The Rock sticks up for himself in ‘Walking Tall’ remake
March 30, 2004


The Rock has yet to meet Elmore Leonard, and he has no idea if the author is a wrestling fan. But when he read “Be Cool,” Leonard's sequel to “Get Shorty,” he had to wonder. After all, how many bulked-up, 6-foot-5 Samoans with a signature cocked eyebrow could Leonard have run into?

“I'm looking forward to asking him,” says the Rock, aka Dwayne Johnson, who is in fact a muscled 6-foot-5 half-Samoan. He will play the character Leonard created in the movie version of “Be Cool,” scheduled for release next February.

Not everything seemed custom-tailored for him, however: His character in the film is gay, while the Rock is married with a 2½-year-old daughter. The character is also — incongruously — named Elliot Wilhelm, after the curator of the esteemed Detroit Film Theatre. The real Wilhelm visited the set but had little to offer the Rock in terms of playing his namesake.

“That was really funny because he turns out to be this little white guy,” says the Rock. “Good guy, though. Knows his movies.”

So does the Rock, as it happens, who is in Detroit not to preview “Be Cool” but to talk about “Walking Tall,” his remake of the 1973 drive-in smash based on the true story of Sheriff Buford Pusser, who cleaned up corruption in his Tennessee county with the help of a very big stick.

While the Rock is quick to point out that he did not contribute to the screenplay and that he was happy to leave the producing chores to others, it can safely be called his film because it wouldn't be there without him.

He had remembered seeing the film as a boy with his father and loving it.

“So I basically just went over to MGM, which was the studio that controlled the rights, and said I was interested in redoing it,” he says.

“They were surprised, but they said yes right away. They had no plans to remake it, but they put it together pretty quick — the Rock, ‘Walking Tall,’ an American story about standing up for what's right the old-fashioned way. Simple, you know? I like to keep things simple.”

Ironically, the real-life Pusser, played by Joe Don Baker in the original film (and by Bo Svenson in a short-lived TV series), had been a professional wrestler, just like the Rock. Pusser, however, never got beyond the regional circuit in Chicago. The Rock became a national superstar after the sport, using the term loosely, was re-energized by the marketing pile-driver that is World Wrestling Entertainment.

The California-born, former University of Miami football star turned to the family business — both his father and maternal grandfather were professional wrestlers — after a brief stint in the Canadian Football League, where he was a teammate of Doug Flutie’s in Calgary.

He first called himself Flex Kavanah, then, upon signing with the then-World Wrestling Foundation, became Rocky Maivia, enforcer for a band of bad guys known as “The Nation of Domination.”

The Rock's exotic good looks — his father is African-American, his mother Samoan — and undeniable charisma begged his conversion from the Dark Side, and he was soon reincarnated as the Rock, “the people's champion.” As his popularity reached movie-star proportions in the ’90s, he began considering the inevitable next step.

After getting his feet wet with a cameo in the thankfully little-seen “The Longshot” in 2000, he landed a supporting role in 2001's “The Mummy Returns” as the mythical Scorpion King, that, in some scenes, had his head atop a computer-generated giant scorpion.

His striking appearance in that otherwise lackluster movie set him up to take the lead in a prequel called, to no one's surprise, “The Scorpion King.” Despite some reviews that suggested as an actor the Rock was a pretty good TV wrestler, the movie grossed $90 million in the United States alone.

“It was a special effects movie, and sometimes I felt like I was just part of all that machinery,” says the Rock. “But I kept my eyes open and paid attention, and I learned a lot, I think. Enough to know that if I kept at this, I could get better.”

With Arnold Schwarzenegger getting — by his own description — a little too old to play such parts, studio types began to think of the Rock as the next larger-than-life action hero, a succession both the about-to-be California governor and the Rock were more than happy to endorse; Schwarzenegger even did a cameo in last year's “The Rundown,” slyly passing the torch.

An action-comedy set in a South American jungle, with the Rock playing a bounty hunter sent there to retrieve a gangster's son, “The Rundown,” to the surprise of everyone, was well received by critics.

Equally surprising, though, was its lack of staying power at the box office; after an $18-million opening weekend last September that was decent enough to push it to the No. 1 spot, it all but disappeared. Eventually it ended up making $47.5 million, compared to its $85 million budget.

“I'm fairly convinced that the ad campaign confused moviegoers, and that was another lesson I needed to learn. I need to become proactive about these things, so my voice is heard. The success of any movie depends on cooperation between everyone involved, and I've tended to cede control to the people who know the business a lot better than I do.

“But I think I know the Rock better than anybody else, so I've been a lot more involved with the marketing of ‘Walking Tall.’ No one will be confused about whether this is an action film or a fantasy or a comedy. It's the Rock being the Rock.”