Released: June 11, 1986

Directed By: John Hughes

Written By:  John Hughes

Music By: Ira Newborn

Stars: Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck, Jennifer Grey, Jeffrey Jones, Cindy Pickett, Edie McClurg, Lyman Ward and a bunch of other actors.

Plot: A high school wise guy is determined to have a day off from school, despite what the Principal thinks of that.

Taglines:  While the rest of us were just thinking about it…Ferris borrowed a Ferrari and did it…all in a day.

How did this movie do?
Budget: $5 Million
Box Office: $71 Million

• Hughes said that he had Broderick in mind when he wrote the screenplay. Rob Lowe, John Cusack, Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey, Jr., and Michael J. Fox were all considered for the role of Ferris Bueller.
  
  
• Molly Ringwald, wanted to play Sloane, said, “John wouldn’t let me do it: he said that the part wasn’t big enough for me.”
  
  
• Ruck had auditioned for the role of Bender in The Breakfast Club that went to Judd Nelson, but Hughes remembered Ruck and cast him as the 17-year-old Cameron Frye.
  
  
• Alan Ruck was 29 at the time of filming
  
  
• 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!”
  
  
• Jones was cast as Rooney based on his role in Amadeus, where he played the emperor; Hughes thought that character’s modern equivalent was Rooney.
  
  
• Charlie Sheen was recommended by Jennifer Grey after they did Red Dawn (1984) together.
  
  
• After working together on Weird Science (1985), John Hughes offered Bill Paxton the role of the garage attendant. However, Paxton turned it down, because he felt the role was too small. He admitted that he regretted turning it down, because Hughes never offered him a role again.
  
  
• Paul Gleason was considered for the role of Ed Rooney. Gleason had previously played the role of Assistant Principal Richard “Dick” Vernon in The Breakfast Club (1985).

• In the film, Ferris convinces Cameron to borrow his father’s rare 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. At the time of filming, there were only 100 of these cars.
  
  
• During the parade scene, Broderick’s moves were choreographed by Kenny Ortega, who later choreographed Dirty Dancing.
  
  
• In August 2022, a spin-off interquel film entitled Sam & Victor’s Day Off, was announced to be in development for the streaming service Paramount+. Taking place during the events of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and focusing on the two titular valets who took Cameron’s father’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder on a joy ride (originally portrayed in the film by Richard Edson and Larry “Flash” Jenkins), the film would be produced by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, and written by Bill Posley.
  
  
• Alan Ruck, when asked what he’d like to see in a sequel has stated “”I used to think why don’t they wait until Matthew and I are in our seventies and do Ferris Bueller Returns and have Cameron be in a nursing home. He doesn’t really need to be there, but he just decided his life is over, so he committed himself to a nursing home. And Ferris comes and breaks him out. And they go to, like, a titty bar and all this ridiculous stuff happens. And then, at the end of the movie, Cameron dies.”
  
  
• DIRECTOR CAMEO: John Hughes made his final on-screen appearance in a cameo role as a man running between the cabs, but was uncredited.
  
  
• 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 9 in the film.
  
  
• Hughes intended the focus of the movie be more on the characters then the plot.
  
  
• During the parade, several of the people seen dancing (including the construction worker and the window washer) originally had nothing to do with the film. They were simply dancing to the music being played, and John Hughes found it so humorous that he told the camera operators to record it.
  
  
• Even though they played siblings, Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Grey would later become engaged after this movie. Tragically, approximately a year later, after Broderick finished filming Biloxi Blues (1988), and before Grey’s premier for Dirty Dancing (1987), the couple was involved in a fatal crash in Northern Ireland, where the passengers of the other vehicle, a mother and daughter, died in the accident.
  
  
• Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, who played Ferris’s parents, married in real life after filming this movie. They later divorced in 1992.
  
  
• To produce the desired drugged-out effect for his role as the drug addict in the police station, Charlie Sheen stayed awake for more than forty-eight hours before the scene was shot.
  
  
• The shot of Ferris playing the clarinet was done on the spot. Someone spotted the instrument as part of the set, and Matthew Broderick said he could play it, which of course he couldn’t.
  
  
• Grace, the secretary pretending to be Ed Rooney during the phone call from Cameron, was improvised.
  
  
• Mia Sara says that Matthew Broderick actually tickled her feet and knees to get her to laugh naturally in the taxicab scene.
  
  
• John Hughes personally designed Ferris’ bedroom, mirrored mostly on his own bedroom when he was in high school. Hughes said that the room was a disorganized series of pop references and other things, because it would represent Ferris’ mind.
  
  
• According to the Inside Story (1986) documentary, Charlie Sheen’s character’s name is actually Garth Volbeck. There was going to be a whole backstory to his character and family. It was also revealed that the Volbecks are the family to whom Ferris’s mom was showing the house in her job as a realtor. If you look closely, the tow truck that tows Rooney’s car is from Volbeck’s Wrecking Service. Also, a deleted backstory shows that Ferris and Garth were friends in the eighth grade. Garth’s family’s pretty messed up, and Ferris tried to help him, and be his friend, but Garth eventually dropped out of high school and wound up in the police station next to Jeannie. That’s why Ferris is so intent on giving Cameron a good time. He blames himself for not helping Garth enough when he could.
  
