The Rock by any other name?
Dwayne Johnson, movie star, is serious about his on-screen career. But that doesn't mean the 'Walking tall' actor is leaving the wrestling world behind.
March 27, 2004
Boston Globe
Most mysteries about the Rock are easily solved. He's racially ambiguous, for example, only if one fails to ask. His father is African-American and his mother Samoan, thank you. Is he a professional wrestler or a movie actor? For now, he's sort of both. But there is one unsolved mystery that's been bothering him lately: He's not sure who he is. The Rock or Dwayne Johnson? Dwayne Johnson or the Rock? His momma calls him Dwayne, but should the millions of wrestling fans who've paid to see him in "The Scorpion King" and "The Rundown," and who'll likely pay again when "Walking Tall" opens Friday?
"Four years ago, when I broke into film and some project started happening, I was starting to think about what kind of actor I wanted to be," Johnson says. "And I just don't want to be a celebrity who crosses into film and does a bunch of movies while he's hot. I wanted to become a decent actor, immersing myself in the craft. Then I started to think about the name, like what happens when I do a romantic comedy? And my delusion kicked in: `The Rock and Halle Berry'?" Johnson is affable and animated, a gentleman in the classic manners sense. It takes a few minutes for the apologies for his tardiness to an interview to stop; if you're used to him shouting to stadiums packed with 11,000 people, his soft, measured speaking voice is almost jarring; and you're left with the impression that he's last off the elevator not because he's the biggest person in it but because it's simply polite. He stands, goateed, at a hard-to-miss 6-foot-5, his body under a shirt and jeans closer to the University of Florida football player he used to be than the wrestler he is. (He recently told Men's Health magazine he hired a personal trainer to help him shed 20 pounds and halve his body fat percentage, which is now 7.)
Johnson's burgundy shirt is open to the center of his chest, partially revealing an elaborate new Polynesian tattoo. He doesn't want his size to intimidate people he won't be elbowing, so he's candid and self-deprecating in the way that some self-consciously large (or famous) people can be. These are not qualities entirely suited to someone who pretends to hurt people for a living, but Johnson of late has been a certain sort of humble as he transitions away from the sport that made him a star.
It was possible to think that Johnson had given up on wrestling. Movie shoots, promotion, and his wife and 2-year-old daughter mean his appearances in the ring tend to be minimal to nonexistent. But at the beginning of the month, a window opened up between promotional appearances for "Walking Tall."
"I love just showing up, not telling anybody, and entertaining the fans," he says.
So two weeks before "Wrestlemania XX," Johnson came to the rescue of the beleaguered wrestling manchild and best-selling memoirist Mick Foley on "Raw." A week later on "Raw," he served as host of a "This Is Your Life"-style tribute to Foley in which he did very little wrestling. He just played to the crowd for the last half-hour of the show with catch phrases and his outsize personality. He was dominant, without breaking an athlete's sweat. Before it was over, Johnson graciously allowed one large young kid (Randy Orton), a much bigger fellow (Dave Batista), and the unsinkable wrestling legend Ric Flair to pound him and Foley into the canvas.
On March 14 at Madison Square Garden, a version of the same stunt repeated itself at "Wrestlemania." On some level, it seemed only fair. Johnson and Foley have had huge successes outside the ring that seem unlikely for their uncharismatic opponents. In Johnson's case, losing in front of so many fans might make them eager to see him trounce a different round of aggressors in "Walking Tall."
The remake was his idea, which he took to MGM studios. He wanted to do something in the key of Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Paul Newman when they played mild men forced into machismo. Their characters were reluctant, Johnson says, "but they got the job done, but at the same time were able to poke fun at themselves every once in a while and not be afraid to be in jeopardy."
