Now one quarter of a century into his film and television career, Chris Messina has continually given strong performances whether as a lead or in supporting roles. His voluminous list of credits can sneak up on you in terms of their quality: Six Feet Under, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Away We Go, Julie & Julia, Greenberg, Argo, Damages, Palo Alto, The Newsroom, Digging for Fire, Sharp Objects, The Sinner, I Care A Lot, and Gaslit are just some of the excellent productions he has made better with his presence, even when his role is relatively small. (As a side note, I highly recommend you seek out 28 Hotel Rooms, a terrific little indie with Messina in the lead).
Working with Director Ben Affleck a third time, Messina once again excels in making the most of his every second on screen while playing NBA super agent David Falk in Air. Despite having only a handful of scenes, Messina delivers a wonderfully funny, profane, and complex performance while mostly talking into a phone. If the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan to the biggest sneaker contract of all time is led by Affleck’s direction and anchored by Matt Damon’s lead performance as Sonny Vaccaro (the man who convinced Michael Jordan’s mom–played by the great Viola Davis–to bring her son to Nike), well, let’s just say Messina provides the hot sauce.
In our conversation, Messina and I discuss how he found his way into playing Falk, the joy he felt working with Affleck again, and how Al Pacino inspired him to give one of the truly great “phone performances” in recent memory.
Awards Daily: In Air, you get to play quite possibly the most notorious sports agent in the history of that business–David Falk. When you were offered the opportunity to play him, what was your idea on what your take on him would be?
Chris Messina: First and foremost I thought oh man, I’m so different from this guy. He’s a lot smarter than me. He’s a lot taller than me. He’s bald. Then I quickly realized that Ben didn’t want a caricature of any of the characters in the film. My job was to find the essence of Falk. I read his book, called The Bald Truth, and listened to him in a lot of interviews. I found that there were some similarities. There was a work ethic that he had that I strive for. He had this role model of his mother, which was really interesting to me. She was a super smart woman who spoke a bunch of different languages and instilled in him to not settle for second best. My mother is a huge influence on me and I carry her with me wherever I go, so you find these overlaps. In order to hang with someone as brilliant and as talented and a force of competitive nature that Michael Jordan was for his entire career, Falk had to match that in some regard. They are obviously very different men, but there was a connection. There was Michael’s love for his mother, and David’s love for his mother, and a work ethic of having to outwork everyone else. I dug my heels into that, because I can understand that. That was a fun jumping off point. Ultimately when you’re playing someone who’s real and alive and well, and you’re not talking to them, every so often you get anxious about am I doing him the right service? I hope that he appreciates this and knows that I think of him in the highest regard.
Awards Daily: Speaking of mothers, one of my favorite scenes in the film is with Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother when she congratulates Matt Damon for signing her son. That’s a really profound moment and what’s interesting about it is what you did with Falk. There’s this insecurity that I think agents have when they don’t have complete control, and I felt like you were really tapping into that.
Chris Messina: At this point in Falk’s career, he wasn’t that David Falk, so this deal was obviously instrumental to the rest of his career. I think he knew how important Michael was, and he knew how important this deal was. He had to stop at nothing. In that, there’s a vulnerability, there’s a nervousness of am I doing the right thing for this young man, for this family? There’s a fun to be had in it too, and in playing him and reading the script, it seemed at times that David was playing into it. Yes, he was screaming and yelling at Sonny (Matt Damon), but as part of a game, there was an enjoyment in it. As angry as he was at times, I think he was also playing the part.
Awards Daily: The first scene that you have, which is more a relentless sarcasm as opposed to the screaming and angry scene that comes later, reminded me a little bit of the best negotiation scenes in Moneyball. I imagine it would be a lot of fun to play that.
Chris Messina: It was amazing. I have had the great fortune of having Ben call me for his last three films, and whenever he calls, you don’t really need to read it. It’s not like you need to think about it because he’s such a great filmmaker. He has this incredible cinematic IQ that’s just fun to be around, and I always learn so much. He surrounds himself with the best in this business. When you’re being shot by Bob Richardson and you’re talking to Matt Damon, and every so often I can look across the table into Viola Davis’s eyes, and see Billy Goldenberg’s editing you and getting rid of your crap and finding just the right moments, you’re in such great hands that as an actor, you can just lay back. You do your work. The script is beautiful and right there, and you know that when you fall, these great collaborators are there to pick you up. It is so fun to be surrounded by people you completely trust.
