Transcript

Intro Clip

Hello? Cameron, babe, what's happening? Very little. How do you feel? Shredded. Is your mother in the room? She's in Decatur. Unfortunately, she's not staying. Where are you? I'm taking the day off. Now get dressed and come on over. I can't, stupid. I'm sick. That's all in your head. Come on over. I feel like complete shit, Ferris. I can't go anywhere. I'm sorry to hear that. Now come on over here and pick me up. Shh. You're not dying, you just can't think of anything good to do. If anybody needs a day off, it's Cameron. He has a lot of things to sort out before he graduates. Can't be wound up this tight and go to college. His roommate will kill him. When Cameron was in Egypt's land. Let my Cameron go. Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in 2 weeks you'd have a diamond.

Steve

It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the '80s and '90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve

Nic

and I'm Nic,

Steve

and today we are continuing our journey through the decades through Two Dads, Two Decades with 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And this was my pick for us. I'll just go into it real quick. This was one of my favorite movies for a long time. I think I probably first saw it, uh, I was probably in elementary school. Um, this was one we definitely had on LaserDisc, and I've mentioned in previous episodes my family had a LaserDisc player before we ever had a VCR. And this was definitely a LaserDisc that we had, probably my parents. If I went to their house now, I could probably still find the Ferris Bueller's Day Off LaserDisc somewhere in my dad's den, you know? But yeah, so I watched this numerous times growing up. It was the kind of thing that I would watch, you know, every, a couple times a year for several years. I've probably seen this movie a few dozen times and it's just always stuck with me as sort of this classic '80s, you know, teen comedy. It's kind of a fantasy movie. I would categorize this genre-wise as both a, comedy and a fantasy. I'll get into some of the details exactly as to why later. But, you know, just really a special movie and probably the bedroom of a character that I most lusted after, like wanted for my own in any movie of the era. So Nic, what's your history with Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

Nic

Yeah, so I think when I watched this for the pod, I realized I think I've only seen this one time before. I've definitely seen, you know, highlights and I'm familiar with like the memization of the movie. But I do realize that I I knew the ska band Save Ferris before I knew what it was from.

Steve

Oh, that's funny.

Nic

So I think I watched this at some point in high school, and for whatever reason, it wasn't like a rotation movie for me. So yeah, I'm coming in a little fresh here.

Steve

Nice.

Nic

I didn't grow up with it, but yeah, I'm ready to dive into this shit.

Steve

Not totally unfamiliar though. It's not like Thief where neither of us really knew anything. No, no.

Nic

And this is one that is in the culture so much that even if you haven't seen it, you understand general stuff from it.

Steve

Yeah, I think if you have any awareness of entertainment in the '80s, like Ferris Bueller is in the zeitgeist. It's at least on your radar, right? So, all right, well, let's jump into the facts on Ferris Bueller's Day Off so we can kick this off. Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released on June 11th, 1986 with a PG-13 rating and a running time of 103 minutes. It is written and directed by the great John Hughes, starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, and Mia Sara. In scores, Rotten Tomatoes gave this 83%, real nice. On IMDb, a nice high solid 7.8, but the homies Siskel and Ebert were split, even though they've got the Chicago connection here.

Nic

That's right, no homerism.

Steve

We get a thumbs up from Roger Ebert and a thumbs down from Gene Siskel. There was one award that this film was nominated for kind of at its release time. So at the 1987 Golden Globes Award, Matthew Broderick was nominated for best lead actor in a comedy or musical. He did not win, but he was nominated. The film was also added to the National Film Registry in 2014. On a $6 million budget, which we're gonna get into a lot of cool funny facts about the budget later. Oh yeah. They took home $70.1 million at the box office for 11.7 times what it cost, a bona fide hit movie, no doubt about it. So Ferris Bueller's Day Off, how does it start? It starts off with the reason that my mother hates this movie. My mom does not like this movie. Now, now look, she's probably gonna listen to this episode at some point and she can correct me if I'm wrong now. She definitely hated this movie when I was young. And it was because specifically she hated that the movie made the parents look like idiots. She really hated that fact that this is a kid getting one over on their parents through the whole movie, right? And it's accurate, but she never liked this. And it starts off with really more first the voices of the parents, right? The mom's voice, the dad's voice. "Oh, Donnie, come take a look. Ferris is sick," whatever. And he kind of is waking up in his room and his parents are concerned and he's snuggled up in the blanket and he's got clammy hands and like all this kind of stuff. And, you know, he's basically like, I can get up, I can go. Like, no, they're like, no, no, you need to stay home from school. Like, you're clearly so sick. You need to stay where you are. You know, don't make it worse. You know, all this stuff. And his parents are loving, wonderful people who are being taken for a ride. Yeah. As we learn in a moment, as Ferris's sister Jeanie comes in the room, played by Jennifer Grey, and is like, okay, what's going on here? Was he— is he going to stay home from school? What is this crap? You know? And, you know, he's kind of like signaling to her, like, you know, wink, wink, you know, whatever. But, you know, He's like, like, Jeannie, Jeannie, just, you have your health. Like, be thankful. Be thankful you have your health. I love her line. She goes, you dry that one out, you can fertilize the lawn with it. You know?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So she is not taking this at all.

Nic

No, she's on to his shit immediately.

Steve

She knows right away what her brother's doing.

Nic

You know, to your mom's point about not liking this movie because the parents look like idiots, I am with her because a lot of times in a movie like this, it's, oh, all my dad cares about is work. And then my mom is just, you know, getting drunk and watching soap operas or like, those would be the caricatures of it. And this is like engaged, caring, present parents.

Steve

100%.

Nic

So Mrs. P, I'm with you, dog.

Steve

I'll be sure to relay that message in case she doesn't listen. But yeah, no, definitely it's true. And again, this is another movie kind of like last week we were talking about The Breakfast Club and, you know, the change in perspective that you have looking at movies like this once you are yourself a parent. Yeah, no, like this is definitely— these are two of the like healthiest, most like well-adjusted parental figures in any John Hughes movie.

Nic

So great.

Steve

And the actor who plays his dad is like the cool dad in—

Nic

I think it was like a Wonder Years episode. Okay, he was like a friend's dad that Kevin thought was super cool. He's also, uh, Steve Martin's co-worker in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Oh yeah, yeah, who's there in the board meeting as he's like trying to make his flight.

Steve

Yeah, he is not Alan Thicke, by the way. Not— he kind of looks like Alan Thicke.

Nic

Yeah. Um, but yeah, I love that guy though.

Steve

Yeah, very, very good stuff. And, uh, so basically, you know, Ferris's parents tell him stay here. Stay home from school. You know, Jeanie goes off. I love as the parents are continuing to tell Ferris how he should just stay in bed and stay away, you hear Jeanie's car, the tires squealing off in the background 'cause she's so pissed off and she's heading off to school. But yeah, basically he needs to stay home and they go off to work. His mom's a real estate agent. His dad works in advertising in Chicago. And so, and they're in Shermer. Like this is the standard John Hughes Chicago suburb. And we even get some shots at their high school early on in the movie. And it's clear that, you know, it says like on signs like, "Go Shermer." This is clearly supposed to be Shermer High, although oddly does not look exactly like the—

Nic

No, it's a little different. Went through a little remodel in the 6 months after Breakfast Club.

Steve

And a massive relocation, it appears. 'Cause I think you can like see the Chicago skyline kind of from the front steps of the school. And you definitely couldn't in Breakfast Club. Breakfast Club's clearly like right in the middle of like a suburban neighborhood. So I think, you know, but anyway.

Nic

It's a little more glamorous in this one here. Um, yeah, so, so Ferris has decided he's gonna stay home and his parents, you know, believe it. And he's like, they bought it. And then it cuts to like the MTV logo immediately and it's like, you know, it's showing whatever. Uh, and this is kind of a funny thing in this movie that makes it more of a fantasy type thing with like the text on screen where Ferris Bueller is talking directly to the screen and, um, you know, talking about whatever he's telling you how to fake your parents, right? Sort of like, like the effective things to do, like clammy hands are better than, uh, fever because—

Steve

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nic

And it's, it's tips and tricks.

Steve

Yeah, absolutely right. Tips, tricks. Um, but yeah, he also spends a significant portion of this movie just breaking the fourth wall and just talking directly to us, the audience. Um, I do think that like most of the time in a movie when that happens, no one in the scene with him can hear him, right? Because there's, there's moments where it would have been bad for him, or, or there would have been reaction if he could have been heard by everyone around him. So that is— I agree, that's why I consider sort of a comedy fantasy movie because so much of the action is taking place in conversation between Ferris and the audience where he's speaking directly to us. Yeah. Very much like Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. So, but you know, there's a few really great things in here. One of the things I love is, like I said, this was a childhood, you know, this was like a bedroom in a movie that I always wanted. He's got like walls of windows viewing out to like this beautiful day. He opens up the blinds or the drapes, whatever. And it's like this gorgeous blue sky, puffy white clouds, sunny day. Heard over the radio at the beginning of the movie that it's going to be 75 or so. 75 right now even, which is like, there's gonna be a warm day. Um, and, and, you know, so that all looks fantastic. Some cool things in his room. One is, uh, a very authentic looking Jason Voorhees Halloween costume hanging on the back of his door. It's got the mask, it's got like the dirty sort of coveralls or whatever. I'm like, oh yeah, so he was, he was probably, he was Jason for Halloween this past year, so it seems. And then there is a really big Simple Minds Don't You Forget About Me poster on his wall, which of course is the hit song from Breakfast Club, which we watched last week and which came out a little less than a year or right around a year before this one did. And I just think it's fun that John Hughes is throwing in references to his own movies like that. Not Jason, but Simple Minds. Yeah, and he's basically, Ferris is telling us all, you know, about sort of like that he really does have a test today. And he goes in this thing and I love, there's actually a great line where he's like, isms in my opinion are not good. A man should not believe in an ism He should believe in himself. And he's— yeah, but everything that he tells us where he sounds at all philosophical and sort of like, you know, mature and kind of like has these great ideas are punctuated with, "And I don't have a car." Yeah, right, exactly.

Nic

It's, it's kid without car throws tantrum and terrorizes a city of Chicago kind of thing.

