After decades of working together as writers and actors, Ben Affleck got a chance to direct Matt Damon for the first time in Air. Released earlier this year, the movie stars Affleck and Damon as Nike executives who were trying to grow the company by creating a relationship with the up-and-coming basketball star Michael Jordan. Affleck, who has directed award-winning movies that have connected with both audiences and critics, had never cast his longtime friend in one until now, and in a new interview with Variety, he admits that he felt a little bit of pressure, since Damon has worked with so many famous and celebrated filmmakers.
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After a few days on set, Affleck told Michael B. Jordan in an “Directors on Directors” interview, the cinematographer told him that he thought Damon trusted Affleck as a director, and things were normal. So it was presumably only a short window where Affleck felt pressured to perform, but he admitted to Jordan — who recently had do direct his own friends in Creed III — that it was strange.
“The one thing that we hadn’t done — during the course of our friendship, we had written together, we had acted together, that’s very comfortable and easy,” Affleck admitted. “What I realized is that he hasn’t even really been in the movies I directed. So here I’ve mad these five movies and he hasn’t seen that part of me, exactly, or been on the set like that. I never thought about it until we started shooting and I actually could see he was like, ‘Alright, what’s it gonna be?’”
You can see the chat below.
Here’s the film’s official synopsis:
“From award-winning director Ben Affleck, Air reveals the unbelievable game-changing partnership between a then-rookie Michael Jordan and Nike’s fledgling basketball division, which revolutionized the world of sports and contemporary culture with the Air Jordan brand. This moving story follows the career-defining gamble of an unconventional team with everything on the line, the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent, and the basketball phenom who would become the greatest of all time.
Matt Damon plays maverick Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro and Affleck plays Nike co-founder Phil Knight, with Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser, Chris Messina as David Falk, Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, Marlon Wayans as George Raveling, Chris Tucker as Howard White, Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan, and Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler, among others.
This marks the first time Ben Affleck has directed a feature film starring Matt Damon. With a script penned by Alex Convery, Air is produced by David Ellison, Jesse Sisgold, Jon Weinbach, Affleck, Damon, Madison Ainley, Jeff Robinov, Peter Guber, and Jason Michael Berman. Executive producers include Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Kevin Halloran, Michael Joe, Drew Vinton, John Graham, Peter E. Strauss, and Jordan Moldo.
You can see the film now on Prime Video, or buy it on disc or digital from physical and digital retailers.
