11/22/2023 0 Comments Michael jordan im back chicago tribune![]() ![]() I knew he had a lot of big things going on, so in my mind, I’m, like, “How do I convince this guy to do this movie with me?” To take a chance on a first-time actor-director? That was the internal thought I had going on. I gave him the spiel about the movie, the character, why I thought he was fantastic and amazing and perfect for it. Jordan: I was in New York, watching the Nets game. So he called me about 25 minutes later, by FaceTime … Majors: Which was wild, because I was, like, “Excuse me? Who wants to call me?” Let’s tag-team this story. Jordan: I reached out to his team, asked if it was OK to get his number. Majors: This was about three years ago, right during awards season. But the important meeting was when I talked to him for a good hour or more, pitching him the film. And before that, there was a moment at an industry party, you know, in passing. About two months after I said I was going to do the movie. Phillips: Where did you two meet for the first time? I watched how he dealt with the ankle monitor, all of that. My stepfather, who raised me, was incarcerated for 15 years before we met. In the cinema, millions of people a day can meet someone, you know? I have a huge investment in what it means to be a young Black man, and what this idea of incarceration means. In life, we only meet one person at a time. I try to figure out what I can share with other folks. With every character, I try to see who they really are, who they represent in society. ![]() So even when my arms felt like they were on fire, I just kept punching. Every time Anderson’s up there on screen, in those fights, I could see my own granddaddy’s name up there, too. I kept finding ways to, you know, stay on the hook. So that gives you some sense of how far in I wanted to put myself with this character. It’s the name of the paternal side of my family. Majors: This guy, Damian Anderson … first of all, the name Anderson is the (character) name Michael and I agreed on (at Majors’ suggestion). Phillips: Jonathan, with a different actor and maybe a different director, it’s easy to imagine Damian as a one-dimensional villain. Is it stretching and bending the rules? Yes. I’d never seen someone (on screen) try to strategically “dead” someone’s arm, but I’d seen it happen in real fights, and it fit Damian’s character so well because that would be his style of boxing. We’ve done the swollen eye, we’ve done the broken nose, the broken ribs, but we’d never shown someone’s tooth getting knocked out. We had to show injuries we hadn’t shown before. ![]() That’s when Dame and Felix Chavez (José Benavidez Jr.) have their title match. In some close-ups, especially when Adonis and Damian are in the ring for the third fight, we wanted to really dive into the inner thought processes of boxers in a way I thought was interesting. And I felt like boxing was a perfect storytelling medium for it. There hasn’t yet been a live-action (version) of anime that works, in my opinion. It’s in my thought process, all the time, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring the look of anime to live-action so it works. My love of anime, I mean, I watch it every day. With so many looks, styles and iterations of boxing films, I had to think outside the box, outside what we’ve seen before in the ring. Phillips: The anime pop to some of the sequences is the biggest visual stroke you make here, wouldn’t you say? It’s super dangerous, and you gotta hit your mark because it’s damn well gonna hit its mark! It’ll clean your clock if you don’t. This thing’ll hit every spot you program it for, systematically. You can program in specific camera moves and locations for the shot you want. It’s a bolt-arm camera, like you find in auto assembly lines. ![]()
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