CKY (videos)
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The CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) videos are an invention of West Chester, Pennsylvania boys Bam Margera and Brandon DiCamillo. Four videos have been released to date, Landspeed: CKY, CKY2K, CKY 3 and CKY4: The Latest And Greatest. There is also a CKY "documentary" DVD, which is a supplemental item in the hard-to-find CKY "Box Set," as well as two "CKY Trilogy" sets, both of which are compilation DVDs featuring scenes from the previous CKY DVDs.
The videos feature Bam Margera, Brandon DiCamillo, their friends and Bam's relatives in all sorts of insane "stunts, pranks and acts of fun" as they themselves put it, interspersed with skating footage of Bam and other pros. A trademark of the skating footage was to show unsuccessful trick attempts immediately followed by the same skater pulling the trick off.
The videos include appearances from pro skaters, the bands HIM and CKY, Bam's parents Phil Margera and April Margera, brother Jess Margera, as well as Ryan Dunn, Raab Himself and Rake Yohn. The latter four, along with Bam and Brandon, are the main stars who comprise "The CKY Crew". Jess's involvement with the video side of CKY became increasingly limited as CKY the band began to tour incessantly and record more and more music.
Various other people appear in the CKY films. These include Ryan Gee, Mark Hanna, Chris Hanna, Naked Dave, CKY band members Deron Miller and Chad Ginsburg, Rake's brother Art Webb 1986, Bam's uncle Vincent (Don Vito) Margera, Bam's former fiancee Jenn Rivell and pro-skateboarders Mike Maldonado, "Hockey Temper" Kerry Getz, "Hoofbité" Chris Aspite, Brandon Novak, Tony Hawk, Tim O'Connor and Mike Vallely. A comprehensive list of those who have appeared in the CKY videos, Viva la Bam, Haggard and so forth is at CKY Crew.
The CKY Crew combined its efforts with a few other like-minded individuals to create the now infamous Jackass television series which aired for three seasons on MTV. A subsequent spin-off titled Viva La Bam followed Bam Margera and his oddball friends of the CKY Crew as they tortured Bam's family and generally wreaked havoc in West Chester and around the world.
Landspeed: CKY
Landspeed: CKY, the first film in the CKY series, was released on March 1st, 1999. Many episodes in the first season of Jackass use scenes from this movie, like the famous "Shopping Carts" sequence.
CKY started when Bam and his friends were in the same Graphics Arts class at East High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Instead of attending class, they would go out in a field and film crazy skits. They had so much footage that Bam decided to make a video.
The name Landspeed comes from Landspeed Wheels, which was a subsidiary of Tum Yeto Inc. that made skateboard wheels and clothing from 1998 to 2000. Landspeed originally produced the CKY video allowing Bam Margera to distribute it in the public domain. Bam discovered that the man who owned Tum Yeto, Tod Swank, was ripping him off. Bam left Toy Machine and took the CKY video with him, re-releasing it titled 'CKY'. He removed the Landspeed title and other references and wrote "A film by Bam Margera and not by anyone from Southern California" on the back inlay. Landspeed Wheels later went out of business.
The original VHS release is hard to find now, and has an extra scene not included with the DVD release of the film. The scene features Brandon Dicamillo running around a Christmas parade as Santa Claus because the real Santa was late. No one at the parade except for Bam and his crew knew that Brandon had nothing to do with the parade and happened to show up on a whim.
CKY2K
On the trip to Iceland, the crew heckled Björk outside her house, and used her music in a previous scene. Like its sequel, CKY2K was discontinued due (in part) to copyright issues. The first major issue was from Björk.
The original VHS release ended with CKY's "Disengage The Simulator," and featured nothing in or after the credits. The DVD release featured "One Last Time" by HIM, and featured additional footage. One such scene featured a minor exposing himself (he had begged to be in the video, and said he'd do anything) in public. This, more than the copyright infringements (of which there were many), led to the discontinuation of the DVD.
CKY2K was the most successful of the CKY movies in sales, and, as a result, it's not rare to find in smaller video stores, despite the fact that it has been out of print since 2004.
CKY 3
CKY4: The Latest & Greatest
Highlights - Don Vito's 50 Shots of Peach Schnapps (Bonus Feature), Lil Key Keys Need For Shit Box (Bonus Feature), Key Key in NYC (Easter Egg) and Ryan Dunn (aka Random Hero) rolling off a roof in a barrel.
CKY4 is the only CKY video to be censored, and one of the few DVDs to have been censored three times.
- A DVD "Easter Egg" (bonus material in a random menu), showed Bam and his then-girlfriend mid-coitus. This wasn't the first time CKY videos have attracted trouble due of this sort, but it had never been cut until mid-2003.
- In 2002, Brandon DiCamillo and CKY drummer Jess Margera wrote a freestyle rap about Masters Of The Universe characters Skeletor and Beast Man engaging in extreme homosexual behavior (since its inception, the show, and its main character, He-Man, have been no strangers to such controversy). Mattel, owners of the Masters Of The Universe franchise, heard about this, and were not pleased. (Bam) Margera was sent a cease-and-desist order, and subsequent editions of the DVD (there have, to date, been four; the first two have the video) have deleted this video in favor of skateboarding footage.
- CKY guitarist Chad Ginsburg, a large fan of punk rocker G.G. Allin, visited his grave one day (probably June 28, 2002, as that was the anniversary of G.G.'s death, and the tenth anniversary was after the DVD's release). Consuming an entire bottle of Jim Beam bourbon (Allin's favorite beverage), he proceeded to urinate on the grave, and left an autographed copy of Infiltrate.Destroy.Rebuild.. The album has since been stolen, about which neither Ginsburg, Deron Miller, Vern Zaborowski (who was, at the time, CKY's live bassist) nor Jess Margera were happy. Mixed in between the grave footage is CKY performing Allin's most famous song, "Bite It, You Scum," which has been a concert favorite for many tours.
- The original DVD release of 2003 included a scene in the bonus material titled 'Shopping Cart Drama'. The scene featured unintentional conflict between the CKY crew and employees of Shop'N Bag. Subsquently Mr Margera and retailers received a cease-and-desist order of which Mr Margera ignored and resulted in another law suit. The outcome allowed the right to re-release the video without the scene although it is still titled in the menu.
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