Name: Why Johnny Knoxville Turned Down "SNL" Job For "Jackass" | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T16:58:26.000Z
Duration: 9 min 11 s
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To-infinitive

No one sets out to have a career the way that you have.

Sentences with adverbs of degree

I just think there's so much that's brilliant about it.

And then you're so effing likable, you know, and you've.

That is kind of your, I think, your secret sauce.

But how does one even begin to become a Johnny Knoxville?

Well, you don't go to college, that's for sure.

Okay, step one, if you're listening, don't go to college, then get on the 10 west and you're fast.

And you started making these videos on your own.

We're going back to what, in the late 90s?

What happened was, honestly, I moved out to Los Angeles to become an actor just two months, maybe a month after high school.

And then my then girlfriend got pregnant and I'm like, oh, I have to do something quick because I.

That's the most frightened I've ever been because I had a little girl on the way and I'm waiting tables and I'm like, I got to do something quick.

So I was living next to Antoine Fuqua in this duplex, and

he set me up with this casting agent who got me a commercial agent.

And I started writing for magazines and like, my version of participatory journalism, like Hunter S.

My one of my first articles was, how about if I test self defense equipment on myself?

That was my best guess at how to support a family.

And it was all out of fear of how to support.

I think you describe that leap as if it's an honest natural progression, you know, Well, a kid's on the way and I better, you know, start to get serious here.

Time to shoot myself in the chest while wearing a bulletproof vest.

So you start doing it and then you start making videos.

A few magazines around town wanted that article, but

none of them, they wanted treated as a negative pickup.

Come see us after you're done, and then we'll.

The only magazine who would help me, like, buy the stun gun, the taser gun.

I bought the bulletproof vest with money my mom gave me for Christmas that year, was the editor of Big Brother magazine, Jeff Tremaine, who is now the director of Jackass, and

he had a skateboarding magazine owned by Larry Flint that.

Right before I was writing, I said, how about if I write the article?

Jeff goes, why don't you film it at the same time?

He's like, I'll have Dimitri go with you to film it.

Who is now the director of photography of Jackass.

And I pull up that morning, and I'm like, get in.

He's like, no, he did, because there's a gun involved.

So that's why the camera works so shaky with that.

So you start making these things, and then you get a chance to make a show for mtv.

At the same moment that you have this deal to make a show, and

you're about to make the show out of nowhere, you get this offer from Lorne Michaels at Saturday Night Live.

Nothing was happening in my life, like, two or three months before.

You know, I mean, the wonderful things with the family and the kid, but professionally, nothing.

We're about to shoot the pilot for mtv, and then, like you said, Lorne Michaels comes calling, and

we go meet at the Polo Lounge, the Beverly Hills Hotel where fear and loathing did begin.

And it was a lot, you know, because I had no gigs before this.

And he's offering me a spot, like five minutes on Saturday Night Live each week.

Not to do characters and things like that.

No, to do what I do, like, make a video each week.

I really seriously considered it, but I ended up thinking I would go on there.

I'm not gonna have any creative control whatsoever.

And I'm about to do this other thing with me and my friends, and I'd rather.

I'd rather bet on us than enter into that and would probably.

I'd been lucky to be on Saturday Night Live, but I chose that.

No, I mean, obviously, you certainly didn't make the wrong move there.

And you got to be the master of your own universe by doing Jackass, as opposed to being a small piece of a show where you have very less sometimes.

Or, you know, we're gonna hold onto that or.

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Why Johnny Knoxville Turned Down "SNL" Job For "Jackass" | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

weird

potential

fear

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