Has Jon Cena surpassed the other wrestlers?

There have been professional wrestlers-turned-actors as long as there has been professional wrestling. We all remember how Rowdy Roddy Piper starred in the cult classic They Live, and that Hulk Hogan tried his hand at acting there for a while, with terrible results. There would be other examples I'm sure.

But we are now living in a golden age of actors who were once wrestlers, and in fact, who found acting to be such a better way to pay the bills that they stopped wrestling entirely. (Of course, their age, and a desire for a less strenuous activity for their bodies, were likely also factors in this.)

The one who paved the way for this new generation was Dwayne Johnson, and I'll mention his stage name because we're talking about wrestling here: The Rock. He was the one who made us realize that ringside charisma could really carry over to movie star charisma, and that if he didn't naturally have the performance instincts to become a decent actor, he had the building blocks to learn them. And despite some obvious examples of on-screen struggles, he has become a genuinely capable actor able to play a variety of different modes, even comedy quite effectively, as well as one of the biggest movie stars and highest paid actors.

Then came Dave Bautista, who we would still likely consider the most technically skilled actor to emerge from wrestling. Bautista let us know early on through his role in Guardians of the Galaxy that he was an adept comedian, but he has also become a go-to guy for a big director like Denis Villeneuve, who doesn't have much of an instinct for comedy at all. Everyone who watches Dave Bautista on screen knows he has "it."

The johnny-come-lately, whom I have taken a long time to really accept, has been Jon Cena. I'm not sure what my primary hesitation was regarding Cena, except for the "Okay, prove it" mentality I have toward any wrestler who tries to transfer over to mainstream acting. I think some of the earliest movies he appeared in were not personal favorites of mine, such as Trainwreck, and then I think his face reminded me a bit too much of steroid heads I considered bullies back in high school.

Now, though, I'm wonder if Cena isn't close to becoming the standard bearer for wrestlers-turned-actors.

My Friday night viewing of Argylle is not really the appropriate occasion to write this post, both because his role in it is quite small and because I didn't like the movie at all. However, I'm writing it now because Argylle made me realize how much I'm seeing Cena, how interested casting directors are in casting him. And with good reason. When I saw Cena pop up in Argylle, I got an immediate jolt of optimism -- one that was unwarranted, unfortunately.

Cena did have more than seven minutes of screen time in another movie I saw recently, Ricky Stanicky, the latest from Peter Farrelly, and likely the best we could hope for from a latter-day Farrelly brothers movie. Although I opted for a 3.5-star rating on Letterboxd, I flirted with four stars, as the film reminded me of that mix of heart and gross-out comedy those brothers were capable of producing at their height. 

And a lot of that was thanks to Cena, who plays the title character -- a fictitious creation by a trio of friends on whom they blame everything from a Halloween prank gone wrong (in their youth) to the reason they have to miss a baby shower (now, as adults). Cena's character is actually an aspiring actor who does porno music parodies -- in other words, he sings a familiar pop song on stage in costume, but changes its lyrics to be X-rated -- in Atlantic City, but he agrees to play the role of this fictitious friend when their wives begin wondering why they've never met him. 

Anyway, this role could have been played very broadly, as a disaster with a heart of gold who only stumbles into not constantly ruining everything. Surely in part thanks to Farrelly, Cena gives this character a lot more than the traits the role calls for, and this comparative restraint was one of the things I liked best about the movie.

So to get back on track, how it is that I now view Cena as possibly the equal or even the better of Johnson and Bautista?

Well for one, those guys seem to be scaling back ever so slightly. If you take away his appearances as Drax the Destroyer -- which should be over now -- Bautista has only been appearing in about one film per year the last couple years. That seems to be by choice, and to be fair, he does currently have ten projects of all shapes and sizes that are scheduled for future release, according to IMDB. Johnson seems to be stepping back even more than Bautista. Since he had two high-profile movies in 2021 -- Jungle Cruise and Red Notice -- Johnson has had only one movie he's starred in, that being 2022's Black Adam. He had an uncredited appearance in the end credits of the last Fast and Furious movie, but that hardly counts.

Cena is only too happy to fill this void. Perhaps with the energy of being five years younger than Johnson and eight years younger than Bautista, Cena had five movie credits in 2023 and already the aforementioned two in 2024. Like the others, his IMDB credits are also littered with various WWE things, but I suspect many of them are running series that are listed near the top of their most recent activities simply because that's how TV shows are handled on IMDB.

