[This story contains spoilers for Air.]
Air is an underdog story about the time Nike pulled off the impossible by signing Chicago Bulls rookie Michael Jordan to an exclusive shoe deal, and the film’s screenwriter, Alex Convery, has also watched his own long-shot story play out in relatively similar fashion.
With Nike now being the No. 1 shoe manufacturer in the world, it’s difficult to imagine a time in which the industry titan was the doormat of the basketball shoe market, but Ben Affleck’s Air picks up at that place in 1984, as Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) wants to bet the farm on Jordan, the Chicago Bulls’ third overall pick in the NBA Draft. The problem is that Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), has no interest in arranging a meeting with Nike, considering that Jordan’s heart was already set on Adidas, with Converse being a distant second.
So, in the film, Vaccaro takes initiative and travels to Wilmington, North Carolina, in hopes of persuading Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis) to at least agree to hear Nike’s pitch for her son. Vaccaro basically cold-called the Jordan family, but the sequence still paralleled Affleck’s own trip to pitch the movie to Michael Jordan and hopefully receive his blessing. Both meetings proved to be make-or-break, as Nike eventually became an industry leader and Convery officially became a produced screenwriter.
The film does in fact have an actor (Damian Delano Young) playing Jordan, but Affleck made the call early on to never show the actor’s face, something Convery’s original spec script intended to do.
“When Sonny says, ‘I’m gonna look you in the eyes and tell you the future,’ that was the first time it cut to Jordan’s face,” Convery tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It worked on the page, but literally, from the first time we sat down with Ben, he very smartly said, ‘Either he has to be a character that you show throughout the movie, or you can’t show him at all.’”
Damon’s performance as Vaccaro has also received rave reviews, especially his pivotal monologue during Jordan’s meeting at Nike headquarters. Convery wrote the bulk of the speech, but Affleck and Damon’s rewrite made sure to incorporate an element about the cost of fame, which is perhaps the one aspect of Jordan’s life that the Oscar-winning screenwriting duo can relate to most.
“Ben and Matt added that piece within the Sonny monologue about living life in the public eye and the expectations that are placed upon you and the weight of having to be that person all day, every day,” Convery says. “I love that part of the speech, and it obviously comes from their own experience. So that was the final knot in the bow in terms of getting that monologue to where it needed to be.”
Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Convery chronicles every phase of Air’s production, including the day Affleck surprised him with sole writing credit on the film.
Just out of curiosity, are you a Halt and Catch Fire fan? Air gave me those vibes.
It’s so funny you say that. I feel horrible now because I did not watch Halt and Catch Fire when it was on the air. I don’t know why, because it’s such a no-brainer concept for my taste. But I binged it on Netflix in the summer of 2020 when I was writing Air, and it wasn’t even on purpose. I didn’t think that it might be good inspiration for the script; I just so happened to stumble onto it on Netflix. So, yes, I am a massive fan of that show, and it undoubtedly influenced a lot of the script.
So you worked on the 30 for 30 episode “Sole Man” about Sonny Vaccaro?
Kind of, yeah. Not to delve too deep into it, but I was the assistant to one of the producers on that movie. So I was around and on the phone calls and all that, but I didn’t capital-W work on the movie.
Was that the jumping-off point for writing Air on spec? Or was it The Last Dance?
It was more The Last Dance, but it was important that I already knew who Sonny was. He was in my head from that 30 for 30, and I knew he was involved in the Jordan deal. But when I was watching The Last Dance and that little five-minute segment on Nike came up, I was like, “Holy crap, this is a movie.” It’s because the deal was so unlikely. It was impossible, and there’s no reason Nike should have ever gotten Jordan. But they did, and it changed the world, really. But I found it very strange that Sonny was not in The Last Dance. He is in it, but it’s just that picture of his head from behind. So I just started researching it and realized that Sonny should probably be the protagonist of this movie. It’s known as the Rashomon of shoe deals. Everyone has a different version and wants to take credit, but the more and more you research it, there’s only one guy who said, “Michael Jordan is the guy and we should bet it all on him.” And that was Sonny. So, just from a screenwriting and practicality perspective, in terms of dramatic stakes and the character who has clear wants and goals, Sonny was always the obvious choice.
