Part I: The Fall

I first met Steve-O nine years ago backstage at a stop on the Rock the Bells tour. He bummed a light from me and described a planned tribute to Ol' Dirty Bastard during the Wu Tang Clan's set: nude from the waist down, he would execute a mangina backflip.

He went on to perform exactly what he'd described. Raekwon took serious offense and demanded an apology. Steve-O obliged. "If I were I to go back, I might have done it differently," he told me recently. "I've always been the butt of my own jokes, and I never meant to disrespect anyone." This, coming from the performer who publicly spent a decade splayed out as a grotesque skater bro on Jackass. He wore a jellyfish as a sombrero; tasered himself routinely; and became a human dartboard, a punching bag, shark bait, and, most importantly, a punch line.

Steve-O is a joke. His name is a joke. His trademark cackle is a joke, always punctuated by his drawn-out nasal catch-phrase "Yeaaaaah, dude." His grin is miles wide and his body is routinely the object of insult. Everything is a stunt, everything is a gag. He can't blow his nose without accidentally lighting himself on fire; his need for attention is unrivaled.

But things have changed in the past eight years, mainly because Steve-O got sober. And then inspiration struck. "I chose to be more compassionate towards animals," he says. "It built up my self esteem. I was at a really low point and it was just something that made me feel better." In other words, he found purpose.

Part II: Redemption

It is just before dusk on August 9, 2015. The GoPro footage is shaky. It follows a heavily tattooed Steve-O, now 41, in jeans and a black t-shirt. He has Bluetooth earphones, a lighter, and a backpack with a blow-up whale and a battery-operated air pump. His asthmatic heaving and torrents of expletives punctuate the silence. He walks fast to avoid the gathering crowd. The camera peers up to a bridged crane, 15 or 20 stories high, that looms over a Hollywood construction site. "I'll just go ahead and say it, I'm gonna be really high up in the air," he says.

The footage shuts off, and Steve-O then clambers up the 150-foot crane until he hovers high above Hollywood Boulevard. This is when the footage kicks in once more. He looks down and sees dozens of firefighters, seven trucks, and a helicopter circling. "That's a lot of firefighters," Steve-O says into the camera, which is broadcasting directly to Facebook Live. "They don't need that many firefighters. It's just me." The stunt takes longer than expected, and he's shocked by the manpower below. Once perched on top of the vertical portion of the crane, Steve-O makes his way horizontally. He inflates the plastic orca, sets off some illegal firecrackers, and then sends the whale into the wind. As it floats down toward the now-thousands of people gathered below, a message taped to its side is revealed: "SeaWorld Sucks."

The Hollywood Shamu stunt was Steve-O's second attack on SeaWorld. The first involved a San Diego freeway sign and a bit of rewriting: for a few hours drivers on the 405 saw "SeaWorld Sucks" instead of "SeaWorld Drive" on the exit ramp leading to the marine park.

At his hearing for the crane stunt, Steve-O was sentenced to 30 days in jail—a stint which begins today—and he responded by saying, "Considering I've become a clean and sober, dog-rescuing vegan, I must say I'm ready to go to jail — not just because it will bring so much attention to the plight of orcas in captivity, but because it's nice to let people know I haven't lost my edge."

Steve-O's protest antics were inspired by the documentary Blackfish, whose release has been followed by a 48 percent decline in SeaWorld's attendance. Within months of Steve-O's sentencing, and following growing political pressure, the California Coastal Commission voted to ban orca breeding in California. "My whole crane-climbing, fireworks debacle really turned out to be pretty meaningful in the end," Steve-O says. "If your goal is to make a statement about captivity, you may as well get yourself locked up!"

Part III: Restoration

Steve-O follows in a long line of marginalized performers that put their addiction and mental illness onstage. But he's survived and—with newfound clarity and a Showtime comedy special lined up—he actually seems to be thriving. There is purpose in Steve-O's life now: caring for his rescue dog Walter and cat Olivia, advocacy work with Farm Sanctuary, his actions against SeaWorld. He's dedicated a portion of the proceeds from his current comedy tour to at-risk teens in Los Angeles.

No one would have guessed this was possible in 2008 when Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass boys staged an intervention that forced Steve-O into an involuntary psychiatric hold. "I was in the habit of sending mass emails to about 200 people, basically broadcasting my downward spiral in real time," Steve-O says. "I had a particularly colorful last week before the intervention. I alluded to suicide. I was planning an eviction party in my apartment, and I wanted to ride a motorcycle through the living room. I knew I was messed up. I just felt like there was nothing I could do. I tried to quit various substances on my own and I was pretty resigned to just never quitting. It was clearly the bottom."

The intervention led to a three-week stint of psychiatric hospitalization and out of boredom, Steve-O picked up a book on sobriety and started reading. He's been sober since. A lot of his animal rights work stems from a desire to lead a compassionate lifestyle, which is ironic for someone who routinely impales himself.

Steve-O began his career as a clown and has never shied away from physical theatrics in exchange for a laugh. But he's become a different kind of Jackass. His latest actions are nothing short of political performance art. "The common denominator to all this is that I'm an attention whore," he readily admits. This jail stint won't be his first. He'll eat granola bars and drink juice and be in isolated protected custody, all in the name of freeing Shamu.

Even his sense of risk has taken on new meaning: He was supposed to do a guest stunt for a friend and figured the most terrifying thing he could pull off was a set of stand-up. That first night, he felt the warmth of the crowd and the heat of applause. Perhaps Steve-O has perfected a little sleight of hand. Maybe his act—being a Jackass—is a disguise for something else, like actually caring.

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