Steve

In his defense though, he's a senior.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So Jeanie is clearly his younger sister. Why else would she still be in high school? They're not twins. I mean, I don't think we're supposed to believe they're twins, right?

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Why? Why did— right. Why does the younger child have a car and the older one doesn't?

Nic

Her car, the car that Jeannie has, because he was mad he got a computer and she got a car. She got a new fucking Pontiac Fiero, which in 1985, '86. Oh my God, dude.

Steve

Really nice.

Nic

That would be— it was like the Mustang convertible of our era. Like, yes, just the perfect thing to get.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So Ferris is— he's not at school, right? And the teacher is taking attendance. Fucking piece of shit. Ben Stein. All these people would always forward me, like, in the email forwarding days, like 2005, like that, or like when Obama was president. This is when I would get the stuff where there's 9 different fonts and 11 different font sizes, and it's forward, forward, forward, regarding, regarding, forward, forward, forward. Our country is in danger. And it would be some shit attributed to Ben Stein, right? And I don't care if he really said it or not. I just say— we'll say because of that, fuck Ben Stein, you suck.

Steve

I mean, look, I don't know for sure if those things were accurate to what he said, but he was a speechwriter for both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. So— and his father was in the Nixon White House.

Nic

So like, I pulled a Ben Stein quote, which I may use later. Okay, so— but very funny, this scene where he's droning through the attendance. And the funny thing to me is that the names start off with Adams Adam Lee, Adamowski.

Steve

Adamson.

Nic

Good gag. That's like Dr. Rosen-Rosen, Dr. Rosenpenis.

Steve

But I love it too, 'cause that's not the end of that joke, because then, so we've got like 6 A names, 4 of which start with Adams, as you mentioned. Then we go to Bueller, and he does the classic, you know, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller, and then gets the explanation from Simone in class about how Ferris passed out at 31 Flavors or whatever it might be, and then immediately goes to Fry. Which is Cameron, his best friend, which we're about to see. So you're telling me there are 6 kids in this class of like 18? Like, there's not that many kids in the class. 6 of them have names that start with A. Then you have Bueller, and then you have nothing till Fry. Like, for whatever reason, that to me is the funniest part of that gag. Um, but we do get, uh, the call to, you know, Fry, Fry, Fry, and that's Cameron Frye, played by Alan Ruck, Ferris Bueller's best friend. And so we cut to him, and he is also homesick.

Nic

I like his bedroom too, really nice. He has that, that What do you call it? The glass ball with the lightning inside where you touch the outside and it goes to— gets attracted to your hammer. What it's called, they would always have it at that store in the mall, like the Discovery Zone store or whatever.

Steve

It's not a Tesla coil version of it. I always think of Tesla coils. Yeah, it's not that.

Nic

He has like— yeah, normally you get one that's the size of a snow globe, you know. If you're lucky, you get one that's the size of like a number 3 soccer ball. But he had like a full-size thing next to his bed. I mean, he has a very well-appointed house.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

Cameron not hurting at all.

Steve

No. Well, Cameron— and Cameron will know more as we go on. Cameron, clearly very rich parents. Very, very rich parents. Um, he also has the best phone I've ever seen in a kid's bedroom, basically. It's a really classy looking— it's got an answering machine built in with a speakerphone button, and it's like really modern looking, very cool. And basically he's laying in bed, he's homesick. We see like medicine all over his nightstand, like whatever. But Ferris calls him and is basically like, I'm taking the day off, come on, you know, get out of bed, come on over. And he goes, I can't, I'm sick, you idiot, I can't go anywhere. And he's like, you know, basically Ferris is like, no, no, you need to come over. And they hang up and Cameron lays there for a little moment. He goes, I'm dying. And the phone rings again. He answers it and Ferris is like, you're not dying. You just can't think of anything better to do. And I love that part too.

Nic

It's a fantasy element for sure.

Steve

Yeah. But then I love that we're getting Ferris is hanging out at his pool basically. And also Ferris, obviously parents, very wealthy, beautiful, big home, big pool, whole thing. And he's chilling out there. And he's one of my favorite lines in the movie. He says, he talks about how Cameron is so uptight and like, you know, needs to let loose on stuff. And he goes, pardon my French, but if you stuck a lump of coal up Cameron's ass, in 2 weeks you'd have a diamond. Yeah, I've always loved that line.

Nic

Um, so, uh, I think back at the school now we have, uh, Mr. Rooney. Is he the principal or the vice principal?

Steve

So he's the principal, and I think we have to take a moment and say, because he's definitely the principal, Edward R. Rooney, um, which I'm assuming then that the vice principal is Dick Vernon, because this is only a few months after Breakfast Club took place. So We must. And if you are telling me that Cameron Frye and Brian from Breakfast Club aren't friends, I don't agree with you. Yeah, Cameron, I think, was very close friends with Larry Lester. I would guess so.

Nic

Cameron was right there, dude. He was in the line of the duct tape.

Steve

Exactly. So, yeah, but no. So I think so. Edward Rooney played by the horrific, awful— God, I hope we never see him in another again. Unfortunately, he's in a lot of these movies. Jeffrey Jones plays Edward Rooney. We don't need to talk anymore about Jeffrey Jones and his proclivities because Disgusting. But he is there and he is calling Ferris's mom because he needs to let her know that Ferris is ill and not in school. Right. And his mom's like, "Oh gosh, I forgot to call. I'm so sorry." And you know what? I've done this. Like, we even have email and stuff. Like, the number of times— Like, I've literally—

Nic

Do you get freaked out when you get those calls? 'Cause you're like, "What are you gonna do to my kid?

Steve

I'm sorry." The funniest one that has happened to me, I think twice now in my history of having two children at the same school, their elementary school, and my son's now in middle school, but back when he was there, like twice I have been in line for a ride at Disneyland on a Monday morning and gotten the phone call that my kids are not in school and went, "Oh, right, shit." Like I literally drove them from home to LA yesterday and forgot to let the school know, "Oh, they're out this week." Like—

Nic

Oh, they don't make it easy. There needs to be like an overnight thing. Yeah. No, that's happened to me before. And it is kind of a feeling similar to the hearing the garbage truck when you didn't bring the barrels out kind of thing. Oh God. I hate seeing the attendance line on my phone.

Steve

Exactly. Yeah.

Nic

So Rooney says Ferris has missed 9 days this semester already, and he's looking at it on the computer, right? Like, you know, it's right here, 9 absences. And in the meantime, as he's having this talk with the mom, the number starts going down, 9, 8, 7. And Ferris is using this computer that he got for Christmas instead of a car. And he's hacked the— all you have to do is type what, how to hack school. And so you're in there.

Steve

We should probably mention It's odd. It never comes back, but like, Ferris is like a Zero Cool level hacker, like from the movie Hackers. Like, you can't just do this. This isn't a thing that's just easy. I'm just gonna like dial in. You remember this is like dial-up. This was like, you know, modems were direct connections from one computer to another, right, in this time. You know, this is very much like Matthew Broderick in WarGames. It's like that same character is Ferris Bueller.

Nic

He got stuck in the computer, yeah.

Steve

Something, because it would be incredibly difficult, even with like, really shitty security of the time. And I understand he's not breaking into like a government— well, it is actually government, it's a public school, but like, not like a government agency, it's like a school. But like, that's not easy, what he's done, right? That is pretty wild. But it is interesting. Again, on the fantasy thing, he does this, Ferris does, knocks it down to 2, I think is where it lands, days absent 2, which is like pretty reasonable, and still freaks out later on in the movie several times about how he's missed 9 times and he needs to make it count. It's like, no, you haven't.

Nic

Did that only work in the moment for when Rooney was like, He's on a phone call? Like, what the fuck?

Steve

'Cause that would make it an even weirder magic trick.

Nic

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

So yeah, after the computer has been changed, and that's when Rooney's freaking out, and he's like trying to get Grace's attention, that's his secretary or whatever, and he's yelling for her, but she's too busy sniffing White-Out to like pay attention to him.

Nic

And we've seen her at the car rental counter in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

Steve

That's right, yeah.

Nic

She's been in a bunch of stuff. Great character actor for the '80s.

Steve

We then cut back to Ben Stein. So we're gonna cut back to economics class, which is really, poignant for today because he's discussing with his students in the most funny kind of monotone way, you know, 19, you know, like 20, whatever, like the Republican-controlled Congress tried to pass the, anyone, anyone, the Tariff Act, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Bill. Anyone? Did it raise or lower? Raised, raised tariffs. Anyone? And he's like going on and on. We're talking about how like, you know, basically this, this, this, economic event, right? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, like, you know, sunk the country further into the Great Depression. And here we are today with tariffs once again being like front and center in the news.

Nic

Except AI is gonna save us. Nothing's ever gonna go down.

Steve

Yes. But yeah, so it's— it's Ben Stein, you know, is who he is. But as an actor, this is clearly his most famous role.

Nic

Oh, for sure.

Steve

I think it's maybe only the second movie he was ever in.

Nic

He's kind of an R. Lee Ermey where like, okay, do one thing really well and we can have you do this. But, you know, we're never gonna have a movie where Ben Stein is the fourth weed. You know, you're not going to make a St. Elmo's Fire where Ben Stein is one of the guys.

Steve

Exactly. Yeah. And this is where— and then this is where now we're at. We're at school and there are some guys talking on a payphone at the school to Ferris.

Nic

That's right.

Steve

At his house.

Nic

And so Ferris is calling, talking to some people on the payphone at school. And he has this rigged— first of all, for him to complain about not having enough shit is insane, right? Like with this computer and then this great like synthesizer setup that he has with the sampler and all this crap. I do love that he's put coughing sounds and like different sounds on the keys of the keyboard. If this was one of the other movies we've seen, he would've just had it recorded on a single cassette tape and would be skipping back and forth to the correct cough at the right time.

Steve

This is much more believable. It's like each octave is a different group of sounds and then he's got the tones within those and it's like, yeah, no, that works.

Nic

That's a good plan here.

Steve

Yeah. He leans on all of them with his forearm at one point. It's like, and he goes, ah, excuse me.

Nic

But he's laying down you know what, he's important that he's putting his truth out, that like he's getting the word out that he is homesick, right, to people that are not directly at the principal's office, so that like it's out there in the world too. If Rooney's trying to ask people, yeah, have you heard anything? Like, yeah, he's homesick.