  
• Rooney’s line about leaving “my cheese in the wind” was ad-libbed. John Hughes wanted a comment that was complete nonsense.
  
  
• The restaurant where Ferris and company go to eat is the same one Jake and Elwood terrorized in The Blues Brothers (1980). It is also the same restaurant from St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), where Kirby waits for Dale.
  
  
• According to John Hughes, Cameron was based, in large part, on a friend of his in high school. “He was sort of a lost person. His family neglected him, so he took that as license to really pamper himself. When he was legitimately sick, he actually felt good, because it was difficult and tiring to have to invent diseases, but when he actually had something, he was relaxed.”
  
  
• EASTER EGG: Most of the license plates are all abbreviations for titles of films by John Hughes. Katie’s = VCTN (National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)); Jeannie’s = TBC (The Breakfast Club (1985)); Tom’s = MMOM (Mr. Mom (1983)); Rooney’s = 4FBDO (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)). The exception is Cameron’s father’s Ferrari (seen when Ferris first pulls out of the garage), the license plate of which reads NRVOUS.
  
  
• Shermer High School is the same high school in Weird Science, Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club (1985).
  
  
• The bus scene that plays during the ending credits was a scene cut from the movie. It was meant to take place after Jeanie announced that she called the police, and Rooney had to find a place to hide. This explains why the sky isn’t dark, and why a bus is taking students home at 6:00 p.m.
  
  
• The painting that Cameron admires is called “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, by Georges Seurat. It is still on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is the inspiration for the long-running Broadway musical “Sunday in the Park with George.”
  
  
• In order to keep the savage rottweiler focused on Ed Rooney, John Hughes had Jeffrey Jones carry a raw steak around in his jacket pocket.
  
  
• At one point in the film, there was a line that Ferris was going to say, “Come next year, I’ll be the first kid to ride on the Space Shuttle.” It was even featured in the preview for theaters. However, less than five months before the film’s release on January 28, 1986, the Challenger exploded, killing all seven aboard, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Because of this, John Hughes had the preview recalled from theaters, and the line was edited out of the final film.
  
  
• DELETED SCENES: – Ferris asks his dad on the phone about bonds his father purchased when he was born, he then takes one of them from a shoebox in his father’s closet, cashes it at the bank with his girlfriend (telling the hard-of-hearing teller they are pregnant with a Jeep), and uses the money to pay for his day off. It was removed, because it made Ferris look like a thief rather than a lovable rogue. – Ferris orders something in French on the menu, and after everyone at the table tastes it, he is informed by the snooty waiter that he ordered “sweetbreads”, which is a French dish made from the thymus gland. It was removed, because it showed the waiter getting the better of Ferris, but later in the movie, when Ferris is recounting the day to Cameron, he remarks “we ate pancreas”.
  
  
• There is a poster for Simple Minds’ song “Don’t You Forget About Me” on Ferris’ wall. This song was featured prominently in John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985).
  
  
• The dance sequence by the group on the stairs during Ferris’ lip-synch performance of “Twist and Shout” is taken directly out of Michael Jackson’s Michael Jackson: Thriller (1983) video, as well as the Jacksons’ performance on the 1983 “Motown 25” TV special.
  
  
• The number “9” was chosen for the number of Ferris’ absences because it sounded harsh when spoken by Rooney.
  
  
• The French restaurant Bueller crashes is “Chez Quis”, which is a pun, as said aloud it would be “Shakeys”, the pizza chain. “Chez Qui” means “the house of whom” in French.
  
  
• John Hughes had wanted to film a scene from the script where Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron go to a strip club. Paramount executives told him there were only so many shooting days left, so the scene was scrapped.
  
  
• Ferris’s “Life moves pretty fast” line was not originally the last line of the movie before the closing credits. The last line before the credits in the script was, “Yeah, life is a carousel. A great big crazy ball of pure living, breathing joy and delight. You gotta get one.” John Hughes decided to change the line on the day of filming the scene.
  
  
• The Ferrari was originally supposed to smash through the window of the garage and land in the backyard. It overshot its mark, however, and hit a fence that was dividing the house from the yard next door.
  
  
• In an early draft of the script, Ferris had two additional younger siblings, and Jeanie was to be the middle child. During the parade scene, Ferris’s father is seen dancing to “Twist and Shout” in his office and there is a family picture in the background that includes the two missing children.
• Alan Ruck had faced career setbacks following his post-“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” career. Ruck had moved his family from Chicago to Los Angeles as he had been cast in a pilot called “Morton’s by the Bay”, which didn’t make it past the pilot stage. With a young family to support and no other marketable job skills, Ruck had to go to an employment agency that had him working at a Sears warehouse for minimum wage. Coworkers would tell Ruck that he reminded them of Cameron Frye and Ruck, not wanting to avoid the humiliation of being the actor in that movie to now working in a warehouse, denied it was him and kept a low profile. Ruck was eventually cast in “Going Places”, which had turned his fortunes around.
  
  
• Alan Ruck’s salary for his role as Cameron Frye was $40K.