And how did the spec end up in the hands of Affleck and Damon’s Artists Equity?
So my rep sent it around town, and we had a couple production companies that were interested in optioning it. I ended up going with Mandalay [Pictures] and Skydance [Sports], just because it seemed like they had the best shot to actually get it made. Jon Weinbach, who runs Skydance Sports, co-directed “Sole Man,” and he and Sonny have a very long history and friendship and just a deep connection and trust, which was important. Mandalay, run by Peter Guber, made The Last Dance, and he is a co-owner of the [Golden State] Warriors. So the NBA connections of it all just made sense, and I went with them.
And then we went out to talent over the holidays of 2021, and Ben was on the short list. These were the dream scenarios that [we thought] would all pass on the movie before we’d go find whoever actually wanted to do it. But when we came back from the holiday break in January 2022, I got the call that Ben was interested, and then two days later, I got the call that we were going to go meet him. “Clear your calendar on Tuesday.” (Laughs.) So we sat with him, and all in that conversation, he said, “I want to direct it. I have some thoughts on the script and I’d like to do a pass on it. Matt has also read the script and he wants to do it. So let’s do it and we’ll go find somewhere to make it.” And five months later, we were standing on set. It was a true whirlwind.
The talent involved probably made this an automatic green light, but the success of The Last Dance, in combination with those names, must’ve been quite a one-two punch.
No question. The Michael Jordan of it all is what gives the movie a bigger audience than it would normally have, but there’s no science to this stuff in terms of what works, what doesn’t, why people want to see things, why they don’t. I honestly give a lot of the credit to Amazon. They believed in this movie and took it from just a streaming release to a theatrical release, which we’re all very grateful for and proud of. But I give the most credit to Ben, obviously. We don’t have the cast that we do unless he’s behind the camera. He directly called these people and got them involved and pitched them their role, while giving them the freedom to create a lot of the role, too. So much of the movie was done on set, from Chris Tucker doing all his own stuff to Viola improvising what I think is the best line in the movie, to Matt and Ben doing a pass on the script. There was so much creation, and that is a lot of the reason why the movie works the way it does. You feel that energy. Just look at the cast, they’re all filmmakers. So we truly had the dream team. No pun intended.
Going back to your favorite line, are you referring to “a shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it”?
Yeah, Viola improv’d the second part of that line. “A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into it” was a throughline in the movie, but when she said, “Until my son steps into it,” it was like, “Holy shit, that is the best line in the movie and I should have thought of that.” So that again speaks to the freedom of creation that was all around the set.
Now Ben has told the story that he met with Michael Jordan in order to receive his blessing, and that led to parts for Howard White (Chris Tucker), George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) and a mandate for Viola Davis to play Deloris Jordan, which also meant a meatier role was needed. So what was your vantage point on the Jordan notes?
Well, knowing that Ben was going to meet with Michael, that was a stressful 24 hours, because if Michael says, “I don’t want you to do it,” then there’s no movie. I don’t think I’m going to have many days like that in my life, where you’re either going to get your first movie made or you’re back to square one. From day one, Ben didn’t care what Nike thought of the movie. He also didn’t care what the NBA thought of the movie, but he really, really cared what Michael wanted. It was really important to him, so that was the right vantage point to take on it.
Look, I wasn’t in on that conversation, but from talking to Ben and hearing his breakdown of the meeting, it was exactly what you said. There were three requests: George Raveling needs to be in the movie. Howard White needs to be in the movie. There was actually a fourth thing. We had Tinker Hatfield as a character in the original script, but he didn’t really design Air Jordans until the Jordan 3. He was technically an employee of Nike at the time, and I just thought it would be fun to have Tinker Hatfield around. But Jordan was like, “Tinker wasn’t really involved in the first Jordan,” so we took him out of the script. And then the other request was that he wanted Viola Davis to play his mom. It’s easy to say that, but you don’t just get Viola Davis if you want her. You have to earn it.
