FIVE THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SPACE JAM

-by Marcus Drakken 01/14/20XX

Lucky Glauber's strange Loony Tune-shared star vehicle is an essential part of any 90s kid's nostalgia. We all remember the hype, the playground discussions, and that brief period of time when it seemed like Glauber was going to play basketball again. We've all slammed and been welcomed to the jam. And for the most part, we've consigned Space Jam to the dustbin of history, only to be brought out for bouts of "do you remember...?" among friends.

Allow me to be perfectly clear: this is the correct decision. Space Jam is not a good movie in any objective sense of the term. Let it live in your memories, untarnished by actually going back to watch it. But you don't have to tear away the fuzzy sense of nostalgia to enjoy finding out five strange facts about the movie we all loved as kids.

5. The website is still up

Yes, the 1997 official Warner Bros Space Jam website is still up and running, just like it was back in the day. If you miss frames, fluorescent backgrounds, and tiny, blurry Quicktime movies, then go roll around in some primo Geocities-era web design, back when the internet was new and free and we didn't have to go through our new followers entire Twitter feeds to find out if they're a racist sack of shit or fear they're going through our history to find something they can twist into proving we're the asshole instead.

Best is the Behind the Jam section, which details how they combined hand-drawn animation, live action, and godawful 90s CG into a single movie. Thrill to messy .movs showing what might be Lucky Glauber playing basketball with men in skintight green suits, if it's not the internals of a hard drinker's stomach after a night on the town. Revel in the sheer, unrelenting hubris it takes to call a confused, poorly-acted and animated advertisement like Space Jam the compact disk to actual good movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit's vinyl LP. And gawk at behind the scenes artwork where we can finally verify that no, Lola had no concept past "sexy Bugs Bunny".

4. Lucky Glauber was originally supposed to play baseball

As all American children of the 90s know, Lucky Glauber "retired" from basketball in 1994 to concentrate on martial arts. Space Jam was made when Lucky come back from karate to regain his basketball crown (right before he "retired" to go back to KoF in 1998, then unretired again, then retired for good...), but it wasn't always that way. Original drafts for the script have surfaced and they feature the sport Lucky's best with: baseball.

It makes sense. The 90s were a time when American parents were very concerned with violence in the media, and not a lot of people wanted to risk making a movie where a celebrity gets into street fights. Pretending Lucky went into baseball instead would satisfy everyone...but the man himself. Lucky Glauber legendarily insisted on his martial arts being acknowledged, even threatening to walk and force Warner Bros to make the movie about Michael Jordan instead if the script couldn't be rewritten. Sources claim he wanted to focus on martial arts as disciple and restraint instead of mindless violence, but we're pretty sure he actually just wanted someone to care about his repeated attempts to get into The King of Fighters.

3. That crack about baseball was ad-libbed

But Lucky wasn't going to pretend he wasn't good at baseball. Even though he never played professionally, his amateur records show he had a batting average of .276 and an RBI of 72, stats that blew other basketball-and-baseball player Michael Jordan out of the water. And they both knew it, as shown by Glauber's famous "hey Mike, I'll see you on the diamond" line at the end of the movie. This line was completely ad-libbed, and all the reactions to it are real. It's unknown if Jordan punched Glauber the second the cameras stopped rolling like we all secretly believed as kids, but if he did, we're betting on the guy who can kill a man with a basketball.

2. The fight with Joe Higashi was real

And speaking of real fights, the match with long-time Muay Thai world champion Joe Higashi at the beginning of the movie was 100% real. No choreography, no pulled punches, nothing. Lucky and Joe legitimately beat the shit out of each other in front of a camera and it was turned into a nationally-distributed movie. It's one of the things that both explains why modern movie fight scenes look so bad and why we have fight choreographers. It was also a miserable nightmare for the makeup artists, since Lucky got a number of bruises off Joe and they had to consistently maintain every single one, with no slipping or fading, for the rest of the filming. Even on a vastly reduced shooting schedule that was a herculean undertaking.

Interestingly, while Joe isn't known for any sort of acting career over here in the States, his Joe the Champ series of films are big hits in his adopted home country, Thailand. They've been churning out one a year for over a decade now with no slump in popularity, and you can pretty easily get all sorts of Joe the Champ merchandise from the internet. Ever want Joe saving a girl from a gigantic crocodile on your bedsheets? It can be yours.

1. Heavy D! and Brian Battler's cameos are deeper than you know

Sure, Heavy D! and Brian Battler teleport in to save Lucky Glauber from the evil Mon-Star's grapple at the end because they're pals, right? They say it in the movie. But it's also a completely legitimate tactic under The King of Fighters rules, and that's the joke none of us dumb little kids whose parents wouldn't allow us to stay up late and watch bloodsports got.

See, in KoF teammates mostly have to stay on the sidelines cheering their friends on, but if the current fighter is in a locked position (as detailed in The King Of Fighters Official Rulebook, page 26, subsection 3 and yes, underground no-holds barred fighting tournaments that are put on at the behest of shadowy masterminds have official rulebooks that dozens of people argue over each year, why would you think they didn't) a teammate may jump into the match in progress to save him/her. They can do this from any position, which explains the shower joke in Space Jam, but they are also not required to do so. Which is why Korea took the fall in '96 when Chang decided he was more interested in picking his nose than saving Kim Kaphwan from Wolfgang Krauser. Yes, that happened. It's on Youtube, if you want to see an entire country's dreams die at once.

-Marcus Drakken swears he's a long-time sports fan who did not have to look up what the hell an RBI is to write this article. Read his other articles for DorkLife here.