"I got rid of my self-esteem and my morality a long time ago," said Ryan Dunn, one of several young, white males that made a career out of "Jackass," the defunct MTV program that raised the bar for comedic stupidity. "I flushed that down the toilet with my toy car."
Anyone who saw "Jackass: The Movie" last October knows Dunn is referring to the toy car he stuffed into a condom and shoved up his rectum. He has since tried to make amends with the startled doctor, who, on camera, viewed an x-ray displaying the end product of his anal adventure.
"I called him up and invited him to the ("Jackass: The Movie") premiere in L.A.," Dunn said. "I kept on leaving messages and he wouldn't call me back. So he's a little freaked out by what happened down there."
For Dunn - who appeared last night in Amherst at Club Evolution with fellow "Jackass" cohort Steve-O on his "Don't Try This At Home" tour - abandoning his inhibitions has made him a success. Embarrassing himself in front of a doctor is small potatoes. This past Tuesday, Dunn had no qualms using his talent to support the arts.
Earlier in the day, Dunn called up a local ice carver to participate in a national sculpting festival in Ohio. The two had a friendly chat and agreed to practice together.
"I went to the icehouse and he's like, 'Well, why don't we do something simple, we'll carve a Florida sailfish...' By the time he was done he had a really nice sailfish," Dunn said. "And I just had a big dick."
But for the purposes of Steve-O's tour, Dunn's skills are more practical when it comes to enduring pain, as opposed to making a public spectacle. Working alongside Steve-O - who faces obscenity charges in a Louisiana court for stapling his scrotum to his inner thigh - necessitates rejecting pain.
Dunn said he broke his wrist and suffered several concussions for trying to perform bike tricks on stage.
"I've broken a lot of watches and (got) bruised up just for diving off the stage on to people when they don't want me to," he said.
It's second nature to Dunn, but for the rest of the public, the stupid human tricks of the "Jackass" crew have polarizing results. Fans applaud them and allow "Jackass: The Movie" to earn a profit 1,500 percent larger than the film's production costs, or the "Jackass" jocks disgust and turn people into culture critics.
In his review of the film, New York Times critic A.O. Scott stated: "'Jackass: The Movie' does not offer much psychological insight, but it does suggest that this small tribe of young white men is motivated by extreme boredom and a playful, quasi-erotic sadomasochistic camaraderie."
But if you want to understand what motivates a "Jackass," Dunn isn't about to make anything insightful out of activities like "bungee wedgie." While on a plane, he met a fan that, to his surprise, called the "Jackass" antics "art."
"I was like 'Yeah, man, that sounds pretty good,'" Dunn said. "It's fools' art. I don't know. It comes easy. I just wreck myself and have fun. And for some reason, somebody out there wants to pay me for it."
Even so, comprehending Dunn's motivation to do what most sane persons would never think of won't result in an easy answer, but his background might have some clues. Also known as "Random Hero," the scruffy-haired native of Ohio learned early on, even before he began jumping off of buildings, that his antics were about getting attention.
According to Dunn, living in Ohio was "a butt hole." His family later moved to East Amherst, where Dunn spent part of his secondary education at Williamsville East High School, not as a model student. But for Dunn, it was thoroughly more enjoyable than Ohio, even though he landed into problems.
"Just to clear my name, I got in trouble for stupid drugs," Dunn said. "I just went to rehab because, you know, my mom was all pissed at me, so I just went there to make everybody happy."
The more formative years of Dunn's early life was spent in West Chester, Penn. It was during this time he met Bam Margera, the professional skater of the "Jackass" crew who is usually seen on MTV abusing his father.
Margera introduced Dunn into the stimulating world of daredevil videos. Bam's brother, Jess, was the drummer for Pennsylvania punk band CKY, short for Camp Kill Yourself. To promote their band, CKY provided background music to videos that featured Bam and his friends partaking in various stunts, pranks and skating tricks. The videos, which, among other antics, contained a clip of Dunn urinating on a cast member, became underground hits that eventually got the crew from West Chester connected with head Jackass Johnny Knoxville.
Dunn, if the stories are as accurate as they are told, had two personalities during his early years in West Chester: the kid who couldn't help but act up and the sap that was whipped by the girls. In fact, the soon-to-be-released CKY film "Haggard," is about Dunn's ex-girlfriend with a cheating heart - she used to have sex with other guys on his driveway before visiting her true boyfriend.
"The story of my life," Dunn said. "I've dated some horrible girls and I kind of just threw some short stories about her and just made a movie about stupid idiots not getting over a girl. And he's got his two buddies trying to help get over it and they start breaking into houses."
Dunn's friendship with Margera had two important personal consequences for him - the first spared him the use of his hands.
"I tried to crucify myself one time with a nail gun, but luckily ... Margera came in and stopped it and warned me with a call from the doctor that I'd lose all feeling in my hand, and would just have a little club (for my hands) for the rest of my life," he said. "So I stopped that. But I was about to do it. Someone a lot smarter than me told me not to."
The second gave him an outlet for attention. Although Dunn's brother was a football player "and crap like that," Ryan had no perceptible talent.
"I just wanted to entertain people and I wasn't that funny," Dunn said. "So I didn't choose whatever route I wanted to take. Me and Bam had cameras and we just started going at it and just never stopped."
Dunn has no intention of ever stopping. Although he has personal reservations against appearing in a possible sequel to "Jackass: The Movie," as implied by the end of the film, he would rather just disappear from the franchise and reappear as an old man.
"Just 50 years from now and it comes back out: 'Jackass,' 'the Son of Jackass,' and we're acting like fools again," Dunn said. "I mean, everybody would just love to see an old man that they remember acting like an idiot 50 years ago before, losing my dentures and s-."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
