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THE ROCK
There are so many great things one can say about The Rock, both as a WWE superstar and a king of Hollywood.
And a really bad one as well.
When I first met Dwayne Johnson, he was training in the bowels of the WWE studios. His teacher was the great Dr. Tom Prichard. Johnson was an unknown then.
“You are going to be a superstar one day!” were the first words I spoke to him.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“You have a million-dollar smile. A great attitude. And I can feel your charisma. It oozes out of every pore of your being.”
“Thanks,” he replied. “You made my day.”
We would chat a few times a week back while he was training, when the wrestling world had no idea who he would become, the phenomenon he would create. Once in a while I’d even treat him to dinner at a local restaurant, the Black Goose in Darien, Connecticut, just a stone’s throw away from Stamford. He was an ambitious kid then, busting his ass training every day. I just wanted to validate his dreams and give him a small dose of hope.
When he finally made his in-ring debut for the WWF in the fall of 1996, he was introduced as Rocky Maivia, a combination of his father and grandfather’s ring names (they were both wrestlers). He was also nicknamed the “Blue Chipper,” and to play up his lineage he was hyped as the WWF’s first third-generation wrestler. Rocky was heavily pushed as a clean-cut babyface despite his lack of wrestling experience. And within three months he became the WWF Intercontinental Champion when he defeated Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Triple H, in February 1997.
But the fans would have none of it. Despite his being a babyface and saying all the right things, the crowd felt he was pushed too fast. Wrestling fans are a savvy bunch, and they booed him heavily. Soon the fans would serenade him with chants of “die Rocky die” and “Rocky sucks” during his matches. Two months later he dropped the title to Owen Hart, and early that summer he suffered a serious knee injury while wrestling Mankind. He spent several months off-air while recovering.
When he returned to television, Rocky was a secondary player in a new faction, the “Nation of Domination.” His character was an angry heel then, especially toward the fans who booed him as a babyface, and he would often insult and chide the crowd. It was both a “work” and a “shoot.” Deep down he really was upset that the fans wouldn’t cheer for him when he was just the good guy.
Several weeks later while standing behind Faarooq, the leader of the Nation of Domination, during an in-ring promo, The Rock raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t planned or deliberate, but it was a magical moment, a spark we all saw in real time. It was subtle, yet it was a seismic change that would lead to the making of a legend.
The first time I worked with The Rock was in an abandoned warehouse with a few new superstars we wanted to feature in an updated version of the original Attitude spot. He wasn’t a big star yet, but we knew he was about to break out.
When that day came, Chris Chambers and I helped persuade Johnson to refer to himself in the third person as “The Rock” whenever he cut a promo. I am not sure if that idea came from Chambers or someone else on the creative team, but we constantly encouraged him to do it.
“Why?” he would ask.
“Because you will be a hated heel if you refer to yourself in the third person.”
It took a couple of months for him to fully embrace and become that character. Initially, he would mix “I” and “The Rock” in the same sentence, but soon he would nail it.
“So The Rock was backstage . . .”
“The Rock thinks . . .”
“The Rock is going to lay a smackdown on your candy ass!”
I worked with The Rock nearly a dozen times in the years that followed. Some of my favorite commercials featured him, such as spots for the WrestleMania 2000 and WWF: SmackDown 2 video games. Much of the imagery for the pay-per-view commercials featured shoots with The Rock as well. I even directed the music video of The Rock that was sung by Method Man and was one of the top songs on the Aggression album. He never complained once when we shot the video in South Beach. He knew the way he was being directed would enhance his image.
Most of what I did with The Rock over the years was shot in and around Miami. I tried to make it easy for him, since he lived roughly twenty-five miles away in Davie, Florida. My dad was often an extra in those shoots, and they formed a bond. Poppa Lou really loved The Rock. The respect was mutual.
I would always call The Rock directly to inform him of the dates and times of the shoots and what was required. This was never a problem . . . until he went to Hollywood. Then everything changed.
Ever since I arrived at the WWF, we would do at least one “ID” shoot with all of the talent on the roster each year. These shoots all required a unique, visually intriguing set and were often shot in abandoned warehouses in Connecticut, New York or Los Angeles. We would supplement the cool imagery of the unique locations with a bevy of special effects such as rain machines, lightning strikes or pyrotechnics.
We would capture images of the talent with wide and tight shots, especially their faces and individual signature poses. Obviously I would allot more time on set for the top superstars, and just five minutes or so for those lower on the roster. The images we captured would be used in promos, packages, video walls and digital media.
In the spring of 2003, I decided to do an ID shoot in Miami. The Rock was returning from Hollywood after finishing his latest movie and was booked for the main event against Brock Lesnar in a major upcoming pay-per-view. So I decided to build the set backstage at the American Airlines arena, just thirty minutes from his home in Davie. He was back home and wanted to work a house match in Miami to get the rust off and get back into wrestling shape. By this time, I could no longer call The Rock personally. I had to go through both his agent and publicist first.
