![]() “So he knows Tonya my wife, he saw my daughter Satchel and my son Jackson growing up. “Mike knew me before I was married,” Lee says. And when Lee’s son Jackson got a shoe of his own, it wasn’t the Son of Spiz’ike. ![]() “If you go on the internet, you will see murals of Mars all over the world.” His Brooklyn-hatted visage appeared on the side of an Air Jordan IV, his first run of commercials was commemorated with Spike’s own Jordan shoe, the Spiz’ike. “Mars is a global iconic figure,” Lee says. And when Air Jordan exploded across the world thanks in part to those cinematic commercials, Mars Blackmon blew up right along with him. “Is it the shoes? It’s gotta be the shoes!” Within two years, Mars Blackmon had gone from Jordan worshipper to Jordan co-star. Jordan didn’t speak much in those first commercials-“back in the day he had that Carolina thing,” Lee says-but Mars, he spoke enough for both of them. Riswold wrote the commercials, Davenport produced them, and Lee shot the first two in December of 1987. It turned out to be much more than that, of course. And I would have been happy with that, if I would have just done one I would have been happy.” ![]() They wanted to do one commercial to see if the shit worked, if the shit don’t work then arrivederci. “They didn’t say it was going to be a series, they said they wanted to do one commercial. I said, ‘what? Let’s go!’ But there is one hitch, Mike hasn’t seen the film so he doesn’t know me and, at the time, Mike had just signed his new deal and had director’s approval. “So they called me up, introduced themselves, said they loved the film, and said they were thinking of doing a commercial with me and Michael Jordan and I would direct it in black and white. it was their idea to pair Mars with Michael Jordan,” Lee says. ![]() “Jim Riswold and Bill Davenport, two guys, white men, who worked for Wieden & Kennedy in Portland saw She’s Gotta Have It and it was their idea, not mine, not Phil Knight’s, not Michael’s. The character also caught the eye of a couple of guys in Oregon who had an idea of how they could give Mars an even bigger role. Mars’ repetitive delivery and love for his sneakers-he didn’t even take his Jordans off in bed-made the character the film’s most memorable, even ahead of Nola Darling, the “She” of the title. “It worked because sometimes I have trouble remembering my lines so I repeat myself, and that’s Mars-because I couldn’t remember the lines. “I knew I was going to play Mars because I couldn’t afford to pay anybody else,” he says. “He loves sneakers, he loved Michael Jordan, so Mars had to wear Jordans.”Īs far as casting, Lee found perfect people for the other roles, but knew he’d have to fill one himself. “Mars to me, I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but he was the original B-boy, the sneakerhead,” Lee continues. Because one man is not enough, she needs three. And the key thing is it wasn’t Mars alone, I had to show three different black men, each distinct, that Nola puts together as one. “You gotta compensate when you are a little guy when it comes to sports and all that stuff, and Mars was funny. ![]() “Mars was this cat I would see around Brooklyn,” he explains. For character inspiration, as he did for his location, Lee turned to what he knew. She’s Gotta Have It was filmed in the summer of 1985, over a two-week period in Lee’s neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. But the new Mars Blackmon exists in a world that, without the old Mars, might not even exist. He’s still in Jordans, still in Cazals, still rides a bike. Thirty-odd years after Blackmon’s entrance, he’s being reintroduced, this time played by Anthony Ramos in Lee’s Netflix-series adaptation of his first film. Blackmon’s crashing entrance belied a surprising longevity. Blackmon, played by Lee, rides his bike straight into the camera-crash!-as jumpcut stills showed his haircut, his nameplate chain and belt, and, of course, his Air Jordans. Over the years, Nike has created several so-called “Players Exclusives” - custom signature sneakers usually given by Nike to sponsored athletes - for the filmmaker to wear on special occasions.It’s around the 11-minute mark when Mars Blackmon literally careens into She’s Gotta Have It, Spike Lee’s 1986 directorial debut. Lee has been an official member of the Jordan Brand family since 1988, back when he began appearing as his She’s Gotta Have It character Mars Blackmon opposite Michael Jordan in the now-iconic Spike-and-Mike Air Jordan commercials. Just five pairs of the original sneakers are said to have been made. The kicks surfaced in online sneakerhead forums Monday on the eve of the festival’s kickoff. Nike created an extremely rare Air Jordan 1 to celebrate Spike Lee’s presidency of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Film buffs who happen to be sneakerheads have a new holy grail. ![]()
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