“Jackass” is a show about a bunch of guys who perform absurdly dangerous and often disgusting stunts, encouraging the audience to take pleasure at their self-inflicted pain. The people on this show will give themselves paper cuts on the webbing between their fingers, or they’ll lock themselves in a port-a-potty that’s hooked up to two cranes with bungie cords. More than anything, “Jackass” is designed to make you wince, just like Elle and Beatrix’s fight in the trailer. Although nobody on “Jackass” gets their eye ripped out, stuff like toilet swirlies and getting already-chewed tobacco thrown in your face is always in the realm of possibility.
“There’s a character that lives in this trailer that dips snuff,” Tarantino explained. “In the South, old women and guys would have coffee cans, and you’d spit the snuff in the coffee can. At some point, Uma grabs the snuff coffee can and throws it in Daryl’s face, and now she has to fight with all of this crap on her.”
This is one of the few moments in the scene where both characters pause. Even though they both casually suffer injuries throughout this fight that would ruin a regular person’s whole month, it’s only as Elle wipes the snuff off her face that she briefly seems to wonder if any of this is really worth it. “Gross,” she says, but a few seconds later the fight’s back on.
Tarantino didn’t tell the crew about the “Jackass” inspiration until a few days after filming the scene: “I got a print of ‘Jackass’ and I screened it for the whole crew,” he said. “Daryl is watching it and she goes, ‘That’s where the snuff juice came from! Oh my God!'”