But more than the quantitative advantages Cena currently has, he's got some qualitative advantages too. Cena seems a bit more committed to comedy than either of the other two, Johnson because he can't do it as well and Bautista because he seems eager not to be defined by Drax the Destroyer. Cena will gleefully show up and be funny, and in fact, now we kind of expect him to do that. And he doesn't disappoint. 

His work seems to have gone from "wait and see approach" to "possible comedy gold" with his involvement in The Suicide Squad and the series that has spun off it, which I still have not seen, but which I feel I can make positive assumptions about, that being Peacemaker. He understands how to be on tone in movies featuring almost a gleeful level of violence, where the comedy has to be just right in order to keep our stomachs from turning.

I've called Jon Cena the johnny-come-lately, but you know what? His first movie was 18 years ago, in 2006, when he was not even 30. It was called The Marine, and I watched it primarily because a guy I know had a significant supporting role in it. I didn't like that movie and I didn't like Cena in it, because 2006 was not a time when big muscle heads realized they needed to be self aware and not take themselves too seriously. But that's only a few years after Johnson started making movies, and a whole eight years before I first identified Bautista in the original Guardians. So by any reasonable assessment of things, these three are all contemporaries, with Bautista the johnny-come-lately of the three if any of them are -- which is also true because he started when he was a lot older than they were.

But I liked Dave Bautista instantly, and Cena had to earn it. Now that he's earned it, though, I am always pleased as punch to see him appear in a new film -- and his face doesn't even remind me of the chemically enhanced bullies who used to punch me on the shoulder in the hallways.

Jungle hospitality

I decided I was going to treat Wednesday night as a "shut your brain off" night at the movies, and I thought my brain would be shut off quite nicely by The Rundown, a 2003 film by Peter Berg, one of the first star vehicles for Dwayne Johnson. (I thought it was the first, but then was reminded of his prior appearance in The Scorpion King, which I also had not seen.)

The version I watched on Netflix, though, had the international title in the movie itself, even if it had the U.S. title on the Netflix menu. That title was Welcome to the Jungle.

I found this particularly funny because it's not the only movie Johnson has made called, at least in part, Welcome to the Jungle.

As you may recall, the 2017 Jumanji reboot was called Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

Guns N Roses are raking in royalties left and right.

It made me wonder if there are other actors who have appeared in two movies with (mostly) the same name that were not actually related to one another. I'm sure it has happened at some point. 

I also wonder if Johnson thought it was funny that they titled the Jumanji reboot this, or whether the international name for The Rundown may have actually factored into what to call the movie.

I also wonder why they thought The Rundown was not a suitable title for this movie in non-U.S. markets.

I'd hoped to derive more enjoyment than I did. For one, it looked really shitty. Whoever lit this movie and chose the film stock did a very poor job. 

It also felt pretty rough from Berg as a director. He's gotten a lot more polished since then, but this was the first action movie the former actor directed, having debuted as a director five years earlier with Very Bad Things (for which I have a soft spot). The action wirework is laughable. The way people fly around when kicked is ludicrous. 

Though he gains footing as he goes, Johnson also doesn't look that comfortable in this movie. His charisma does start to come out as it goes along -- which is not necessarily a case of gaining comfort, since movies are shot out of sequence -- but at the start it's pretty much non-existent.

Interestingly, I found that he seemed most comfortable in a comedic scene, in which he's been temporarily paralyzed due to a toxin in a jungle fruit, and he has to try to shoo a monkey away from the still paralyzed bodies of him and Seann William Scott. He and Scott not fully able to move their mouths, but still trying to get the monkey to get lost, was comedic gold, and previewed that Johnson really had a fitness for this sort of performance -- which he would continue to explore, notably in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and particularly in its sequel.

Also: It was funny to see he him when he had hair.

I was originally going to call this post "Two decades of Dwayne 'The Movie Star' Johnson," until I noted the earlier release dates of The Scorpion King. It's funny to think that he's been on screen for so long, because I still kind of thinking of him as transitioning from wrestling relatively recently. 

Yeah, and Mark Wahlberg was a rapper just yesterday too.

