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It’s difficult to tell a true story when everyone already knows how it goes. As a filmmaker, you have to make the audience want to stick with it until the inevitable conclusion. Oftentimes, you’ll find your creative freedom hindered by the pressure of checking all the requisite boxes. Most of the time, these movies play on the tension that arises in anticipation of something big, like the untimely death of a famous figure or the winning of an iconic sports game.
via YouTubeThe Ben Affleck-directed sports drama Air is much less climactic than that. It surrounds an underdog shoe company trying to land a deal with an NBA rookie at the start of his career in 1984. Never in history has a celebrity been more synonymous with a brand than Michael Jordan with Nike, and anyone sitting down to watch this movie already knows how the story ends. But Affleck and company (the script was written by newcomer Alex Convery) focus on the “how” — even if it’s a mostly procedural affair.
Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, the talent scout for Nike’s floundering basketball division. While the brands with bigger market shares may have names like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird on their rosters, at least Nike has an employee who’s nothing but a rabid fan of the sport and knows how to spot gifted players before the world truly sees them for their greatness.
In order to expand Nike’s roster, Sonny works with a relatively small budget of $250,000, which company president Phil Knight (Affleck) intends to spread across three or four players — not just one. But knowing how much Adidas and Converse have committed to their own basketball divisions, Sonny knows he’s not about to land anyone worthwhile without more money. He then has the idea to put the entire budget on Jordan alone, who’s already outright said he’s going to sign with Adidas anyway. Sonny won’t take no for an answer.
What makes the effectiveness of Air’s storytelling so impressive is how low the stakes are. In fact, the filmmakers even go so far as to eliminate almost all of the characters’ personal lives from the table. We never see Sonny’s gambling addiction ever become a problem, or witness Phil and his wife argue about how much time he spends at work (she’s omitted from the movie entirely). Instead, the film is ardently dedicated to making sure the entirety of this story takes place in direct relation to this potential shoe deal — for better or worse.
This one-dimensional monomania plays its part in keeping things focused on the task at hand, even if it’s at the expense of establishing any subtext that might have made us care a bit more about whether these people win or lose. But Affleck ensures that he and his brilliant cinematographer Robert Richardson keep things interesting the entire time with shallow depth of field and random rack focuses.
The Nike team certainly faces a great deal of adversity along the way, but never are their lives or marriages or reputations ever truly at stake. It’s a weird feeling to have while watching a drama – let alone one based on a true story. When you’re in the process of dramatizing any real-life events, the question that must arise is “Is this story one that’s worth telling?” And as fun as it is to watch, and as much as sports fans and shoe heads would tell you otherwise, Air definitely struggles with finding ways to convince us that we needed to hear this story.
It compensates for this existential crisis by convincing us that we want to hear this story. Soaked in the zeitgeist of 1984 — one would say too much — with some 40 pop songs that desperately riddle its soundtrack with more frequency than Wolfman Jack’s setlist in American Graffiti, Air often seems a little too self-aware of its own time period. At one point, marketing executive Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) asks Sonny, “You know that Bruce Springsteen song, ‘Born in the U.S.A.?’” to which Sonny responds, “Yeah, everyone knows that song. They play it on the radio all the time!” It’s just not how normal people talk. And don’t worry, The Boss’ song does in fact play later on.
Convery approaches his screenplay with the tone and repartee of other strategy-based workplace dramedies such as Moneyball, The Big Short, and Draft Day, while hosting a very well-known story at its center. And while Affleck allows the script’s tight banter to set the pace, he also allows for a certain freedom that something from the likes of Aaron Sorkin or Adam McKay may not. Actors improvise and let their natural rapport with one another take over at times. At first, these felt random and jarring in a genre where I usually expect a little more control. However, I eventually realized that what makes Air feel loose and random in those occasional moments is also what sets it apart from its contemporaries.
The one problem the movie can’t fix is how to treat the audience’s familiarity with the story. In one moment, it addresses the inherent risks of signing any young athlete to a long-term deal (they could blow out their knee and end their career in their second season), but then later treats the signing of Michael Jordan as the ultimate victory.
Later in the film, when the deal looks like it’s about to close, Sonny and Phil have one final decision to make in order to meet the demands of MJ’s mother (played by Viola Davis). When the two men figure out the solution, they sound excited yet tentative. Giving off a different tone entirely, the score in the background treats this like an unequivocal triumph.
Earlier this year, in the videogame biopic Tetris, we saw how several different parties were fighting for the distribution rights for the titular Russian import. However, the people involved already knew with certainty how big of a hit Tetris would be; all you had to do was play it! Once you had the game rights, there was no more risk involved – in fact, that’s why the competition was so ruthless.
In Air, much of the time is spent on Sonny convincing the other characters that the young MJ will actually have success in the NBA. For an audience with retrospect and a wealth of awareness of Michael Jordan’s unparalleled success, it’s obvious that Nike’s worries would be all for naught. In real life, Jordan would become the greatest professional athlete to ever live and forever changed the landscape of sports marketing and the relationship between the fan and the product.
However, Air never seems to know exactly how to rectify the viewer’s hindsight with a realistic mindset of 1984-based characters in a movie; the potential risks all still exist by the end of the timeline presented in the film yet are forgotten about by these characters. And truthfully, I don’t even think there’s a way you can circumvent it.
Air is almost never concerned with the larger picture at play. Nike’s deal with MJ was the very first signature shoe deal in the basketball industry and would result in a halcyon of players getting their own shoes, which still happens frequently today. However, watching the movie, it’s clear it’s made by people willing to take a risk of their own, and can afford to do so. Affleck, Damon, and the rest of the people involved clearly want to tell a story that they’re interested in – and have a blast doing so. This comes through the screen more than any higher purpose that could be imposed onto it. And honestly, that’s all that matters.