public figure, I’d use my platform to bitch about the circus.” His message only grew from there: In 2006, he appeared in two PETA campaigns, and in 2008, he not only got sober but stopped eating meat. “The more I made decisions based on compassion, I somehow benefitted from it. It was helpful to boost self-esteem and to do things I felt good about. I was sort of building esteem through estimable acts.”
“External validation is my higher power.”
It’s baffling to think that the same dude who covered his almost-naked body in raw meat inside a farm full of hungry gators is talking like this. This is not the Steve-O I was expecting. “I live a double life,” he admits. “It used to not be that way. But there was no real longevity in the track I was on. There are different aspects of me. People think I’ll be just bouncing off the walls, and that’s not necessarily the case.”
I breathe a sigh of relief, settling back into the couch. He laughs.
Ten years into his sobriety, Steve-O is mapping out the next phase of his life. He and fiancée Lux Wright aren’t interested in having kids or a family. They have a different vision: an animal sanctuary that Steve-O is calling the Radical Ranch. “We care less about when we get married than where we get married,” he says. “And that’s the idea: to buy the land for the Radical Ranch and get married on the land. Because that represents our future and what we want to do. That’s significant to us.”
While he likens this idea to the animal shelter Gentle Barn—but with crazy go-karts and a welcoming bed-and-breakfast—Steve-O sheds any remaining sense of comedy to really explain how deeply important this project is to him. “My sister has two kids, one with both autism and Down syndrome. He’s so far on the spectrum that next month, he turns 11 years old, and he’s still completely non-verbal.” His sister wanted to structure her will so that, if anything happened to her, he’d become his nephew’s guardian. And that idea really freaked him out. “Now, I’m the dude looking to get a vasectomy at the time. I don’t want kids, let alone that. I went into a fucking panic when my sister told me that if anything happens to her, I’d be responsible for her kids.”
After some time, though, things began to come into focus. A close friend suggested the idea of an animal sanctuary, and that was the watershed moment that brought this whole plan to life. “I start thinking that if I were to have an animal sanctuary—a 501(c)(3) non-profit, leveraging my platform—it’d be a big advantage over other animal sanctuaries [in] that I have a voice like that.” Not only would he be able to take care of 43 different species on the property, he’d be able to employ his sister—and in the process, create a supporting environment for his nephew to thrive in.
“So then, if all this comes together, this will ultimately, I see, serve as … I don’t want to say legitimize, because it’s not like I’m not proud, but really sort of elevate all of my naked fuckery,” he says with a smile. “It’s a legacy that I really care about, and it’s a one-stop shop for everything I want to accomplish.”
Until his vision becomes a reality, it seems Steve-O will continue doing what he does best: “Doing dumb shit.” He’s currently in the process of selling his second comedy special, the one where he proposed to his then-girlfriend after being duct-taped to a billboard truck for seven hours on his way from L.A. to Denver. And with Headset Hotshots, he’s becoming an unlikely poster child for technological advances in entertainment. “We had a good time doing it,” he exclaims about the series. “I’m not ashamed of the content, and we get to play with some nifty new toys.” Hey, sometimes a good time is all anyone needs.