Trivia / BASEketball

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $23 million. Box office, $7,027,290. It's possible that it could have done better had it not had the bad luck of arriving in theaters just two weeks after the blockbuster, better-reviewed R-rated comedy There's Something About Mary.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Trey Parker and Matt Stone rarely speak kindly of this film, as they felt its particular brand of humor was beneath them, and were at one point nervous that their legacy as entertainers would be relegated to this movie (luckily for them, this was never the case). According to them, they only took the roles because they assumed that it was just something you "did" once you were successful in Hollywood and that South Park would have been canceled by that point (it wasn't, resulting in both of them losing a lot of sleep attempting to juggle both). "The Passion of the Jew" pokes fun at the film when Stan tells Kenny that it's their right to get a refund after seeing a bad movie (in this case, The Passion of the Christ): "This will be just like when we saw BASEketball."
  • Ernest Borgnine once called this the worst movie he ever appeared in, which considering his filmography is saying something.
• Inspiration for the Work: The movie is based on a real-life game that David Zucker created with his friends, literally played in the driveway of his home. Many of the reappearing teammates are friends of Zucker and actual original players of the Zucker-driveway game, asked by the director to be in the movie to pay homage to origins of BASEketball.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Reel Big Fish's cover of a-ha's "Take On Me" for the movie itself, their song "Beer" for the Milwaukee Beers.
• What Could Have Been: David Zucker had wanted Chris Farley to play the lead role, before casting Parker and Stone.

---