On this shoot, I discovered the man I once knew and respected had changed. Nine months earlier, he’d left WWE to shoot another Hollywood movie. I sent him three books upon his return to the world of celluloid heroes — books I thought would resonate with him, words I thought would speak to his spirit because they spoke to mine. The books were Illusions by Richard Bach, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and The Prophet, penned by Kahlil Gibran nearly a century ago.
I greeted The Rock when he arrived at the arena for the ID shoot.
“Hey Rock,” I said. “As you know, we brought the set here to make it easy on you.”
“I know,” he replied. “Thank you for that.”
“I can shoot you whenever you wish. It’ll only take twenty or twenty five minutes.”
“Give me an hour to settle in. I want to say hello to the boys first.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t give him an hour. I gave him two. Then I searched for him backstage. He was playing cards with a group of wrestlers and agents.
“Is now a good time for you, Rock?” He was still in his street clothes, two hours after his arrival.
“Let me finish this game first.”
Another hour passed, so I sought him out again. He was finally starting to put on his wrestling gear.
“Looks like you are getting ready for the shoot,” I remarked.
“Yes.”
Yet another hour passed. Now he was in full gear, but he was talking to his opponent.
“Are you ready to go now?” I asked. “It’ll be fast.”
“No. I need to go over the match first. Then I’ll come to you.”
I was not happy.
“I need you. We came here for you,” I said in a stern voice.
“I know. I’ll find you when we are done planning the match. I promise.”
He never found me. Instead I found him an hour later backstage near the Gorilla Position, a secret control area that is always close to the entrance to the arena. He was watching a match on one of the many screens there.
“Now?” I asked, a tinge of hope mixing with a healthy dose of anger in my voice.
“Not now. After my match.”
By this point I was fuming. I’d gone out of my way to make this shoot as painless as possible for him, yet I felt he was going out of his way to ignore and neglect me. And WWE as a whole.
As his entrance theme played, he walked through the black curtain that separates secrets from fantasy and into the deafening roar of a thunderous crowd. During the match I waited, steadfast, on the other side of the black curtain. When his match was finally over he walked backstage, and I made sure I was the first person he would see.
He was sweating profusely, and when he saw me waiting he wasn’t happy.
“Rock,” I said in a voice that left no doubt I was angry. “Now, right here.” I pointed to the set fifteen feet away.
“Really, D?” he replied with fury. “Really?”
“Yes. Really. We came here just for you and you’ve been blowing me off all day.”
He huffed heavily and got even angrier. “You get five minutes,” he commanded, holding five fingers in front of my face. “Five minutes. That’s all.”
“I’ll take it.”
One minute into the shoot I heard a sound I knew and always dreaded.
It was the sound of a hair stuck in the gate of the camera lens. Why was this happening now?
“What’s that?” Rock snapped.
“We just have to check the gate.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Just a few minutes.”
He was pissed. He was ready to walk off the set.
But as angry as he was, I was even more furious. Such disregard, I thought, after all I had done for him and all the sacrifices we’d made collectively to help jump-start his career. Still, I tried to ease the tension. “Rock, did you get the three books I sent you?”
That question took him by surprise. I knew it would. Now I was playing him.
“What books?”
“The ones I said I would send to you in Los Angeles nine months ago.
Remember? It was the last time we worked together.”
“I never got them.”
“Funny,” I remarked. “I got the receipt from FedEx and I saw your signature and the date you received them.”
His attitude changed drastically. His snarky smirk turned into that famous million-dollar smile, and his demeanor became calm and friendly, fake as it was. He was trying to play me now.
“How’s your father doing?” he asked, gently putting his hand on my shoulder. Damn, he is a great actor, I thought, but he was desperate for redemption.
As Heath Ledger said while playing the character of the Joker, “Sometimes you have to play the role of a fool to fool the fool who thinks he is fooling you.” So I played the role, and The Rock couldn’t fool me now. “He’s doing great,” I replied with a smile. Now I had the power, the control, over this king of Hollywood.
“Why isn’t he here tonight, D?”
“He had something better to do.”
“Tell him I say hello. Will you please?”
“I certainly will,” I replied, but I would not.
A minute later the camera was ready, and he now allowed us to roll for not five but fifteen minutes. When we were finished, he shook my hand and said thanks. It mattered little. It was all a falsehood. He revealed a side to me I never thought he had, one I never wanted to see.
Everyone is allowed to have a bad day in life. I’ve had many. We all have. The Rock just happened to have a really bad one that day, so I will give him a pass.
It’s just sad that it was the last time I would ever work with him.
***
Reprinted by permission.
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