‘Air’ writer Alex Convery 'didn't believe' movie would get made

Writer Alex Convery conceived ‘Air’ while watching a 2-minute segment during a movie. Convery never imagined the script would become a film, the writer revealed to Indiewire.

The writer spoke about what went down in an interview:

“You always look for ideas that will catch someone’s attention, at least they can read the logline and be like, ‘OK, I know what this is,'” he said. “The script still has to be good, but at least you can try to stack the deck.”

“From time to time you hear, ‘This big actor read the script, they’re interested, they want to do it,’ and when I was first breaking in, it was like, ‘Holy shit, I made it!’ Then you learn the way Hollywood works, [which is] you never hear that they’re not doing it, you just never hear about it again,” Convery said during the interview with IndieWire.

“If you ride the emotional ups and downs of every call you get from your agent about talent interested in your script, you’ll go nuts. I knew who the script was out to, and you assume these are our five crazy names and they’re all going to pass and then we’ll move on. I got a call that said, ‘Ben read the script, he’s interested in directing it, he’s going to think it over some more, talk to his team, and we’ll see.'”

Two days later, Convery received another call: “Clear your schedule, on Tuesday we’re sitting with Ben.”

“Obviously it’s a call you want to get on something like this, but a movie can fall apart a million different times, so just because Ben wants to meet doesn’t mean the movie’s happening,” he said.

“I really didn’t believe it until day one of shooting,” Convery said with a laugh. “Well, really day three of shooting because I had COVID and I couldn’t go to the first day of set. But day three when I was on set, it was just like, ‘OK, this is happening.’ “Just like you don’t get a call when people aren’t doing it, you also don’t get a follow-up call being like, ‘Yes, this is for sure, Ben’s doing it, paper signed.'”