LOS ANGELES – For many people, the idea of a movie about a normal guy pretending to be intellectually challenged in order to fix the Special Olympics might sound like a bad joke. It’s probably not surprising that to Johnny Knoxville, it sounded like a hilarious one.
Lured in by Ricky Blitt’s script and the presence of the Farrelly brothers (“There’s Something About Mary”) on the production team, Knoxville seems to have been particularly moved by the opportunity to work with his co-stars, a mixture of character actors, real Special Olympians and developmentally challenged thespians.
“I’d never been around mentally challenged people before and I’d missed out on that whole world and God … I’ve been with John (Taylor) and Eddie (Barbanell) a lot lately and, I dunno, we have a ball,” Knoxville says. “I showed the “Jackass’ guys the movie and now they’re open to that world.”
On the “Ringer” set, when he wasn’t pulling his standard pranks on the cast and crew – an incident involving a cattle prod is mentioned by actors and producers alike – Knoxville was stretching his performing muscles to create the unique sub-character of “Jeffy,” the special alter-ego crafted his character Steve, a cubicle drone whose Olympic motives are actually confusingly altruistic.
“Basically, I didn’t want to be hard to watch, you know?” he says. “And wanted to keep it light. Steve is a good guy, he’s just not very quick and I don’t think he’d be that great of an actor, so Jeffy would fall in and out of character and go over-the-top sometimes. So that’s how I approached it. I wasn’t trying to do Dustin Hoffman doing “Rainman.’ Steve is not capable of that.”
Knoxville scoffs at the idea that a correlation might exist between the complicated stunts of “Jackass” and the physical prowess necessary to pretend to be competing in the Special Olympics.
“On “Jackass,’ there’s no athleticism required,” he explains. “You just have to fail doing your stunts on “Jackass.’ If you did a stunt and you landed it, it’s like “Do it again til you fail.’ In the movie, it’s the opposite. Stuntmen on movies are insanely skilled and trained in a number of areas and … yeah … I love the stunt guys. And the Teamsters. Always be nice to the Teamsters. No one can shut a movie down faster. Be nice.”
Knoxville says that the film’s subject matter never offended him. Looking over the actor’s resume, it seems hard to imagine anything disgusting him, but Knoxville begs to differ.
“Oh, there’s tons of things,” he insists. “I’ve walked out of movies. I can’t take certain things, even to watch in a film. I know it’s all set up, but … I walked out of “Leaving Las Vegas’ during the rape scene with the guys hitting the girl, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t want to see that.’ Anything with women or children in jeopardy … Nah. I don’t like that.”
It’s been a busy 2005 for Knoxville. He’s expanded his acting horizons with a slew of films ranging for “Lords of Dogtown” to “The Dukes of Hazzard” to the barely released “Daltry Calhoun.” He’s also nearly completed work in John Madden’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s “Killshot.” He understands that viewers – and junket-going reporters – may be just a little sick of him.
“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna be in theaters for a while,” Knoxville notes. “You’ll have a whole year without me.”
“The Ringer” hits theaters nationwide on Friday.
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