Steve

I talked to him earlier. He's sick sick. Oh man, so sick, dude.

Nic

He's doing, uh, yeah, so he's, he's getting the story straight with everyone.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. Um, so then we see, uh, Ferris is on the phone with Cameron again. Cameron at least now has gotten out of bed. And he's, or I guess he's kind of sitting up in bed at least, and he's still in bed, but he's basically just like, "No, I can't go anywhere. You know what my diastolic is?" Cameron is just a hypochondriac, it seems like, right? Let's go, whatever. And then Cameron is sitting in his car, interesting choice I found, wearing a really great Gordie Howe hockey jersey, Detroit Red Wings, but it's a Chicago suburban native. Interesting choice to wear a Detroit hockey jersey and not a Blackhawks jersey.

Nic

I guess. Yeah, he's interesting. He's an outsider. He's a nerd. He's not with the cool ones.

Steve

Well, and Gordie Howe is, you know, if you're a hockey fan, Gordie Howe is one of those Wayne Gretzky level sort of figures in the history of hockey, right? They even invented a stat called the Gordie Howe hat trick, which is if you get a goal and an assist and you get in a fight in the same game, you've accomplished the Gordie Howe hat trick. So love the Howe jersey, but I always thought it was a little interesting.

Nic

Yeah, what would he get? A Bobby Hull? What was the Chicago back then?

Steve

Oh man, I'm not I'm not even sure. This is pre-Chris Chelios, which is about when I started paying attention to the Blackhawks. So Stan Mikita? Stan Mikita, maybe.

Nic

All right, let's get him on a Stan Mikita jersey here.

Steve

But he's sitting in his car now.

Nic

Yeah, so, and Cam cannot get his car started. He's, yeah, and he's also kind of like talking to himself like, I can't believe this guy's talking to me into this. Like, I want to stay home. So he's not happy about any of this right now.

Steve

But he knows he's going to get called.

Nic

Yeah, he's being pulled by a force. It's like, Like, look, you're gonna keep asking me, so I'm just gonna do this now, 'cause my punishment is you're never gonna shut the fuck up.

Steve

It's a thing where it's like, there's an interesting move with Cameron here where, you know, I think Cameron really does, you know, he and Ferris really are friends, but there is an element that Cameron's like, if he would just leave me alone, I would just do what I want, and I would never have to worry about anything or see anybody, but because of Ferris, I have to go out of the house, I have to get dressed, I have to do this shit, and I'm sure there is part of him that like wants to, but there's a lot of him that doesn't, and so he sort of is struggling with himself, and he ends up, going eventually. We cut back to the school, and this is actually my favorite of the teachers that we see, 'cause there's Ben Stein, and he's got funny stuff with the Mennonites, but this guy who appears to be like an English or literature type teacher, and he goes, "In what way does the author's use of the prison?" The most ridiculous—

Nic

I don't know if I saw him in the credits or not. I might be tripping. Was that Del Close?

Steve

Oh, I don't know, actually.

Nic

I feel like he had a small part in that movie, but, uh, it was—

Steve

yeah, it's very funny.

Nic

Oh, I like the— I like the goofy teachers. I mean, that's an important part of it.

Steve

But the reason we're seeing him is that Sloane Peterson, uh, played by Mia Sara, is in this class, um, and we are also getting a woman in a nurse's, you know, scrubs. You got the white sort of nurse uniform. She's walking down the halls. She ends up coming into the class and pulling Sloane out and telling her that your father just called. Your grandmother has just passed. And Sloane tears up and, you know, she hugs the nurse, hugs her. Oh dear, oh dear. You know, she's a very maternal woman. She's really hugging her close and everything. It's very sweet. We later learned from Grace that that woman's name is Florence Sparrow, which I think is hilarious because Florence Nightingale is right there. And it's just like, clearly a reference. It always makes me chuckle. But basically like Grace tells Rooney, Mr. Peterson, Sloane's father, called, said that her grandmother had passed away. I've sent Florence Sparrow to go get her, let her know that that's happened or whatever. And so Rooney asks for Peterson's daytime number, like his work number, right? But then his phone rings. Grace answers it. Oh, wouldn't you know, it's Mr. Peterson on line 1, you know, kind of thing. Do you still want his daytime number? Like, she's so funny, whatever. But it's Cameron, as it turns out. He's doing this great kind of Chicago cop accent. Like, hey, you better get my kid out of school right now.

Nic

Yeah, he does a nice impression there.

Steve

It's funny.

Nic

And Rooney doesn't buy it because he's like—

Steve

Immediately.

Nic

He's sniffing out Bueller from the second he woke up this morning, from 7:06 when the day started. And he's like, yeah, fuck this. He's like, oh, really? The grandma's dead? Well, I'm going to need to see a body. And he's really getting after him about this.

Steve

It's so funny. He just says, you just produce a corpse and I'll dig up your daughter. I'm sorry, Ed, did you say you wanted to see a body? But this is when Ed's world kind of comes crumbling down on him for the first time this movie. It happens over and over again. Rudy does not have a good time here. But this one is bad because the phone rings again and Grace answers it. And it is Ferris Bueller saying, "Hi, this is Ferris Bueller. Is Mr. Rooney available?" Yeah. So she's trying to get Rooney's attention while he continues to like swear and like, you know, address very, you know, immaturely, you know, "Kiss my ass" or whatever, to quote Mr. Peterson.

Nic

Right.

Steve

And then she says, "Ferris Bueller's online too." And it's like the music hits and it zooms in on his face. And it's just like, "Oh my God, what have I done?" And Ferris is just doing his regular like customer service voice. Oh yeah.

Nic

He's not even trying to sound sick. I feel like he screwed up there. Um, but yeah, good gag that they tried it. They got him thinking one thing and then Ferris actually calls. Uh, so when he gets back on with the dad, um, Ferris is telling Cameron like what to say and everything. He says, oh, tell her to like, I'm gonna meet her outside of the school, she needs to be by herself.

Steve

Oh, she should be by herself.

Nic

And then, uh, and then he's like, you know what, I want you out there too. And you know, he's like kind of messing up the plan and everything. Ferris gets like mad, or he's like giving Cameron a hard time for screwing up that conversation. Yeah, he's like, well, now, right, Rooney's gonna be out there instead of us just being able to pick him up.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And his payment for like screwing this up, which is fucking manipulative, abusive bullshit behavior that Ferris is doing to Cameron, is, well, you owe me this.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

You know, so I'm gonna take your dad's priceless Ferrari. Yes, since your car's not working, so we're gonna take that to go pick up.

Steve

Well, his car works because he got to Ferris's house, but it's like no one believed that Mr. Peterson drives that piece of shit. Oh, that's right. I don't even have a piece of shit of my own. I have to be jealous about yours. So it's not like that, but nobody will believe that like her dad, who's apparently like chief of or a captain in the Chicago Police Department, like drives a shitty car. Yeah, there's the thing. And so then we get, we get to Cameron's Dad's garage, the car. And it is spectacular. It is a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California. And it's an amazing car. And I dug up a little bit of details about the car.

Nic

Ooh, okay.

Steve

So in 1961, if you had bought this car, they did only make like 1,000 or so. He said like less than 1,000 were made or something like that. And if you were to buy it from Ferrari in 1961, I believe the MSRP was in the ballpark of about $14,000, which is like, maybe $150 grand in today's dollars, right? So it's a very reasonable price for a Ferrari, especially one this limited in number. But that price has gone up and up and up and up and up over the years, 'cause it really is a rare vehicle. At the time this movie was filmed, they could have acquired one of these cars for about half a million dollars. Well, on a $6 million budget, that's not gonna work. You're not gonna spend $500 grand on a car. They used kit cars, and they used to use several, Later on, there's some scenes with some joyriding happening in the car. They actually wrecked two of the kits filming those scenes. They had to end up using a total of three kits to do it. But obviously that's significantly cheaper than a real one. This is the part I love. Today, last year in 2025, one of these vehicles was sold at auction at the Concours d'Elegance, which is in Pebble Beach, California, which is a huge luxury car show and auction. And it sold for $25.6 million. The car.

Nic

Good lord.

Steve

If you took the budget of the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which was $6 million in 1986, and you adjusted it for inflation today, you only get to about $18 million. So the value of the car in the movie, it far outstrips the actual cost to make the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which I find hilarious. Yeah. Even like the cheapest recent sale of a '61 California Spyder that I could find was like around $8 million. Which in nominal dollars is still more than the budget of the film back in '86. So the car is worth more than the movie, basically.

Nic

So it's not something you just make your friend let you use because you're trying to guilt him into, uh, hey, but he has to look cool picking this up. We get the Oh Yeah song. We hit the Bow Wow Oh Yeah song by Yellow, uh, which for the first of two times in this movie. That's right, that's right. We see it a couple times. Um, so yeah, uh, Ferris now takes off in this car pretending to be, uh, Sloan's dad, right?

Steve

Mr. Peterson.

Nic

And he's wearing kind of, kind of a sneak preview to his future career as Inspector Gadget. He has a bit of an Inspector Gadget hat on.

Steve

That's funny.

Nic

Yeah. And a coat and glasses, so he's not recognizable. But his plan is, well, I'm going to stay in the car and—

Steve

right. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so he pulls up to the front of the, of the high school.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And it's funny, Sloan's reaction is very funny when she sees the car. She's like, whoa. Like, she was not— you know, she had no idea that that was going to be part of the plan or whatever. There's clearly a lot of this, like when the nurse showed up up to Sloane's classroom, she immediately puts on her jacket, even though no one has said anything about who that woman is there for. So she knew ahead of time.

Nic

She knew that there was some plan.

Steve

She was able to set the answering machine at her home later is set to something similar. So there was a lot of pre-work doing, going into this, which I think sheds a different light on Cameron's unwillingness to just get out of bed and go. He'd already agreed to all this.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

So yeah. Right? 'Cause he did prep work that was necessary the day before. Okay.

Nic

So then Cameron is, okay, that changes it a little bit. He's a little bit of a wet blanket.

Steve

He's just an innocent friend.

