Johnny Knoxville on Jackass Number Two

Bestiality, alcohol enemas, geriatric cross-dressers - the star and director of the second Jackass film tell us about near-death experiences and insist things are better when you're naked

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"I'm really glad I didn't drink the horse cum," says Johnny Knoxville, musing on the comically dubious activities of the gang in Jackass Number Two. "I sort of wish I hadn't used the same clippers as Mike Ellis used..." adds Jeff Tremaine, the film's director, referring to the scene in the film where the boys clip their pubes then trick a fellow Jackasser into using the hair as a fake beard. All unawares that the aforementioned Ellis ("don't print that!") had a slight case of crabs.

Yep, an audience with members of the Jackass team isn't exactly a sophisticated affair. Apropos the semen-drinking - one of the film's most memorable moments, and certainly its most nauseating - Tremaine said Chris Pontius (the cum-quaffer) had asked, "Aw, man, is that gay? Is that bestiality?" To which the director replied yes, probably, on both counts.

The actual drinking was one thing they couldn't explicitly show, for fear of incurring classification as porn. As for the concerns with his actions seeming gay, drinking horse semen is somewhat by-the-by when the whole gang of ostensibly straight men ("these guys who eat shit and do all these things all have great-looking girlfriends and wives," insists Tremaine) are utterly obsessed with each other's bottoms. Knoxville's justification? "It just seems kinda funny when stuff's going in our bros' butts." Nude is even better, with Tremaine explaining that when they invent a gag or stunt, they often say, "This is funny, but it'd be a lot funnier if you were naked."

Although alcohol enemas, faeces, vomit, bare flesh and dirty geriatric cross-dressing (Spike Jonze appears as an old dear with a propensity for losing her clothes; "He's a much better lady than a man," says Tremaine) do make appearances in the film, for the most part, the Jackass stunts involve activities more likely to leave the participants bruised and battered. Or worse. Jackass Part Two features Knoxville and the boys finding all sorts of inventive ways to damage themselves for laughs. This time round, they seem to have a thing about formidable animals - specifically bulls and anacondas. "We like working with predictable animals," says Tremaine. What's the common, predictable element here? "They all hate humans."

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