“You’re remembered for the rules you break.” So says Ben Affleck in Air, the 2023 sports marketing drama that took its own advice. Written by our guest today, Alex Convery, Air shouldn’t have been the captivating cinematic slam-dunk it turned out to be. At least, not on paper. A drama about the creation of the Nike Air Jordan trainer? That sounds like a film that’s gonna play out largely in grey, air conditioned boardrooms. It sounds like a film that’s gonna have limited suspense, because we all know that Air Jordan became this huge sports brand. It also sounds perhaps like it could be a nakedly capitalistic celebration of a product – Hollywood scraping the barrel in a time of endless IP and emphasis on “brand recognition."
But Air turned out to be a film about Nike. At least, not entirely. It’s a drama about our connection to “things” and the intelligent people that foster those connections – who recognise how, for better or worse, in a capitalist world, products like an Air Jordan trainer can become these symbols of the lives we want to lead and the people we aspire to be. Directed by Affleck from Alex’s spec script, it starred Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan, mother to Michael Jordan – the greatest basketball player of all time. Alex had the idea for the movie after watching Netflix documentary series The Last Dance and – well, we'll leave the rest for him to explain.
It was a total pleasure chatting with Alex about what Air says about 1980s America, and about stories that use an un-obvious perspective to frame their subject – Jordan through the eyes of a marketing exec, like Jesus through the eyes of the devil in Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. We also get into how Air fits into a new Hollywood trend of movies based on products: Barbie, Blackberry, Tetris and so on. Alex had great insights on it all.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.
Support the Show.
No One Will Save You With Brian Duffield
The Fall Guy with Drew Pearce
The Blair Witch Project with Eduardo Sánchez
Stage Apart: The Hills of California with Jez Butterworth
Civil War with Alex Garland
Stage Apart: Stranger Things – The First Shadow with Kate Trefry
Script Club: Children of Men with Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties)
Expats with Lulu Wang
How To Have Sex with Molly Manning Walker
American Fiction with Cord Jefferson
The Holdovers with David Hemingson
All Of Us Strangers with Andrew Haigh
Maestro with Josh Singer
Beau Is Afraid with Ari Aster
Poor Things with Tony McNamara
Society Of The Snow with J.A. Bayona
Toy Story 3 with Michael Arndt
A Murder At The End Of The World with Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij
Leave The World Behind with Sam Esmail
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Sackhoff Show
Toon’d In! with Jim Cummings
Team Deakins
You Can’t Make This Up
Phase Zero