Life was moving fast for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” writer/director/producer John Hughes when he wrote the film’s script. It took him just four days to complete it.
“How did I come to write ‘Ferris?’ Well, let’s see,” Hughes said. “There was a writer’s strike coming up in a week and my agent called and warned me, so I thought, ‘Geez, John, you better write something,’ and so I got this sentence … out of the ozone. ‘I am 17 years old and I have no idea where my life is going,’ and I thought, ‘That’s it!’ I called Ned Tanen (head of Paramount films) and said, ‘I want to do this movie about a kid who takes a day off from school and … that’s all I know so far.’”
Hughes was fresh off “The Breakfast Club” release in February 1985, “Weird Science” in August 1985 and filming for “Pretty in Pink” in Los Angeles. He had just signed a five-movie deal with Paramount Pictures.
Ferris Bueller, Hughes told the Tribune, would be “the most popular guy in school, a guy with everything going for him, who could be really obnoxious except for the fact that he polices himself.” The character on the precipice of graduating high school but also about to miss his ninth day of school during the spring semester.
Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel didn't like the 1986 teen comedy "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." He only gave it two stars. (Chicago Tribune)
Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick)
Hughes choose the then-23-year-old actor to portray the teen, who was on the precipice of graduating high school but also about to miss his ninth day of school during the spring semester. Broderick accepted a Tony Award for Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and starred with “The Breakfast Club’s” Ally Sheedy in “WarGames.”
Three years before he became Ferris Bueller, Broderick told Gene Siskel that he didn’t regret skipping college.
“It wouldn’t have worked for me,” I would have ended up doing the minimum amount of studying to just pass, and I would have resented even giving up that much time. I love acting.”
Ferris Bueller’s iconic vest goes up for auction 40 years after famously skipping school
Broderick was announced in June 1985 as the lead in “Ferris.” He initially had doubts about the role, which breaks the fourth wall.
“I was just starting out. I had done two Neil Simon plays where I spoke to the audience and Ferris spoke to the camera, and I had done (the 1985 movie) ‘Ladyhawke,’ where the character sort of talks to the camera,” Broderick said in 2016 interview. “And I thought, ‘I’m always going to be like this comedian who talks to the camera. I have to get a real part,’ or some stupid like that.”
Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck)
Cleveland native Ruck graduated from the University of Illinois, then headed to Chicago to pursue theater. He starred as a “mischievous manservant” in Halcyon Repertory Co.’s September 1979 production of “Mandragola.” He then starred opposite Jennifer Grey and Megan Mullally in David Rimmer’s “Album” at Apollo Theater Chicago followed by “a marvelous cameo” in “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Wisdom Bridge Theater in March 1982. Ruck had a role in June 1983’s, “One Shining Moment,” which was a musical about a group of students recreating the Kennedy years that debuted in Chicago at Drury Lane Theater in Water Tower Place.
Before he became Cameron, Ruck struck a nerve with military-themed scripts. He was a weird military academy student in the 1984 NBC made-for-TV movie “Hard Knox.” Ruck portrayed Canadian World War I pilot Billy Bishop in a one-man show at Wisdom Bridge Theater in March 1984, a soldier injured during the Korean War who comes home to sell body parts in “Life and Limb,” and finally opposite Broderick on Broadway for Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues.”
Broderick and Ruck — then 29 years old — left the Broadway production to film “Bueller” in Chicago. They could reunite soon to star in another film together.
Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara)
Sara, who was 18 years old during filming of “Ferris,” starred on “All My Children” and as princess Lili with Tom Cruise as Jack in 1985’s “Legend,” which Tribune critic Gene Siskel gave 1½ stars and called a “truly awful film.” Married to Jim Henson’s son Brian, Sara returned to the red carpet this week for the premiere of “The Life of Chuck.”
Gene Siskel gave “Ferris Bueller” just two stars, describing it as “a film that doesn’t seem to know what it’s about until the end.”
Still, the movie was a commercial success. As of February 1987, when his next film “Some Kind of Wonderful” was released, “Ferris” had earned a $70 million domestic gross. Hughes died of a heart attack on Aug. 6, 2009, at age 59 while he was visiting family in New York.
Here’s a guide to the Chicago-area locations as they appeared in the film. Unfortunately, the Bueller house is not in Chicagoland — it’s in Long Beach, California. Many of the interior scenes were also shot in Los Angeles.