Awards Daily: Any time I see film credits roll and I see Robert Richardson, the first thing I think is that’s the guy who shot JFK, which is one of the most visually amazing movies I’ve ever seen.
Chris Messina: He’s incredible. I have four phone calls in the movie, and if those phone calls had been shot by somebody else, or directed by somebody else they just wouldn’t have been the same. Ben did this great thing where Matt and I were down the hallway from each other, so we were talking to each other live. Matt had three cameras on him, I had three on me, so we could overlap, we could improvise. In all the years I’ve been doing this and the many phone call scenes that I’ve done, I’ve never done it that way. So smart. So I think there’s a rawness to those calls and an aliveness that Matt and I are just simply talking to each other. Usually you’re across from a crew member or a script supervisor who’s doing you a favor, but it’s just not the same as Matt Damon.
Awards Daily: Was it fun getting paid to scream at Matt Damon? (Laughs). I like Matt Damon very much, by the way.
Chris Messina: Yes! (Laughs). I like Matt very much too. I can remember going to the Angelika Theater in my twenties to see Good Will Hunting and being in awe of both Matt and Ben. It was so foreign to me that, as an actor, you could write something and be in it and get it done. I was so inspired and yet I was so jealous. There I was now getting to scream at Matt. As corny as it sounds, sometimes in rehearsal with the two of them, as we worked on the script and worked through things, I’d be like how the hell did I end up here with these two guys? It’s the kind of job that when you leave, you mourn it. I always say to Ben that being on his sets spoils you for other sets. He knows what he wants. He knows when he has it. He trusts actors. He casts really well, and he trusts you and gives you the wings to fly. Unfortunately, so many other times, people can clip your wings. But when you’re around that kind of talent, they let you soar.
Awards Daily: Because Affleck went through kind of a rough time personally at a couple of points in his life, I think he’s been a very undervalued actor and filmmaker. I watched Air a third time to prepare for this interview, because it had been a little bit of time since I’d seen it. I really got his Phil Knight performance much more this time around. There’s layers, right?
Chris Messina: Great performance. It’s really funny and it’s a hard character to play, because he’s this great businessman and has this zen quality too. It’s a fine line you’re walking with his integrity and his humor. Nike was not the Nike we know today. They were in a slippery place. I think he does a magnificent job as does everybody in the cast. The cast is just a knockout.
Awards Daily: You have what, five, six scenes? And you have to make them all count. One of them is just you sitting in a restaurant and not even talking. Did you think to yourself I’ve got this small window to make an impact, and if I just make him a crazy screaming guy, it’s not going to play as well and not help the movie?
Chris Messina: I did think that. I thought there has to be an arc to these scenes and certainly these phone calls. It was very much there in the script, but there are times when you take something on and reverse engineer it. You start backwards where a character might end, and you know that’s where they end, but you just want to take them somewhere. So, I did kind of arc it out, and Ben helped with that. We’ve seen it done a lot, screaming agents and managers, and we’ve seen it done really well. So it was important to me that it did have teeth to it, but also had as much humanity as well. I kept watching Glengarry Glen Ross, and it’s a phenomenal play and film, but specifically Pacino’s Roma. Anytime you’re in any kind of trouble or you’re trying to arc out a character, Al Pacino’s a good lighthouse.
Awards Daily: You’ll never catch me disagreeing with that. I tell everybody that Dog Day Afternoon is maybe the greatest performance of all time.
Chris Messina: A lot of people have been very nice to me, and believe me, I’m extremely grateful that people like this movie and what I did in it, and the phone scenes. That makes me very happy, but Al Pacino on the phone in Dog Day Afternoon, talking to both of his loves back to back…I read in Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies that he put two cameras on him so one would roll out, but the other one would keep going. He knew he would have a cutaway to the other person on the phone, and they did a bunch of takes in a row without cutting from one phone call into the next. Then you get this incredibly exhausted, frustrated, sad, heartbroken Al Pacino. Some of, if not the best, phone acting I’ve ever seen.
Awards Daily: The scene where you really scream at Matt Damon, Sonny because he goes around you and shows up at the Jordan’s house without telling him he’s going to do it. You start out yelling “You show up at the house?!,” and then there’s all this hysterical profanity from you, but then it swings back around to when Matt Damon/Sonny says well, what if I do sign him? And you say “you and I will be best friends.” That’s an arc in a single conversation.
