It debuts on demand Feb. 12 from FilmBuff.

As Beauty Day informs us, Zavadil was a man before his time as cable-TV personality Cap’n Video, a David Lee Roth-looking, Jackass-style camcorder prankster who was doing his thing in the mid-1990s, before Johnny Knoxville and the gang even dreamt of getting paid to puke. Director Jay Cheel’s doc opens with footage of the Cap’n’s apparently most notorious stunt, in which he jumps from atop a very tall ladder onto the cover of his swimming pool.

Or at least that’s what he intended to do. The ladder wasn’t properly stabilized and ... well, y’know, physics is one mean em-effer. I mean, Zavadil still hit the cover ... but only after hitting the cement, breaking his neck in the process. It’s a miracle he survived.

But he did, and the film spends time with the chain smoker reminiscing about those good ol’ days of walking through an automated car wash, snorting raw eggs, eating a homemade pie of Cool Whip and dog hair, sledding off his roof, lighting his face on fire, skiing on clothesline, and licking chocolate sauce off a puppy. Hey, it was for Easter.

Zavadil claims he wasn’t doing it to be famous; instead, “It's just being a fucking nutbar and being the nutbar in everyone.” And yet, the back half of the movie follows him attempting to revive Cap’n Video for a 20th-anniversary special.

Cheel certainly found a ready-and-willing subject in Zavadil, an individual — boy, is he ever! — who has no problem saying what’s on his mind, whether about the past, present or future. Oft-spoken is a phrase from which Beauty Day takes its title — one that is out-of-context odd and not entirely indicative of the mild mayhem contained within.

Cap’n Video had a small, but loyal audience in his original run, but his profile should expand as this entertaining documentary spreads and streams.  —Rod Lott

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