In honor of the flickering ember of a possibility that there might be another Space Jam, I decided to go housebound spelunking into the murky caverns of the Internet’s near-beginnings, and the inexplicably still semi-functioning promo Space Jam site from 1996. It was a time when one had to move a cord from a phone to a computer to listen as a song secured passageway to an in-between world. What did I find? Quite a bit, actually.
1. I’m jumping right in, sans a critique about the look of the thing. It’s a Web 1.0 creation that hasn’t benefited from the 19 years of “getting better at it” like the rest of the Internet has.
Our first stop is “The Lineup.” This is where the cast bios reside, and there’s some interesting info. For instance, according to Bugs Bunny’s official bio on the Space Jam website, the animated rabbit is proof that, “To survive in today’s world, one has to be shrewd and cool when under stress.” Also, Bugs is on the main cast bio page and the Looney Tunes one, but there’s no Lola or Bill Murray bio on the site at all.
On the plus side, I did learn that Wayne Knight was in Dirty Dancing, and that, back in 1996, someone felt the need to be preemptively pissy about people referring to Knight as “Newman,” as the above image shows.
2. When you open the “Bad Guys” page, some kind of blank DCR file downloads automatically. So, that’s a surprise. Maybe don’t go to the “Bad Guys” page. There are only sketches of the Monstars — no depthy bios about who they were before absorbing the essence of Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing, and certainly no cool mottos or Newman trivia.
3. The Junior Jams section has basketball tips on how to play like Micheal Jordan, but there’s nothing in there about functioning in the triangle offense, and the tips weren’t actually written by Jordan.
4. There’s a coloring book section.
5. Despite the existence of studio drivel like “an animated/live-action razzle-dazzle tour de force” at the top of the page, the Production Notes section is actually stuffed with interesting details about the evolution of the project and the production. Deep, technical details about the merger between live-action athletes (Jordan, Murray, Newman) and the Looney Tunes can also be found there.
6. When you look at the trailer, you come upon these words: “The jamminest two minutes of trailer time that ever hit a theater. It’s 7.5 megs, it’s Quicktime, and it’s worth it.” Welcome to the cutting edge. I clicked the image, and it auto-downloaded a .mov file to my computer. The ’90s were a more innocent time with all these auto-downloads. Sadly, the trailer only plays as audio for me.
7. Planet B-Ball is filled with dead links about Lithuanian basketball and the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association. If you need to know how many rebounds Larry Johnson pulled down during the 1995-96 season, though, this is your source.
8. The Warner Bros. Studio Store link takes you to the updated site and not some archived 1996 version with Twister merch and Tin Cup cups. If you search for Space Jam, all you get is the chance to buy the movie on DVD. If this is how you thought you would finally get your hands on a Space Jam jersey, I’m sorry. Also, I owned one. Bought it for like $12 on clearance, and I was embarrassed to wear it outside of the house. Still am, but it’s now mostly due to the weight gain.
9. The Stellar Souvenirs section has you covered if you want to see what the Space Jam poster looked like, but if you want to download the spinning basketball browser icon, you need to be on a Macintosh running Netscape, and you are most assuredly not doing that. There are also sound clips that still work, and postcards! Here’s a link to Wikipedia, in case you’re too young to know what a postcard is.
Also, I downloaded this “screensaver” from the Stellar Souvenirs page. It’s pretty sweet.
10. Like the production notes section, the Behind the Jam page offers a surprisingly lush look at the technical effort behind the making of Space Jam. There are also original character sketches to peruse.
Compare Space Jam‘s site to a contemporary “kids movie” site like the one propped up for The Minions (which, to be fair, offers plenty of visual behind-the-scenes materials), and there really is no comparison. Whoever built the Space Jam website put a lot of care into creating a true web resource that still has value, and that’s pretty impressive, considering the disposable nature of the Internet.