Cameron Frye’s house
370 Beech St., Highland Park
Cameron Frye tells his best friend Ferris Bueller that his father, Morris Frye, loves his 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder — with Illinois license plate “NRVOUS” — and it “is his passion.”
The song that plays when the car was revealed in the movie? That’s “Oh Yeah” by Yello. But you can’t buy a soundtrack for the film — it was never released per Hughes’ order.
The home was built in 1953, for textile artist Ben Rose. The steel-and-glass house was designed by A. James Speyer, a disciple of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The pavilion (where the Ferrari was housed) was built 20 years later.
Rose died in 2004, and his wife, Frances, followed in 2009. That’s when the 5,300-square-foot estate was listed for sale for $2.3 million. It was on the market again in 2013, for $1.5 million.
How did Ruck get chosen for the role of Cameron Frye? He showed up to an open-casting call for “The Breakfast Club.”
“I love them because they give young actors a chance to go in front of real casting directors for real parts,” Hughes told the Tribune in 1986. “They get their feet wet. And while the casting directors may not use them for that particular part, they may pull them out for something else.”
Katie Bueller’s real estate office
538 Chestnut St., Winnetka
No longer home to the Koenig & Strey real estate office, but the building in downtown Winnetka looks almost the same as it appeared in the film.
Ferris Bueller’s high school
Glenbrook North, 2300 Shermer Road, Northbrook
Hughes and his wife, Nancy, who like Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson, were high school sweethearts when they both attended Glenbrook North.
In “Ferris,” it became Shermer High School, the same fictional high school where “The Breakfast Club” took place (but that was filmed at the former Maine North High School in Des Plaines). Screenrant.com went down a rabbit hole that concludes the characters from both films probably knew each other.
The boring teachers were portrayed by Ben Stein and Del Close. Stein described the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act before a classroom of bored students. Hughes told Close he could write anything he wanted on the blackboard in the classroom his scene was set. Close wrote “The Harold,” which was the name of the improvisational game he invented.
Hughes held a private screening of “Ferris” at the high school since many of its students were extras in the film.
Tom Bueller’s office
333 W. Wacker Drive, Chicago
Had Tom Bueller looked out his office window upon hearing The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” he would have observed the Chicago River — not Dearborn Street.
The curvy, green glass-walled structure was designed by New York-based architecture film Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, which also designed 300 W. Monroe St. Completed in 1983, the building has 36 stories and more than 6 acres of glass that create a reflective facade that seems to bend along with the river just opposite the Merchandise Mart.
Parking garage
Washington Madison Wells garage, 172 W. Madison St., Chicago
The Ferrari was entrusted to an attendant at a parking garage, which was owned by the Chicago Board of Education in the 1970s.
Locals might have one bone to pick with the setup of one shot. The parking garage attendant, who takes the Ferrari out for a spin, clearly turns off Wells Street when he leaves the garage, but then unbelievably ends up underneath the “L” tracks on Wells again.
The West Loop garage still has 12 levels of parking — but now it’s all self serve.
Willis (Sears Tower) Skydeck, 103rd floor
233 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago
When the movie was filmed, the Sears Tower was the world’s tallest building — it had been since iron workers bolted the last girder into place in 1973.
The Skydeck observation area opened in 1974, on the building’s 103rd floor, which is 1,353 feet up in the air. Though Cameron Frye probably couldn’t see his dad from up there, visitors can see up to four states and 50 miles out on a clear day.
The 1,451-foot structure lost its crown as the world’s tallest when it was surpassed in 1996 by Malaysia’s Petronas Towers, and the American title in 2013 when New York City’s One World Trade Center was completed. After decades of construction in Asian countries, it’s now the 25th tallest in the world.
Chicago Board of Trade
141 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago
The Chicago Board of Trade opened on March 13, 1848, making it the world’s oldest and largest commodities futures trading center. In 1930, it moved into its 45-story art deco skyscraper by Holabird & Root. Its first tenant: Quaker Oats Co. The statue of Ceres that tops the structure has no face, reportedly because it was thought no other building would ever be as tall as the Board of Trade, therefore no one would realize that statue’s head was featureless.
At the time the film was shot, visitors could take free tours of the CBOT building on weekdays and observe the trading floor from galleries. True to the movie, the floor jumped to life at 9:30 a.m. when trading opened as brokers negotiated transactions face to face in the pits using hand signals and shouted commands, known as open outcry. Transactions were then recorded via computer and relayed to the big board and communications networks around the world. The process was an ironic combination of Stone Age communications and 20th century technology. The trading pit is no longer open to the public.
