While this film had only moderate success by its original theatrical run in 1993 (about 565,000 tickets were sold), it gained a lot of popularity through a great number of reruns on both public and private TV and can now be considered a cult classic in Germany. It was even adapted to a musical, which ran in Düsseldorf in 2011 and 2012.
Hape Kerkeling wrote the script with two of his longtime companions; his then-boyfriend Angelo Colagrossi (who also co-directed the film) and his former schoolmate and regular stage partner Achim Hagemann. Both men also make appearances in the film: Colagrossi is "the man with the goldfish", one of the contestants in the TV casting; Hagemann can be seen as a street performer playing the saxophone near the end of the film and also performs the voice to the "Fortune Melody Machine".
Willy Egger, this film's executive producer, plays one of the contestants in the TV casting; the man who introduces himself as "the new Frank Elstner".