So they did a lot of work on that character, especially in the third act, which has my favorite scene in the movie. That was all Ben, Matt and Viola. So Deloris Jordan was always in the movie, but that third-act turn really came from the Jordan conversation and him saying that the most important person in all this was his mom. We’d always known that, but when I was spec’ing the script, I had to be careful. I was very conscious of the fact that I wasn’t writing the Michael Jordan biopic. That was never the idea, and in all likelihood, I’m not the right person to tell that story. So you just want to respect that and be careful about that stuff.
But once we had Jordan’s permission and our cast, there was a little more freedom. Chris Tucker knows Howard White, so it was easy for him to channel that and be authentic with it. And Viola being Viola, she just took that role and made it what it is, which is the giant beating heart of the movie.
Just to clarify, did you incorporate the Jordan notes into a rewrite? Or were the Jordan notes all a part of Ben and Matt’s rewrite?
It was all happening at once. So I met with Sonny and did a “Sonny pass” on the script before Ben and Matt were officially signed on to the movie. And then they were like, “We’re going to do our pass on the script,” but we were already going to roll cameras in four months. So there was hardly any time for anything. They were working on their pass as Ben met with Jordan, and then he got those Jordan notes. So we talked about it, and I had already researched Howard. I also knew about George Raveling, who wasn’t at Nike, but I was trying to keep the spec as tight as possible and keep it on the tracks of Nike. So I knew George was important, but it was like, “Are we going to do another phone call? Sonny is already going to Carolina.” But once we heard how important it was to Jordan, we had to get it in the script.
But, no, the Jordan notes were all Ben and Matt during their pass. They incorporated the ideas they already had into the script, on top of Jordan’s notes, and that continued into shooting the movie. There was a lot of creation during the shoot, but that’s making movies, man. You’re never locked.
So what’s the story behind Sonny’s (Damon) monologue? Where did it begin and how did it evolve?
That was the hardest scene to write. The movie is leading up to that moment, and you have to earn it. You have to believe it. I knocked out some of these scenes in a day. The Mel Turpin thing was one of the scenes that just came naturally, but the speech was not one of those. I took that in bits and chunks and pieces, but I probably unlocked it while I was on a run. That’s when I get most of my good ideas, and that’s in the movie, too. (Laughs.) So it was this idea that Sonny is going to see into the future and talk about that, but I was nervous about if it was really going to work. If it’s not done right, it’s a little hokey and it’s kind of a cheat. But this is a movie where everyone knows the ending already. No one is walking into it, saying, “I wonder if Nike is gonna sign Michael Jordan.” So the speech is just an extension of that. The audience is already on the same level, and so I felt like we had permission to go there. So that device was in there from the early draft.
So, Ben and Matt added George Raveling’s story about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech that ultimately sets up Sonny’s monologue?
Yeah, that was them. That’s a real George Raveling story. That’s all from him. Ben and Matt also added that piece within the Sonny monologue about living life in the public eye and the expectations that are placed upon you and the weight of having to be that person all day, every day. I love that part of the speech, and it obviously comes from their own experience. I don’t know what that’s like, but they do. So that was the final knot in the bow in terms of getting that monologue to where it needed to be.
What I also appreciate about the speech is that Affleck intercuts not only future highlights but also future lowlights, such as Michael’s gambling controversy, his father James Jordan’s murder and his Minor League Baseball stint. As you’re likely aware, biopics often get criticized for looking at their subjects through rose-colored glasses, but this movie covered both angles to varying degrees. Anyway, were Michael’s lowlights ever a point of contention?
No. I mean, I don’t know if Ben talked about that with Jordan, but they were always part of it. We were always going to show him on the White Sox AAA team. We were always going to show the tragic events with his father, and it’s because of exactly what you’re saying. That’s really the whole point of the speech. The way up the mountain is much, much easier than the way down. It’s also this idea that we love to build people up, but we also love to tear people down, because we’re human and we want them to be human, too. And the way we confirm that they are human is by finding all the little flaws in them and making them as public as possible after we’ve built them up. So we had to show those things because that is what happened with Jordan. The idea is that if you can get past that, you can live on, and the shoe is just an extension of that. It’s something that says, “I was here,” and that valley after the peak is part of it, so how do you keep going?