In 2007, the Chicago Board of Trade merged with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The merger created what was, at the time, the world’s largest derivatives market.
Chez Quis restaurant
22 W. Schiller St., Chicago
The French name, which roughly translates to “the house of who,” was not found in any Tribune restaurant reviews. With good reason — it was never a restaurant. The private residence was used for a brief exterior shot only in the movie. Abe Froman, “Sausage King of Chicago,” had a reservation at a Los Angeles restaurant instead.
Siskel called it, “a weak ripoff of a similar scene in ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’”
Search for Ferris Bueller begins
Chestnut Court Park, Winnetka
If the buildings in the background look familiar, then it’s because the same area was used in “Home Alone” for Santa Claus’ shack.
The pizza parlor Rooney wandered into? Though it looks similar to a Barnaby’s, it was really in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood.
Wrigley Field
1060 W. Addison St., Chicago
A producer inspected Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park as possible locations for the movie, but Wrigley won when the White Sox (Hughes was a fan) schedule put the team on the road. Broderick had received batting lessons from White Sox coach Charley Lau in the 1983 film “Max Dugan Returns.”
Ferris and friends were sitting in the 100-level near the left-foul pole. The Cubs game on TV at the pizza place took place June 5, 1985, against the Atlanta Braves. But when Ferris Bueller caught the foul ball? That was shot during a Sept. 24, 1985, game at Wrigley Field. Ruck recalled, according to MLB.com, he took inspiration from a catcher at his high school for his, “Hey batter, batter, batter, sa-wing batter!” chant.
Hughes’ own father-in-law was an extra seated behind Broderick, according to the death notice for Henry “Hank” Ludwig published in the June 2, 2013, edition of the Tribune. Ludwig suffered a major heart attack the day after filming and drove himself 20 miles to the hospital. Doctors gave him 7-12 years to live — he made it 27.
Art Institute of Chicago
111 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
The trio joined a line of schoolchildren in front of “Paris Street; Rainy Day” by Gustave Caillebotte. Cameron Frye contemplated Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Latte – 1884.” The second is a prime example of pointillism — the closer one stands to the painting, the more noticeable the tiny dots of color become.
Siskel’s critique: “The paintings are delightful, but Chicago purists will wonder why Ferris doesn’t spend more time with the Impressionists or, earlier, why he didn’t try to sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field along with the other kids ditching school.”
Steuben Parade
Daley Plaza (111 S. Michigan Ave.) and along Dearborn Street, Chicago
Ferris Bueller lip-synced to “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton and “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles near the intersection of Dearborn and Adams streets.
Unlike “The Fugitive,” where filming took place during an actual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in downtown Chicago, the Steuben Parade was staged on Sept. 28, 1985. Though snippets from the real German American Parade on Sept. 21, 1985, were peppered into “Ferris.”
Hughes put out a call for 5,000 extras dressed in mid-spring attire to recreate the German American Parade (which actually took place the week before). The names of people who showed up had their names put into a raffle. Prizes included “a trip to Mexico, a motor scooter, several weekend hotel packages, gift certificates, movie passes and record albums,” the Tribune reported.
The woman on accordion? That was “International Queen of Polka” Vlasta Krsek.
“Those were real faces, real people,” Hughes told the Tribune in June 1986. “That guy twisting up on that scaffolding was no actor. He was a real guy. That was spontaneous, and we were lucky enough to catch it.”
‘Save Ferris’ water tower
Best viewed from the John Hughes memorial bench outside Northbrook Public Library, 1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook
For months during filming, Northbrook residents wondered why “Save Ferris” was written on their village’s water tower. Now, they embrace their connection to the film.
Northbrook held “Ferris Fest” in 2016, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movie. Cast members Edie McClurg (Grace), Cindy Pickett (Katie Bueller), Lyman Ward (Tom Bueller), Jonathan Schmook (maitre d’ at Chez Quis) and Larry “Flash” Jenkins (garage attendant) mingled with locals.
Stanton Schuman Overlook
1 Park Ave., Glencoe
Cameron Frye’s breakdown was captured overlooking the serenity of Glencoe Beach on Lake Michigan. The area is named in honor of longtime Glencoe resident, former president of the park district, lawyer and scoutmaster, Stanton Schuman.
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