The 90s Bulls Take Hollywood!

Roger Ebert: “How good of an actor do you think you are?”

Michael Jordan: “I’m a learning actor. I can’t say I’m good because I haven’t been in this business that long.”

Ebert: “Do you think that you could make a movie a year and look at this as part of your career?”

Jordan: “No. I think I need to take a step back and evaluate a lot of other things in my life before I can make this a whole other career. I’d like to make this a hobby and learn more about it, and pick and choose the parts I feel comfortable with. Maybe I’m not ready for a starring role.”

— Roger Ebert and Michael Jordan at the Space Jam premiere, Nov. 6, 1996

Amazon best-seller WHY WE ROOT

Michael Jordan might soon be an Oscar-winner.

Michael B. Jordan, that is.

The 90s Bulls were part of every aspect of popular culture, including TV cameos, McDonald’s promotions, books, music, wrestling and of course merchandise. With the Academy Awards upon us — and with Michael B. Jordan possibly taking home a statue for Sinners — let’s take a look at how the 90s Bulls pervaded Hollywood.1

I could be missing something, but the first glimpse we had of the 90s Bulls on the silver screen came in 1986 with Spike Lee’s film debut She’s Gotta Have It. Spike famously played Mars Blackmon, a young New Yorker and big Jordan fan, with an MJ cutout appearing in the trailer. Spike repped MJ again three years later in Do The Right Thing, as his Mookie is introduced in a scene wearing a generic Jordan jersey.

More famously, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) feuds with a white man in a Larry Bird jersey (John Savage) for stepping on his new, clean, white Air Jordans. (Cost: “One hundred and eight with tax!”)

In 1990, a lifesize MJ cutout played a crucial role in Home Alone, and in 1992, Jordan made perhaps his first cameo appearance in a post-credit sequence of Malcolm X, as MJ and Magic Johnson were among the celebrities who wrote checks to Spike when the film went over-budget2. He and Magic donned the instantly iconic X hats, which Jordan also wore to Bulls practice.

What we didn’t know was that four years earlier, a team of filmmakers captured Jordan’s performance in the 1988 NBA All-Star Game in Chicago by filming a Chicago teenager watching the game on TV — all for a movie that wouldn’t come out until 1994.

• Oct. 14, 1994

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan (many references), Dr. John Hefferon

To my knowledge, no movies came out during the first three-peat that featured members of the Bulls — but one was being made. In October of 1994, while Michael Jordan was retired and playing baseball, Hoop Dreams was released and would become a groundbreaking success. The film about two young Chicagoans building their basketball careers opened with one of the two, William Gates, watching the 1988 NBA All-Star Game on TV from his home in Cabrini-Green, about three miles away from the game itself at Chicago Stadium.

MJ does not appear in the film. He merely hovers over and all around it, no surprise for a basketball movie filmed from 1986 to 1991, and in Chicago no less. Isiah Thomas is a more tangible figure, the Chicagoan appearing in the movie when he speaks at his alma mater St. Joseph’s, where both Gates and fellow doc subject Arthur Agee attended. Agee even gets to play against Isiah at St. Joseph’s, with Zeke sporting a Pistons warmup jersey.

Jordan and the Bulls are always floating around the story. Gates and his family watch a Bulls-Pistons playoff game at one point (Gates’s brother Curtis: “Jordan might shoot 15 out of 40”), and when Gates injures his knee, his brother-in-law takes him to see Dr. John Hefferon, the Bulls’ team doctor.

• May 31, 1996

• Bulls on screen: technically none, as the movie was shot largely in the summer of 1995, but by the time of the release, Dennis Rodman (Spurs cameo) and John Salley (supporting performance) were Bulls, as were Randy Brown and Jack Haley

As the NBA rose in stature within American pop culture, we saw more and more movies set in or around the league. No Bulls appear in Blue Chips3 (1994), Forget Paris (1995), or Celtic Pride (1996), and technically, no Bulls appear in the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Eddie. But by the time that movie came out in May of ‘96, it did have — count ‘em — four members of the 72-10 Chicago Bulls.

Dennis Rodman filmed scenes while a member of the Spurs, and John Salley starred as one of the fake members of the New York Knicks, Nate Wilson #6. They each have lines in the trailer. Rodman’s then-Spurs teammate Jack Haley is credited, as is then-Kings guard Randy Brown, who is visible in the trailer during the conversation about black holes.

Two future champion Bulls are in the movie too, from their time with the Hornets: Scott Burrell and Joe Kleine. That’s six future-champion Bulls in a movie about the Knicks. It’s all the way live!

• Aug. 23, 1996

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan (reference)

You didn’t know this one was coming, did you?

Solo is a 1990s action film starring Mario Van Peebles that was largely forgettable except for one key point: Van Peebles plays a government-built Terminator-esque killing machine that gets to choose its own face — and selects Michael Jordan.4

“Like… Mike,” the cyborg grunts, pointing to the TV. The young scientist, played by Adrien Brody in one of his earliest big roles, responds: “You’ve got good taste.”