Dave Bautista is a national treasure

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may take an unusual honor on my blog: most times tagged in one of my posts before actually being seen by me. Before Friday night's viewing, I had already talked about the movie five times, in subjects ranging from my anticipation for it, to my reluctance to see it, to my annoyance over its director's tweets, to its poster campaign.

And now that I have finally see it, I have a very similar takeaway to the first movie:

Dave Bautista is awesome.

Dave Bautista was the best part of the first movie, and indeed continues in that regard here. Not only is he the funniest character, but he also has the best character arc (of sorts), and the most touchingly genuine scenes. Drax the Destroyer is easily my favorite Guardian, but more than that, he may be one of my favorite Marvel characters, period.

And that's thanks to Bautista.

As you likely already know, Bautista is one of those who has followed in the footsteps of Dwayne Johnson and made the transition from professional wrestling to acting. He may be the best example of that successful transition other than Johnson himself, who is a true force of nature in the entertainment world, having recently become the highest paid actor in Hollywood. (And if the rumors are to be believed, even a possible candidate for president -- and I can see no reason why he would not win there as well.)

But while Johnson is undoubtedly a singular phenomenon of charisma and I always enjoy watching him, I cannot say he has always been good. Without even delving into his filmography, where I'm sure I could find other examples, I'll mention his weak performances in such films as Southland Tales and Central Intelligence. I wanted to like him in those films, but he was just bad.

Dave Bautista has yet to be bad. At least, not in any film I've seen.

In 2017 we've already gotten two examples of the ways he's improved the films he's in. It's not that difficult to be the best thing in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because I'd argue the material is a little overrated, but it's quite something else to be the best thing in a Blade Runner movie. Indeed, I've gone on record saying that Dave Bautista was my favorite part of Blade Runner 2049, and given that he's only in one ten-minute scene, that's really saying something.

What is it about Bautista? It's hard to put my finger on it. But he has something undefinable that all good actors share: a sense of intelligence he brings to the work, which shines through even when the character is not intended to be particularly smart. Given his hulking frame, Bautista has never been cast as a genius, though the spectacles he wears in Blade Runner 2049 do give him something of the aspect of an intellectual. But acting smarts are a powerful form of intelligence that make even a dumb character seem shrewdly played.

And that's what Bautista does. He seems keenly able to focus in on the core of a character and bring out its essence.

Not only that, he can play a range of emotions, from serious to comic. In Guardians of course his function is comic, but even in the two different movies he exemplifies a different kind of comedy. In the first, his lines are funny because he doesn't understand they're funny, and in fact is incapable of doing anything but speaking his mind. In the second, he's a bit more overtly funny, as his character has made a choice to get in touch with the funny things in the world and laughs regularly. When an actor is required to laugh heartily for a role, rarely does it seem as genuine as Bautista makes it here.

Of course, neither should Bautista be mistaken for just a comedic performer. In Blade Runner 2049, it's the world weariness he brings to that character that's so striking. He's been living humbly, quietly, as a rogue replicant just trying to play out the string in peace, despite a sadness that must make his days unendurable. Bautista communicates all of this with a few glances and lines of dialogue. He's switched on. You can see the light emanating from him.

It strikes me as funny that I am making these estimations about him based only on four films. In addition to the three I've already mentioned, I've also seen Bautista in Spectre, where he really is pretty much used just for his muscle and physique, as a henchman. And while I can't remember him making an impression on me one way or another in that film, when he came up recently in discussion, a friend made a pitch for how good he is in that movie too. If I didn't find the rest of that movie pretty boring, I might watch it again just to pay special attention to the intelligent touches he undoubtedly brings.

Bautista is 48, three years older than Johnson, so it's hard to tell if this is just the start of many other great things, or whether we've already seen the best Bautista has to offer. But age is certainly not a consideration for Johnson, as there's every reason to expect he will look just about as he does now for another ten years. The same could certainly be said for Bautista, and if other casting directors out there see what I see -- and how can they not -- we may get plenty of Bautista roles beyond his next appearance as Drax in Avengers: Infinity War.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here with a wild prediction: Dave Bautista is going to win an Oscar.

"Huh?" you say. "Yeah, he's good, but he will never even get cast in the type of role that wins Oscars, let alone be good enough to actually win the award."

