EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck Talks Getting Michael Jordan’s Approval for New Film, ‘AIR’

Ben Affleck steps into the director’s chair for Amazon Studios’ new film, AIR. Based on the creation of the Air Jordan shoe line, we got the chance to hear from Affleck regarding his new film.

During the chat, Affleck talks assembling his team for the film, how his and partner, Matt Damon’s story parallels this film, getting Michael Jordan’s approval, and so much more. Check out what he said below.

Ben, you’re once again both directing, working on the screenplay, and starring in this film. Was it hard to balance all that for this one film?

“I can see how it would seem that way, but actually for me it made it so much easier because this was a group of people who either I had known for a long, long time, an enormous amount of respect in regard for Matt Maher, Chris Messina as you’ve mentioned, and obviously Matt Damon and Jason Bateman, all of whom I’ve worked with multiple times and know well and adore and admire and people who it’s been my sort of life’s goal to work. Viola Davis and Chris Tucker.

I think Chris can attest the number of times I’ve harassed him. He passed me by in a hotel lobby. ‘Chris, Chris. Chris, I want to do a movie with you.’ But finally it got, I think Jordan brought him around or the Jordan subject matter or just because he’s really being humble. I mean, he really came in and created this role and I said, ‘I need you as a collaborator, filmmaker, your voice, your experience, your perspective. This movie is a massive failure if it’s just my voice and my experience and perspective.’ And Chris and Viola and Marlon and everybody who brought, what Jason brought, all those things are invaluable to telling a story. So it’s actually kind of like we’re walking on air.”

It feels like a coach assembling a team, and you did bring a lot of folks onto it. Can you talk about casting Viola Davis and getting that casting nod from Michael Jordan?

“I went to speak to Michael because I’ve been lucky enough to run across him a few times. I’m not going to act like me and him are friend. I just idolized the guy. And every now and again, I’ve had a chance to spend time with him. It’s been very memorable for me. Probably he’s forgotten it. So I had it at least enough of an in to say, ‘Hey, can I come see you and just run this past you?’ Because to be honest, listen, from a point of view of a respect for him, his family, who he is, what he means, from a selfish point of view, from the movie, the stupidest thing in the world would be to go make a movie that involves, he’s not in, doesn’t appear in, nonetheless, that invokes his name and tells a part of his story that he was opposed to.

So if he said, ‘Don’t do it,’ I just was going to not do it, that would be that. Over, last conversation. And I was very, very prepared for that to be the result of that because I had no reason to think that he would be open to it or that he would welcome it, particularly since it wasn’t the Michael Jordan story where they had bought his rights and that sort of thing, which I would think might be discomforting. However, what I found was that he was very gracious. And actually when I said, ‘Look, this is not a historically accurate in the sense that I can’t dot every I and cross every T what time every phone call was made, this is going to have to be something of a fable, a parable, an inspiring story. And so I’m going to take liberties in order to make it an hour and 30, 40 minutes, but I don’t want to violate anything that’s fundamentally important or true to you. So if you would please tell me what those things are, and I promise you they’ll be sacrosanct.’

And I think it was telling that he did. He wasn’t somebody who was like, ‘Well, we got to talk about when I did this and I did that,’ which there are people who take that approach. He only talked about other people. He wanted to make sure that other people who were meaningful were included in the story. George Raveling was one of them of them, which was why Marlon’s role in the movie and again, brought Marlon in, helped me figure this out, researched this, found out about the King speech story, that being true. Then he also said, Howard White, Howard White’s integral to this. So my first thought was finally I’m going to maybe get Chris Tucker, and then I said, ‘What was your dad like?’

And he said, because initially, to be honest, I was going to have it be a story about Michael himself saying, ‘This is what I’m worth and this is what I deserve.’ A person saying, ‘This is what I mean, and I’m going to ask for that.’ And I thought also his parents weren’t so much a part of the story, and so I was trying to flesh that out. He said, ‘My dad had the best personality in the world.’ And I think with Julius [Tennon], we got the exactly that, the perfect person. And then he said, ‘I didn’t want to go to Portland. I would’ve signed my shoe rights away for life for a red Mercedes. My mom told me to go to.’ And when I saw how he talked about his mother and the regard and esteem in which he held her, this is a very intimidating, powerful man.

I’ve never seen Michael Jordan, I mean, he really is it’s sort of being on Olympus. You’re around somebody who is as close to a deity as you’re going to find and yet there was this moment where I saw awe and a reverence and a respect and an adoration and love when he talked about his mother. And it just shocked me, and shame on me for not kind of assuming this was the case, but when I heard it, I realized right away, this is the story. And this is a beautiful story. And it’s a story about Deloris Jordan and what she means to Michael and that she’s emblematic of what so many mothers must have meant to so many athletes and entertainers and people in this business who are oftentimes very young and thrust into a world of fame and money, and that can be confusing.

And it just requires, and we see people take different rows all the time and must require enormous amount of guidance. And so I thought, actually, this is brilliant. This is what the story is. This is beautiful. This is the protagonist. And I said, who do you offhandedly, which is always a mistake, ‘Who do you think should play your mom?’ He said, ‘It has to be Viola Davis.’ I was like, okay. So that’s kind like saying, can I get a basketball team together? Sure. It has to be Michael Jordan. You’re like, well, all right.

But then I thought, this is very typical of who this guy is. It has to be the very best. Absolutely. And so I knew that it was incumbent on us to create a role that was worthy of Viola, and we tried to do that. And I still think probably her saying yes, which has been a lifelong career ambition of mine, I thought, I really have will made it as a director if I have Viola Davis in my movie. And when she said yes, I tried to believe it was me. I think a lot of it had to do with me being like, “Michael Jordan wants you to play his mom.”

This whole process really has been a team effort. But the story is almost similar to your and Matt Damon’s partnership. Can you talk a little about that?

“It’s interesting because the movie thematically kind of paralleled the things we were trying to do. We had ambitions for philosophically, which was we wanted to raise money to create a kind of mini sort of studio. And in some ways what Nike wanted to do, which was change the rules a little bit, change how the process was undergone, and also ultimately fundamentally ended up changing the way compensation worked to afford more responsibility and also more reward to the people. I really firmly believe the artist behind the camera make a massive difference in the quality and cost and the experience of your movie as well as the performers who I often feel are so meaningful and not compensated appropriately. And also to try to eliminate waste and streamline the process so that the important things are kept and the stuff that has to do with the ego and the ways in which sometimes money can be wasted are kind of left behind.

It was a function, both of my experience over the years and talking to other directors and going, ‘Why are we doing, why is it this? Do we need that?’ We are trying to change things a little bit, which is a very difficult thing because we have a model that we’ve inherited in terms of how films are made from the ’30s and ’40s with big cameras and slow film and lots of lights and a certain crew structure and all kinds of ways in which ownership and compensation are set up that I’ve heard the speech that Sonny gives Deloris about that’s just not how it works already. And I certainly don’t liken myself to the profound and significant way in which that deal not only changed Michael’s life, but had a ripple effect for hundreds of billions of dollars for athletes down the way and down the line.

And I don’t believe it is yet even an equitable relationship , but it was a step in that direction. And we’re trying to take a similar step, really, because I think that’s how you get the best work. I believe if you spend more on better gifted people, recognize them, value them, value alternate multiple voices and collaboration then hopefully we can have a company that’s known for making original interesting stories about people and what they say and how they relate to another that generates empathy. And we can be a supplier of films that people like.”

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity

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