The "Walking Tall" of 1973 and its two sequels were part of the decade's vigilante mood. It told the story of the law enforcement icon Buford Pusser, the real-life sheriff whom the movie made famous for cleaning up his little Tennessee town with a two-by-four. In the first film, Joe Don Baker played Pusser as a soft-spoken and reluctant but ultimately righteous reformer. Johnson decided to lose the name: He looks nothing like the real Pusser -- who, as it turns out, was also a pro wrestler -- nor did Johnson want to sully the man's legacy. (Pusser died in 1974 in a car accident, having recently wrapped up talks to star in yet another incarnation of his story.)
Johnson's character is called, more convincingly, Chris Vaughn, a man who's home from an unspecified war. There's an interesting parallel between Vaughn's return and the hard time his old pals give him, and Johnson's sporadic returns to the WWE.
Johnson agrees with a laugh. Obviously, the flak he gets from his wrestling peers is not as drastic as the welcome home his "Walking Tall" character gets, but not everybody in the WWE is pulling for him.
"I don't get that from the entire crew, just from a handful of guys who, interestingly enough, are at the top now," Johnson says. "But most guys are genuinely excited. They come up to me, and they're like, `Hey, I saw "The Rundown"! Congratulations!' But you're going to get negativity from some people. That's just the nature of this business."
Actors, surprisingly, have been more encouraging. "In rehearsals, they know I'm genuine about this," Johnson says of more seasoned costars. "I want to be good. `Help me. Teach me. Let me be like a sponge.' So I think once they get that vibe from me, then it's cool."
"Walking Tall" is an ideal vehicle for Johnson. But after three consecutive films that feature Johnson losing his cool and Rock-ing out, the question arises: At what point does he stop making WWE-friendly action flicks and really begin to challenge himself as a movie star? When does Vince McMahon, the WWE's steely P. T. Barnum turned Dino DeLaurentiis, stop executive producing Johnson's movies?
Johnson sounds like he'd be content to embellish the action hero thing, if not abandon it. It's true, he does seem poised to inherit the "new Schwarzenegger" mantle. In 2000, Johnson made a memorable appearance at the Republican convention, politics possibly being just one more thing the two men share. But all the governor -- in his bodybuilding prime -- has on Johnson is a Marvel Comics physique.
Johnson, now 31, knows he could be a lucrative action-movie pinup until he's 50. The alternatives seem to make him both nervous and excited. He just finished shooting the showbiz comedy "Be Cool," the sequel to "Get Shorty." Opposite John Travolta, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel, he's playing a gay Samoan bodyguard named Elliot who really wants to be a singer.
"My goal with wanting this movie was not, `Let me take a break from the action thing,' " Johnson says. "It was, `Let me work with these amazing actors and test my timing.' " He doesn't want anything he does in Hollywood to seem calculated.
At the center of Johnson's career is a question of both identity and identification. Johnson's "The Rock" is the most magnetic professional athlete to dare to have a movie career. His two stints as host of "Saturday Night Live," one in which he played a considerably larger relative of Chris Kattan's apple-munching primate, were funnier and more go-for-broke than some Oscar winners'. The Rock, though, is a cottage industry of patented finishing moves (the People's Elbow), patented leadership positions (the People's Champion), and patented catch phrases (among them, "Can you smell what the Rock [dramatic pause] is cooking?"). When Johnson's movie career got underway, McMahon, showing a rare flash of magnanimity, gave Johnson ownership of the "Rock" handle. But with the WWE on the periphery of his life, is it crazy for Johnson to think about changing brands?
This dilemma is nothing new, but it's still interesting. At the drop of a press release, we'll call Sean Combs whatever kind of "Puffy" or "P. Diddy" he asks us to. Though it's worth noting that for his Broadway debut next week in "Raisin in the Sun," he's simply "Sean Combs."
Something interesting started to happen after "The Rundown," Johnson says. "In the press, everything I saw and heard was always `Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.' " He chalks the change up to the media's beginning to take him seriously as a movie actor. Maybe people will learn to split the difference and the name on his birth certificate will prevail?
"I just think it'll take on a life of its own," he says. "Eventually, I'll just be Dwayne Johnson."