Noted. But when actors are good, they find their way into the strangest of places. And just because you didn't start out as a professionally trained actor does not preclude you from winning an Oscar. Just ask Cher, Jennifer Hudson and Mo'Nique.

Even if all Dave Bautista does in the future is bring soul to Drax the Destroyer again, I'll be there to appreciate the hell out of it.

Oh, and I should not leave this post before actually telling you what I thought about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The five previous mentions, many of them wary, demand it.

Well, I liked it! "Liked" is as far as I will go, but I did like it just a bit more than the first one. Obviously this is a minority opinion, but the comparison I made to Blade Runner 2049 in my post earlier this week is especially instructive given that Bautista appears in both movies (something I didn't recognize at the time I made the comparison). In that post I said that people who didn't particularly love the first Blade Runner seem to enjoy 2049 better, and that's me for this series. If I had loved Guardians of the Galaxy, like 4.5 stars, and said that Vol. 2 was even better, that would be crazy talk. But since I think Guardians of the Galaxy is a three-star movie, I have no problem telling you that I gave Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 a half star more than that. Oh sure, I have issues with parts of it (particularly the climactic battle and overly sentimental ending), but other parts make up for that, such as the inspired opening sequence.

And Drax. Drax makes up for it. The recurring laughter bit is great, but what I really enjoyed was his relationship with Mantis, the empath and new addition to the cast. What I like about their relationship encapsulates what I like about Bautista's Drax, which is his genuineness. We can tell that they have a little chemistry between them, but it does not develop in the expected ways, primarily because Drax -- who basically cannot lie -- tells her how ugly he thinks she is. He says she is awful to look at and the idea of physical intimacy with her makes him physically sick.

Of course, Mantis is a fairly unique being so she is a bit taken aback by this, but not offended in the way that a more traditionally socialized creature would be. That's what makes her a good match for Drax. And what's nice is that Drax loves her for what's inside her. Even at the end, when we think the movie is going to soften his stance and that he is going to learn to be physically as well as emotionally attracted to her, it doesn't go that way. "You're beautiful too," he says. "On the inside."

If it's wrong to love Dave Bautista, I don't want to be right.

Dwayne Johnson's unused skateboard

So as I mentioned yesterday, I did indeed see Pain & Gain on Thursday night.

As I also mentioned, I liked it.

There's some, though not as much as you would expect, of Bay's usual bombast, and there's some, though not as much as you would expect, of Bay's cheesy musical cues.

There's about as much slow-mo as you would expect. 

Overall, it's probably best described as Bay's attempt to make his own version of Goodfellas. Or really, any other of the many crime movies that feature unintended escalating consequences and regular doses of humor, though a couple key decisions remind a person of Goodfellas specifically. (The heavy reliance on voiceover being one.)

So yes, I did just mention Goodfellas and Pain & Gain in the same sentence. Of course, Goodfellas is a five-star movie and Pain & Gain is a three. I did momentarily consider giving it a three-and-a-half.

The thing I want to talk about, though, is Dwayne Johnson's unused skateboard.

At several times early on in Pain & Gain, Paul Doyle (Johnson) is shown carrying a skateboard. Never riding the skateboard, mind you; only carrying it. There's no explanation given about this skateboard.

One of these skateboard-carrying scenes is the one you see above, which is an iconic shot of Johnson, Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie strutting along, looking on top of the world. The fact that Johnson is carrying his unused skateboard at the time makes the shot slightly absurd. Here, I've taken the liberty of cropping out the other two dudes and pointing it out to you with a handy little yellow arrow. You can see the black and blue end of the board and the green wheel.

Now, Doyle is a recovering cocaine addict who spent time in prison, so it could be surmised that the skateboard is his mode of transportation because he no longer has a driver's license. A key scene later in the movie involves him driving a car, but enough criminal behavior has transpired by then that not having a license is probably the least of his worries. Still, without some mention if it, it sticks out.

While I won't go so far as to call this unexplained skateboard a distraction or an actual flaw in the film, it is the kind of thing that draws attention to the parts of Pain & Gain that were left on the cutting room floor. You figure there must have once been a scene that showed Doyle skateboarding, or at least a scene explaining why he's got one.

To go back to Goodfellas, it would be like just saying he's called Jimmy Two Times, without the "I'm gonna go get the papers, get the papers."

