Johnny Knoxville Takes A Fresh Look At ‘Detroit’

Jackass star Johnny Knoxville explores Motor City’s little-known cultural rebirth in the documentary web series Detroit Lives, which launched yesterday on the website for Palladium Boots.

The European urban boot manufacturer teamed up with Virtue, the creative agency for Vice Magazine, to produce a series of visually compelling and thought-provoking documentary web series along the theme of exploration—”we put our boots on and went exploring” is the brand’s newest marketing slogan—that investigates urban centers with series such as The Ruins of New York, Centralia, Missile Silo Homes, Oil Of L.A., Listen In: Berlin, London Pirate Radio, and the most recent Detroit Lives.

Unlike Wieden+Kennedy‘s controversial “Go Forth” campaign for Levi’s, which romanticizes the post-apocalyptic imagery of Braddock, PA, Palladium’s exploration of Detroit focuses attention away from the burnt-out abandoned buildings and towards the people and projects that are forming the foundation for the city’s inspired renaissance. “We came to Detroit to see what else is going on besides all the bad stuff you hear about in the news,” said Knoxville.

Knoxville meets with many of the city’s creatives—young and old—from restauranteurs and developers to fashion designers and musicians, who feel empowered to take this abandoned city into their own hands and effect positive change. As one Detroit resident commented in the series, “Detroit doesn’t need any saviors. We need entrepreneurs, artists, do-it-yourselfers, thinkers.”