When he’s not serving as human shark bait or stapling his balls to his leg, “Jackass” star Steve-O brings live comedy to the stage. Steve-O will be performing five shows at Déjà Vu Comedy Club this weekend as part of a worldwide comedy tour. The former clown and drug addict talked with MOVE about the upcoming shows, his past in comedy and what not to do on tour. The “professional idiot” is performing a five-show engagement at Déjà Vu from Feb. 9 to 11.
[MOVE] What can we expect for the shows? [Steve-O] It’s filthy comedy and stupid stunts.
[MOVE] You’re playing five shows. Can we expect the same things in each of them? [STEVE-O] Yeah, I’d expect the shows to be similar. I kind of involve the crowd in the shows, so that’s never the same, but all in all the shows will be similar.
[MOVE] Is it more like standup or bringing Jackass to the stage?
[STEVE-O] There’s really two sets. I’m going to do a set of standup, which is pretty much just based on my experience as a semi-famous, drug-addicted, male slut, and then after the standup I do a set of silly stunts and tricks.
[MOVE] Which part do you like doing more?
[STEVE-O] It depends. I like it all. I find that people come to my shows with generally kinda low expectations for my standup, and the consensus I get is that people are really surprised to find out that my comedy is better than they expect it to be. I have two goals with my show: I want people to think that my comedy is better than they expected, and I also want them to leave thinking like, “Holy crap, that guy’s still crazy.” I guess if you ask which set I’d prefer more it’s like, well, “What’s more important to me? The comedy or that they think I’m still crazy?” I can’t really answer that. I think it’s equally important.
[MOVE] Had you been doing comedy tours in between the TV shows and movies?
[STEVE-O] The comedy tour has been going on since November of 2010. I first started doing standup back in 2006, but that was the first time I got into it. Touring in general I’ve kinda always done. My career started as a circus clown, my first real clown job I guess was in a nightclub, but then I worked as a clown on Royal Caribbean cruise line, and then I worked in the circus. My last day as working as a clown in the circus was my first day filming for Jackass. As soon as Jackass came out I started up a tour, the Don’t Try This at Home Tour, and that revolved around doing drunken rambling. I’d come out on stage breaking beers on my head and chugging liquor the whole time and sort of rambling on and doing crazy stunts. This tour is very similar to that one, except I’ve replaced the drunken rambling with stand-up comedy.
[MOVE] What’s the craziest thing that’s happened on this tour?
[STEVE-O] I don’t know. I don’t even know where to begin. In 2011, I went to 15 different countries on this tour. I did shows all over the world, so I don’t even know where to start. The whole thing has been crazy.
[MOVE] Were there one or two things that really stood out?
[STEVE-O] The thing that comes into mind is setting off smoke alarms, like blowing a fireball into a fire alarm and that just turned into kind of a disaster, with cops and evacuating the building and stuff. It’s bad to blow fireballs onto fire alarms or smoke detectors.
Steve-O’s five-show engagement will be held at Déjà Vu from Feb. 9 to 11. Tickets range from $15 to $20.