Parenthetically

I went to the movies (50/50) for the first time ever at The Grove last night. The Grove is one of those outdoor shopping malls (at 3rd and Fairfax) that is meant to sort of look like a little Disney village. There's frequently music playing (I remember hearing Dean Martin on my last trip), there are several fountains, and there's even a train that runs through. There's an undeniable air of festivity about the whole place.

The complex has one of those ornate throwback movie theaters (possibly a genuine theater from that era, more likely a Disneyfied recreation), and I'd always wanted to see a movie there. Because The Grove is not a geographically logical theater for me, to accomplish the feat I'd need to both be in the neighborhood, and have no child with me at the time. The planets aligned last night when I was in Hollywood for an alumni event for Columbia University, where I went to journalism school.

All of this is parenthetical to what I actually want to talk about.

The full push is on at The Grove to advertise Happy Feet Two, which comes out next month. So I first encountered a poster in the elevator on the way down from the parking garage. I was reading through the names atop the poster, to see if most of the vocal talent seemed to be returning from the first movie -- not that I really liked the first movie, mind you, or could necessarily remember more than a few names. But it was something to do.

And so I noticed that the artist otherwise known as Pink was credited in the following way:

Alecia Moore
(P!nk)

Or actually, if you want to get technical about it:

Alecia
Moore
(P!nk)

There's a comment to be made about the exclamation point in her name, but not today. Today it's all about the parenthetical clarification of who the heck "Alecia Moore" is.

Alecia Moore is of course Pink's birth name, and since Pink is making some strides (I guess) into acting, now she's ready to take the more mature approach to the moniker by which she's identified. We see this thing from time to time, and eventually, the re-branding may actually work. I'm pretty sure I've started referring to The Wrestler Formerly Known as The Rock as "Dwayne Johnson" in almost all contexts.

But I also thought there was something a bit better about the way they did Johnson's transition from wrestler to actor: He started being credited as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. After enough times credited this way, "The Rock" disappeared and he became, simply, Dwayne Johnson. The caterpillar had become the butterfly.

It doesn't seem like there's the same kind of exit strategy with "Alecia Moore (P!nk)." Or maybe they just plan to execute that strategy faster, because the parenthetical reminder of who she is is particularly awkward. I guess in one sense the (P!nk) will drop off the name more easily, because it's at the end, and doesn't even interrupt the flow of the name like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. But in the short term, until that point is reached, it'll make for a lot of indelicate semantics. (I suppose this method of crediting the singer/actress is intended for the poster only -- I doubt she will be credited thus in the movie itself, because the people who would have been drawn to the movie by her presence will have already paid their admission fee.)

What's kind of funny is that on this same poster, there's another one-name recording artist who has yet to return to his birth name, and may never plan to: Common. Maybe Common just isn't that psyched about one day being referred to as Lonnie Lynn Jr. Wikipedia has his full name as Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., so maybe he could just go with Rashid Lynn, which is probably okay. Or even Lonnie Rashid. Although of course, at first he'd have to be either Rashid "Common" Lynn, or maybe "Rashid Lynn (Common)" if Pink's little experiment does not end up being viewed as overly awkward.

Then when I got down inside the ornate theater at The Grove, I saw a poster for Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve -- you know, the movie that was greenlit after Marshall's Valentine's Day was such a commercial and critical success. (I jest.) And here I was reminded that Pink might be stuck with her chosen naming convention for longer than she thinks.

One of a kajillion stars appearing on the poster (including Robert De Niro?!?) was Chris Bridges. Don't know who I'm talking about when I say Chris Bridges? That's because the name still hasn't caught on. More than eight years after he appeared in 2 Fast 2 Furious, audiences still need to know that Chris Bridges is Chris "Ludacris" Bridges. Maybe it's because "Chris Bridges" is a pretty bland name. Then again, so is "Dwayne Johnson." Yet somehow The Rock has shirked his stage name while Ludacris has not.

Maybe there's a reason we need to keep being reminded who Chris Bridges is -- he's making crappy career choices. He's following up a disappointing "black friend" role in No Strings Attached with a role in a sappy chick flick ensemble movie that I can only assume will be disappointing.

Maybe I need to see his actual follow-up to No Strings Attached, Fast Five, to get excited again about Mr. Bridges. Everyone says it's fun. But I'm too anal, and I need to see Fasts two through four before I can see Fast Five.