Nic

He's the guy who bails at the last minute after making a plan because he doesn't feel like he wants to do it anymore. Shout out to that guy, by the way. That's me a lot. So I can see that. So Ferris, as Sloane's dad, goes to pick her up from school, and Rooney's standing there at the top of the steps, and Sloane walks down to the car, and he goes, do you have a kiss for Daddy? And then kisses are the way a man would kiss his girlfriend, and it's supposed to be his dad. And Jeffrey Jones is standing there saying, That is the most sexually deviant thing I could ever imagine. I wonder what else is out there.

Steve

And then he said to himself, hold my beer. Yeah, seriously.

Nic

Oh God. So this scene though was just like, oh man, uh, again, Ferris Bueller doing something he thinks is funny that's just ruining everyone's life who has to watch it.

Steve

I mean, the kiss is like innocent, uh, for two teenagers who are together because it's a very reasonable kiss for like two teenagers to have with each other. But yes, the context of— he even says something Rooney does about, so that's how it is in their family. Yeah, that makes it sound like you think that's not that weird, right? You know, that's just one category. That's just one category of normal kisses between them.

Nic

Some people do lasagna every Sunday. Sometimes the dad and the daughter make up. Yeah, very Brazzers-coded. No good there. So, so in the meantime, the word is getting around school that Ferris Bueller— and of course course it's getting embellished and embellished, that like, you know, goes from him having a cold to worse and worse and worse, right?

Steve

As does every rumor in high school, right? All the time. Exactly.

Nic

Um, and I think his sister Jeannie is walking down the hall and encounters some guy who's with a Pepsi can, like, oh, save Ferris, like we're trying to raise money for Ferris Bueller.

Steve

What the fuck?

Nic

Jennifer Grey, really good in this as Jeannie. Uh, my wife is a genie. There are not a lot of genies out there that's not Jeannie with the G, so yeah, I like seeing some representation in the film.

Steve

I thought the same while I was watching. I was like, oh, that's right, the sister's name is Jeannie. That's cool.

Nic

Oh, let's see. So Rooney's calling around and everything, um, and they've taken off in the car. So they picked up Sloane, and the three of them are traveling in a two-seater car, uh, to have every guy's dream. Hey, me and my girlfriend are gonna drive your dad's priceless convertible around the city all day. Would you like to kind of sit on the back a little bit, kind of out of the car, and watch us make out? Does that sound cool to you?

Steve

Is that fun? Does that feel like a fun day? Yeah. So they have to leave it in a parking garage. They have a bunch of stuff to do downtown, right? Yes. So they got a bunch of stuff to do. So they go to the A1 Easy OK Park parking garage. I always loved the name of that. I would absolutely wear a shirt with the big circle logo on the back. This is A1 Easy OK Park. But yeah, one of the funniest lines in the movie is when, you know, they pull into the parking garage, they get out of the car. And first Cameron's like, not here. I don't want to leave it here. But they're like, hey, it's a parking garage. Like, what can happen? In and he's got all kinds of things he thinks could happen to it. But the attendant comes up and just clocks in. The dude is clocking in right now. He looks a little, I'll be honest, smarmy. You know, he's just got like a little bit of a, not sure I trust this guy kind of look. But Ferris walks up to him and goes like, you know, like, hey, how's it going? And the guy kind of like nods or whatever, goes, you speak English? And the guy looks at him like, what country do you think this is? I love that.

Nic

Yeah, that was one part that I thought was really funny. And his perfect, you know, no accent or anything on what he said. Because he definitely has a face, and I'm sure that that actor in other movies has definitely been a, uh, I will cut your throat, like, kind of—

Steve

that dude's been— that dude probably got typecast as, like, cartel members or, like, Middle Eastern terrorists far too often, you know? Like, yeah.

Nic

Um, yeah, so he takes— he takes the car to park, and he also gets this kind of look in his eyes like, oh hell yeah, I get to park this. Um, Ferris's room— it's kind of cutting back to his room.

Steve

Yeah, his mom—

Nic

mom comes home, his mom goes to check in, and he has this thing rigged where there's a rope tied to the doorknob, and if you open the door it, whatever. He's got a dummy on his bed and this fake snoring playing on a tape. He's got a very elaborate setup.

Steve

It's very like— it's like a big mannequin because we actually saw the mannequin earlier in the movie. I was wearing the trench coat and the hat that he ends up wearing. The mannequin had those on in his room. So now the mannequin's in bed and yeah, there's some kind of— there's like several different like, uh, like ring, uh, screws around, you know, and then like a rope going through them. And then it's like as you open the door, there's like— there's a weight because he was like put like a basketball trophy as a weight on the line. Yeah. So it would pull as the door lets go, it'll pull it down. And that makes the, you know, the mannequin sort of look like it's like rolling over slightly away from the door as the snoring sound is happening. And it's all pretty good, except you can clearly see a very darkly toned arm and hand of the mannequin out from underneath the blanket. Like anybody glancing remotely in the area of the arm would go, what the fuck is that? Like what happened to his arm? I better check on him. Yeah. 'Cause she doesn't come into the room. She kind of like pokes her head in Which, like, again, I think is just another indication, yes, of sort of maybe gullibility or naivete on the part of his mom, but also of, like, her absolute and total respect for his privacy, right? She doesn't just come in. She peeks her head in.

Nic

These are the best parents.

Steve

Yeah, they're amazing.

Nic

They prove over and over again to be great. But yeah, right. And he is taking advantage of that. You know, like, if you trust— if you didn't trust me the way that you trust me, I wouldn't be able to pull this shit off.

Steve

If I thought you were actually— first of all, If his mom didn't work out of the house, right, which she does, she's a real estate agent, this never would work. If he believed at any moment that she was likely to come into the room to, like, check on him, none of this works. Like, there's so many things that, like, had to go just the right way and are all based around his parents' implicit trust in him, which is incredibly misplaced.

Nic

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So now, now we're with the crew and we're living it up in Chicago.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

We're seeing some famous Chicago sites.

Steve

Vegas.

Nic

They go, uh, up high in the Sears Tower and they're like standing on the railing, leaning their heads against the glass to get that real effect of being— that kind of thing freaks me out. It is cool, but vertigo. Like, there was this place in Vegas that was like, uh, a bar at the top of this hotel and they had a glass floor section. Ghost Bar or something like that.

Steve

It was like, it was like almost like, like a balcony, right? Yeah, it was then glass.

Nic

I remember that. And going out there was like in there, okay. I came to Vegas, I brought my coolest clothes, I'm ready to go out, I learned some dance moves, I'm ready to look cool as hell, I'm here with my friends, and then the second I step out on that, I'm the most embarrassing little coward that's ever lived. Nothing cool exists inside me. Yeah, so they're up at the Sears Tower, they go to the Commodities Exchange.

Steve

What the hell?

Nic

They're sitting in Randolph and Mortimer's Duke Skybox for some reason. I don't know how they got in into where they got into.

Steve

Well, it does look like a view because there's like brochures behind them. It looks like a viewing area.

Nic

So it does look like if there is a public part of the Sears Tower, right? That's happening inside there.

Steve

Maybe that is. I honestly don't, because I've always looked at this and gone, that's a weird place for them to end up for any reason at all. Um, they'd have a little chat about like, basically Ferris asks, uh, uh, Sloane if he would— if she wants to get married, you know? And she's kind of like, well, yeah, someday, whatever, you know? But he's like, no, no, I mean like today, like let's get married. She's like, I'm not gonna marry you. It's like a dumb thing. But, and I don't even know how serious he's about it. I think he's I think he likes suggesting wild things to people, you know? So there's an element of that. But I also do think he's in love and wants to be with her. Like, I mean, there's no indication, you know, there's one thing like Ferris takes advantage of people and their trust in him the whole movie. He also shows real love for these two, for Cameron and Sloane throughout the movie. I feel like there are moments where it's like clear that he actually does care deeply for these two people. But You know, there's an element again of like, I think maybe he just wants to kind of control things too. Yeah.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

It's hard to, it's hard to tell sometimes.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Um, let's see. Oh, and where else would a bunch of, uh, high schoolers want to go? We're going to live it up in the big city. We only got one day to live. Where are we going to go? Basically the French restaurant from the Blues Brothers.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Chez Louis.

Steve

It's actually Chez Key. I know that looks like an L, but that is a very script Q. Oh, okay. It's Chez Key for two reasons. One, the joke is that that translates to house of whom? Sort of like, like, nice. It also sounds like Shakey's, which is one of those famous Chicago deep dish pizza places, right? So yeah, okay.

Nic

Well, uh, the, the maître d', this is a good character. He, he's, uh, very well cast. He would have been a good, um, the guy, uh, Peck from Ghostbusters, like one of those kind of guys, just a good like asshole mini authority figure.

Steve

Flip side, I also think William Atherton would have been very funny in this role. Totally.

Nic

William Atherton would have been better as Jeffrey Jones's role. If you need to edit him out would throw someone like that in.

Steve

Yes. Oh, he would have been killed. He would have killed his Rooney. Yeah.

Nic

Um, so, uh, so they obviously can't get seated at this place. It's all reservations. And then Ferris reads the reservation list and decides, okay, well, I'm Abe Froman, party of 3, like, sit us down. So they're kind of threatening to make a scene. Uh, if you don't sit us down, we're gonna make a scene here. So they get seated down. So I guess that's a win.

Steve

Well, it's sort of funny because, like, it's a little funnier than that. Like, basically the guy says, like, you need to get out of here. And he's being condescending to them. But, you know, Ferris is like, I am a, you know, he is basically Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can just a few years earlier. Like he's an aspiring con man is really what Ferris Bueller is. And so he's not gonna let the con die because some, you know, snooty maître d' is like not giving what he wants. So he says he's gonna call the cops, but he clearly dials the phone number for another one of the lines there in the restaurant. They've got all the lines on the top. So that starts ringing and then the guy hears it ringing, but Ferris, the phone, he's like, well, I need to take that phone call. Like, take whatever you go, go find another phone or I'll yell rat, like whatever. So then when he picks it up, it's Sloane then on the call Ferris has and saying, "I'd like to speak to Abe Froman." And then the guy says, "Well, could you describe him? I'll search the restaurant." And she describes exactly what Ferris is wearing.

Nic

She only describes his clothes. His clothing. She doesn't talk about how he looks at all.