My friends and I rented Solo not long after it came out on VHS simply for the Jordan connection. It was pretty dull and I never watched it again, neither good enough nor bad enough to be memorable. Case in point: Siskel and Ebert didn’t even name it in their “Worst of 1996” special.

The trailer is really all you need:

• Nov. 15, 1996

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan, starring role as self, and several Bulls in uncredited roles

I won’t spend a lot of time telling you about Space Jam, other than to make a few points. First, a bit of background: the earliest reporting I’ve found is from the spring of 1995, with blurbs noting that on March 24, 1995, when MJ made his return to Chicago against the Magic, Warner Bros. sent four cameras to the game to shoot footage for a “Roger Rabbit-style” movie with MJ and Bugs Bunny. The film’s working title: “Hare Jordan.”

Second, a Roger Ebert interview revealed that there was some truth to MJ’s minor league baseball scenes in the movie:

Third, Friend of the Program The Notorious Lex shared an incredible story with me a few years ago, in which her father took her to meet Michael Jordan at a summer barbecue at Juanita Jordan’s mother’s house, and a young R. Kelly showed up and told Jordan he would one day write a song about him.

Lastly, this article from February of 2020 by Steven Perlberg is a fascinating look into how Space Jam weaved pro-labor politics into its plot.

• Mar. 28, 1997

• Bulls on screen: Dennis Rodman, cameo

On March 24, 1997, Dennis Rodman appeared at the Oscars with date Vivica A. Fox5 in part of his promotional work for his first starring feature, Double Team, dropping the following month.

But moviegoers got a look at the Bulls’ star four days after the Oscars in his closing credits cameo in B.A.P.S. with Halle Berry. This was a very quick appearance, showing Rodman’s budding pop cultural stardom.

• Apr. 4, 1997

• Bulls on screen: Dennis Rodman, starring role as character

With Double Team, Dennis Rodman joined Shaq as the only NBA star in the media-fueled David Stern era to star in a feature film in which he was playing a character. Yes, Rodman’s weapons merchant Yaz has a lot in common with Rodman himself, but this is not Michael Jordan as “Michael Jordan” nor is it a supporting role like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane! Rodman was the #2 star after Jean-Claude Van Damme, used on the poster and heavily in the trailer.

The studio sold Double Team to audiences not as a Van Damme movie but as a Van Damme-Rodman movie, giving Rodman a ton to do and even giving him the movie’s last line. It wasn’t a hit, but it turned a profit, and when I rewatched it last year, I was surprised by how much fun I had watching Rodman as a lively action star.

• May 1, 1998

• Bulls on screen: Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, cameos as themselves — and Jordan in a newspaper about Jake Shuttlesworth’s escape

Michael Jordan’s first film appearance was with Spike Lee, and his final film appearance as a Bull was with Spike Lee, too. Not counting his uncredited appearance in Space Jam, He Got Game is the only feature film of Scottie Pippen’s career. He is part of the montage of NBA stars and college basketball coaches who shout “Jesus!” at the camera for the SportsCenter segment on Jesus Shuttlesworth.

Spike pays MJ the ultimate compliment by letting him end the montage with the movie’s title:

As with She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing, He Got Game features a character rocking Air Jordans, as Denzel’s Jake Shuttlesworth uses his fleeting freedom to buy the 13s. (Cost: “One fiddy with tax.”)

Things weren’t all sunshine and montage kickers for Spike Lee, who could not resist a mild burn on his good friend.

In a closing scene, characters are reading the New York Post reporting on Jake Shuttlesworth being “caught” by authorities. The camera pans and shows the sports page with the headline “KNICKS GORE BULLS” and “Jordan Held to Ten Points.”

MJ’s actual career low vs. the Knicks: 15.

• Sep. 24, 1999

• Bulls on screen: technically none, as the movie was released after Rodman had already been with the Lakers (and before he signed with the Mavericks). But in terms of pop culture, he still felt like a Bull.

Dennis Rodman closed out the Bulls decade with his follow up to Double Team, a starring role in Simon Sez, reportedly a byproduct of Rodman’s free time in the summer of 1998 during the lockout. I never saw this one and don’t know anyone else who did. The box office reflects that, and it does not in any way appear to have the even minor cult status of Double Team.

Fittingly, those who once graced the screen are now the subject of it. First came Air in 2023, about Michael Jordan signing with Nike. Next up, Hollywood will turn its gaze on Yaz, as Lakeith Stanfield plays Rodman in the forthcoming “48 Hours in Vegas” movie.

The flick looks poised to put the “based” in “based on a true story,” in more ways than one:

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Did I miss anyone? Let me know!

This article is about movies, but the 90s Bulls made a lot of TV appearances, none more memorable than “ProStars”:

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The Oscars has an incredible database of every acceptance speech that you can search by keyword, and of course I went hunting for Bulls references. The only one? You guessed it: Spike Lee, when he received an honorary Oscar in 2015. He wore “Oscar edition Air Jordans, given to me by the great Michael Jordan for this occasion.” Go ahead, Spike!