One sequel I won't be seeing, however, is Happy Feet Two. Pink or P!nk or Alecia Moore (P!nk) or Alecia "P!nk" Moore notwithstanding.

There can be only one

Not only one Fast & Furious. Apparently, there can be at least five Fast & Furiouses. (Fast & Furii?)

No, I'm talking about the epic grudge match between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in Fast Five, which comes out today. The grudge match I imagine in my mind, anyway.

I have long considered Diesel and Johnson to serve more or less the same capacity in the movie biz. They are both biracial, they are both action stars, they are both usually bald, and they are both ripped.

Except the demographic they represent and cater to is where the comparison ends. Johnson also does comedy and generally makes smart choices. Diesel takes himself too seriously and generally makes dumb choices.

Essentially, the erstwhile The Rock is having the career Diesel should have had.

No sooner did Vin Diesel become famous than we started hearing about all the roles he didn't want to do. The main reason Diesel has only been in the first and most recent two installments of the Fast/Furious movies (and skipped out on the sequel to XXX) is that he thought he was going to do more "serious" and "worthwhile" projects (such as, um, The Chronicles of Riddick). I'm not saying a measure of an actor's career intelligence is how many half-baked sequels he makes. The problem with Diesel -- at least this is the impression I got from an interview I read -- is that he looked down his nose on the projects that made him famous, suffering from an instant case of "I'm better than that" syndrome. There's a healthy balance between challenging yourself and understanding where your bread is buttered, and the main reason Diesel basically disappeared for five to seven years is that he was so spectacularly untalented at finding that balance. (However, one can see how some early casting luck would have tempted him into making better movies -- before the clock even struck 2000, Diesel had appeared in both Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant.)

Filling the Diesel void was Dwayne Johnson, known previously to wrestling fans (and most of the rest of us) as The Rock. It was almost like there was an actual baton passing. The year 2002 was when both XXX came out, marking the last time Diesel wanted to be associated with such mindless action drivel, and The Scorpion King came out, marking the beginning of Johnson's rapid ascension toward the A list. (Or at least the B+ list.) Johnson could have easily gone from one role to the next to the next that required only his physique, but he smartly started to mix humor into his roles, such as The Rundown and Get Smart. Okay, I haven't seen The Rundown and I hated Get Smart. So maybe I'm really thinking of his appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he showed such a fitness for comedy. Meanwhile, having struck out with A Man Apart and Chronicles of Riddick, Diesel tried to make a course correction of sorts into comedy with the children's movie The Pacifier. It was a disaster, precisely because Diesel isn't funny.

Johnson smartly followed in Ice Cube's footsteps toward more family-friend fare, starring in The Game Plan, Race to Witch Mountain, Planet 51 and Tooth Fairy. He may have overdone it, in fact, because when he appeared in a straightforward action movie last fall -- Faster -- it caught a lot of us by surprise. You may have had a different take, but to me, it seemed that Johnson had become too good for marginal vigilante schlock like this. (I understand some people liked it. I haven't seen it.)

Meanwhile, after a second sci-fi misfire (Babylon A.D.), Diesel has been racing back to his roots like a cheating husband desperate for forgiveness. Not only has he jumped back into the Fast/Furious movies with both feet, I understand he's also filming the third XXX, subtitled The Return of Xander Cage. Funny, speaking of Ice Cube, Cube was actually Diesel's successor in XXX: State of the Nation. So if Cube was following in Diesel's footsepts, and Johnson was following in Cube's footsteps, but Diesel is generally seen as a failure, how is Johnson possibly the most successful of the three of them? I'm confused.

