Young Rock – Memphis Flyer

Record year for film and television

Television and film productions spent more money in Shelby County last year than any other year on record.

The Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission said the production of Young Rock pushed the record-breaking figure. Production offices for the show open in July 2022 and closed in February 2023. The series put to work nearly 1,500 local cast and crew members.

The commission said the show filled “Downtown hotels and launched Graceland’s exhibit halls as Memphis’ largest soundstage space.”

“[Last year] is bigger even than any year in the 1990s when we had big budget studio films such as Paramount’s The Firm and Columbia Pictures’ The People vs. Larry Flynt,” the commission said in a statement.

Ching’s Wings former owner indicted

Veniece Bobo I Credit: Shelby County Jail

Veniece Bobo, 65, former owner of Ching’s Wings, was arrested Wednesday on two counts of tax theft. She was booked into the Shelby County Jail.

State officials indicted Bobo last month on charges of tax theft over $60,000. She faces 12 years in the state penitentiary and fines of up to $25,000 for each charge.

“Investigations, such as this one, should warn retailers that failing to properly remit all the sales tax monies they collect is a crime,“ said Tennessee Department of Revenue Commissioner David Gerregano. “The taxes collected from customers are property of state and local governments. Customers have a right to know that the tax they pay will be remitted to the state and used for public good.”

Appeal lost for man convicted of touching young relative

Reed I Credit: Tennessee Department of Corrections

A man convicted of inappropriately touching an 11-year-old relative lost an appeal of his case, in which he argued that no evidence produced at trial proved the “the contact was for sexual arousal or gratification.”

In 2020, the young victim woke to find Rico Reed, then 39, “just rubbing [her] private part. … on top of [her] clothes.” She “pushed his hand back” and told him “no.” The victim ran from Reed and immediately texted her mother for help.

Reed, already convicted of sex crimes in Ohio, was convicted in Tennessee last year. His counsel sought to overturn the ruling, arguing no one could prove the touching was for sexual gratification. A state appeals court affirmed the ruling of the Shelby County court this week.

“In sum, [Reed] a 39-year-old man, touched the 11-year-old victim’s vagina while she was asleep and unable to resist,” reads the ruling. “When the victim awoke, she did resist and told him ‘no.’

“The jury, when presented with this evidence, was able to ‘draw upon its common knowledge’ to ‘reasonably construe’ that [Reed’s] actions were for sexual arousal or gratification. We find no reason in the record to say otherwise.”

There’s one thing you can say about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — he’s big. Yes, the former Miami Hurricanes defensive tackle turned professional wrestler is physically large — officially, he’s a 6-foot-5, 260-pound pile of muscle and tattoos — but his personality and ambitions are also cartoonishly outsized.

When he was in his wrestling prime around the turn of the century, he attracted the biggest audiences WWE ever saw. But for the last 20 years or so, Johnson has been a movie star. After making his debut as a supporting actor in 2001 with The Mummy Returns, he immediately booked his first lead role in that film’s prequel, 2002’s The Scorpion King. In 2011’s Fast Five, he gave the struggling Fast & Furious series a shot in the arm, introducing a new character and transforming the car-chase franchise into the weird semi-spy thriller thing that is scheduled to clock its 10th installment in 2023.

Notice I called Johnson a “movie star” instead of an “actor.” That’s because actors transform themselves for each new role, while movie stars transform each role into a conduit for the persona they’re selling. John Wayne, for example, always played John Wayne, even when he was ostensibly playing Genghis Khan. Next year, people won’t go to see what Luke Hobbs is up to in Fast X, they’ll go to see The Rock drive cars real fast.

Johnson’s larger-than-life persona, and how it got to be so dang big, is the subject of Young Rock, which is probably the first ever biographical comedy series about someone who is not a comedian — or even very funny. It’s 2032, and Johnson is running for president. He appears on a chat show hosted by Randall Park (playing himself, as several people, including Johnson, do in the future-now world of 2032), where he starts telling stories about his life. As each story unfolds we flash back to the appropriate period of Rock lore: Adrian Groulx plays him at age 10, Bradley Constant at 15, and Uli Latukefu as the young adult Rock.

Johnson’s had a pretty interesting life to provide fodder for the show. He was a third-generation wrestler — his father was Rocky “Soul Man” Johnson, the first Black champion in WWE history, and his mother Ata was the daughter of Samoan wrestling legend Peter Maivia. There’s also a colorful cast of characters, including André the Giant (Matthew Willig), The Iron Sheik (Brett Azar), and “Macho Man” Randy Savage (Kevin Makely), just to name a few.

Both Soul Man and The Rock went through the famously wild Memphis wrestling market on their way to stardom. Rocky was a rival of Jerry “The King” Lawler. Later, Johnson would introduce memories of his stint in the Mid-South with the words, “I was working in Memphis, and it was a grind.”

We know the feeling, Rock.

But it must not have been too bad because after two seasons filming in Queensland, Australia, Young Rock moved company to Memphis. The first episode filmed in the Bluff City, “The People Need You,” premiered last Friday. At the end of season 2, Johnson had just lost the 2032 election to Senator Brayden Taft (Michael Torpey). As season 3 dawns, Park, who functions as the audience surrogate who listens to The Rock’s tall tales, has a new show with a co-host he hates. Johnson has gone into seclusion following his election loss, but after a viral video surfaces of The Rock signing a kid’s autograph, Park goes to visit his old friend, who is spending his time puttering around his farm quoting Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech.

Becky Lynch guest stars as Cyndi Lauper.

The episode’s time jumps and wacky portrayals of real people show that Young Rock didn’t lose a step when it leapt continents. The production values are first-rate — at one point, Downtown’s Front Street is transformed into Saudi Arabia. Johnson recalls the events which led to the downfall of his father’s career, which included an international contract dispute with Vince McMahon (Adam Ray) and a visit to a music video release party for Cyndi Lauper’s (Irish wrestler Becky Lynch) theme song for The Goonies.

Johnson has been pretty open about his ambitions to enter politics, and Young Rock seems designed to burnish his image as a saintly everyman while getting people used to seeing the wrestler/actor as a political candidate. It’s a strategy that has worked before, first with Donald Trump’s stint on another NBC show, The Apprentice. The second time was TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was elected president of Ukraine in April 2019 and was then promptly extorted by Trump, who attempted to get him to lie about Hunter Biden in exchange for American military assistance. The incident led to Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Zelenskyy is a hero of democracy, leading his people against the genocidal Russian invasion. Let’s hope The Rock takes after him.

Young Rock is airing on NBC and streaming on Peacock.