Johnny Knoxville – Memphis Flyer

It’s Sunday afternoon, 72 hours after an omega-level ice storm knocked out the power to roughly half of Memphis, when I realize I need to see a movie to review for this week’s Flyer. After two nights spent in a heatless house, the wife and I have decamped to the climate-controlled refuge of a friend’s home office/guest bedroom. Outside, chainsaws roar through downed trees, and MLGW crews struggle to reconnect the power grid. “Maybe you’ll get power back today,” says our host, trying to be encouraging.

Oh, you sweet summer child. I was here for Ice Storm ’94 and Hurricane Elvis. I know that, when Mother Nature gets really pissed off, it can take weeks to get back to normal. And just what “normal” do we want to get back to? An uncontrolled spread of a mutant virus? The death toll reached 900,000 while we were preoccupied with arctic survival. A fascist movement called the Republican party that has already tried to violently overthrow American democracy and has now graduated to the book-burning phase? An attorney general who refuses to prosecute the traitorous Donald Trump while “very serious people” cluck-cluck about decorum? A rapidly deteriorating planetary climate that we apparently can’t do anything about because a Maserati-driving Senator from West fucking Virginia is afraid his coal stocks will take a hit?

Understandably upset by the prankster, a bull throws Johnny Knoxville.

Malco Powerhouse is open, so which movie should I see to escape this little sneak preview of my future as a climate change refugee? Should it be Roland Emmerich’s latest epic, Moonfall, where I presume a ragtag team tries to prevent the moon from crashing into the Earth, in defiance of all laws of physics and principles of good cinema? Do I want to slog through disaster porn in the midst of an actual disaster?

No, I choose Jackass Forever.

It’s been 20 years since Jackass, that unholy mutation of skater culture that marked the final debasement of MTV, spawned its first feature film. Johnny Knoxville, who, like many East Tennesseans, punches way above his weight in the “destroying Western culture” category, now has five feature films to add to the hundreds of hours of “reality” television he has produced.

How bad could it be? I’m living through William Gibson’s jackpot apocalypse. What could the Jackass crew show me that I haven’t seen?

The answer is: their dicks. Johnsons. Penises. Pricks. The full buffalo. Jackass Forever breaks new ground in the field of high-speed photography of the human testicle. In the opening sequence, director Jeff Tremaine channels Ishirō Honda and attacks a miniature city with a kaiju dingus. When gonads are pummeled with tiny boxing gloves, he brings you every detail at 1,000 frames per second. A guy named Danger gets a nut shot from MMA fighter Francis Ngannou, who holds the record for the hardest punch ever recorded. Two goombas smush their manhood in transparent acrylic schlong presses and use them as ping pong paddles.

Fortunately, Jackass Forever is more than just elaborate genital torture schemes. They also shock each other with tasers, concuss their friends with thrown soccer balls, and terrorize innocent civilians with scatalogical pranks. The team enlists MythBusters’ Tory Belleci to bring science to bear on their 14-year quest to light a fart underwater. Gallons of pig semen are put to nonreproductive use. Tyler, The Creator wears a tuxedo to get his testicles tased. Snakes bite, tarantulas crawl, and a vulture bites a dwarf’s bulging package. I tapped out when Steve-O’s ding dong was attacked by a swarm of bees.

And here we are, back to recreational penile trauma. Was there a meeting at Paramount where someone said, “Even if it tanks at the box office, we’ll still make a fortune from the ball torture fetish community”? I’m probably not the first person to say this, but Jackass is the most repressed homoerotic franchise in film history. Seriously, y’all, just fuck and get it over with already!

I sit in the Powerhouse and let the joystick slapstick wash over me like a shock wave of shit from an exploding porta potty, just happy to be in a room with working heat. “We’re not NASA scientists,” says comedian and Jackass fanboy Eric André. “This isn’t Mensa. We get down and dirty.”

Jackass Forever is currently the No. 1 film in America.

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In the deep recesses of Elvis lore, there is one image that stands out as particularly surreal: Elvis in full 70s regalia shaking hands with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. As the prologue of Elvis and Nixon reminds us, it is by far the most requested image from the National Archive, more popular than the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi or the Apollo 17 “Blue Marble” shot. As the image stares at us from the walls of countless dorm rooms and t shirts, it poses the inscrutable question, “What the hell was going on here?”

Elvis and Nixon meet in December, 1970

Director Liza Johnson tries to answer that question with Elvis and Nixon, with mixed success. One of the best choices from her and a trio of screenwriters (Joey Sagal, Hanna Sagal, and Cary Elews of Princess Bride fame) is beginning with the morning meeting where advisors Egil Keogh (Colin Hanks) and Dwight Chapin (Evan Peters) try to blithely slip in that the President’s nap time will be curtailed in favor of meeting with Mr. Presley. Kevin Spacey, used to playing a president in House Of Cards, absolutely nails Nixon, all hunched shoulders, quivering jowls, and indignation.

When we meet Elvis (Michael Shannon), he’s restless and irritable, trapped in Graceland’s TV room like a panther in a cage. In this telling, it’s the images of the military flailing around in Southeast Asia and the anti-war movement that drive him to seek an audience with the president. No longer a conduit of youthful rebellion, but an early middle aged, wealthy member of the establishment, he’s disturbed by the direction of the country, and thinks the best way he can help is to become an undercover narc. The alternate theory, long entertained by druggies everywhere, that Elvis, buoyed by the finest formulations from Dr. Nick’s pharmacopeia, was pulling Nixon’s leg, is not entertained here.

Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon star in Elvis and Nixon.

The truth is, the story of this weird picture of two of the most recognizable figures of the twentieth century is pretty thin gruel for a movie. Johnson treats it as a light comedy, which is appropriate, and is at her most interesting when she’s drawing parallels between the isolation and delusions of the President and the King. Both have two henchmen—Elvis’ are Jerry Shilling (Alex Pettyfer) and Sonny West (Johnny Knoxville)—who dictate the exact terms on which anyone can communicate with their boss. The climactic meeting is like watching two silverback gorillas trade dominance displays in the jungle, and it’s pretty fun.

The film’s weak link is Michael Shannon, but it’s not entirely his fault. There have been many attempts to portray Elvis onscreen, with varying degrees of success. For my money, the best was still Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter-directed Elvis TV movie from 1979. Shannon’s not a bad actor, and he gets Elvis’ body language right for the most part. But the voice is all wrong, and the look is just…well, Elvis was one of if not the best looking man of his century and Michael Shannon is not. He suffers especially when put up against Spacey’s uncanny Nixon.

Despite that glaring flaw, Elvis and Nixon is a good view for Memphis audiences and Elvis fans. It’s understatedly, and sometimes surreally, funny, and Johnson has some genuine insights on the isolating nature of fame. But the definitive film document of Elvis remains to be made.