I do think there is something intentionally cheeky about pitting Johnson and Diesel against each other in Fast Five. It's like the famous first tete-a-tete on film between Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann's Heat, only on a much smaller and more poorly acted scale. And from what the trailers tell me, they're definitely on opposite sides of the law. So I can see the same kind of semi-civilized sit-down conversation, pregnant with veiled threats, transpiring between these two cinematic luminaries as well. Perhaps it would go something like this:

Johnson: You're going down, Diesel.
Diesel: I've been down. What else ya got?
Johnson: Oh you think you're a real comedian.
Diesel: No, isn't that your job, Mr. Saturday Night?
Johnson: It was one time! I only hosted once!
Diesel: Yeah, you were pretty menacing in your hula skirt. Me, I invented menacing.
Johnson: Menacing like Find Me Guilty? When you wore a bad wig and played a goofball mobster defending himself?
Diesel: Shut up. The great Sidney Lumet directed that film, may he rest in peace.
Johnson: And the great Richard Kelly directed Southland Tales.
Diesel: Um, yeah.
Johnson: Shut up.
Diesel: Face it -- you wish you were me.
Johnson: I am you -- only better. I've had two full careers. So, I've had one-and-a-half more careers than you.
Diesel: But were you ever in a movie nominated for best picture? Hello, I was one of those dudes saving private Ryan.
Johnson: Wasn't Be Cool nominated for best picture?
Diesel: No.
Johnson: Wait, how are you winning this argument? I'm much more successful than you are by any standard. Plus, I actually know how to fight.
Diesel: Please. Professional wrestling is fa--
Johnson: DON'T. YOU. DARE.
Diesel: Alright, listen dude, can we just agree to disagree? I'm always going to have that cool, laid-back thing you have to work so hard at. Which means I'm never going to lose an argument.
Johnson: Okay, but you gotta give me that The Pacifier sucked, and you only did it because you panicked and you didn't know what you were doing.
Diesel: I never panic.
Johnson: (silence)
Diesel: But yeah, The Pacifier sucked.

The inherent worthiness of acting

(Note: I know your time is precious, and your desire to keep up with my blog may be overwhelmed if I update it too often. So I'm going to try not to post every day, or at least, I'll keep some of them shorter, like yesterday's. However, today I have no bosses in the office, three hours remaining in my workday, no one needing my help, and no desire to do any work. That spells blogging long-windedness.)

The other day, as I was cruising down Venice Boulevard (doesn't my LA lifestyle sound so glamorous?), I caught a billboard for Disney's Race to Witch Mountain, which is not due out for over a month. I looked up at the giant face of Dwayne Johnson -- otherwise known as "The Rock" -- and thought how proud I was of him.

He's not even using his wrestling name in quotation marks anymore. He's just plain old Dwayne Johnson, the movie star. And he's a pretty good movie star at that. I mean, you want Dwayne Johnson in your movie, don't you? Maybe not if you're making Jane Austen, but for your average popcorn film, Dwayne Johnson is a boon to your box office, and he seems like a pretty cool guy, too.

And that made me realize: I tend to think of acting as just about the most noble pursuit a person can make.

Or let me rephrase that: It's about the most noble pursuit a person who's already famous for another reason can make.

For reasons I can't quite identify, I always feel a small rush of pride when I learn that musicians, athletes, or (in this case) pro wrestlers decide they want to try their hand at acting. It's like I think they've seen the light, and decided to join the right team. And I know it's not just congratulating them on branching out. Because if it were, I wouldn't feel an equal and opposite sense of annoyance whenever an actor wants to become a musician. But I do.

Which, I realize, is patently ridiculous. Why in the world would I consider acting to be more noble than performing music? It could certainly be argued that music serves a much greater benefit to society than movies. While some people can (gasp!) do without watching movies, the love of music is pretty much universal. Have you ever heard a person say "I don't like music"? Nope, of course you haven't. But people who don't care for movies ... there are plenty of them. You probably even know one of these sorry bastards personally.

Another thing that is almost definitely true: Being a musician is harder than being an actor. You can get cast in a movie just by being particularly beautiful. And maybe, if you've watched a lot of movies, you can fake your way through to a decent performance, even if it's just using the cues of some other actor. Then maybe, if they give you enough chances, you'll actually learn enough to become a passable actor. But being a musician? That takes indisputable skill. If you're an actor (or just a normal beautiful person), you can't fake your way to perfecting an instrument or writing a song. You might be able to sing a little bit, but that's probably because you started in musical theater when you were five, like most other actors.

Yet despite all these ways that being a musician is both more challenging and perhaps more socially useful, I still feel somehow vindicated when a musician wants to become an actor. And somewhat betrayed when an actor wants to become a musician. (And yes, I know I started this post talking about Dwayne Johnson, who is not a musician. But considering that not many actors decide to become athletes, which is even that much harder than being a musician, or to become wrestlers, which would just be stupid, it's useful at this point to leave Mr. Johnson behind and concentrate on a larger theory).

