Proposal for a book to be adapted into a movie starring Dwayne Johnson

September 23, 2018 10:52 PM

I am here to tell you the professional wrestler turned movie star Dwayne The Rock Johnson is going to be president, but before that happens, we are going to make a book, to make a movie, to make a mind.
posted by Zed (14 comments total)

haha this is pretty far out... but it does beg an interesting question: if the time for charismatic apolitical celebrities to run for president is ripe, and i agree that it is, then some new rules will probably develop to make a hierarchy of them, just like there were pre-trump/pailin political rules that once made idiots like them unelectable. what i mean is, there are plenty of other seemingly viable celebrities who might run, and some metric will arise to weigh which has the best shot and which skeletons in which closets are a bridge too far for voters... although i dont really think we know what that will be yet. johnson seems cool, but i'm not convinced he is that special even compared to other famous former wrestlers. (john cena?) let alone true mega celebrities like oprah or george clooney or whomever.
posted by wibari at 11:16 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was enjoying this thought experiment... then I got to page 8 and was surprisingly moved, particularly by this beautiful paragraph:

Without openness, the United States is just another country. This is the insight that came late, as much a lie and a dream as anything else in our history, but I think we believed it, enough of us to matter: that a country could be for everyone, and American-ness might not have to be inherited or earned, it might just be available. It might operate, in that way, like grace.

posted by borborygmi at 1:28 AM on September 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Ctrl-F "Schwarzenegger"

"Phrase not found"
posted by nnethercote at 2:11 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

This all sounded sincere, but Gnomon Marlowe is apparently not a real thing. So it's a weird piece of short fiction I guess...? Also, I watch Ballers so I can verify that this is false:
Watching Dwayne Johnson on TV, you see that it is NOT his medium. Come on, he's excellent on that show. He's equally capable in all media contexts it seems.

And that's why this is like a horror story. I don't want any more actor Presidents. No, no, no. And yet I know, like this author, that Dwayne Johnson is so charismatic that he would win if he ran. So every time this topic comes up, I get this anxiety that makes me want to yell "Stop it! That's not what America needs!"
posted by heatvision at 2:36 AM on September 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Johnson should run in 2020 and in place of one debate, he and the presumptive republican nominee for president should wrestle.
posted by The Potate at 3:32 AM on September 24, 2018

This is all going to lead up to a Kardashian versus a Palin for the Presidency and then we will all welcome the nukes.
posted by delfin at 3:56 AM on September 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

“The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:06 AM on September 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

"Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho"
posted by Ickster at 5:53 AM on September 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

...we still get Hanks as vice in both regards, right? I'm in.
posted by davelog at 6:34 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oprah Hanks 2020
posted by Damienmce at 6:44 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

[Zaphod Beeblebrox quote]
posted by Just this guy, y'know

Heh.
posted by quinndexter at 9:52 AM on September 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Honestly at this point president should just be decided via wrestling matches. We could then at least be sure nobody was meddling in the process, we could see it before our very eyes, and we'd probably end up with better candidates than the current system produces.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:53 AM on September 24, 2018

Sooo..if 2016 had been decided by wrestling??? Think Hill Coulda shown trumpster some moves?
posted by supermedusa at 5:57 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I re-read Moby Dick last year, and realised that my headcanon for the first third was firmly in the "Ishmael by Martin Freeman, Queequeg by Dwayne Johnson" and I only had to bowdlerise out a fraction of the 19th century white-dude perspective to make this a film I'd be willing to pitch.

Like, when Ishmael first wakes up to actually see Queequeg in the light of day, first thing he notes is the tattoos and the second thing is that dude is cold shaving with whale oil and the sharpened edge of his own harpoon. The bromance that follows is entirely hapless-city-boy-plus-quiet-badass magic (as I said, so long as you cross out a sentence or two here or there).

Let's make this happen. He can run for president after.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:57 AM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]