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Ferris Bueller's Day Off
1986 · Film · 103 min
Directed by John Hughes
After high school slacker Ferris Bueller successfully fakes an illness in order to skip school for the day, he goes on a series of adventures throughout Chicago with his girlfriend Sloane and best friend Cameron, all the while trying to outwit his wily school principal and fed-up sister.
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I'm honestly pretty tired of the 80s-movie-derived cultural memeplex of nerds getting oppressed by jocks with girlfriends in a high school context. This never accurately characterized any social environment I've been in, and I'm definitely a nerd by disposition. I'm not sure this ever really existed outside the imaginations of hollywood screenwriters. The Breakfast Club is mid, Weird Science is an actively terrible movie, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off is entertaining enough but looms way too large in the American pop culture imagination.
Tim Cook was the salutatorian of his Alabama public high school, majored in industrial engineering in college, and later got an MBA. He sold IBM computers for years and joined Apple in its late 90s doldrums because he was won over by Steve Jobs' charisma within several minutes of his first interview with Jobs. He's an openly-gay fitness nut - meaning he's had a lot of opportunity to have sex in his life (and being famously private, he's not talking about it one way or the other, as is his right).
I frankly don't think Tim Cook is much of a nerd. He's a smart, driven, ambitious business guy who's done a good job at making the gigantic electronics company he's the CEO of sell more products and navigate the political environment it operates in. He's not some underdog hero, and people who actually care about technology for its own sake or who care about computational sovereignty shouldn't attach their sense of identity to anything Apple does.
I don't think you can give one reason, because everything feeds everything else and then there's a network effect of sorts of popularity.
But one factor I think not mentioned yet is the film industry: I think (aside from feed-in popularity) the 80s gets outsized attention in TV & film because it's before modern technology was quite so prolific - plot lines that don't work with mobile phones, the web, etc.
And then that feeds people's interest too. Like, you can be born after WarGames or Ferris Bueller's Day Off for example, watch them, and then it's appealing because it's different and interesting, and you want more.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
When I was a kid, VHS home recording was a thing... so my sisters and I watched a few movies wayyyyy too many times.
The Blues Brothers Stripes Ferris Bueller's Day Off Footloose Dirty Dancing Amadeus These days, everything comes and goes from streaming. I'll watch these when they pop up again
The Expanse Monty Python and the Holy Grail The Ministry of Time Groundhog Day Dirty Harry Apocalypse Now About Time Time Bandits
The classic cars destroyed in movies are, quite often, not worth restoring, The Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a kit car, vehicles are often insurance write offs...there was a time when you could see cars in-frame were suddently 10 years older and tell that there was some destruction going to happen. I'm sure you can find some Italian Supercar destroyed for real in some Fast and the Furious type movie, but it's often not what it seems.
Is there also outcry when a Musician destroys a guitar on-stage?
My feeling at the ad wasn't particularly emotional, more curiosity at how much of it was real and how much wasnt. Speakers and art supplies aren't particularly expensive, and the Arcade machine wasn't recognizeably a machine worth keeping. There are plenty of used up pianos out there. The emoji was kinda funny...I don't know what that says about me.
Children of Men - 2006 - society would fall apart without a fresh supply of humans, this movie made that very, very clear
The Discovery - 2017 - The thought that we keep doing things over in an imperceptible manner until we get it right, is haunting
Ferris Bueller's Day Off - 1986 - "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - It told me I could be a little less serious about things, and have more fun
About Time - 2013 - The lesson is to try to roll with whatever happens, and relax
> Remember that movies are HIGHLY produced works
True, but also John Hughes was notoriously fast at producing works. There are independent rumors [1] that he wrote first drafts for both Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club in a day.
That's not to say he couldn't invest in explaining his motivations to the production designers, but sometimes a personality and idea is clear enough in your head, you can spill its' dialogue out without filters.
[1] https://www.slashfilm.com/910399/john-hughes-took-the-brute-force-approach-to-writing-ferris-buellers-day-off/
A nice analysis but not much that goes beyond the obvious. Perhaps it's actually more an interpretation than an analysis, if the former term were to allow for more of a personal stance / opinion. There's certainly a couple of things where I would disagree with Almond's view but then again, it's a film from the 80s that I haven't seen in over a decade if not two. Perhaps because there's more important things to life. Still, Ferris Bueller's Day Off certainly holds a nice and cozy place in my memory.
For those not familiar with them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearer_instrument
Most commonly know example is "bearer bonds", which are often used in heist movies and similar films, including, in the original script, in Ferris Bueller's Day Off[1].
[1] https://goat.com.au/ferris-buellers-day-off/today-i-learned-a-deleted-scene-wouldve-turned-ferris-bueller-day-off-into-a-much-darker-movie/
First, the Last Starfighter. My mom said this was the first movie I stayed awake for the entire time as a toddler, and while I don't remember seeing it in a theater, I think this made me instantly interested in everything computers and space, and I eventually became a rocket scientist (kinda). Yay!
Network - It was made a long time ago, but it's really about Facebook. Watch it.
Requiem for a dream - I'll never forget this movie, ever. This will make you want to quit all your drugs.
Hearts of Darkness (A Filmmaker's Apocalypse) - This is the making of Apocalypse Now, and it's amazing. It's so much more than a documentary about how to make a movie, it's about life, movie making, and youtube, long before it existed.
Wargames - still relevant about how technology could destroy us. I feel like this is the Ferris Bueller's Day Off for Hackers.
And lastly, who could forget, Hackers.
Anyone know whether the name was derived from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
Sorry ya without context, I don't suppose my comment made sense.
