Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) on Netflix
Two months before graduation, Ferris Bueller fakes an illness to skip school in Chicago. His sister Jeanie sees through the ruse, and dean Edward R. Rooney sets out to expose him.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.8/10420,712 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ferris Bueller has skipped school before, and this time he stages a convincing illness so that his parents, Katie and Tom, leave him home alone. His sister Jeanie does not buy it. At school, dean Edward R. Rooney and his secretary Grace have logged nine absences for Ferris this semester and want proof he is lying, so he breaks into the school's computer files and lowers the count. To free his girlfriend Sloane Peterson from class, he has his friend Cameron Frye phone the school as her father and report that her grandmother has died. Out on the town, the three ride in a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder belonging to Cameron's father, and Cameron worries about giving it back unmarked.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Alan Ruck had auditioned for Bender in The Breakfast Club and lost it to Judd Nelson, but John Hughes remembered him and cast him as the seventeen-year-old Cameron Frye.
- Cameron Frye was first offered to Emilio Estevez, who turned it down. "Every time I see Emilio, I want to kiss him," said Alan Ruck, who got the part instead. Jon Cryer had also been considered for it.
- Anthony Michael Hall, who had made three films with Hughes, was offered Ferris and turned it down because he was busy. Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Jon Cryer, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox were all considered before Matthew Broderick.
SPOILER
Cameron's home was the real Ben Rose House in Highland Park, Illinois, and architect David Haid reinforced the wall connections so the Ferrari could burst out of the glass pavilion without wrecking it. Afterwards he told Hughes, "You owe me $25,000," and Hughes paid.SPOILER
For the crash the crew removed every single pane of glass from the pavilion first. Hughes explained that the old panes had all aged to the same tint, so any replacement panel dropped in among them would have been obvious on camera.- Kenny Ortega, later the choreographer of Dirty Dancing, worked out routines for the parade that mostly had to be thrown away, because Matthew Broderick badly hurt his knee filming the run through the neighbors' backyards and could not manage the knee spins.
- The parade number was shot on two Saturdays in downtown Chicago, the first during a genuine parade. Radio stations then invited listeners to take part in "a John Hughes movie" and about 10,000 people turned up, which Broderick described as seeing a river of people.
- Sloane originally told Cameron during the parade that a girl can always bail out, have a baby and find a man to support her. Producer Tom Jacobson said the irony went over young viewers' heads; Lindsay Doran recalled that cutting that one line sent female test scores up about 40 points.