Steve

Funny. Yeah, it should have been more like, you know, "Oh, you know, like early 20s." He could have gotten away with that, right? Brown hair, you know, da da da, whatever. He says like devastatingly handsome. You know, it's cute. But then they're even smarter than that because then Ferris goes, okay, until he comes back, Cameron, get on here and get ready to do your Mr. Peterson impression. And he switches over to listen in on Ferris's line. And that's where he goes, "This is George Peterson, Chicago Police," or whatever, you know? And it drives home to the maître d' that actually the dude called 911, right? So there's a complicatedness to this con, but it is still a con. Sure, sure. Anything else?

Nic

Yeah, no, they do a good job of figuring out who in our friend group can do what impressions to utilize this in different parts.

Steve

Of the game. I think that would have been me for almost all of the shit.

Nic

I was gonna say, you're like the Robin Williams and everyone else is sitting there. Um, so yeah, they— success, I guess.

Steve

We get to, uh, they get to pay hundreds of dollars for a French lunch.

Nic

Yeah, they get to sit there and eat at a fancy place.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Um, and, uh, it's flashing back a little just to Jeannie, uh, Ferris's sister, who just is getting increasingly furious, right? Said, why does my brother get away with everything? I'm gonna take my car and drive around looking for him. My car that he doesn't have, that I have.

Steve

Also, why does he get to skip school? I'll just skip school.

Nic

Like, school all day investigating this. The same thing with Rooney. I mean, it is a, it is an abuse of resources to send this one guy out for his entire day trying to track down this kid.

Steve

Rooney's attitude towards his responsibility and duties to the student body are so out of whack. He makes Dick Vernon look like Mr. Rogers. Like, he Rooney is so hell-bent on this one kid. And like, like, if you look, we saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High a few weeks ago, right? And Mr. Hand, you know, not really wanting Spicoli back in his class next year, so he kind of like talks to make sure he learns something, you know, he checks in on him to make sure he learned something, right, as a teacher, an educator does, right? All Rooney wants to do is catch Ferris to keep him at school another year.

Nic

Yeah, he has no like— yeah, he's just on this quest and he's fully obsessed.

Steve

Yeah, and he isn't even thinking about the fact that like Ferris's girlfriend is a junior, she's going to be there next year. So all doing is making him spend another year with his girlfriend if he's successful, right? Which doesn't even look that insane of a punishment to me, but like, whatever. Nobody wants a 5th year of high school, don't get me wrong.

Nic

He's got a personal slight, and the only thing that matters is him defeating Ferris in some way.

Steve

Exactly. Which is insane, 'cause this, again, we're talking about a child. We're talking about Ferris is like maybe 18, but like definitely not older than that, and like essentially a child. And so this is also—

Nic

I wouldn't expect that guy to know the definition of a child. So Ferris is, oh, he says something about they're driving the, when they're driving the car, does Ferris say something about like, it is so choice?

Steve

Oh, he's in the bathroom at the restaurant. And yes, he's doing more of the fourth wall talk. And he's like, I do love driving it. It is so choice. If you have the means, I suggest picking one up. It was when that line happened that I'm like, I'm looking up all like, what did this cost then? What does it cost now? I'm like, oh, the means. Yeah, I'll put this on my wishlist, my bucket list. I'll save up. By the time I could afford it, it would have to be worth $50 to $60 million. I'll have to save a lot more money than $25 to get one of these. But I'll look into it for Ferris's sake. You know, one of the things I love about the, the, the hotel, not even love, but just one of the things I was thinking about with the restaurant scene is why doesn't the real Abe Froman ever show up? I had a guy had a reservation for 3.

Nic

Seriously, where's the Rooney to go track down Abe Froman? We need Abe's Rooney to go, to go get him. So at this restaurant, you know, everything's cool, everything's great. And we're leaving and oh fuck, who is here? It's his dad. His dad is there. I love the banter that they have because they had, uh, had mentioned that his dad works in advertising or whatever. And his, like, business talk is, "I'm telling you, you gotta raise your ad budget.

Steve

You're not gonna do it if it's like—" "We're gonna take it away from print and outdoor and add it to TV. Come on, you bonehead." He's like talking to, like, ostensibly a client, right? Like, "You've got the money. We know you got the money. We just need you to spend it, you bonehead." And it's like, "Oh my God." Also, the scene when Ferris was talking in the restaurant bathroom, when he's done, he like goes to the attendant, like gets a mint or whatever, gives the guy a tip. Hip, and his dad comes out of the stall. And that's when I realized, oh, for sure, no one can hear Ferris when he's breaking the fourth wall, because then his dad would hear his voice and it would all be over. Although the parent— the dad in particular is oblivious as fuck. Like, the fact that he doesn't see—

Nic

so many times in this movie—

Steve

hear somebody right behind him, smell his son, I don't know, something. Yeah, no, no recognition whatsoever. Because they actually almost get into a cab and then don't. And so then Ferris and Cameron and Sloane jump into that cab and run. And then another one luckily pulls up right behind. So his dad is reaching for what he thinks is the same cab's door. Yeah, it's a whole different seamless, and it's a new car. Oh, oblivious to everything. It's wild. Um, and I love here Rooney has now— so I love that. I do love this juxtaposition, the reality of what Ferris is up to, right? He's in Chicago. So far they've been to the Sears Tower and the Commodities Exchange. They've gone to a very expensive lunch. Um, and Rooney's thought is, well, he's probably at a pizza place here in town. Yeah, right.

Nic

He figures, you know, Ferris, he doesn't have the imagination.

Steve

Yeah. So he goes to this hugely busy pizza place on a weekday during school lunchtime. Yeah, weekday lunchtime, massively busy, 100 people in this place. Um, and he sees somebody who is, you know, very short brown hair and wearing kind of a similar leather jacket to what Ferris has on. So maybe it's one he wears to school often enough. Yeah. And, you know, he walks up, you know, The game is up. Your ass is mine. And the person turns around and it's almost like from Fast Times, like one of the, like, Pat Benatar girls from school. Totally. Yes. The pixie cut. Yes. The whole— the really striking cheekbone highlights and whatever. And, you know, he realizes his mistake, but she, like, takes a bunch of sawed-in-straw and spits it all over his face, which I love.

Nic

That's a good move because it's like, okay, that's just enough to get this guy away from me. Exactly. So meanwhile, our gang is at Wrigley Field watching a Cubs game. Game, and we see, uh, on the TV— I don't know if it's on in Rooney's office or if it's on at the pizza place. Yeah. And, uh, and very, uh, you know, to be followed by Zack Morris a few years later, Ferris Bueller catches a foul ball, so he's on TV and everything during this scene where they're at the baseball game. Yeah. Sitting behind them is the most insane pumpkin pie haircut I've ever seen. This kid behind them, it's wild. It's like the kid from Face/Off cut his own hair after he already got that haircut. Cut with lefty scissors. It sucks. It's really funny, dude. So, uh, that's something, a little Easter egg for folks enjoying the movie there.

Steve

I think it's also clear that like Ferris and Cameron and Sloan snuck into the game because it's like middle of the— it's like near the end of the game or so. I think they say something like this is like the first— that was the first hit since the 5th inning. So it's like later in the game. Um, and they obviously haven't been there very long, right? Which is like, I don't know when this game started. Like, like day games in Oakland used to always start at like 1 o'clock, like sort of after lunch, not not before, but I don't know, maybe it's like a morning game or something. Sloane is sitting there doing homework. She's totally uninterested. But I love the way that Cameron and Ferris yell at the batter is something that like became a Little League thing. Like all my Little League teams, you know, be like, "Hey, bada bada bada bada bada, swing! Bada, he can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit, he can't, swing! Bada, hey!" Like we would do that shit all the time as kids, like all the time. And that would just came straight out of this movie. Um, but yeah, and then there's a sign that, you know, Wrigley Field's got one of those big signs out front and it says Save Ferris. Yeah. So it's clear that like, it's not like known he's there at that game. Nobody knows who he actually is. There's a kid named Ferris in nearby Shermer.

Nic

Hey, yeah, it's left the suburb and now it's getting into this big city. There's like actual missing children, like hot cases happening right now, and they're like, appeal that billboard down, we're gonna throw this Save Ferris up.

Steve

Meanwhile, Chicago SVU is looking to help Ferris. Oh man.

Nic

Okay, so, uh, Rooney now is at the Bueller house because he needs to see in person that this kid is sick.

Steve

He wants to talk to him. Yeah.

Nic

And, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, good prep work by Ferris shines through here. So Rooney rings the doorbell, it's like an intercom doorbell thing, and it's, oh, I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling good, I can't make it down to the door. You know, and then I think Rooney does it a second time and realizes that Yeah, just a recording. Yeah. Um, and he ends up trying to sneak in through the side of the house. There's the most mud I've ever seen in my life for as good as the weather was.

Steve

Yeah, I was thinking exactly. It's beautiful weather out and it's like May. Yeah. So it's like probably been nice weather for a while. The Buellers really should look into this, honestly, some kind of leak, foundation damaging water issue they have on their side yard. That— because his foot sinks a foot in, like 12 inches into the ground.

Nic

It's like, if I did that at my house, tried to find a spot where I could water it enough that my foot would sink like that. I don't think there's a spot there.

Steve

No, I don't think so either. This is literally like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness. Like, right, you could sink a horse in this fucking thing. Like, you know what it is?

Nic

It was Vernon's coffee. Oh yeah, it had the same consistency as Vernon's coffee from The Breakfast Club. Yeah.

Steve

And then, uh, and then he tries to, uh, you know, like sneak in. Basically, he gets his foot stuck in the mud and he gets his shoe stuck in the mud. He's trying to clean it off. He's just getting dirtier and dirtier. Yeah. And then he's sitting on the back back porch, it looks like, like the back door or whatever. And that's when he notices that there's a doggy door in the back door. So he decides, I'm— this is a totally normal thing for an educator to do. I'm going to sneak into my student's house through the doggy door. Right. And he is presented with the guard dog of the '90s, a few years early. Movie's ahead of its time. The Rottweiler is there. The Bueller family dog is a really gnarly looking Rottweiler, a big, big guy. I know.