The rousing score underneath the monologue works hand in hand with the writing and the performance. Did you turn on any uplifting or inspiring music while you wrote it?
No, I was working on spec while I was doing the other work that I was actually being paid to write. I was being paid very little — but paid, nonetheless — and that work had to take precedence. So I wrote a lot of this script late at night after my wife had gone to bed. I’d sit at this table or in our second bedroom, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. And at that time, I’d typically listen to ambient music like Brian Eno. Besides Halt and Catch Fire, I was also watching Industry at that time, and so I would listen to Nathan Micay’s theme from that show. He’s this British ambient artist, so I listened to his stuff late at night, too. In a lot of ways, that sequence when Sonny and Rob [Jason Bateman] are working alone in the office over the weekend was similar to the setting that I was writing it in, actually.
With Ben and Matt being Boston Celtics guys, could you tell that it pained them to have to definitively acknowledge that Michael is the greatest player of all time?
It’s funny because Ben was always like, “Michael transcends rivalries in the game,” and Matt also saw Jordan play a lot. He had a similar experience in childhood as me, where I would get to go to one Bulls game a year through my mom’s work. She would get tickets to one game a year, and that was always the day I would look forward to the most. And Matt has said that his dad would also get tickets for one game a year, and if he couldn’t get Laker tickets, they would always try to see Michael Jordan. So he transcends.
On set, the 2022 NBA Finals [Golden St. Warriors vs. Boston Celtics] were going on while we were shooting, and Ben is obviously a huge Celtic fan. And Peter Guber, one of the producers on the movie, co-owns the Warriors, so there was a lot of back and forth and funny jabs as that series progressed. [Writer’s Note: The Celtics lost.]
It made sense for the story, but they got their couple of moments of Celtics-related glory in the film, so they’ll be OK.
Yeah, there was even more of that. During the casino scene, they were trying to figure out what the bets would be, and they were doing all the Celtics-over-Lakers bets for the [1984 NBA Finals between the L.A. Lakers and Celtics]. But then they were like, “We’ll just do a couple instead of making it all an in-joke.” But there’s a little bit of that in there, for sure.
Wisely, Jordan looms over the entire movie, but his face is never directly shown. Was he ever more involved on the page?
The only difference is that in the original spec, when Sonny says, “I’m gonna look you in the eyes and tell you the future,” that was the first time it cut to Jordan’s face. It worked on the page, but literally, from the first time we sat down with Ben, he very smartly said, “I think you have to pick one or the other. Either he has to be a character that you show throughout the movie, or you can’t show him at all. Because the minute we cast someone to play Jordan, that’s going to be the main headline about the movie. This actor is playing Michael Jordan, and everyone’s going to be wondering how he’s going to do and what it’s going to look like. And then they’re going to show up for the movie and they’re only going to see his face in that one shot.” And he was right. So they made the decision that, instead of trying to write Jordan in, we’ll just [shoot him from behind] in the signing meeting, too.
And to all the headlines that are like, “Michael Jordan is not in the movie,” he is, but he’s just presented in the footage of him playing basketball. That’s Michael Jordan. So the idea of leaving him out of the movie, I don’t see it that way. I think it’s the opposite, where it’s almost out of respect for him that we’re not trying to fake him. You can fake [Nike co-founder] Phil Knight, you can fake Sonny Vaccaro, you can fake [Jordan’s agent] David Falk, but you can’t fake Michael Jordan, unless you are really going to do the biopic. As Ben says, the minute you turn the camera on his face, everyone in the audience will think, “OK, that is not Michael Jordan.” So I agree with him, and the way Michael is shot in the movie works. It’s also a credit to Billy [Goldenberg], the editor. If it was cut wrong, then it could be really glaring.
Considering that Air was your first produced screenwriting credit and you had such an assortment of heavy hitters around you, were you a nervous wreck throughout this entire process?
