Forty years ago, Ferris Bueller called in sick and took Chicago along for the ride.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hit the theaters in the summer of 1986 and became one of John Hughes’ most enduring films. Starring Matthew Broderick as the impossibly confident Ferris, Mia Sara as Sloane Peterson and Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye, the movie turned an ordinary day of playing hooky into a tour of some of Chicago’s most recognizable places.
Wrigley Field, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Board of Trade and downtown streets weren’t simply locations. Hughes made Chicago part of the story.
Four decades later, the movie remains so closely connected to the area where Hughes grew up that Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Hughes’ alma mater and one of the locations used for Ferris’ high school, is marking the 40th anniversary with its own celebration of the film.
There are plenty of familiar stories about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But behind the Ferrari, the parade and “Bueller… Bueller…” are some lesser-known details about how the movie came together.
Here are 12 of our favorites:
1. John Hughes had doubts about Matthew Broderick
It is difficult to imagine anyone other than Matthew Broderick playing Ferris, but Hughes and his leading man did not always see the character the same way.
Broderick has recalled that after Hughes watched some early footage, the filmmaker told him he wasn’t particularly “fun to watch.” Broderick was taken aback enough to essentially suggest that Hughes find somebody he liked better.
The two also occasionally clashed over Hughes’ very specific direction of the character.
Whatever tension existed during production clearly did not prevent the performance from working. Hughes had wanted Broderick for Ferris and later spoke about the particular combination of intelligence, charm and likability Broderick brought to a character who could easily have become obnoxious.
2. Ferris was secretly dating his sister
Jennifer Grey who played Jeanie Bueller, Ferris’ perpetually irritated sister, spends much of the movie trying to prove that her brother isn’t really sick.
Behind the scenes, things were considerably friendlier.
Grey and Broderick became romantically involved during the making of the film and kept their relationship relatively quiet during production. The couple later became engaged before eventually separating.
It adds an entirely different dimension to those wonderfully hostile Ferris and Jeanie scenes.
3. Cameron was pushing 30
Alan Ruck was 29 when he played Ferris’ neurotic high school best friend Cameron Frye.
Ruck had previously appeared with Broderick in the Broadway production of Biloxi Blues, and Broderick helped bring him to Hughes’ attention.
The age difference hardly mattered. Ruck’s Cameron became the emotional counterweight to Ferris and, arguably, the character who changes the most during their extraordinary day off.
4. Most of that enormous parade crowd wasn’t hired for the movie
The legendary “Twist and Shout” sequence blended movie production with a very real Chicago event.
Hughes filmed around Chicago’s annual Von Steuben Day Parade, using a relatively small number of hired background performers among a much larger crowd of actual Chicagoans.
For additional filming, word went out through local radio inviting people to come downtown and participate. Thousands responded.
The enormous crowd surrounding Ferris wasn’t created on a backlot or filled entirely with professional background performers. Much of it was Chicago showing up and joining the movie.
5. Some people wound up in the movie simply because they started dancing
Not everyone seen reacting to Ferris’ performance had been carefully choreographed.
As the music played and cameras rolled, Hughes and his crew captured spontaneous reactions from people along the route. Among the memorable images were workers dancing from their jobs and spectators simply joining the party.
That mixture of planned production and genuine reaction is part of what gives the sequence an energy that would have been difficult to manufacture.
6. Shermer High was more than one school
Ferris’ fictional Shermer High School was assembled from multiple locations.
Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook was used for exterior scenes. Hughes had graduated from Glenbrook North in 1968, making the location particularly personal.
Other school sequences were filmed elsewhere, continuing a Hughes tradition of creating his fictional suburban world of Shermer, Illinois from real places around Chicago’s North Shore and northwest suburbs.
Forty years later, Glenbrook North is embracing that history with a 40th anniversary celebration recognizing the school’s connection to Hughes and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
7. Ferris was wearing some very unusual socks
Matthew Broderick has revealed that Ferris’ wardrobe contained details viewers would have had little chance of noticing.
