With Richard Kelly’s dramatic film Southland Tales wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is officially dropping ‘The Rock’ from his name. Just call him Dwayne Johnson from now on – unless he steps back in the ring. “Moving forward it will be Dwayne Johnson,” explained the busy actor. “Originally, getting back to when I first started, I never wanted to force anything. I wanted it to feel natural. I knew eventually I would just get to Dwayne Johnson and be billed as Dwayne Johnson only as an actor, but I still wanted it to happen naturally. It was a personal decision I made. I never wanted to say, ‘Well, from this day forward, I want to be known only as…’ That just didn't feel right to me. The Rock was a character I created and a nickname, so now I felt the timing was right on Southland Tales to move forward and just be billed as Dwayne Johnson.”
Kelly’s second feature film as a director is set in LA in July 2008 and stars Johnson as Boxer Santaros, an action movie star with amnesia. Taking place over the course of three days, Kelly’s Southland Tales looks at a city on the edge of disaster environmentally, socially, and economically. The originality of Kelly’s script is what drew Johnson to the project. “It was something like I had never, ever read before,” explained Johnson. “I was intrigued by the challenge. I met with Richard first; he had to pitch me the entire story. He showed me great visuals, renditions of the characters and what they would look like. He was very specific with everything. I'd watched Donnie Darko a couple of months earlier, loved it and said, ‘Great, I would love to do it.’"
Johnson even loved the experience of working on a film that didn’t have major studio money backing its production. “There's a different type of energy and vibe on set when no one comes from a place of money, just in terms of what somebody is making. There are so many eclectic actors who bring different strengths to the movie. Nobody's working on money. Frankly, I joked with Richard all the time because at that time, my house wasn't ready here so I had to stay in a hotel. It cost me more money to make the movie than I actually made. For two months I was staying at a hotel, ridiculous prices. We laugh about it now.”
Kelly's a deep-thinker who packs his films with messages, some of which flow over his audiences’ heads. Commenting on what Southland Tales says about today’s world, Johnson said, “It's funny because everybody takes something different from the movie when they see it. You have your environmental issues, of course. You have your political issues. I always go back to the entertainment factor, especially in the movie because I view the movie as a comedy, as a dark comedy. I always have. A lot of people view it as a lot of different things - and it is.”
Johnson was surrounded by a bevy of pretty female co-stars, including Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore. “Working with Sarah, I thought Sarah was great in that role,” said Johnson. “Not the first choice you would think of when you think of an entrepreneurial porn star, but I thought she did a great job. Mandy, I loved working with Mandy. She was great even though we didn’t have that many scenes together. Bai Ling was great. She's always great. My fan, my passionate fan on the beach was great. That was an interesting scene too because we just can't shut down Venice Beach, so there were a lot of people, they were all watching and all excited about this scene. And then she pulls out the gun. I could see people behind her, they were lined up and it worked out great for the shot. They were excited, with their families and there were children too. Like, ‘Cool, it's a movie scene.’ And she says what she says and they're like [making faces]. Then she says it again and I can see their faces, like, ‘It's time to go. Let's go.’”
But Johnson won’t kiss and tell. “Are you kidding?,” Johnson laughed in reply to a question on who was the best kisser. “How great, how lucky, how lucky was I on the set? Kiss Sarah, kiss Mandy, Bai Ling...”
Johnson also shared scenes with comedic actors, which made him more determined to play Boxer as straight as possible. “I think especially with a role like this, the straighter you play it the funnier it is. Without playing things too broad, especially for Boxer because there's so much going on, he's always just searching for the truth. Every day he's searching for some sort of semblance of the truth because he has no idea, no recollection of anything. I think great comedy comes in just playing that very serious and very straight. Let other people go broad if they want to, which works for them. It wasn't that hard. If you think about it, if you're just rooted in reality, it's like, okay, you know nothing. You know what people are telling you. They say you have a life and this is your girlfriend and you do know the world's going to end. That's what you know.”
Johnson doesn’t mind showing off his body, if it makes sense for the scene and the film. For Southland Tales the well-built ex-wrestler sported a batch of fake tattoos just for the film, which meant he had to put up with having three hours-worth of tattoos applied each day. “Everything on this side of my body and everything on my back were all put on. We talked about my tattoos and I talked about it with Richard. He goes, ‘I love your tattoos. As a matter of fact, I want to add to them.’ That was Richard's idea. He said, ‘I think if he had amnesia and was out in the desert, he went on this pilgrimage. He went and he explored many different religions and got many different tattoos in addition to the ones you have.’ It's great.”
