in 2016.
Writing As he was writing the film in 1985,
John Hughes kept track of his progress in a spiral-bound logbook. He noted that the basic storyline was developed on February 25 and was successfully pitched the following day to
Paramount Studios chief
Ned Tanen. Tanen was intrigued by the concept, but wary that the
Writers Guild of America was hours away from picketing the studio. Editor
Paul Hirsch explained that Hughes had a trance-like concentration to his script-writing process, working for hours on end, and would later shoot the film on essentially what was his first draft of the script. "The first cut of ''Ferris Bueller's Day Off'' ended up at two hours, 45 minutes. The shortening of the script had to come in the cutting room", said Hirsch. "Having the story episodic and taking place in one day...meant the characters were wearing the same clothes. I suspect that Hughes writes his scripts with few, if any costume changes just so he can have that kind of freedom in the editing." Edward McNally was rumored as the inspiration for the character Ferris Bueller. McNally grew up on the same street as Hughes, had a best friend named "Buehler", and was relentlessly pursued by the school dean over his truancy, which amounted to 27 days' absence, compared to Bueller's nine in the film.
Casting Hughes said that he had Matthew Broderick in mind when he wrote the screenplay, saying Broderick was the only actor he could think of who could pull off the role, calling him clever and charming. "Certain guys would have played Ferris and you would have thought, 'Where's my wallet? Hughes said. "I had to have that look; that charm had to come through.
Jimmy Stewart could have played Ferris at 15...I needed Matthew." Other actors who were considered for the role included
Jim Carrey,
John Cusack,
Johnny Depp,
George Clooney,
Tom Cruise, and
Michael J. Fox. Mia Sara surprised Hughes when she auditioned for the role of Sloane Peterson. "It was funny," she said. "He didn't know how old I was and said he wanted an older girl to play the 17-year-old. He said it would take someone older to give her the kind of dignity she needed. He almost fell out of his chair when I told him I was only 18."
Molly Ringwald, who had also wanted to play Sloane, said, "John wouldn't let me do it: he said that the part wasn't big enough for me." Ruck said the role of Cameron had been offered to
Emilio Estevez, who turned it down. "Every time I see Emilio, I want to kiss him," said Ruck. "Thank you!" Ruck, then 29, worried about the age difference (he was only six years younger than Hughes). "I was worried that I'd be 10 years out of step, and I wouldn't know anything about what was cool, what was hip, all that junk. But when I was going to high school, I didn't know any of that stuff then, either. So I just thought, well, hell—I'll just be me. The character, he's such a loner that he really wouldn't give a damn about that stuff anyway. He'd feel guilty that he didn't know it, but that's it." Ruck was not surprised to find himself cast young. "No, because, really, when I was 18, I sort of looked 12," he said. "Maybe it's a genetic imbalance." "So I was the only one in opposition, which presented a lot of opportunities, some of which weren't even in the script or were expanded on. John was receptive to anything I had to offer, and indeed got ideas along the way himself. So that was fun, working with him." To help Jones study for the part, Hughes took him to meet his old vice principal. "This is the guy I want you to pay close attention to," Jones explained to Hughes's biographer Kirk Honeycutt. While meeting him, the VP's coat momentarily flew open revealing a holster and gun attached to the man's belt. This made Jones realize what Hughes had envisioned. "The guy was 'Sign up for the Army quick before I kill you! Jones exclaimed. Stein says he got the role of Bueller's economics teacher through
six degrees of separation. "
Richard Nixon introduced me to a man named
Bill Safire, who's a
New York Times columnist. He introduced me to a guy who's an executive at
Warner Brothers. He introduced me to a guy who's a casting director. He introduced me to John Hughes. John Hughes and I are among the only Republicans in the picture business, and John Hughes put me in the movie," Stein said. "A lot of
Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people who get upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film. It's funny—nobody ever says anything to
Woody Allen about always filming in
New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy
Ferris Bueller." In late October 1985, the production moved to Los Angeles, and shooting ended on November 22. The
Von Steuben Day Parade scene was filmed on September 28. Scenes were filmed at several locations in
downtown Chicago and
Winnetka (Ferris's home, his mother's real estate office, etc.). Many of the other scenes were filmed in
Northbrook, Illinois, including at
Glenbrook North High School. The exterior of Ferris's house is located at 4160 Country Club Drive,
Long Beach, California, The
modernist house of Cameron Frye is located in
Highland Park, Illinois. Known as the
Ben Rose House, it was designed by architects A. James Speyer, who designed the main building in 1954, and David Haid, who designed the
pavilion in 1974. It was once owned by photographer
Ben Rose, who had a car collection in the pavilion. In the film, Cameron's father is portrayed as owning a
Ferrari 250 GT California in the same pavilion. According to
Lake Forest College art professor Franz Shulze, during the filming of the scene where the Ferrari crashes out of the window, Haid explained to Hughes that he could prevent the car from damaging the rest of the pavilion. Haid fixed connections in the wall and the building remained intact. Haid said to Hughes afterward, "You owe me $25,000," and which Hughes paid. was a "place of refuge" in his youth. According to Hughes, the scene at the
Art Institute of Chicago was "a self-indulgent scene of mine—which was a place of refuge for me, I went there quite a bit, I loved it. I knew all the paintings, the building. This was a chance for me to go back into this building and show the paintings that were my favorite." The museum had not been shot in, until the producers of the film approached them. A passionate
Beatles fan, Hughes makes multiple references to them and
John Lennon in the script. While filming, Hughes listened to their
self-titled 1968 album every single day for 56 days. Hughes also pays tribute to his childhood hero
Gordie Howe with Cameron's
Detroit Red Wings jersey. "I sent them the jersey," said Howe. "It was nice seeing the No. 9 on the big screen." Ruck later explained the significance of Cameron wearing the Detroit Red Wings jersey. "John [Hughes] had spent some of his boyhood in Detroit...(and) had decided that Cameron had a horrible relationship with his father, but a great relationship with his grandfather, who lived in Detroit and would take Cameron to Red Wings games," Ruck said. "That's all it was, and it was never explained in the movie."