Nic

To the point that it doesn't seem like that dog would be cool even if it was your dog. That was an angry dog. Yeah. Angry. Um, there, uh, there was a quick cut to the valets who are now joyriding the Ferrari, and they're playing like Star Wars music as they're like, you know, flying around, just him and the buddy. And I do like that it is a joyride and it wasn't something worse than that. It wasn't like I'm stealing the car. It was just like, dude, let's go ride around in this car.

Steve

Um, funny enough, in the end credits, uh, when you see all the music credits, all the different songs that are in it, this, this song is in there as the Star Wars theme plural, Star Wars, but it's still credited to John Williams. I think it's a typo that never got fixed.

Nic

Uh, so more, more enjoyment of the city here, the Chicago Institute of Art. And actually, I, I like this montage. This is probably my favorite chunk of the movie, and it's not— it's unlike the rest of the movie, but I think just as a, as a John Hughes, like, oh, he knows how to do this kind of montage, kind of like, uh, like Steve Martin riding the, um, the train home in Planes, Trains and Automobiles as he's reflecting back on the trip. The memory just— he does, does it very well where it's like silence and subdued music and everything. Um, yeah, so we get some good Chicago Institute of Art here. A lot of Picassos. A lot of Picassos. We got Cam staring at, uh, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Steve

Oh, you looked it up?

Nic

Or did you know that?

Steve

Which is good because I can never remember that.

Nic

And I think it's, it's Seurat. It's a very famous example of pointillism for art history fans there. But yeah, this is a great scene, and I think this scene does a good job of capturing the spirit of like, dude, all this stuff is out there for us and we just never stop to look at it. We never take advantage.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, this really is— I mean, when the movie— if you boil the movie down past the whole kind of con man part and, you know, extract Ferris's sort of like wheeling and dealing and the negativity of that This movie is really telling you, if you live anywhere near a big city, you're probably not taking advantage of that fact. Yeah. You know, there is stuff to do every single day. If we go into Oakland or San Francisco, where, you know, near where we are, any single day, there's going to be cool stuff for you to go see. Yeah. And, and I know I don't take advantage of it. I haven't taken my kids into San Francisco often enough to like show them cool stuff or, you know, go to the one of the piers or the Exploratorium or I don't know, whatever. Like there's stuff out there and it's, it's a good reminder. You know, for those of us in city-adjacent suburbs.

Nic

Right, I mean, we're like probably Shermer's distance roughly from San Francisco. Sure, give or take. So yeah, I really did enjoy this scene. I like the art museum scene a lot.

Steve

Yeah, very good stuff. We then get some establishing shots of a parade going on. It is the Stuben Day Parade, which is unfortunately always in September. It's a German-American heritage parade. It's always in September. We know for sure that we're in May. So that doesn't work, but hey, whatever. It's all good. It's a huge parade in downtown Chicago. They do it in New York and a few other places as well. But yeah, it's definitely in the wrong time of year. But in the meantime, while we do get some establishing shots, we don't really see, we're not in the parade yet. We get them in a cab stuck kind of in traffic, I think because the parade's going on. And immediately next to them is another cab and Ferris's dad is in it. He glances over and sees Ferris ostensibly. I mean, whatever. And he looks ahead again and then looks back over and it's Sloane. Yeah. Am I to believe that he doesn't know what his son's girlfriend looks like?

Nic

For as engaged and interested of parents as they are, I guarantee they've probably had Sloane on a little weekend family getaway. We're going to Wisconsin Dells. We're going to ride some fucking water slides. Sloane, do you want to come? There's no way he doesn't know Sloane.

Steve

And her father is Chicago PD. I bet that whole family's been over to the Buellers' house for lunch or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, it's bizarre to me that he didn't immediately immediately recognize Sloane. But again, fantasy stuff, and, and it doesn't— the movie deliberately has to have these parents be oblivious for any of this to work.

Nic

Well, and then sometimes you're just in— like, I've run into people that I legitimately know in a scenario, in a setting that I would not expect them. Yeah. And it took me a minute to be like, oh, what? Like, I'm not thinking that that person will be here, right? Right. I'm in Reno. Why would this guy that I know from college, you know? Yeah. So So maybe it's some of that. That's true. I like that when Cameron and Ferris are kind of on the floor of the cab and Dad's looking over, they're rubbing a— very aggressively rubbing a rabbit's foot. So I like the rabbit's foot.

Steve

Which is on a chain and attached to Ferris's belt the entire movie and is in his pocket. You see the chain most of the time. He has like this swinger's chain for the rabbit's foot. And there's other scenes where he's like flinging it around or playing with it. He's got that lucky rabbit's foot on him at all times. So I have a feeling that in this world, it is a very effective charm. Lucky rabbits. Yeah. Yeah. But now, so now we get the actual Stuben Day parade. And initially Cameron and Sloan think that Ferris has ditched them. Well, Cameron thinks Ferris has ditched them. Sloan's like, he wouldn't ditch us. He's— we just lost him. Like, he's here somewhere. Let's look for him, whatever. And Cameron's like, no, no, he's just going to make me sweat. He's just going to leave, whatever. And that's when they hear over loudspeaker, you know, this one goes out to a guy who thinks he hasn't seen anything good today yet. And it's Ferris up on a float. Lip-syncing to "Donkey Shane." Now, this is the third of four times this song appears in this movie because he sings a little bit of it in the shower. Okay. Right? "I recall Central Park in fall." Like, oh, he does that in the shower. Yeah. Rooney hums it to himself at one point, I think when he's at the Buellers' home. And then it shows up in here. He sings basically the entire or the majority of the song in the scene. And then there's another time later, I think, where Ferris hums it to himself. Okay. So four times we get at least the tune of "Dunker Shane" hummed by someone, and then a couple times where he sings it.

Nic

Damn. Very funny, weird song to listen to. Like, Wayne Newton's voice at that age was incredibly odd.

Steve

I thought it was like a woman at first.

Nic

I've never heard anybody sound like that. Quick Wayne Newton thing. Back in like 2005 or so, I went to Vegas with my wife and another couple that we were friends with. We went and saw Wayne Newton, and it was like Wayne Newton's holiday spectacular. And he was old, but it was great. It was a good show. He had it. Oh man, he was so good and we loved it. We had so much fun there. We got our pictures afterwards and everything. Didn't have the full Alan Griswold experience, but you know, it was still pretty good. So then the next year for my work, we were doing a Vegas trip and they— we did these great Vegas trips and they would always pay for a show for us to go to. So we did like Cirque du Soleil one year, whatever. Like, what should we do? And I was like, oh, hands down, Wayne Newton. It was great. It was the best thing I've ever seen. So we got Wayne Newton the next year. He had aged like 1,000 years in the time. He was not really doing any of his songs. It was more like Wayne Newton, a retrospective, like Wayne Newton standing in front of a PowerPoint of previous versions of him. And I was so embarrassed. It was so, so bad. But the first time, man, he really had it. So shout out to Wayne Newton. I'm sure you're doing fine. Oh my God. That's funny. Yeah. So, so Ferris gets up there and he's lip-syncing Donkey Shane, right, as well.

Steve

And then Twist and Shout by the Beatles. Yeah. And the whole place goes crazy for a kid lip-syncing to the Beatles. Yes. Okay.

Nic

This is part— so I, I love talking about this. I'm glad that we watched this, but I have been melting down through this whole movie. And when this part fucking happens, first of all, Shout out to John Paul George and Ringo, but I'm not a Beatles fan. I don't care about the Beatles. And but Twist and Shout is like the shittiest version of a Beatles song.

Steve

You can listen to their song as a cover when they did it.

Nic

This is like if you went to like some deep part of Siberia and there was some element of like, what would you imagine American culture to be? And Twist and Shout is roughly like what they think it would be. Yeah. So everyone who's there is watching a parade that was already happening. Happening. So it has music that's already recorded with performances that are already planned, and then some fucking teenager gets up there and just, oh, step aside, the person who trained and practiced for this for months. Let me get up here and look like an asshole in front of my friends. Which, okay, that stuff happens. But yeah, everybody getting on board with it is insane. People should start a riot and get that guy like thrown in the hoosegow.

Steve

I don't like that. The thing that always blows my mind the most about this that he's clearly lip-syncing, 'cause it's clearly John Lennon's voice for the most of the song, right? It's mostly a John song when the Beatles do it. Again, it's not even their song. It was a cover when they did it. Songs from like the early '60s or before the Beatles got together. And yet, so it's clearly, it's lip-syncing, so there's clearly a track playing. Yet the marching band around the float in the parade is supposedly playing the horn line? Are they also like doing a horn version of lip-syncing? Like, what is this? This is bizarre. And it starts off with like, there's like, they're right in front of the like, what do you call it? Like the parade, the like judge's tent or something, or the judge's stands, right? Well, 'cause they're probably judging all the parade floats and there's some prize for like the best float or something like that, right? So there's all these people, they have these sashes that say honored guest on them. And when it first starts, they're all looking confused as hell and like checking their papers. Is this what's on the schedule? Is this what's supposed to be happening? But then by the end of it, they're just jamming along to, it even shows apparently they are directly in front of Ferris's dad's building. Because he is in his office and can hear the music and like looks down, right? But it's like, and I get that it would be far enough away he wouldn't see who it is that's playing, that's fine. But like he's kind of jamming along to it as well, and I'm just like, it is the most bizarre of all the bizarre scenes in this movie. This one makes the least sense and is the most like fantastical. Like it makes me wonder if the entire movie is a dream sometimes, right? We don't really get any other indication that that's true, but if you told me that Ferris woke up quote the next morning and it was actually that day and he just went to school and the whole thing was dreamed, I would absolutely believe you.

Nic

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a good example of just one of those like entitled guy going up and stealing, you know, oh, let me get the attention and look how good I am. You know, someone who sucks at singing who gets up, oh hey, I want to sing a song with the band. It's like, fuck you, dude, we hate you, we hate your ass. So Ferris very quickly has flowers delivered to his house. Uh, Rooney is still there, right? And these flowers get delivered, and the flower delivery guy, who it shows his face later but it doesn't show his face here, it is Louie Anderson. Oh, is it really? Definitely Louie Anderson, because later he's there as part of that singing telegram thing, right? Okay, uh, so shout out Louie Anderson. I love Louie Anderson. Yeah, good guy. Uh, Save Ferris is up on a water tower.