I grew up in Idaho and went through a couple of recessions. Most of the TV/movies from that time like Family Ties and Ferris Bueller's Day Off portray it as prosperous, but it was really more like South Park.
My dad practiced dentistry for many years but due to some house fires and other setbacks, we didn't have money until I was about 15. So I grew up eating a lot of lamb, deer, elk, farm fresh eggs, etc that he got when he traded out dental work because nobody had much money.
So what I was trying to say is, real prosperity to me would look more like if the 80s and 90s had continued so the US still had its manufacturing base today. A bit more like how Germany has prospered.
Instead we have the appearance for prosperity for most, but the bottom income half of the US is really struggling right now with multiple jobs, high debts, and not nearly as strong of a social safety net as we had then. So I question why that is necessary when some people are doing so phenomenally well. To me, America lost its way after the dot bomb around 2000 and never really recovered. Maybe I'm reaching though, if I'm seeing conspiracies just because we can't find a discontinued connector, which I fully admit haha.
It was terrible. Just an endless avalanche of 80s pop culture references loosely strung together with a horribly cliche plot and characters.
The references weren't even interesting either. It'll just be something like, "Then, I traveled to planet Bueller, where I played through the plot of Ferris Bueller's Day Off--", and then a page and a half literally describing various scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That's it. It adds nothing. Unless the idea of scenes from 80s movies and TV shows and video games that you are familiar with being described back to you is inherently amusing, you will probably find that this gets old very fast.
Then again - this might translate much better to the screen, in a way it didn't to the page, because A) film is a much better medium, I think, to delight the audience with familiarity than writing, and B) from the trailer it looks like the film will expand beyond just 80s pop culture, and intermix the references a little better than "I went to planet Star Wars and here are some scenes from Star Wars I played through". With Spielberg at the helm, I have pretty high hopes. Just don't expect, if you like the movie, to read the book and like it even more. If the film succeeds, this will be one of those very rare instances in which it's better than the material it's adapted from.
If you want to read a good novel about VR, pick up Snow Crash instead.
Pontiac launched the 'Fiero' with styling inspired by the Ferrari 308 in the mid 80s [1]. Around the same time, VW also launched the 'Corrado' as a possible 'successor to the Porsche 944'. Both models were pulled from the market after a few years of production and now have somewhat of a cult following among car collectors. They had good initial interest and sales, but were regarded as too expensive and unreliable, and so eventually so lost out to other, more practical competitors.
In my opinion, cheap luxury clones don't work because the market is too small. Plenty of people like the idea of a 'cool' car, but the car is a big ticket item for most people, so practical, reliable and having a good resale value tend to trump 'cool' as an important feature. You'll also note that classic, 'boring' colors tend to outsell flashy, 'cool' colors. Even the best selling sports cars in the mid-price segment, e.g. VW GTI, tend to have a hatchback and a large, useful interior that is workable for a family car.
Fun fact: The Fiero was featured in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the car owned by the feature character's sister.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Fiero [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Corrado
Alcohol is the real threat to cognition, and we don't talk about it. [1] [2]
We don't know where the line is exactly, but somewhere around 4-5 drinks over a few hours has an acute neurotoxic effect.
Cannabis use in adolescents does not result in changes that can be picked up on high resolution MRI scans. [3] This is a considerable finding considering that one would expect changes just from the added stress of being a cannabis user in a prohibition environment (fear of arrest, fear of expulsion, fear of parental punishment upon discovery). It may even point to a protective effect of cannabis on the brain, as we see in Parkinson's and has been seen in other studies and in stroke. [4]
A UK study on the IQ effects of moderate cannabis use on students did not find evidence of harm. The study did find significant evidence of cognitive deficits caused by alcohol use. [5]
Why do young adults want to get high so much? I think the answer is that they are coping with the stress of being locked into institutions that do not serve them, do not respect them and offer them very little, while demanding very much.
One of the themes of Ferris Bueller's Day Off was high school as prison. The entire movie is a jail break story, and I think it gets to the truth of what its like to be doing time in high school better than anything.
It's no wonder so many teenagers cope by getting high as much as they can. And then we blame them, and treat them like criminals, when they are just sufferers of low mood.
We need a radically different approach to high school education. I think we need to find a way for people to be more economically useful, economically empowered and more in control of their lives at younger ages.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25702705
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183294/
[3] http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/4/1505.short
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10863546
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/22/no-marijuana-use-doesnt-lower-your-iq/
Anecdotal evidence to the contrary: I am 25 and this has been one of my favorite movies since first seeing it around ten years ago.
Few under-30 year olds have even given The Beatles or Pink Floyd a proper listen either or know of Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I'm serious, mass cultural memory is not very long.
But I think you'll find that all of the above will be mentioned in discussions of 20th century movies and music long into the future. Citizen Kane definitely stands the test of time.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was the doorbell scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/282975/Ferris-Bueller-s-Day-Off-Movie-Clip-It-s-Ed-Rooney.html
Seriously though, I like the idea but what happens if someone holds up a photo of a friend or family member who's face automatically unlocks the door? It would be pretty easy to get a suitable image from a Facebook profile, for example.
I'm thinking this is going to be a decade-defining movie like Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off was for the 80's.
I was overjoyed to find a director's commentary for amongst my favourite films ever: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, on the DVD.
One thing I said in 1998 is that I wish they had a device to erase movies like Ferris Bueller from your memory so you can watch and enjoy them again and again!
The Tariff Act is in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with the teacher's "This act... anyone, anyone? - Raised...", except there's a line where he's taking class attendance register and goes "Bueller - Bueller". So I mixed both references. It's definitely an in-joke for viewers of the film. :-|