Ferrari In the film, Ferris convinces Cameron to borrow his father's rare 1961
Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. "The
insert shots of the Ferrari were of the real 250 GT California," Hughes explains in the DVD commentary. "The cars we used in the wide shots were obviously reproductions. There were only 100 of these cars, so it was way too expensive to destroy. We had a number of replicas made. They were pretty good, but for the tight shots I needed a real one, so we brought one in to the stage and shot the inserts with it." Hughes saw a mention of the company in a car magazine and decided to research them. Neil Glassmoyer recalls the day Hughes contacted him to ask about seeing the Modena Spyder: Automobile restorationist Mark Goyette designed the kits for three reproductions used in the film and chronicled the whereabouts of the cars today: • "Built by Goyette and leased to Paramount for the filming. It's the one that jumps over the camera, and is used in almost every shot. At the end of filming, Paramount returned it to Goyette, with the exhaust crushed and cracks in the body. "There was quite a bit of superficial damage, but it held up amazingly well," he said. He rebuilt it, and sold it to a young couple in California. The husband later ran it off the road, and Goyette rebuilt the front end for him. That owner sold it in the mid-90s, and it turned up again around 2000, but hasn't emerged since." Another "replicar" used in the movie, serial number 001, referenced as the "hero car" that Goyette stated "hasn't emerged since" was sold at the 2020 Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction on January 18, 2020, for . The "replicar" was "universally hated by the crew," said Ruck. "It didn't work right." The scene in which Ferris turns off the car to leave it with the garage attendant had to be shot a dozen times because it would not start. At the time of filming, the original 250 GT California model was worth $350,000. and more recently in 2015 for . The
vanity plate of Cameron's dad's Ferrari spells NRVOUS and the other plates seen in the film are homages to Hughes's earlier works, VCTN (''National Lampoon's Vacation
), TBC (The Breakfast Club
), MMOM (Mr. Mom
), as well as 4FBDO (Ferris Bueller's Day Off'').
Economics lecture Ben Stein's famous monotonous lecture about the
Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was not originally in Hughes's script. Stein, by happenstance, was lecturing off-camera to the amusement of the student cast. "I was just going to do it off camera, but the student extras laughed so hard when they heard my voice that (Hughes) said do it on camera, improvise, something you know a lot about. When I gave the lecture about
supply-side economics, I thought they were applauding. Everybody on the set applauded. I thought they were applauding because they had learned something about supply-side economics. But they were applauding because they thought I was boring. ... It was the best day of my life," Stein said. Broderick's moves were choreographed by
Kenny Ortega (who later choreographed
Dirty Dancing). Much of it had to be scrapped, though, for Broderick had injured his knee badly during the scenes of running through neighbors' backyards. "I was pretty sore", Broderick said. "I got well enough to do what you see in the parade there, but I couldn't do most of Kenny Ortega's knee spins and things like that that we had worked on. When we did shoot it, we had all this choreography and I remember John would yell with a megaphone, 'Okay, do it again, but don't do any of the choreography', because he wanted it to be a total mess." "
Danke Schoen" was somewhat choreographed but for "
Twist and Shout", Broderick said, "we were just making everything up." Hughes explained that much of the scene was spontaneously filmed. "It just happened that this was an actual parade, which we put our float into—unbeknownst to anybody, all the people on the reviewing stand. Nobody knew what it was, including the governor." In the next scene, Sloane, Cameron, and Ferris are in the left field stands inside Wrigley. Ferris flexes his hand in pain after supposedly catching the foul ball. During this scene, the characters enjoy the game and joke about what they would be doing if they had played by the rules. All these "in the park" shots, including the one from the previous scene where Ferris catches the foul ball on TV, were filmed on September 24, 1985, at a game between the
Montreal Expos and the Cubs. During the
1985 season, the Braves and the Expos both wore powder blue uniforms during their road games so, with seamless editing by Hirsch, it is difficult to distinguish that the game being seen and described in the pizza joint is not only a different game but also a different Cubs' opponent from the one filmed inside the stadium. On October 1, 2011, Wrigley Field celebrated the 25th anniversary of the film by showing it on three giant screens on the infield. ==Post-production==