Six of John Hughes’ iconic teen films are coming back to life, literally, at The Shermer Club: A John Hughes Fest, which also is recreating scenes that were part of the original film.
The upcoming June 22-25 celebration of all things Hughes will take place at the John and Nancy Hughes Theatre at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest.
The summer fest is being organized by LA-based event creator/organizer David Blanchard, an editor by trade, who created last year’s popular “Ferris Fest” as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of Hughes’ classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Immediately following “Ferris Fest,” Blanchard and his LA team began planning “The Shermer Club,” “with the realization that we wanted to have plenty of time to make it incredibly fun and memorable,” Blanchard said in a recent interview in The Reader.
Six of writer/director Hughes’ iconic 1980s teen movies will screen, with cast members fielding Q&As after the screenings of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Some Kind Of Wonderful, Weird Science and, of course, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
So far, the growing list of special guests includes Andrew McCarthy (Pretty In Pink), Lea Thompson (Some Kind Of Wonderful), Ian Mitchell-Smith (Weird Science), Howard Deutch (director of Pretty in Pink and Some Kind Of Wonderful), Cindy Pickett (Ferris Bueller) and John Kaelos (The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles).
Luxury bus tours will take attendees to filming locations in the North Shore suburbs and Chicago. Expansive recreations of classic scenes from those films will climax with the full wedding scene from Sixteen Candles. It will be staged at its original location at the Glencoe Union Church.
Blanchard assures fans the reenactment will go down “exactly as it was blocked and performed in the movie. This will give attendees the sense that they were actually walking into that particular scene in a very immersive fashion,” Blanchard told The Reader. “Because who wouldn’t want to find themselves in one of their favorite films?”
Tickets have gone on sale at $25 and may be purchased here.
