Johnny Knoxville Blames ‘Fun Police’ for Killing Studio Comedies

Johnny Knoxville is no stranger to suffering for his art. As lead prankster on the comedy stunt show “Jackass” and its subsequent film series, Knoxville got knocked out by a professional boxer, shot himself in the chest with a .38 while wearing a worn-out bulletproof vest, and strapped himself to a rocket. It was good preparation for “Tiny Fugitives,” a new comedy that sees Knoxville’s over-the-hill camp counselor treated like a human piñata by a group of teenagers. Yes, he had a stunt double, but Knoxville did risk life and limb for a laugh during shooting; he just can’t remember putting his body on the line.

“What was the most dynamic indignity that I suffered?” Knoxville said to IndieWire, searching desperately for the answer. “I’ve had a lot of concussions.”

“I liked seeing you get thrown through the bunkhouse wall,” Michael Lewen, the film’s cowriter and director, interjected. “I liked seeing you get driven around on the top of that car.”

Lewen stopped himself, but with a mischievous smirk that suggested he’d like to keep going. And truthfully there’s plenty to work with. “Tiny Fugitives” follows a group of foul-mouthed campers who decide they want to keep summer going indefinitely instead of returning home. That leads them to stage a breakout with Knoxville’s character Bob, a deranged counselor who was supposed to hand them off to their parents, in hot pursuit. But they outmaneuver him at every point, leaving Bob pummeled and pulverized. There were times when Knoxville’s “Jackass” education came in handy.

“When we were shooting the scene where he gets electrocuted, I asked Johnny, ‘Can you do it with a little more shaking when you get zapped, kind of like they do in the movies,’” Lewen said. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, but that’s not really what happens when you get electrocuted. ‘And I realized, oh, of course, we got the guy that actually knows what happens. So I learned from him.”

For Knoxville’s tormentors, Lewen made a point of casting real 12- and 13-year-olds so they’d feel authentic.

“The hard part is sticking a 12-year-old up on wires 40 feet in the air and dropping him down to the ground,” Lewen said. “These kids did a lot of their own stunts, and so you know you want to double-check it all before they do it. It’s very physical work for them.”

Knoxville found a lot of fans among the teen ensemble.

“Some of them had seen ‘Jackass,’” Knoxville said. “And I was like, why are you watching that? You’re too young. You shouldn’t watch trash like that.”

It can be tough working with younger co-stars, but Knoxville, boyish at 55 despite his silver hair, confesses they were better-behaved than he was.

“It was probably more difficult for them because I had the shortest attention span on the set,” Knoxville said. “But I love working with kids. They’re fun. They’re very free, and Michael did a really good job of casting very mischievous kids. They really had my number the whole movie.”

“Tiny Fugitives” feels like a throwback to R-rated raunchy comedies like “Superbad” and “Knocked Up” that dominated the box office in the early aughts. It’s no coincidence that Point Grey Pictures, which was co-founded by the star of those movies, Seth Rogen, produced “Tiny Fugitives.” But the film is something of an endangered species since studios have more or less stopped making theatrical comedies. Knoxville thinks they may be a casualty of political correctness.

“It’s tougher to make comedies today,” he said. “There’s a lot of fun police or joke police out there. There’s kind of an ebb and flow throughout time, and we’re just on the conservative side as far as that goes. It’s just harder.”

”Tiny Fugitives” is now in theaters.