Honestly, once we were going, it was like going to work every day. That’s not to say it ever felt normal, but we were making the movie. The only time I was really nervous was that 24-hour period where Ben was going to meet with Jordan and the movie was on the line. It’s weird in Hollywood. When someone passes on a project, you never officially hear it from them. When I met with Ben and he was like, “I want to direct it and Matt wants to do it,” we didn’t sign a contract in the room. It was just like, “They’re on board for the project and we’re going to try to set it up.” But then there’s that weird time in between them coming onto the project and actually shooting where it’s like, “I think this movie is happening, but nothing is official.” So you’re existing in this weird in-between space where it’s like, “Well, I’m going to start my next script and maybe my first movie is going to get made with Ben and Matt, or nothing could happen and I’ll be back to being an unproduced screenwriter who’s trying to make it happen.”
So, February and March of 2022 was this very heady time where I was potentially on the verge of doing this dream project that could also fall apart. So I tried not to think about it, and I tried to just move on to the next script and cross my fingers and understand that once the script leaves your hand, the part of the process that you control is over. Life’s too short to stress about stuff that you can’t control, and trust me, that’s a skill I’ve had to learn. Having had two scripts prior to this get close and not go is part of it. So it’s a crazy business, man. If you emotionally ride the highs and lows, then you’re gonna go crazy. So you just have to take it in stride and know that there are going to be a lot of good and bad and in-between days. And emotionally, I try to treat every day like an in-between day. You should still celebrate the wins, but it’s a long road with no finish line.
So is there actually debate about who originated the term Air Jordan first?
A hundred percent. David Falk does take credit, and by the way, he might have actually come up with it. I think the movie is trying to presuppose that it very well could have been his idea. I think they went over a bunch of potential names, and Air Jordan was one of 20 names on the list. In the original script, the guy who comes up with it is that dude Richard [Dan Bucatinsky] who barges in on Bateman’s character in the bathroom. It was just this idea of like, “Well, if everyone is gonna take credit for it, then I’m just gonna give the idea to this random dude.” It was also a comment on how a good idea can come from anywhere, but Ben was like, “Let’s embrace it. Let’s have David Falk say it and let’s have Peter Moore [Matthew Maher] say it.” And then, obviously, we know who Sonny and Strasser were going to side with [Peter Moore]. But yes, there’s still a ton of debate about who came up with it.
Decades from now, when you’re reminiscing in front of a crackling fireplace, what day on Air will you likely recall first?
The first day on set was a little overwhelming, but it was also like, “OK, this is where I’ve wanted to be and where I’ve dreamed of being, and we’re here.” On the last day of production, Ben pulled me aside and said, “We’re not gonna arbitrate. We’re going to give you sole credit. It was a spec script, and we’re writers. A lot of people gave us the benefit of the doubt and gave us breaks and gave us chances, and we’re going to pay it back.” So, to be a part of that was very surreal and heady, and I’ll always remember that.
I’ll also remember the first time I saw a scene of the movie. We didn’t really do dailies, but Ben and Billy were cutting the movie as we were going. So, when they had some assembly scenes, Ben took me into the edit room and showed me the scene where Sonny is breaking down Jordan’s title game shot against Georgetown and says, “I don’t wanna sign three players; I wanna sign one.” Look, set is not as romantic as it seems. It’s just stop and start, and then stop for a long time and start quickly. So it’s just hard to picture what it’s going to look like, but when I saw that scene for the first time, it was out-of-body. I was just like, “Wow, holy shit. Matt killed it, and this scene is way better than I ever could have imagined.”
***
Air is now playing in movie theaters. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
"original" - Google News
April 12, 2023 at 03:27AM
https://ift.tt/ZczKWEv
‘Air’ Writer Alex Convery on the Original Plan for Michael Jordan and Building Matt Damon’s Show-Stopping Monologue - Hollywood Reporter
"original" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3y1hvnX
https://ift.tt/5dzxgUP
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "‘Air’ Writer Alex Convery on the Original Plan for Michael Jordan and Building Matt Damon’s Show-Stopping Monologue - Hollywood Reporter"
Post a Comment