Steve-O On Taping Himself To Los Angeles Billboard: 'I Was Terrified No One Was Going To Pay Attention To Me'

LOS ANGELES (CBS Local) — Steve-O has been making people laugh and wince in pain for over two decades and he provided some new amusement for the city of Los Angeles when he taped himself to a billboard last month to promote his new comedy special called "Gnarly."

The comedian and stunt performer became a household name in the early 2000's with the creation of "Jackass" on MTV and Steve-O is still out there doing crazy things, even after many surgeries and broken bones. He says that no one noticed he was taped to a billboard until about 90 minutes after a construction team put him in a harness and stuck him high above the city.

"My comedy special is like part Jackass movie, part documentary and part stand-up comedy special. It's just this whole thing I'm so excited about. To let the world know about it, I hired a construction team to figure out how to tape me to a billboard, which I rented," said Steve-O in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "I was up there for roughly two hours and up there for almost an hour and a half without anybody seeming to care about it. I was terrified no one was going to pay attention to me. I showed up on the Citizen app and it went crazy viral on there. As publicity stunts go, it was wildly successful."

FULL INTERVIEW

The Jackass star drew the attention of local Los Angeles police officers and firefighters after the news started to spread about his stunt on social media. Steve-O was harnessed onto the billboard and two cranes were kept on the scene to get him down. However, the fire department decided to take matters into their own hands and the comedian made sure to compensate the crew for their work.

"The fire department apparently said they had to be the ones to pull me down," said Steve-O. "While it was great it happened quickly, I was genuinely upset to see the fire department was wasting their time pulling me off of a billboard. What I did was take a particularly magnificent photo on the billboard and I made 1,000 8x10 prints of it. I signed every single one by hand and then sold them all on my website to raise money for the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation. I did that and then matched the $25,000 that was brought in."

Steve-O's comedy special is available on his website right now. The special also commemorates the 20th anniversary of "Jackass" first airing on MTV. The stunt performer was a circus clown before the show began and he knew that he, Bam Margera and the rest of the crew had something special right from the jump on MTV.

"Before Jackass, I was a circus clown," said Steve-O. "Had Jackass not happened, I'm a persistent guy so I don't think I would've given up until some kind of big thing happened. It'll be 20 years since Jackass came out on October 1. The 20th anniversary of the first episode premiering on MTV. To imagine that two decades have gone by and I'm still getting away with it. I'm profoundly grateful for what I've been able to do."

Watch all of DJ Sixsmith's interviews from "The Sit-Down" series here.