Ferris Bueller: True to Chicago?
Two A.V. Club writers debate the classic film's veracity & whether it matters
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David: Kyle, when reclusive writer-director John Hughes died of a heart attack in New York City earlier this month, he took with him a feature idea I had been kicking around since May, when the house where Cameron Frye from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off lived went on the market: to have Hughes retrace Bueller’s legendary day of hooky and explain why exactly a slacker high-school senior’s wildest fantasies would include an afternoon watching traders at the Merc and appreciating Picasso paintings at the Art Institute.
Hughes isn’t around anymore to defend his motives in Bueller, but I was able to find the next best thing: an out-of-print copy of the movie with his commentary. With the Music Box screening it tonight and tomorrow night, it seemed a good a time as any to assess the 1986 movie’s portrayal of this town. Bueller was meant as Hughes’ love letter to Chicago; he explains early in his commentary that he “really wanted to show [my city] at its best,” but the message is probably most embraced and heard loudest outside of Chicago, because the movie is clearly intended to win over an audience beyond state lines. This generic message of civic pride doesn’t exactly cut it with locals. Who else but a tourist would marvel at the Sears Tower?
Well, if Ferris Bueller is to be believed, a fast-talking local high schooler would—it’d be his first stop after tooling around the house jamming on the clarinet, drawing a naked lady on MacPaint, and programming his synthesizer to properly emulate a nasty cough. Arguably the Sears Tower's inclusion is among the weakest: A cameraman endured altitude-induced dizziness because Hughes “thought it would be neat to see [the characters] upside down and right-side up.” It adds nothing to the plot; it’s the cinematic equivalent of an appendix.
Then, you know how teenagers are. After stealing a couple of amazing moments at the top of one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, it’s only natural they would give into their hormones and scurry off to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where watching market runners in mustard-colored jackets is far more fascinating than any joyride in a Ferrari. Except, well, Hughes confesses, “This scene was really there just to hit Cameron’s family situation, which would be important later.” If Bueller is such a rebellious scamp, couldn’t he do better than the Sears Tower and the Merc? The city of Chicago should come off as charming as Bueller, but at this point the mold is starting to set on it being flat and dull by comparison. What follows suggests Hughes merely cribbed the locations from a travel brochure—Chicago is really filling in for any other major city here.
Bueller cons his way into a generic French restaurant (everyone’s shorthand for suggesting refinement and sophistication), a Cubs game, and then, uh, it’s off to the Art Institute. Really? We’re expected to believe that 17-year-olds on a day of hooky would get some culture? If that were true, wouldn’t he have gone to school that day to take that test on European socialism? Hughes explains the inspiration for this “very self-indulgent scene”:
It reads a bit like the “This Little Wiggy” Simpsons episode, where Nelson Muntz, growing weary of terrorizing Bart and Ralph Wiggum, suggests that he and his bully pals “go pick some huckleberries,” which they then hurry off to do excitedly. The only difference is that the latter is intentionally out of step with how kids today spend their leisure time. Wouldn’t someone like Ferris Bueller be staying home and playing video games or watching MTV? “Students embrace apathy even more than usual in their ditch day,” says Deerfield High School teacher Jeff Berger-White, a Chicagoland native who was a teenaged extra in the film. “It is a little off,” adds recent Niles West High graduate Andreas Nicholas. “Most kids would just walk down the street to Subway, and then go home and sleep.”
Kyle: David, I think you have Ferris Bueller, and his eponymous movie, all wrong. Speaking of The Simpsons, I occasionally felt like I was reading an op-ed by Comic Book Guy. Are we going to follow up this story with another debunking The Blues Brothers, noting that cars in Chicago don’t really jump closing bridges, and people don’t break out into song at Maxwell Street Market?
No, because not even the most fervent fans of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off think the film’s realistic—though they might be surprised to learn there is no Shermer, Ill. And I think you have Ferris as a character all wrong. But let’s begin with agreement. You say that the film was “embraced and heard loudest outside of Chicago,” and it was “clearly intended to win over the audience beyond state lines.”
