This story is about ““Air” screenwriter Alex Convery First appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap Magazine.
Screenwriter Alex Convery was releasing Ben Affleck’s legendary 1980s film “Air” on Amazon when Affleck stumbled upon the script. The story of how to thrill audiences is almost as much to cheer for as the movie itself. After all, how many writers get this kind of (pardon the pun) slam dunk on their first try: a widely released, mid-budget work (originally only available for streaming until test scores) on the back of a key theme soaring) and the legendary Michael Jordan?
“Well, it’s the first screenplay I’ve ever produced. It’s certainly not the first thing I’ve written,” Convery says cautiously, noting that, like many upstart screenwriters, he has a long list of credits that aren’t always is to land on the right table. “I was busy chasing assignments and trying to sell products every day, and I was kind of stuck in a cycle of trying to work for other people. And then COVID hit and the industry kind of shut down, which provided quite a bit of freedom. It allowed me to get back into it. Return to the designated area.”
His spec script tells the story of how Nike’s victory-hungry marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) succeeds in a landmark deal to acquire the most famous sneaker line in American history. The product deal, known as “Air Jordans,” helped secure Michael Jordan’s status as one of the world’s greatest athletes and created an industry template for athlete profit participation. The idea was sparked by Convery’s binge-watching of the Netflix documentary “The Last Dance,” where a casual mention of the deal stuck in his mind.
“I was a ’90s kid from Chicago, so I wouldn’t have watched anything else at the time,” Convery said with a laugh, noting that he never thought anything he wrote would reach such heights. “As time went on, Sonny was left out of a lot of the story, and he didn’t even appear in ‘The Last Dance,’ which is crazy. “Unless he had a compelling The main character, who I wouldn’t have done otherwise, and him being an unknown employee of Nike and a loser in his own right was very interesting to me. “
Sonny’s monologue was so subdued that even a controversial former president plucked content from a Truth Society campaign video out of a slew of content. (“It’s just too bad,” Convery laments. “You put something out into the world, but you can’t necessarily control how people interpret it or what they’re going to do with it.”)
Given Jordan’s Sonics popularity, it was inevitable that Affleck and Convery would need the approval of his family. (Real-life married actors Viola Davis and Julius Tennon play Jordan’s parents in the movie, while Michael appears mostly off-screen.) Jordan has only a few significant credits: his mother Dolores’ presence increases in the second half of the movie, as does the Nike executive
Howard White and especially Olympic coach George Raveling (played by Chris Tucker and Marlon Wayans respectively) deserve due credit for their role in driving this success story.
“Raveline was mentioned in the original script,” Convery said, “but because his Olympic coaching was before the movie, I felt like there wasn’t much point in trying to squeeze him in for dramatic purposes. But when you hear from Michael how important this is, we had to get him on board. It’s hard to imagine the movie without them.”
Speaking of key characters, the film cleverly utilizes Jordan himself as the mysterious god-like figure throughout. (Played by Damian Young, who only says one word in the frame.) There’s a reason for that. “In the original script, you did see him eventually – but it always felt like his absence was
“His presence is greater than his presence because he has this mythical quality,” Convery said, noting that Steven Spielberg preserved the shark’s canon for tension in “Jaws.” practice. “The less you show something, the more powerful it is because our imaginations will always create something more powerful than any inner concrete image you can come up with.”
Read more about the Race On issue here.