Steve

Yeah. Uh, how did that get there and when and why? That's, that's what I mean.

Nic

Some of this stuff, it's like, is this all these municipalities are moving quick? Quick, you know? Like, if someone wrote "great big hairy pussy" on the water tower, could we get it off in the amount of time it took to save Ferris to get up there?

Steve

Not if Brad Hamilton's in this, in the municipal government. But yeah, so now, because Rooney hasn't been able to get back to the back door, right, because of the dog. And so now he's— and this is the one F-bomb in the movie, by the way, as well, is when Rooney gets the flowers. They're in like a vase. They're not just like, you know, bundled. They're like in some kind of heavy pot. And he was— what we see him walking over to the side here, and he goes, look what Uncle Ed's got for you, you little fucker. And he clearly— we don't see him do it, but it's— show— then shows the dog basically passed out with the shattered— he brained the dog with the flowers. Like, if you didn't already hate Ed Rooney, and by extension Jeffrey Jones, here's a good reason to. Like, Jesus Christ, who fucking brains a dog with a goddamn pot of plants?

Nic

And this is like Bugs Bunny villain style. Yeah, yeah. Um, And also Rooney's car is like parked out at a fire hydrant. There's a ton of parking. He just parked right in front of the fire hydrant. And during the time his car's been there, what, 2 hours? It's got like 9 tickets accumulating.

Steve

Well, I love it too, because we see a cop write the first ticket and it gets put on there. And then the next time we see it, it feels like minutes have passed. Yeah. And they're like, yeah, like 7, 8, 9, whatever tickets on it. Then a few more minutes pass and they— and I think that's when it's starting to get towed away at one point. Yeah. And it's like, but that's when Jeanie comes home. So Jeanie is now gonna confront Ferris 'cause she still believes he is just skipping and is at home. So she is gonna come home and confront him. She, you know, unlocks the front door, runs in, does not lock the door behind her, and heads upstairs. And when she busts into Ferris's door, it like is such a, you know, aggressive opening that it throws off the whole Rube Goldberg system, the pulley system he's figured out, and the mannequin flies off the bed. And she's like, "I knew it!" You know, whatever. But now Rooney has snuck in and there's this really great— I love the kind of— it's tension, except it's not tension for the audience because we know who it is that you will— but you've got Rooney sneaking around thinking it's Ferris. Yes. You've got Jeanie sneaking around thinking it's Ferris. And they get to a point where they are clearly on opposite sides of the same wall with like a doorway about to be breached. And I love when— because Rooney goes, Bueller, and then Jeanie goes, Ferris. Like, and it's a great moment. She jumps, he jumps. When she realizes that it is not her brother, it is— I mean, she might recognize him as Ed Rooney if she takes a second, but he is disheveled. He looks beat up. The dog got him. He's ripped up. He looks horrifying. She just gives him like, I think, 3 quick kicks all the way up to the chin.

Nic

Van Damme style.

Steve

Yeah. Jennifer Grey with those Dirty Dancing moves. Yeah, it paid off. Really got that high kick going. Just rocks him and then races upstairs and calls the police. Yeah. Right move. Right move, Jeanie, all the way. Way through.

Nic

Yeah, and her yelling down to him about how, you know, I have a sexually transmitted disease and I took karate, or whatever she's saying.

Steve

I have a gun and a scorching case of herpes.

Nic

That's right, that's right. So back in the city, we finished our parade disruption. We're getting kicked out of the German Day parade for fucking making it suck. And they realized that Cameron—

Steve

stop holding back, Nic. You really got to let your real feelings show here. This is about honesty and open I'm just saying, if I was there trying to celebrate German Day—

Nic

so Cameron's dad not only, like, cares about and loves this vehicle more than anything, he never drives it, never takes it anywhere. He knows exactly how many miles on it. There's supposed to be like 130 miles on it, give or take, and there's like 300 miles on it, right? And this is when they get it back from the valet, so they didn't drive all those miles. They drove 20 miles, maybe, right? Whatever. But these guys were taking around, so they're like, okay, we're fucked. And Cameron is like catatonic. Yes, like this is the end of his life, and he's not speaking, he's not responding. Yeah, just like— yeah.

Steve

And, and so then the next scene we see is the three of them at Ferris's pool again, which I always, you know, kind of took me a while to realize, wait, isn't Jeannie there? Isn't Rooney there? No, no, I guess Rooney, his car got towed and he chased it down the road. He's gone. And then Jeannie, we later find out very soon that after she called the cops, she got picked up by the cops for a phony report, because not only is like there nobody there, but like there's no car there, so they don't believe her that anybody was ever in the house. So she's been arrested essentially. So they're now back at Ferris's pool. Uh, Cameron, for whatever reason, is sitting in a lawn chair on the diving board. Very odd choice, especially for somebody who does not appear—

Nic

would never happen in real life. That's an effective, uh—

Steve

but especially for someone who we don't believe is fully here right now, is dealing with something.

Nic

That's a good point, because You could see that happening, but this guy in his catatonic state had to set up and balance a lawn chair on the end of the diving board.

Steve

You'd have to walk along it with it holding the chair behind you to then sit on. It's insane.

Nic

Not something he would have dealt with. Yeah, that's a very good point.

Steve

And Ferris and Sloane are just hanging out in the hot tub and they're worried about him, whatever. And Cameron basically takes a dive off the thing, just kind of falls forward off the diving board into the pool, is sitting down, and is— honestly, I always get nervous for him because he's letting out air air real fast. I mean, he's just blowing bubbles out. Yeah, so dude's gonna run out of air real quick, but Ferris, being the real friendliest, dives in, grabs him, pulls him up, um, at which point Cameron—

Nic

was he like looking up? It looked like he jumped in there wanting someone to come in after him, right? So he was kind of looking up like, hey, where are you?

Steve

It feels like Cameron has been listening. He's kind of come to grips with some of what's happened, and he's now hearing how concerned Ferris is and wants to play a little prank on him. Yeah, this is me getting back at you a little bit, Ferris. You put me in this position, let's see how you like it if something really horrible happens to you. I'm gonna pretend like I'm dead. Here I go. Which is shitty, but also turnabout is fair play. Ferris has fucked with him all day long, at least. So, but yes, he immediately looks up to like wait to see Ferris coming, and I'm sure that if he didn't come, he would have jumped back up eventually. But Ferris doesn't know that, so he jumped, you know, dives in after him, drags him up, and that's, you know, you know, Cameron's like keeping his eyes closed. Cameron, come on, buddy! Oh God, oh shit, Cameron, come on! You know, and that's when Cameron opens his eyes, he goes, Ferris Bueller, you're my hero. And it's just like, you can tell it's a joke or whatever. Um, but yeah, but that's Cameron's little bit of a dig back.

Nic

Yeah, Cameron got back at him a little bit. Um, Jeannie's at the police station now and she's got to wait. And, uh, we got Charlie Sheen sitting next to her, a very early Charlie Sheen. I read this somewhere, uh, just about his character that he stayed up for like 24 hours. Oh my God, great. The night before to try to get the appropriate look of like—

Steve

yeah, you know, to be fair for Charlie Sheen, that's called a Tuesday.

Nic

I know, it's like, yeah, were you method acting or were you mething? Like, come on, man, it was meth acting.

Steve

Oh yeah, that's tiger's blood right there, baby. Yeah, yeah. By the way, real quick, is it amazing to you that Charlie Sheen has not gotten caught up in any of this, uh, the files and stuff that are out there today. I, you know, good for Sheen. Apparently he was only interested in adult hookers. Good for him, right? In the grand scheme of things.

Nic

And, and it says a lot too about just have your own plane. Yeah, exactly. Show up places. Don't, don't require a ride from someone else. So be— have that Two and a Half Men money. There you go. Um, but there's a good exchange between her and Charlie Sheen, and, you know, he's trying to drill in about like what she really bad about it and all that.

Steve

And he's surprisingly— he's very patient and wise. Yeah, it's like, well, it sounds like you have a you problem. You're not really— nobody else is doing anything to you. Why do you care so much? You know, like, yeah. Um, but yeah, so now then we— I think we get back to Cameron and Sloane and Ferris at Cameron's house solving the car problem, right?

Nic

Trying to.

Steve

Which is— I— here's the thing, I don't know cars that well, I'll be totally honest with you, but I would assume that if you were racing, you know, full pedal to the metal with the car in reverse, wouldn't the miles still be going up? Don't miles go up even when the car is moving in reverse, or do they not?

Nic

Yeah, I guess— so I read something about this too. And it said that during the time— and I don't know if it would apply to that exact car, but there were some cars, early odometers, that would run that way, where it was just meant to track forward progress, which is kind of weird. But you're not reversing that much. That's OK. But yeah, what you say I bet is the case now. There's no way you— it definitely wouldn't run backwards. But it should still run forward because it's wear and tear on the vehicle. And it's a very— legally protected thing, like the integrity of an odometer. So they must work like that now.

Steve

Miles on the transmission are still miles on the transmission, or whatever it is, right? Even if they're going back in reverse gear, it still should be. And so that's why I was always surprised when I see this. Not that I ever expected it to work to go backwards. As a kid, I knew that wasn't how it worked. But then more recently, I would watch this and go, why isn't the mileage continuing? Why is it stuck? If they keep running it backwards, it should go up. And maybe— and again, maybe it's something where, yeah, well, no, in the 1960s, '60s car, it didn't work like that. It would have just stayed still unless it was in forward gear, but maybe a modern car would. But yeah, something that I noticed. Goodness.

Nic

I mean, decent plan given what they had to work with at that point and the problem they had to solve. Like, hey, that's about as good as you can do. I mean, right? And so this is happening and they go and check the odometer and realize like, this isn't going anywhere.

Steve

Yep. Sorry, Cameron. To which Ferris suggests they need to, quote, just crack open the odometer and roll it back by hand. Like, good luck on a vintage automobile. Like, yeah, go have fun. What do you mean crack into it? Like, you got a replacement panel for the dash available to you? Is that it? Like, yeah.

Nic

He'd be mad about it. He'd be more mad about a cracked odometer than missing 100 miles, probably.

Steve

Yeah, I would think.

