How Ben Affleck’s ‘Air’ Immortalizes Michael Jordan Against a Backdrop of ’80s Pop Ephemera
variety.comTodd Gilchrist editor Michael Jordan and his signature sneakers have been a fixture of pop culture since 1984, when Sonny Vaccaro convinced the then-rookie (and more importantly, his shrewd mother, Deloris) to sign an industry-changing endorsement deal with sportswear brand Nike. “Air” dramatizes many of the finer points of these real-life events, with Matt Damon playing Vaccaro, Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan and Ben Affleck pulling double duty as director and co-star.
But the new film operates less as a tribute to consumerism than as an origin story of one exceptional athlete — and the leather-and-rubber vessel that has become synonymous with his legacy. “I wasn’t all that interested in the business minutiae in the story,” Affleck tells Variety. “It’s really a fable, inspired by these characters and who they represent.” “Air” screenwriter Alex Convery grew up in the suburbs of Illinois in the 1990s during Jordan’s historic double NBA three-peat.
He says he was inspired to write the script while watching “The Last Dance,” ESPN Films’ 2020 documentary about Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls. “‘The Last Dance’ showed us how still ever present he is and in pop culture,” Convery says. “It’s just so second nature now — Jordans and Nike and the NBA as arguably the second-most-popular sport in the country,” he says. “It wasn’t always that way.” Tapping into moviegoers’ collective memories of the 1980s, production designer François Audouy flooded the sets with instantly recognizable ephemera, from a Trivial Pursuit board game to Apple’s original personal computer, the Macintosh 128K.
Aiming for a look that was evocative yet faithful to the period, Audouy says his research unearthed a more subdued landscape than the
Read more on variety.com
