Paramount has much riding on Jackass: Number Two, with the hit-hungry studio praying audiences will show up for another heaping serving of its particular brand of inter-rectal Hot Wheels fun. Director Jeff Tremaine—whose face became familiar to West Hollywood locals when Jackass star Johnny Knoxville put it on a billboard promoting a fictional gay cruise line—spoke to MTV.com about his unwitting participation in the viral marketing prank:

Tremaine: I had nothing to do with that billboard. In fact, I was probably just as surprised as anybody to see that stupid thing... Johnny and the executive producers had some disposable cash apparently, and they thought it would be funny.

...They made sure I saw it. We did a bit a long time ago called "The Convict" where Knoxville was dressed like a convict in a hardware store trying to saw his handcuffs off. The bit was never allowed to be seen, because we didn't do things by legal standards. So the producers told me that we were gonna go down and talk to the West Hollywood Police Department because they were considering letting us use that footage. It was all just a setup to get me down there to see that f—-ing billboard.

MTV: How did people react to the billboard?

Tremaine: I've heard from friends who think it's just hilarious. They all love my tribal work tattoo and the nipple ring I'm sporting.

The self-initiated scheme was so successful in drumming up early buzz for the film that Paramount would be crazy to abandon the gay cruise campaign prematurely. Their marketing group shouldn't give up until every possible Photoshopped combination of Steve-O, Bam, Knoxville, and the gang tangled in compromising scenarios looms above intersections in West Hollywood, where their scrotum-durability testing as entertainment can be best appreciated.