-Welcome back to the show.
Looking good, bud. Thanks for coming on.
I just saw your beautiful wife backstage.
And today is the 20th anniversary of you guys meeting?
-Yeah, This is the day we met 20 years ago.
-Isn't that cool? -Yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ] -That's awesome, buddy.
-Yeah, it's really weird. Actually, um...
And the movie, "Air," is opening today,
and we realized that Michael Jordan wore two numbers
in his career, 45 and 23, and the date is 4/5/23.
-Holy -- -Isn't that crazy?
-Yes! Come on! That's fun. [ Cheers and applause ]
-But much more importantly,
it's 20 years since I met Lucy, so...
-Of course. Yeah. Yeah, that's much more important.
How is the fam? Last time we talked,
you were moving everyone from L.A. to New York.
-Right. Yeah, we did. We -- We --
It was the smartest thing we ever did.
We're loving it. -You're here.
-Yeah, We're in Brooklyn. -Yeah! Good.
-Very, very happy. Yeah, yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
-You're loving it. -Loving it, Loving it. Yeah.
-Let's talk about the new movie, "Air."
I got to see it, and the reviews are in.
Everyone loves it. It is fantastic, buddy.
-Thank you. -You're so good in this.
Everyone's good in it, by the way.
-Everybody's great.
I mean, we got just a lights-out cast.
-You really do. But everything was good.
The script was tight. You and Ben Affleck, obviously,
everyone loves you guys together.
You're great. This was 25 years ago.
-Oh, yeah. -Look at this.
When you won the Oscars for "Good Will Hunting."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Look at how happy -- Look at this.
-We don't -- -"Yeaaah!!"
-We don't look too excited. -Yeah, I mean, you got to be --
I mean, what's going through -- Do you remember this?
-I do. Well, we didn't --
The weird thing about that was that we --
like, the year before, we were watching it on TV.
It was like, we had no -- there was no adjustment period
where we went -- Like, we just suddenly
were kind of there in the front row.
And Billy Crystal sang a song with our names in it.
We were like, "What is happening?"
-"What is going on with our lives?"
-Yeah. And and we hadn't -- we hadn't talked about
like, a speech or anything like that
because I think as kind of lifelong Red Sox fans,
you know, you don't want to jinx anything, so...
-Yeah. Yeah, exactly. -Because I think both of us,
without even talking about it,
we were like --
'Cause later we talked about it,
and it was like, I had this feeling, like, if I ever said,
"Hey, we should think about a speech,"
I would just flash-forward to being like 50 years later
in a bar with him going,
"Can you believe we practiced a speech?"
-Yeah, yeah, yeah! "That's why we lost."
-That's why. -"Because we practiced.
-"Like we would ever win an Oscar."
You know what I mean? And then suddenly,
we were up there, and I just pushed him into the microphone.
So he -- And he --
And he just started kind of babbling and --
and then saying names of people who had helped us.
And then I was next to him,
and I was just screaming the names.
So he would say, like, Chris Moore.
And I'd go, "Chris Moore!" [ Laughter ]
And he'd go, "John Gordon." I'd go, "John Gordon!"
-"John Gordon! Gordon! Gordie! Gordie!"
-I was just so happy, and, like --
But that was -- that was my contribution to the speech.
[ Laughter ] -Isn't that fun?
-I was like the hype man in the corner, you know?
-Do you still have that passion and that --
that love of the movies and the industry?
-Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, well, that's one of the reasons we started this company.
Ben and I started this kind of mini studio together,
and this was our first movie for the studio,
which was really cool. -What's it called again?
Artists Equity. -Artists Equity, yeah.
-Yeah. 'Cause we're pulling a lot of the crew members.
We're trying to pull them above the line
and get them paid better.
And -- And, you know, we kind of feel like --
[ Cheers and applause ] -Yeah.
-Yeah. -Good for you.
-So... -I read about that.
-But it's definitely, like, a white-knuckle exercise
because we're responsible for the overages, you know?
So it's like... [ Laughter ]
It's like, "Oh!" -Did you go over budget?
-In three places we went over budget.
We went over budget, but in all really good places.
We went over budget in construction
because we were moving so fast
that we had the construction teams
working 24 hours a day to build the sets
or else we were gonna run out of stuff to shoot.
So we had budgeted 33 days and we shot this in 24.
So we were moving really fast without even trying to.
And then we went over with our -- we had budgeted --
we had allotted a certain amount of money for cast,
and then we got this cast, so we paid more.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
-And we were very happy to pay more.
And then we went over budget on food trucks.
[ Laughter ] Because we had food trucks.
-You're a smart guy. You know how to throw a party.
-Well, we've been doing this for a long time
and we know what matters.
And, like, you know, people are coming out,
and they'd be like, "There's a Korean barbecue truck."
-Yeah! That's exactly right!
Dude, it makes everyone happy.
-Yeah, it was really, really --
It was the most fun either of us have ever had making a movie,
and we've had a lot of fun making movies.
-I said it before, but I really mean it.
You're one of the best actors to do it.
And I love watching you act. It's amazing. You're great.
[ Cheers and applause ]
I think that you've -- For me, like,
if it was a team, you're my go-to player.
If you're on my team, I go, "Just give the ball to Matt.
He'll -- He'll nail the line." You go,
"How do you like them apples," or, you know,
"Ford v. Ferrari," you're like, you know, the stopwatch thing.
You're like, "You want one? They're Italian."
It's like, "Yes!" You have the way of delivering
these lines that, like, the crowd goes nuts.
When I watched "Air," you had a couple of them.
Everyone just claps. Like, do you go into a script going,
"Oh, that line will be my -- that'll be the line I nail"?
-No, no, no.
-You just read it and just do it.
-Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, you know, I -- I look at the whole script,
and usually if it's a good script,
then it'll have lines in it.
But I won't kind of plan it out like that.
I mean, "How do you like them apples" was kind of a very --
'cause I'm slamming the number against the window and all that.
So that definitely felt like a bigger thing
because it's a bigger thing in the movie.
But not -- I didn't think it would, like, sustain.
-Do people -- Is that the line
that everyone yells to you when they see you?
-That or they just say my name
like the puppet in "Team America."
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, that's the other way
to do it, too, yeah.
-Yeah, that's the other one I hear a lot. Yeah.
-Well, when you -- when you get this idea,
you go, "Okay. This is a fantastic idea."
This is how kind of the industry changed, you know?
And a sneaker company started working with one person.
You created the Air Jordan brand.
You go, "Okay. First steps.
We have to talk to Michael Jordan."
-Yeah. -I'm assuming.
-Yeah, that was the first thing.
Well, because the script was great --
-Can't make it without him. [ Laughter ]
-Well, he's not in the movie. -No.
-You do realize, he's not in the movie.
And that's all by design because it's really about --
it's about that deal to make this shoe
and going back to 1984,
and Nike was not Nike, like the Nike we know.
They were like this underdog. They were in third place
in the basketball division. -That already blew me away.
When that came up, I'm like, "Oh, yeah."
It was Converse and then --
-Converse, then Adidas, and then Nike.
-Yeah. And I -- I mean, I didn't -- I read the script,
and I was, like, blown away. I was like, "This is all true?"
-Yeah, -But so that's -- I think,
you know, Alex, the screenwriter,
did a really good job of kind of setting
what things looked like in 1984.
And it just was really surprising.
-So, did you have a meeting with Michael,
or did you make Ben do that?
-I made Ben do that. -Yeah, smart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Ben, Come on. Charm him," yeah.
-No, Ben went down to talk to him,
and actually, that was kind of the critical thing because --
because we, out of that meeting, Michael --
Michael -- Because first of all,
we said, like, "Look, we're not gonna do it.
If you don't want us to do it, we're not gonna do it."
And he was like, "No, no, it's a good idea for a movie."
But Ben said, "What is -- What's most important
that we get right?
Like, what's most important to you?"
And what he spoke about were three things.
There was Howard White, who's an executive
that Chris Tucker plays in the movie.
-Oh, he's great. -Yeah, he's awesome.
And George Raveling, who Marlon Wayans plays.
George Raveling, was the first person
who talked to Michael about Nike,
and then he talked at length about his mother.
And that was kind of the critical thing.
It was like, "Oh, wait a minute."
You know -- You know, to see, like, Michael,
who's very intimidating dude,
you know, suddenly kind of be awestruck
and talk about his mom.
And so that was -- so Ben said like,
"Look, who do you think we should get to play --"
and before he finished the sentence, the question,
Michael was like, "Viola Davis." -Yeah.
So, Ben -- yeah, yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
-I mean, Viola Davis.
-That's who you go to, to hit the shot, by the way.
-Yeah, that's who you go to.
Yeah, you give it to Viola Davis.
-So he called me.
He was like, "I got great news and bad news."
And I'm like, "Okay." And he's like,
"The great news is, you know,
I know exactly what to do for the rewrite.
Like, we're gonna put in George Raveling,
we're gonna put in Howard White,
and we're gonna make his mom central to the whole thing.
And I go, "Great. What's the bad news?"
He goes, "We have to get Viola Davis
or we can't make the movie." You were like,
"All right, all right. That is our mission."
Because everyone wants Viola Davis in there.
-That's what I said to Ben. I was like, that's like saying
you want Michael Jordan on your basketball team.
-Yeah, exactly! It's a good way to put it.
Yeah. -So we went, and we rewrote,
and we really just kind of drilled down on that --
on that character and the dynamic between her
and everybody else in the movie. -She was phenomenal.
-She's phenomenal. -She's great.
And it's so well done, well-acted, well-written.
Everything was good. It's funny, as well, by the way.
-Yeah. It doesn't seem like something
that would be a great movie.
It's like, "It's about a shoe deal?"
-Yeah, yeah. -But trust me, it's really --
It's great. It's a lot of fun.
-By the end -- [ Cheers and applause ]
-Yeah. -No, it makes you feel good.
-Yeah. Yeah.
That's what we used to call a feel-good movie, right?
-A feel-good movie of the year. Yeah.
And it's like, at the end, you're like, standing ovation,
clapping, like, "Yes! I'm so happy for everybody."
It's wild. You're getting fantastic reviews.
A lot of critics are saying this is the best movie of the year
so far, so congratulations. -It's only April.
-That's true. Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-We haven't seen "Super Mario Bros." yet.
-That's true. Yeah, yeah.
We have to wait for this weekend.
I want to show a clip.
Here's Matt Damon and Viola Davis in "Air."
Take a look.
-Are you Mr. Jordan?
-James. -Sonny Vaccaro. I'm with Nike.
-[ Laughing ] Oh, man. Here we go.
-Well -- -James?
Who is it? -Hello, Missus -- Mrs. Jordan.
My name is Sonny Vaccaro. I-I'm with Nike.
-I believe Mr. Faulk made it clear
that we weren't interested.
-Yes, I-I was told not to call.
-Do you typically make it a habit of showing up
at people's front doors unannounced?
-Well, maybe the worst of all my faults,
and believe me, there are many,
But I don't like to take no for an answer.
And I actually think your son should be endorsed by someone
with that exact mind-set.
-All right. Come on back. Take a seat.
-Thank you.
-Yeah. Come on, bud.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Matt Damon, everybody! "Air" is in theaters now.
Matt and I are playing Beer Pong Basketball
when we come back. Stick around.