by Gill Pringle
Instantly propelled to stardom, Affleck, now 50, and Damon, now 52, followed their own trajectories, regularly reuniting for projects, although none of their collaborations have recaptured the dizzy heights of Good Will Hunting – until possibly now, with their feel-good drama, Air.
Directed by Affleck, who also portrays Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight, Air stars Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike shoe salesman determined to sign rookie basketball player Michael Jordan in a deal to wear their shoes.
Viola Davis and her real-life husband Julius Tennon co-star as Jordan’s parents Deloris and James, with Jason Bateman portraying Rob Strasser, Nike’s VP of Marketing; Chris Messina as David Falk, Jordan’s agent; Chris Tucker as Howard White, an ex-player and Sonny’s colleague and advisor, and Marlon Wayans as George Raveling, one of Jordan’s coaches at the 1984 Olympics.
“A shoe is just a shoe…until my son steps into it,” is the logline for this heart-warming drama that goes behind the scenes of the unbelievable game-changing partnership between then rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division, which revolutionised the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand in 1984.
An inspirational story, which follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time.
“I really believe that human excellence is a beautiful thing; the concept of genius is one of the things that’s most fascinating to me, and Michael Jordan is nothing if not a genius,” says Affleck, whose award-winning films Argo and The Town proved that perhaps his greatest talent may be behind the camera. “There is a mystery in what exactly makes Jordan who he is – that level of elite, that cut above, the greatest basketball player ever. His influence on basketball and sports in general, and the people who love them, is incalculable.”
Written by newbie Alex Convery in 2021 under the title of ‘Air Jordan’, the script appeared on that year’s Black List, Amazon Studios optioning the script a few months later and securing Affleck and Damon to co-star with Affleck at the helm.
“I’m a ‘90s Chicago kid, which is where the Bulls and Michael Jordan and that connection comes from,” says Convery. “Like everyone else, I was locked up during those first couple months of quarantine watching The Last Dance and there’s a little five minute clip about Nike and how Air Jordan came together.
“I was at a point in my career where you’re trying to write a script that gets noticed. So, if you can explain the movie in one sentence – it’s a story of how Nike got Michael Jordan – then it has that ability to go to the top of the pile and people give it a bit more of a chance.
“But it comes down to character, so the question was: Who can be the protagonist? And the engine of this movie and finding both Sonny and Deloris was really, to me, what elevated it above just a shoe and Michael Jordan movie. It’s about finding the human elements in a very big movie. I call them big little movies, the little being, this is just a movie about a shoe deal, right? And it takes place over a week or so and it’s small in scope. But the big part is when you say it’s about Nike and Michael Jordan and that’s what elevates it above just a movie about a shoe,” argues Convery.
Affleck was immediately intrigued by the premise. “This is a story that exemplifies how – even before he stepped on an NBA court – Michael Jordan completely transformed the world of sports marketing and how athletes are compensated, championed by his mother, who envisioned his future and knew his worth.
“Air is not Michael Jordan’s story, but there is no story without him. I would not have made this movie without first reaching out to him. And I’m grateful to Michael for sharing what was important to him. His presence and influence is felt throughout the film, though we don’t see his face. Because he is such an icon – an undisputedly important and meaningful figure, someone everyone holds in such high esteem – we didn’t want to shatter the illusion, but rather, let the audience invoke their own memories and experiences of what Michael Jordan means,” says Affleck.
Damon was equally impressed by Convery’s script. “It was really quite something, and a lot of it was there on the page. With my character of Sonny, we were really trying to capture the spirit of these people in this time, more than anything, not exactly who said what at exactly what moment.
“And all these people on the Nike side, independent of one another, have talked about this time with such nostalgia and that’s what we were trying to create and remind people that they were the underdog, which is such a weird way to think of Nike now. But before this incredible deal, they really were these renegades or outsiders, which is what we were really trying to get at – how these characters all had this incredible infectious energy which was really jumping off the page,” adds Damon.
Affleck agrees. “The unconventional team at Nike, led by Sonny Vaccaro, Howard White and Rob Strasser, saw greatness in Jordan, but they never imagined that a shoe designed around a single player would be the catalyst for a multibillion-dollar global industry that would set a new standard. Today, we take it for granted when stars in any arena have a brand, but this is a story about the nascence of that – when the concept of creating a brand and associating it with personal identity was first formed.
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie, for me going into it, is that the protagonist isn’t who you think it is. In the course of developing the film, I came to the realisation that the fulcrum of the movie is Viola Davis’s character, Deloris Jordan. I wanted to do justice to her, as well as Michael, and honour who they are and the lasting impact they have on our culture,” says Affleck who visited Jordan at his Miami home to get his blessing.
Air is not Affleck’s first basketball film, three years ago he starred in well received drama, The Way Back, portraying an alcoholic construction worker recruited to become head coach of the basketball team at the high school he used to attend. And, prior to Good Will Hunting fame, he made an uncredited appearance as a basketball player in the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer film.
After debuting at SXSW to an ecstatic reception, Affleck and Damon hope Air will prove a slam-dunk.
“It really is one of those kinds of stories that comes along, and you go, ‘Wow, this really is for everybody’. We used to call them feel-good movies, when you leave the theatre with a skip in your step,” says Damon.
Air is in cinemas April 5, 2023