Ben Affleck Praises ‘Brilliant’ Wife J.Lo for Help with ‘AIR’ (Exclusive)

Monday was date night for Ben Affleck and his wife Jennifer Lopez at the “AIR” premiere in L.A.

“Extra’s” Rachel Lindsay caught up with Ben, who directs movie about the partnership between Nike and Michael Jordan in the ‘80s. He also stars alongside Matt Damon, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis, Marlon Wayans and others.

Affleck said J.Lo helped him understand the significance of that partnership, saying, “My own memories of Boston at the time, Matt and I were trying out a career as breakdancers that did not last… At the time, it was shell toes and that athletic wear. I remember when Nike came along, and Nike was not cool in that way, then all of a sudden it was Jordans… and it was overnight and I was asking her whether or not she noticed a similar phenomenon in New York.”

He gushed, “Obviously, she is brilliant and articulate, and really understands a great deal about the relationship between music and culture and fashion and so on.”

Ben plays Nike cofounder Phil Knight in the movie, and Rachel asked him if he is as Zen as Knight. “I seek Zen-ness. That is my ambition, one of many. I rarely achieve it.”

Ben, having called the premiere at SXSW the most important in his career, explained, “This movie represents both the inception of a company that we really believed would work if we valued the artist both in front and behind the camera… and because it’s a story about a person that came to mean something to the whole world and it’s really a nakedly, a kind of optimistic movie, I’m not ashamed to say I want people to like this movie, have fun, to laugh. But it’s not cheesy, superficial, or false.”

He added of the casting, “I had always dreamed of one day I really would have accomplished something in life if Viola Davis was in my movie as a director… I don’t know that it is really gonna get any better than that.”

Smiling, he said of Tucker, “I always have been trying to get Chris to be in a movie with me, Chris Tucker, for 25 years. I’m always like, ‘Chris, Chris, Chris…’ I see him at events and sh*t, hotels, and he’s, like, blowing me off.”

So who else does he want to work with? “There are so many people. There is nobody I can think of that I hold any higher esteem than this cast. This is a career high,, without a question for me. I feel like a coach on the dream team who is going to get a gold medal because of all the great players.”