In fact, somewhat frequent references to his own outstanding charisma aside, he actually seems pretty humble, and mellow, and thoughtful, despite an intense, brain-frazzling schedule that for weeks has kept him from seeing his wife, Dany, who lives in Miami, and requires him to be on call for twelve hours a day, learning how to sword fight, how to ride a camel, how to pretend a deadly cobra’s about to strike, and how to do all the other stuff you’ve got to do when you’re carrying a motion picture with a budget of more than $60 million.
His voice isn’t what you might expect, either - it’s soft and subdued.
He tips his head and grins and looks genuinely pleased at Russell’s compliment and that’s one of the first things you realize about Dwayne - that for a big, beefy wrestler guy who does that snarky eyebrow-hoisting business on the WWF’s TV shows, he may not be such a giant-size turd after all. He backs up, lifts his sword, drives forward, hacking, hacking, hacking.
Action.”Ĭameras roll as Dwayne, in full leather get-up, glares hotly at an imaginary snake. Inside the overheated confines of stage 44, smoke from a smoke machine drifts and swirls around a room that has the look of an old Egyptian temple, and then, when all is ready, the assistant director says, “Let’s stand by, everybody. the Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment, the Brahma Bull, etc.), with a bit of Rudy Valentino thrown in, waiting for his trailer door to open and for his future in Holly-wood, whatever it may be, to arrive. He’s a classic action star, along with a little bit of Rudolph Valentino.”Īnd so there he is, Dwayne, the Rock (a.k.a. I mean, one big issue in action is always whether you really want to ultimately see the action guy kiss the girl. Says director Chuck Russell, who introduced Jim Carrey to the big time in The Mask, “I think he has true, legitimate screen presence. But, say those responsible for making The Scorpion King, it’s not so much the Rock that they’re banking on as it is Dwayne. His autobiography, The Rock Says…, jumped to the top of the New York Times best-seller list his appearance at WrestleMania events ignites the box office he’s won the WWF Championship belt six times (at the moment, though, he’s been “suspended indefinitely” from the WWF for arguing with the organization’s chairman, Vince McMahon) and his numerous self-created slogans - among them “Do you smell what the Rock is cooking?” “Know your role, Jabroni, and shut your mouth” and “Why don’t you drink a big, tall glass of shut-up juice?” - are now part of the vernacular. It’s true, of course, that Dwayne, as the Rock, is a major, over-the-top crowd pleaser and draw. As it happens, Dwayne Johnson is indeed new to the movies, brand-spanking-new at the age of twenty-nine, but he’s getting paid like almost no one so untested and green ever has before - $5.5 million for The Scorpion King, which is quite a raise from his Mummy Returns payday of $500,000. Then he says, softly, “Sure, sure, right, right,” and hangs up, wobbling there in sunlight slanting through the trailer’s blinds. OK? So I’d like to have a conversation with somebody, so they hear about it from me, face to face.”ĭwayne listens for a moment. It’s one of those things where, like, instinctively you go, ‘What the fuck!’ and you want to kick somebody’s ass. “Being new to the industry, I’m not sure if this isn’t just the way it is, but this is the fourth time this has happened,” Dwayne says.
He gets on the phone with one of his advisers. And when something doesn’t seem right to Dwayne, he’s not one to sit still for long. So, what’s the holdup? It doesn’t seem right. His role, he feels, is a great one - it was written expressly for him after Universal Studios’ big shots got an early look at his work in The Mummy Returns - and it could turn him into the next big action hero. His hair has been done, his make-up has been done, he’s already been fitted into the hunky, revealing leather togs apparently appropriate to an Akkadian assassin circa 3,000 B.C. He’s been cooped up here for nearly five hours, since 5:30 A.M. To keep busy, Dwayne whips himself up a protein shake, watches a few minutes of Robert De Niro on the TV set, switches to some Bruce Willis, then takes a leak.