Ben Affleck Interview: Why Michael Jordan Is Barely in Air
75Ben Affleck’s Air is about how Michael Jordan completely changed the game for Nike’s struggling basketball division, but Jordan is barely seen in the movie. While that might come as a surprise to some, it works. Exceptionally well, in fact.
In the 80s, Nike couldn’t compete with juggernauts Converse and Adidas when it came to basketball shoes. Converse had Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and Adidas was attracting some of the biggest rising stars including Michael Jordan himself. In a last-ditch effort to keep the basketball division afloat at Nike, Matt Damon’s Sonny Vaccaro opts to risk it all on one player; he wants to use all of their resources (and then some) to sign Jordan.
Given the fact that some referred to Air as “the Michael Jordan Nike movie” leading up to its release, it might come as a surprise that Jordan is rarely seen in the flesh in the film. Most of the negotiating happens between Vaccaro and Jordan’s mother, Deloris Jordan, played by Viola Davis. Air certainly emphasizes Michael’s genius in the sport, but it’s largely focused on how he changed the game of basketball before even joining the NBA. As Affleck notes in his director’s statement, “Air is not Michael Jordan’s story, but there is no story without him.”
With that in mind, the camera is often on the film’s main ensemble including Damon, Davis, Affleck as Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight, Jason Bateman as Nike’s VP of Marketing, Chris Tucker as Sonny’s colleague and advisor, Chris Messina as Jordan’s agent, and Marlon Wayans as one of Jordan’s coaches at the 1984 Olympics. While we do get flashes of Michael Jordan himself, we never see him in full in the movie.
With Air hitting theaters on April 5th, I got the chance to chat with Affleck and opted to ask him if that was always the plan. Did he want to incorporate Michael Jordan this particular way since day one or did he ever consider a different approach? Hear about that and more from Affleck and Chris Tucker in this interview!
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