Well, yeah, of course. Only a sliver of the potential audience was in Chicago, as this was a major studio film. Hughes wanted to show off his hometown to the outside world. Outsiders, of course, have a limited vocabulary when it comes to Chicago, and so would a teenager from a tony North Shore suburb. I think we can safely assume Ferris doesn’t spend a lot of time in the city, so he would naturally gravitate toward the touristy parts. “Who else but a tourist would marvel at the Sears Tower?” Um, I would and do. It’s a giant fucking building. It’s hard not to marvel at it.
Here is where it becomes obvious you’re misreading the character of Ferris Bueller: He’s supposed to be worldly and eccentric, so the Art Institute is precisely the kind of place he would want to hit up. When Cameron sniffs that he, Ferris, and Sloane hadn’t seen anything interesting in Chicago, Ferris rattles off a list of the culture they took in that day. He’s not supposed to be a typical teenager—he’s Ferris Bueller.
Regardless, no one was coming to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for cinema verité. It’s just supposed to be a fun movie, and I think it completely succeeds. Suspension of disbelief is a requirement for just about every film, especially an ’80s John Hughes comedy. Don’t quibble with it. As Del Griffith, a wise character from another Hughes comedy said, go with the flow, “like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream.”
David: Now who’s quibbling, Kyle? All I’m saying is that if you’re writing a love letter to a city, you damn well better get your facts straight, because the people it was intended to celebrate can smell if something isn’t right. If Ferris Bueller was meant to use broad strokes to exemplify the spirit of the city, why don’t we see its characters scarfing down hot dogs while riding the El, discussing gangsters and corrupt politicians? Why couldn’t Hughes have expanded an outsider’s perspective of the city, rather than narrowing it?
You ask if this really matters. Of course not. This was just a silly little movie that came out in the mid-’80s and has since ascended to the ranks of a cult classic. But the funny thing about cult classics is that people watch them once, form an opinion about it, and then don’t bother revisiting it—they become its unquestioning disciples. When’s the last time you sat down and watched it? I saw it on Sunday, and it was mildly amusing and certainly charming, but it’s simply too distracting as a native not to be taken out of the movie by its cramming-for-a-final-like attempt to squeeze every drop of the city into 100-odd minutes.
Incidentally, The Blues Brothers was one of my favorite movies growing up, so it isn’t like I’m totally made of stone here. I don’t have a problem with Ferris as a character; it’s the character that the city takes on here that’s the issue. Why would he crash a parade and not go to Navy Pier? If I’m misreading Ferris, then you’re definitely taking him too seriously. In the commentary, Hughes himself describes Ferris not as worldly and refined but as boyish. If he was worldly and sophisticated, his smarminess wouldn’t read as charming. And eccentric or not, any teenager with a synthesizer in the mid-’80s certainly would have a Nintendo, which came bundled with Super Mario Bros. or Duck Hunt, and is what we locals wiled away our free time with. Not staring at buildings.
Kyle: Basically your beef with Bueller comes down to your disliking the choices John Hughes made. Fair enough, but that doesn’t make them wrong. Why weren’t they on the el? Why didn’t they go to Navy Pier? Who knows? (And the Navy Pier of 1986 bore little resemblance to its current incarnation.)
Again, though: It doesn’t matter. You say “it’s the character that the city takes on here that’s the issue,” but how can you argue with how the city looks in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? As a kid who saw the film growing up in Texas, I can tell you that Chicago looked awesome.
Maybe your perspective is too slanted because you grew up here, and maybe mine is similarly skewed because I didn’t. Funny enough, I feel about The Blues Brothers the way you feel about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I know it’s heresy, especially coming from a non-Chicago native, but I always thought it a bit overrated.
Regardless, I think the success of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off speaks for itself. It’s not a cult classic; the film was one of the top-10 highest-grossing movies of 1986, and it has an indelible place in popular culture as one of the classic ’80s comedies—and one of Hughes’ most memorable films. Had you landed that interview with him, I don’t think he would’ve felt the need to defend his choices.
