Space Jam's Monstars: Where Are They Now?

20 years after Space Jam, the Monstars are spread across the country, and not doing so great. We tracked them down.

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Image via Complex Original
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Before Space Jam's 1996 release, we'd never imagined that Michael Jordan would dunk on cartoon players, that Jay-Z would ghostwrite for Bugs Bunny, or that a cartoon rabbit could make us sweat. Our five-part "Space Jam: 20 Years Later" package grapples with all of these incomprehensible truths and many more, exploring the legacy of the worst-best film ever made. 

It’s midnight and I’m drunk as a howler monkey on shore leave. I’ve pulled a Martin Sheen and have punched the mirror in my hotel room, though unlike Martin I’ve managed not to have a heart attack. My editor is leaving frantic messages. He wants to know if I’ve found the Monstars. He’s left four messages, each increasingly unhinged. I don’t call him back, but yes, I have found them. Most of them anyway. They’re scattered across the lower 48 and I intend to track each of them down. Space Jam is the only thing that matters right now.

You see, it’s the 20th anniversary of Space Jam, the beloved film about failed baseball player Michael Jordan and various luminaries of the Looney Toon cohort, who team up to defeat the machinations of Moron Mountain magnate and cigar-chewing villain Swackhammer. As you’ll recall if you have even rudimentary knowledge of the film, Swackhammer’s minions are the Monstars (the progenitors of the Monstars in the mythology of the film, the Nerdlucks, are entirely fictional).

What is there to know about these Monstars? Mostly that they are huge and they are different colors and they are adept at dunking basketballs. And also that they used some kind of interstellar sorcery to obtain the talents of five prominent basketball stars at the time: Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, and Shawn Bradley. The Monstars initially seemed to be the villains of this story, but with time came the realization that they were more so well-meaning, subjugated pawns, thrust into wrongdoing by Swackhammer. That’s all I know about them. That’s all anyone knows really. But I want to know more. What have they been up to these past 20 years? Where are they hiding? What sort of (monster) men are they? I aim to answer at least one of these questions.

Pound

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Bang

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Nawt

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Blanko

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Bupkus

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Location: Zionsville, Indiana

Occupation: Unknown

At four in the morning I am awakened by another text. It’s from an unknown number. An address and a winking emoji. The address is in Indiana, which is a state I’ve only barely heard of. I call the number back. Disconnected. I pace around my hotel room and punch another mirror. I’m going to fucking Indiana.

The next day I am on the road for hours. I take many wrong turns. I spill coffee on my crotch twice. My rental car smells like it was last driven by a recently deceased senior citizen. Finally, I arrive in Zionsville. Cobblestone streets, manicured lawns, earnestly smiling people. It’s the type of place that's undoubtedly proud of the amount of picket fences within town limits. 

The address is down a quiet residential street on the outskirts of the city. It’s a nice enough house (the Halloween decorations are still up), but not anything that would cost you a fortune in this part of Indiana. I park in front of it and wait. The sun sinks. The horizon looks like a mottled pink-and-blue bruise. I close my eyes. 

I awake with a start. I’m swaddled in darkness. Still in the terrible car, still outside the basic looking home. But I’m not alone. A family has just pulled into the driveway. And the father just happens to be purple and huge. I know immediately it is Bupkus, though he is wearing a polo shirt and thick-rimmed glasses. He’s bald now, but otherwise looks the same as the brawny Monstar who stole Larry Johnson’s above-average basketball skills. I stumble out of the car noisily. The family turns, confused. I see a younger version of Bupkus, his son I assume, wearing a sleeveless Slipknot shirt, and a teenage girl version of Bupkus, who hardly looks up from her phone after one glance at me.

Bupkus himself stares at me quizzically. Does he know who I am? Does he care? Does he know I want to ask him about Space Jam? Does he know how far I’ve come? 

His children walk inside, but he stays in the driveway, waiting for me to make the first move. We stare at each other for what seems like a disrespectful amount of time. It’s like two gunfighters appraising one another before the big shoot-out, except much more boring and weird.

Finally, I wave. And Bupkus waves back. Then he shrugs his massive purple shoulders and walks inside. I can hear the door lock behind him. I wonder briefly why Bupkus didn’t want to speak to me. Is he not impressed that I had tracked him down to what is essentially Mars for people like me? Perhaps he does want to speak to me. Perhaps he lives on the jagged border between longing for past glory and accepting the hell of daily life. Perhaps he has to cook dinner for his children. Or perhaps his silence is merely his last opportunity to make a statement. I respect the stenography of that silence.

I stumble into the odor of my rental car and drive away at speeds the state of Indiana has never imagined possible. I decide Bupkus is my favorite Monstar. I never learn who sent me that text. It doesn’t matter. I sleep soundly for the first time in weeks, perhaps years, and dream of dunking on Michael Jordan and winning the big game for the Monstars. I’ve always wanted to win the big game.

 

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