Chris Messina: You’re right. It was an arc right there. And that was just great writing. Just beautiful writing. I really do believe that with this group of people and that script, the lucky person who got to play David Falk would have just had a blast, and would fare very well because the language was right there. Those fast F bombs coming at you.
Awards Daily: Let’s talk about that last sequence of him eating alone. I always wonder about when you’re asked to do nothing but the most ordinary thing, as an actor. When Falk says “I don’t have friends, I have clients. And someday I’ll be eating alone” and he seems to be okay with that, but yet there is a certain touch of melancholy in that scene isn’t there?
Chris Messina: Oh, yeah. It’s funny because all the characters had a moment in that end scroll, but Falk didn’t in the original script. On set, Matt and Ben and I were talking about the movie, about the character, and I said you know guys, I’d love Falk to have a last moment. Maybe it’s just something simple. He’s alone, something. I believe it was Matt who said, Oh, I heard this story from Sonny about how he saw Falk eating alone after this huge deal, and then Ben’s like that’s great. We’ll put you in a restaurant, we’ll shoot, and they put it all together. It was beautiful. That was the vibe on set, very much a collaboration. A lot of these people had worked on Ben’s movies before and it felt like a family but yeah, I love that the scene is in there, because there’s a sadness to it. You can make all this money and make this big deal, and then you’re still kind of wondering what’s next.
Awards Daily: There were revelations, too, as you’re watching the movie, and one of them is that Falk might have named the shoe! (Laughs).
Chris Messina: I know. The legend has it that a lot of people, as the movie kind of tackles, think they named the shoe. Certainly Falk has said in interviews that he did come up with the name. There were a lot of different versions of that line when he speaks it when he’s on the phone with Sonny, and he said you can call it Air fucking Jordan, whatever the actual line was. There were a couple different versions of how to deliver that so it was just spitting out of someone’s mouth rather than here’s the name of the shoe, so it feels almost accidental. I believe, because I played him, that Falk named the shoe. (Laughs).
Awards Daily: Are you a big sports fan in general?
Chris Messina: I’ve become more of a sports fan because I have two teenage boys who follow sports more than I did. I was a theater dork. I kind of ran away from sports as a kid and went the other direction, but now later on in life, because of my sons, I just have a great love of watching all athletes. I grew up in New York, so I was a Knicks fan. I watched Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls battle the Knicks at the garden with my brother and my father. Just seeing Michael Jordan was like seeing God. It was incredible. But the movie made me even more excited about basketball and even more excited about athletes. I didn’t know about the deal. I had a pair of the shoes, but I didn’t know how it all came to be.
Awards Daily: In the current day, we seem to have tentpole movies, indie movies, and not a lot of space in between for adult-based films that are character-driven to get into the multiplex. Air wasn’t a humongous blockbuster, but it did prove that people will go see these kinds of films if you do them well.
Chris Messina: It felt great. It felt great that they released it in a movie theater. It felt great when we saw it at South by Southwest and it was just such a great crowd and they applauded when Viola came on screen and they applauded with some of the lines. It was so fun to watch it in the movie theater and I’m probably the wrong person to ask, because I love going to the movie theater. I do watch movies at home. I do watch movies on my laptop. I’m away in Savannah. I sit in my bed and watch movies on this little screen here, but whenever I can, I go to movie theaters. I see a movie differently in a theater. I hear a movie differently. I turn off my phone. I try to escape into the world of it. It’s the reason why I’m here talking to you. My parents took me to the movies and I fell in love. I’m a dreamer that we’re all just going to keep going and if you build it, they will come. It’s had its ups and downs and people say it’s over, it’s dead. I can’t live by that rule. I think if you make good work, if you tell good stories, if you show people who they are, who we are as people, as a society, if you can move them, if you can make them laugh, they’ll come.
Awards Daily: Alright, silly question: Is there anything more badass than having your character enter the film to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message“?
Chris Messina: There’s nothing more badass. When I first saw the movie, Ben screened it for me and that song came on and I was like Oh my god, what an introduction. It’s like exactly what you’re saying. When you were a kid, you were like I hope that I’m in a movie one day and I get an introduction like that. It was so cool. I was so psyched. All the needle drops in Air are exquisite, but that one I’m particularly fond of.
