The Rock elaborates on Vin Diesel feud by offering his definition of a "candy ass"
Dictionaries have failed us, but The Rock comes through
While making films about scowling men racing cars and punching one another in their scowling faces, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin “The Tank Top” Diesel learned, quite publicly, that they don’t like each other much at all. And now, after years of revving their mouth-engines at each other through statements evoking Federico Fellini, the show Ballers, and, of course, the complicated nature of all family relationships, The Rock has decided to speak on the issue once more and offer us a working definition of the term “candy ass” in the process.
In a Vanity Fair profile, the candy ass post heard ‘round the world is introduced and contextualized as “one of The Rock’s trademark wrestling put-downs.” When asked how it relates to a co-star like Diesel, The Rock elaborates by stating that “a candy ass is something you don’t want to be.”
“The best way that I can describe a candy ass is: Life is so much easier, I have found, when you are not full of shit,” he continues, before really complicating the ass-centric metaphor with, “And a candy ass is completely full of shit.”
Since we all know whose sugary ass is filled with shit in this scenario, The Rock goes on to say that, despite being our two foremost musclebound, shiny-headed actors, he and Vin Diesel are “philosophically two different people, and we approach the business of moviemaking in two very different ways.”
He goes on to passive aggressively say that he looks “at everybody as equal partners” in a project, whether that means a studio, co-star of varying fame, or member of the crew.
The Rock says that actually he doesn’t like having public arguments (while discussing this public argument) but that he stands by calling Diesel a candy ass. He also comments on Diesel’s assertion that The Rock is like a brother to him by saying “I have one big brother and it’s my half brother” and, when it comes to the Fellini quote, “Johnson at first simply bellows with laughter.”
Then, quoted in full, he continues:
“One part of me feels like there’s no way I would dignify any of that bullshit with an answer. But here’s the truth. I’ve been around the block a lot of times. Unlike him, I did not come from the world of theater. And, you know, I came up differently and was raised differently. And I came from a completely different culture and environment. And I go into every project giving it my all. And if I feel that there’s some things that need to be squared away and handled and taken care of, then I do it. And it’s just that simple. So when I read that, just like everybody else, I laughed. I laughed hard. We all laughed. And somewhere I’m sure Fellini is laughing too.”
Perhaps this isn’t quite as rough as being called a candy ass, but it’s close.
To smell a bit more of what The Rock’s cooking these days, read the rest of the article at Vanity Fair.
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