i played this character mars black who wore nikes and even when he made love to nola, he didn't take jordans, he kept them on and two kinds of nikes, advertising agency kennedy, they saw the film and went to michael jordan and said we should do this. and, of course, mike didn't know who i was. he had not seen the film yet and he could easily have squashed that and just gone with some, whoever the hottest white director was out at the time, but he gave me a shot and so at that point, you know, we did, like, eight years. that really blew -- nike blew up after that. people don't give philip knight credit for that because with the exception of aunt jemima and uncle ben's -- uncle ben's rice, white america has never really put a black person as a face of their company and philip knight did that with nike. >> it answers one of the questions that i had, and that is whether or not that was a calculated decision to brand marvin -- >> no, it was not. the only reason i was in "she's gotta have it" because we couldn't afford to pay anybody else. i don't even like acting. a lot of this is on us,