For starters, there are a lot more success stories among musicians who have become actors than actors who have become musicians. The list of musicians who have received decent acting reviews is probably too long to tackle, but just off hand: Courtney Love, Tim McGraw, Ludacris, Ice Cube, Ice T, Common, Eminem, Dwight Yoakam, Mos Def, Cher (who actually won an Oscar), Jennifer Hudson (who also won an Oscar), Jon Bon Jovi, Tupac Shakur, Mandy Moore, Queen Latifah and Justin Timberlake ... I'm only stopping because I'm tired of racking my brain, and you get the point. (If you notice a lot of rappers on that list, it's no coincidence, because I believe most rappers have an innate ability to give a legitimate performance. Perhaps this is because they have the life experience to reach those emotional places that evade your average person. This is a longer post for another time.) Of course, I'm just naming modern references here. This tradition goes way back, to when Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr. made the transition from crooning to discovering a character's motivation. In a way, you could say that the acting ranks have always received a steady flow of talent from the music world.

Of course, this is not to say that every singer can act. There are famous cases of the singer who wanted so badly to act, but just never did it well enough -- Sting, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears are just a few.

But if you flip it around and try to chart the success of actors trying to make it as legitimate musicians, the numbers flip as well -- a small number of successes and a large number of laughable failures. For every Jack Black, a genuinely gifted musician, that exists out there, there are a half-dozen others who make us laugh at their pathetic attempts to become rock stars: Keanu Reeves, Jared Leto, Kevin Bacon, Bruce Willis, Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, to name exactly a half-dozen. To say nothing of the would-be chanteuses: Scarlett Johansson, Lindsey Lohan, Minnie Driver, Hilary Duff, Milla Jovovich and Jennifer Love Hewitt, to name another half-dozen.

So I guess my perspective is: Why even bother? Why not just be happy with acting, rather than making a fool of yourself as a musician? Isn't acting good enough for you?

I remember the actress who first really brought me face to face with my own bias. You may know her better as "J. Lo." In fact, the only reason we all know Jennifer Lopez as "J. Lo" is because she embarked on a singing career. I venture to say she wouldn't have been a tenth as famous if she'd just remained an actress, someone who never knocked our socks off, but could do a nice little job in films like Out of Sight. So in a manner of speaking, J. Lo has been a smashing success as a musician.

The difference is, I no longer like her. I really did like her when she was "just" an actress, plucky and attractive, with a modest share of success that was likely to grow with time. But once she became a full-on diva, and directed all her attentions to grasping for the title of "world's most famous person," and churned out mindless pop albums that were barely even catchy, and started dating Puffy, and began making bad movies with Ben Affleck, she ruined herself. Yes, she was a million times more famous. And a million times less credible. And a million times less likeable.

So I guess it really comes down to the motivation for switching to the other side that makes the difference for me. If you are being cynical, you'd say that the primary motivation is always to become more famous, for both the singer becoming an actor and the actor becoming a singer. Their agents, their families, and everyone who ever advised them has emphasized that they are in the business of promoting their own brand. If you can be both the host and the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, bully for you. (In fact, there was a particularly weird SNL last fall when Tim McGraw hosted and Ludacris was the musical guest. Weird because rapper Ludacris is a more established actor than country singer McGraw, and had in fact done double duty himself as recently as 2006. If anything, you'd think the roles would have been reversed, except maybe the kids today aren't interested in McGraw's music.)

So let's look at secondary motivations, and this is where you'll see my personal biases. For the musician who wants to become an actor, it's about new challenges. It's about committing to grueling work schedules, about trying to develop the perspective of another person. It's about pushing your own limitations -- but in a realistic way in which you might actually succeed.

For the actor who wants to become a musician? It's about becoming a "rock star." It's about boozing and carousing and having a posse. It's about getting "rock star parking." After all, why do you think they call it "rock star parking" rather than "movie star parking"? Because it's the rock star who is worshipped like an icon, a god of cool, a stumbling, no-sense-making person who is allowed to be that way because he might just also be a genius. He might be the next John Lennon ... even if he started out as one of the guys in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

But then again, that might just be me. And I really enjoy watching the acting of a former pro wrestler, so what do I know?