Look for this upcoming Inside Story: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off documentary. Interviews with many of the actors, behind the scenes videos, stories about how the movie was written and made. Very enjoyable for any fan of the movie.
Some of the dichotomy here in how we perceive Bueller is what age we were when the movie came out.
If you were in high school or even undergraduate college, then he comes off as a hero.
If you were older, he comes off as a really poorly raised smarmy teen-aged kid who doesn’t know how good he has it.
I was 30. And I considered him a righteous dude. This is about whether or not you are cool, period.
I told you, I didn’t often break the rules. I certainly never stole a car or hacked into the school computer. I do know someone who did the latter and got expelled.
I was a junior in high school and hated him. I didn’t really enjoy the movie at all until I was in my 30’s and tried to appreciate the movie as a cartoonish fantasy, but even then I thought Ferris was a smarmy jerk.
I feel he’s a cartoon character. The rules are different.
Actually the most mitigating testimony at Ferris’s trial would be that if it weren’t for him we would never have gotten to here Edie McClurg say “He’s a righteous dude”. IIRC, that line was an improv.
Off topic, but, according to Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson, so was my other favorite Edie McClurg line in the movie Elvira: Mistress of the Dark: “Ooh Melody, you made your famous Tic-Tac pie!”. Per Elvira, Edie came up with that in a read-through when the script directions said something like ‘makes small talk about the food’ and they laughed so hard they actually decorated a pie with Tic-Tacs to use it in the movie. (Looking at her imdbshe still has lots of credits, but I haven’t noticed her in anything lately.)
She is a fabulous character actor. Was she the rental clerk in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles?
ETA: Yes she was! (I like to try to get these from memory before I look them up)
Yes. IMO, that role should be credited as the “You’re fucked woman.”
He’s a dick in the same way Gandhi was. Initially this chapter in his life was about him wanting some more ME time, but it quickly becomes about showing Cameron the way out of a lifestyle that’s crushing his soul. Sure, he’s egotistical enough to impose his method on Cameron, but Cameron’s too far gone to help himself.
[QUOTE=Ferris]
Cameron has never been in love - at least, nobody’s ever been in love with him. If things don’t change for him, he’s gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she’s gonna treat him like shit, because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existence. She won’t respect him, ‘cause you can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.
[/QUOTE]
Is it wrong that Ferris’ natural nonchalance makes him oblivious to the discomfort of those he ends up ‘helping?’
Wouldn’t that insight by Ferris ruin the “all in Cameron’s head” theory? Unless we believe Cameron has an unbelieveable amount of insight into his own personality, and an adult perspective and wisdom(which makes me wonder how Ferris has it too!).
I suppose she would be considered evil by some in this thread.
Gandhi on the loose in a stolen Ferrari would be a much better movie.
Practicing passing resistance?
For anybody who doesn’t know, there’s another thread that has the link to the new Super Bowl commercial. (It’s better than the movie imo.)
On the contrary :-D. And I was in junior high when it came out, so it’s not like I was too old for it.
I actually see it the other way round from you: I’d’ve guessed that people who love Ferris Bueller didn’t have a lot of fun in high school and were getting vicarious wish-fulfilment out of him, while those of us who did have fun in high school don’t need that. Probably neither generalisation would hold up.
But a lot of other people did do things like taking their parent’s car without permission or skipping school, and a hell of a lot of people would have hacked into their school’s computer if they were able to. These really are not major signifiers of sociopathy.
Hell, a lot of kids his age who skipped school went off drinking, doing drugs and having unsafe sex. Ferris Bueller went to an art gallery. Oooh, what a bad boy!
That’s probably true. But it doesn’t justify calling Ferris evil. I heard the poor guy was on his deathbed ferchrisakes 
I like FBDO because it was nostalgic of my high school years. And I went to high school in the 70s, when the emphasis was on high. We probably were a little evil. Ferris was just having harmless fun. Well except for the Ferrari abuse, but I blame that on the director. Ferris would never have intentionally harmed a car like that. He had to do it because it was in the script.
I hated Ferris Bueller at the time, and still hate him to this day. I’ve also hated Broderick for this role, as usually when I see him I think “fuck you, ferris!”
Cameron was a tool and was hard to like, but the way Ferris took advantage of him wasn’t funny… it was cruel. I didn’t see the humor in this movie, and never will.
It’s funny, but I have a real, visceral reaction when I see the name Ferris Bueller, and that feeling came over me when I read the OP title.
I don’t know why I get so annoyed with this thing. I think it has a lot to do with the love this movie seems to have from so many people.
Does anyone know why? Bueller? Bueller?
:mad::mad::mad::mad: 
[QUOTE=SciFiSam]
Hell, a lot of kids his age who skipped school went off drinking, doing drugs and having unsafe sex. Ferris Bueller went to an art gallery. Oooh, what a bad boy!
[/QUOTE]
That’s alright then. Grand theft auto, no problem, so long as you do something culturally enriching.
Thats like hating Star Wars because Han Solo smuggles illegal drugs and guns, and even kills someone on screen in what is questionably self defense, and this guy is a hero?! :mad:
