Production
Bob Lanier, Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks legend and Hall of Famer, was hired as basketball coach for the movie. He was impressed with Harrelson and Snipes, suggesting that both reached division III college basketball skill level.
The original music soundtrack and song "If I Lose" were composed by saxophonist and composer Bennie Wallace, who also scored Ron Shelton's film "Blaze."
The musical R&B quintet Riff recorded a song and accompanying music video called "White Men Can't Jump" for the movie. The music video featured Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes and Rosie Perez. It can be seen on the DVD release with bonus features.
Marques Johnson has a supporting role as Raymond, who loses a game to Snipes and Harrelson. Johnson was a star player for UCLA's 1974-75 national championship team coached by John Wooden and later played for the NBA's Bucks, Clippers and Warriors.
Freeman Williams, who played "Duck" Johnson, also had a distinguished NBA career, playing for the Clippers, Jazz, and Bullets from 1978-86.
NBA player Gary Payton made an uncredited appearance as an unidentified street baller.
The category "Foods that start with the letter 'Q'" was an actual category on an October 1997 episode of Jeopardy!
There is a video game based on the movie, for the Atari Jaguar console.
To introduce a new basketball shoe, Nike teamed up with the makers of White Men Can't Jump to assemble the package of shoes inspired by characters Billy Hoyle and Sidney Deane.
Read more about this topic: White Men Can't Jump
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)