Among them were socks decorated with flags from around the world and a rabbit’s foot tucked into his pocket.
Broderick also had a hand in one of Ferris’ most recognizable fashion choices, the beret he wears during his excursion through Chicago.
They are tiny details, but they fit a character who seems to have considered absolutely everything about how he presents himself to the world.
8. Ferris’ terrible clarinet playing gave Broderick one of his funniest moments
Ferris briefly attempts to play the clarinet before looking directly into the camera and announcing, “Never had one lesson.”
Broderick really could play an instrument, but not that one. The intentionally awful clarinet moment became another example of the movie allowing Ferris to speak directly to the audience and let us in on the joke.
9. Ben Stein wasn’t supposed to be in the movie
One of the film’s most memorable performances happened almost by accident.
Ben Stein wasn’t an actor and hadn’t been cast in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He was visiting the set through a friend connected with the production when John Hughes heard his distinctive monotone voice and thought it was funny. Hughes asked Stein if he would do something very small: read the classroom roll call, off camera.
That was supposed to be it.
But when Stein began calling attendance and repeating “Bueller?… Bueller?…” the students in the classroom reacted so strongly to his deadpan delivery that Hughes decided to put him in front of the camera.
Hughes then asked Stein to improvise a lecture about something he knew well. Stein, who had studied economics and worked as a speechwriter for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, launched into an economics lesson touching on supply-side economics and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.
Stein later recalled that when he finished, the people on the set applauded. For a moment, he thought they were impressed by the economics lesson. Instead, they were congratulating him on how extraordinarily boring he had managed to be.
The entire economics lecture was essentially improvised. What began as a tiny off-camera favor became Stein’s first acting role and one of the most recognizable classroom scenes in movie history.
“Bueller?… Bueller?… Bueller?”
Forty years later, that’s still all it takes.
10. No priceless Ferrari was launched through a window
Cameron’s father’s spectacular 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder is central to the movie, but production wasn’t about to destroy the real thing.
Replica cars were built for filming, allowing Hughes to put the Ferrari through situations no sensible owner would permit with an extraordinarily valuable original.
That became particularly important for the movie’s unforgettable payoff when Cameron finally confronts his fear of his father and the car crashes backward through the glass garage and into the ravine below.
The replica survived Hollywood. Cameron’s father’s Ferrari did not.
11. Cameron’s house tells us almost as much about him as Cameron does
The remarkable glass-walled home where Cameron’s father keeps his treasured Ferrari is the Ben Rose House in Highland Park.
Designed by architects A. James Speyer and David Haid, the modernist residence gave Hughes something more than a spectacular location.
The pristine glass pavilion surrounding the Ferrari makes the automobile appear almost like a museum piece. It visually reinforces everything Cameron has told us about his father’s priorities and the enormous importance placed on the car.
By the time Cameron begins kicking the Ferrari, the audience understands that he isn’t really angry at an automobile.
12. The day off was really Hughes’ tour of the city he loved
Ferris could have skipped school anywhere. Hughes made sure he did it in Chicago.
Ferris, Cameron and Sloane don’t simply wander around downtown. They experience the city. They catch a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. They visit the Art Institute of Chicago. They eat at a fancy restaurant. They take in the view from the Sears Tower. Ferris commandeers a parade float and turns downtown Chicago into a giant street party.
Perhaps the most revealing sequence is also one of the quietest.
At the Art Institute, Cameron becomes transfixed by Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Hughes repeatedly cuts closer and closer between Cameron’s face and the tiny individual dots of paint that make up the image.
For a movie remembered largely as a comedy about a kid who gets away with everything, Cameron’s museum scene hints at something deeper. Ferris may be driving the adventure, but Cameron is the one being changed by it.
That is part of what has allowed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to survive well beyond its 1980s setting.
Forty years later, audiences still know the house. They know the Ferrari. They know the parade. They know the museum. And they certainly know what happens when someone calls Ferris Bueller’s name during attendance.
But perhaps Hughes gave the movie its own explanation for why we are still talking about it four decades later.
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