Nic

And Cameron's starting to talk about, you know what? No, I'll take the heat for this. He's like, whatever, this is my fault. I don't care. Like my dad pushes me around and I'm gonna take a stand and all this stuff. And he starts taking it out on the car.

Steve

Yeah, really beating the shit out of it.

Nic

Those are strong kicks. That's a chrome bumper. That's not a hollow metal or plastic. Like he is stomping that thing. I don't even know what kind of— Converse All-Stars, who knew, right?

Steve

None of this car is like fiberglass, right? This is all metal. Like, so it's, he's really beating the shit out of it.

Nic

Yeah, and Cameron's doing the bonus round from Street Fighter 2 and just beating the shit out of the car.

Steve

He gets a wind— he gets a headlight in there, cracks it or whatever. Yeah. And then it's like, I do love the way they do this, is that he goes— we are seeing the, uh, the jack that the car is on in the back of it. It's a rear-wheel drive, obviously, sports car, so they had to raise the rear wheels for them to run. And so, you know, he's kicking, and it keeps making that— that jack is angling further and further and further back to where it's going to fall off of it. And it looks like it could go any, any moment, and he goes to kick it again and stops. And I love that John Hughes did this. Like, no, no, no, you stop and you realize, ah, that's enough. I've done enough. I've made my point. I can't even— says, I can't hide this. He's going to come home and see it. Yeah. And, you know, we'll deal with it. And it's okay. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. And I think then he just like goes to like lean on it, like put his foot on it, like to lean on it or something. And that's when the jack gives way. The car's wheels hit the ground, races backwards through the window, and clearly their house like overlooks a ravine. Or something, right? On some kind of hillside, cliffside, or—

Nic

amazing house, by the way. And to be able to burn an entire room with beautiful, like, views and everything just to display that car. And then there was some, like, Model T, like, a couple old-timey cars.

Steve

There's like 3 cars in that garage. Yeah, all really gorgeous classics. But, like, this is obviously the prize, right? This is Ferrari, and it flies off and it is gone. I mean, it crashes, you know, probably 20, 30 feet below where it started. And, and, you know, Cameron goes He's like, "What did I do?" And Ferris turns him and goes, "You killed the car." It's like, "He really did." And Ferris, to his credit, tries to say to Cam, "You don't want this much heat. Your dad already hates me. Let me take it. Like, I will say I did this. You had nothing to do with it. Like, let me take this heat." Which is like, I don't think even you understand, Ferris, what you'd be taking on. You'd basically be putting your parents on the hook for at least half a million dollars to replace that car.

Nic

'Cause they probably don't understand the real rarity of that. Like my friend's dad's nice car.

Steve

It's a fancy car. Yeah, that he likes a lot.

Nic

Um, but Cameron's like, no, like, me and Dad are gonna have a talk. Um, and I don't know, I mean, throughout the movie I don't feel like there was a lot of Cameron ruminating on how his parents don't really talk to him and stuff. So this just kind of like popped in.

Steve

But well, but when they first get resolution, when they first get to the garage, he talks about how his dad doesn't care about anything. He just like wipes the car. And when I think when they're at the Commodities Exchange, he He says, 'cause they're talking about marriage, and he goes, 'I'll give you two reasons not to get married, my father and my mother.' Like, it's like that car. He loves the car. He hates his wife. So we get several ideas throughout the movie that Morris Fry is somebody who just does not love anything in his life other than that car. Not his family, not his wife, not his kid, nothing.

Nic

That makes sense. So it's clearly a bad car for him. Now you gotta face your family. We get away this thing that you put ahead of everything, and you gotta be a dad now. Yeah.

Steve

Although I think Cameron is in real danger of being actually killed by his father.

Nic

Yeah, I'm a little concerned about that. Yeah.

Steve

No good.

Nic

Um, so Ferris has gotta, uh, he's gotta get home, right? And his sister is trying to like beat him home.

Steve

So sister and mom— the mom went to pick up Jeanie from the police station. And, and of course I love too that the police officer is like, hey, say, tell Ferris we hope he's getting better, or something like that. She's like, um, okay. And so Jeanie's making out with Charlie Sheen, right? And, and then his mom's like, we gotta go now. She's pissed at her because it's like, you know, she— you know, the mom believes what the police said, that she made a phony 911 call was skipping school when she did it, like the whole deal. So she's in trouble. So they go home and it's, uh, Ferris has taken Sloane home and realizes it's almost 6 o'clock and that's when his dad at least is supposed to be home, you know, 6 sharp kind of thing. So he starts running through the neighborhood to get to his house and Jeanie almost hits him with the car. He runs through the street, she almost hits him. The mom doesn't see him because she's got like papers or something in her way, whatever. But Jeanie recognizes it and he starts going. So she starts speeding like a crazy person through these little suburban streets trying to get home before Ferris can. And luckily for Ferris, she gets pulled over at one point. Uh, I think actually it's— she said her mom says gets 2 speeding tickets. She got a speeding ticket, then she got another speeding ticket that I didn't show you.

Nic

Oh my God, like, that's crazy. And he's doing, uh, he's doing good, like running through yards and the point break chase. Exactly that, exactly that. Uh, and there's one point where he's running through somebody's yard and there's these 2 women that are out there like sunbathing on chaise lounges.

Steve

Are they sunbathing? I don't know, literally sitting in the shade, completely in the shade.

Nic

If you had to draw a picture of sunbathing, it would be that. Uh, so he like runs by them and then the camera stays on them, and then Ferris doubles back. He's like, hi, Ferris Bueller. Hey, you know the girl that I care about more than anything in the world that I want to marry? I'm still too horny to run home in time.

Steve

Um, it's not a good— that's not— we didn't need that. That's not a good look for Ferris's character that he had to go back and say hi to the pretty girls in bikinis.

Nic

But it fits, you know, beginning, beginning of the film. Ferris, that's his, that's his move. That's true. So yeah, so he's getting chased home and this song is playing, which I think was a bad song. I'm trying to remember the song, but I feel like it was a lot of grunts and stuff.

Steve

I don't even know if there's that much like, yeah, song to it.

Nic

It's like, yeah. So Ferris gets back home. Mm-hmm. And he's beaten them barely by moments. Like mom and dad are like standing by the front door and Ferris is in the rear of the house where he's looking for the key under the mat.

Steve

Yeah. Yes. And there isn't one. No. But who is there with the key? Rooney. And so Rooney's like, you know, I finally got you. I finally got you. And this is a point where I think Jeanie— I think Ferris is very lucky that Jeanie met that guy, met Charlie Sheen at the police station. Yeah. Because he talked to her about, why do you care? What's it matter to you? All this stuff. And she decides in this moment to basically save Ferris's ass. Yeah. So he— she opens the door. She read the water tower. Yeah, exactly right. She's saving Ferris. And so she opens the door and is like, oh, Mr. Rooney, thank you so much for driving Ferris home. We've been so worried about him. Can you believe someone this sick tried to leave the hospital on his own? Like all this stuff. But then when, but, and he's kind of like, what do you, what? And so she's like, Ferris goes in and that's when she gives him his wallet and goes, Mr. Rooney, you left your wallet on our floor. So that's now basically, she knows for sure that was him in the house. She knows he broke in. He can't say shit about any of this. Yeah. Like that's, that's what sort of like, now we're all mutually assured destruction as far as like letting know anyone what happened this day. We all have to keep our shit quiet, right? So Jeanie saves the day. She's a pro in the end.

Nic

Yeah, she absolutely ends up doing it.

Steve

Best sister in cinematic history, really. Yeah.

Nic

Yeah. So he's home and, you know, he makes it into bed before his parents get up to his bedroom door. Right. And, you know, he says, oh, I'm actually feeling a lot better. I don't want to miss school again tomorrow.

Steve

Don't make me stay home. Yeah.

Nic

And then it would— it kind of ends with his Like, life moves at you pretty fast.

Steve

Which is kind of the theme of the movie. If you don't slow down, life will pass you by. You need to actually enjoy it. Which is, this is not a bad thesis. Not a bad theme, yeah, absolutely.

Nic

And then we get our favorite. Bounce, bounce.

Steve

Oh yeah. More "Oh Yeah" by Yellow. This is the second movie we've done that shows this, that has this song in it at least twice. "Secret of My Success" also did it twice. But yeah, this is, there's a credit sequence. It runs through the entire credits where Rooney has to get, is walking back to the school, I guess. And a school bus comes by him that I guess would be taking kids home. So I'm not sure where it's going to take Rooney to, but whatever. He gets on the bus and there's one seat left and it's next to this girl who like offers him a gummy bear that's been in her pocket or something. Yeah. All the kids have Save Ferris like scribbled on their like binders and different things like that. And so there's, there's, yeah, it's just sort of punctuating Rooney's just like Rooney's horrible day. Humiliation.

Nic

Right, right. Um, yeah. So, and that was kind of kind of long at the end, but yeah, whatever. I mean, we gotta wrap it up, and it's funny to watch that guy.

Steve

Did you stick around for the post-credit sequence? It's probably the first post-credit sequence.

Nic

Yeah, because I don't—

Steve

I can't think of an earlier one. I certainly don't know of one. But yeah, basically just Ferris telling us all, you're still here, go, go home, movie's over. Like, which is, which is funny. Clever move. Yeah, yeah. But that is Ferris Bueller's Day Off in its entirety. And Toto. Uh, and yeah, I'll go ahead and give my, my rating first. This was my pick. Like I said, there was a time in my life where this was one of my favorite movies, like a top 5 movie for me. And I still really enjoyed watching it. I did watch it in chunks this time, partly because I do know it so well. I wasn't too worried about like kind of being able to follow the plot, but I just had things to do yesterday. So I was kind of like on and off it. And it was, it did feel like it didn't flow quite as well as I remembered. Like there were definitely parts of it. I'm like, you know, this is really funny in parts, but also, you know, Ferris is not a likable guy. The parents are much better people than I remember. You know, my perspective now is different, whatever. Whatever. Um, so yeah, but I still really enjoy this movie. I think it's a lot of fun, and it really still holds a place in, in cultural consciousness, you know, from the '80s, as far as like, you know, there are themes and there are things or references that people will make to this movie. Like you said, there's a ska band that named itself Save Ferris because of this movie. Like, there's no other— that is nothing but a reference to this movie. Um, I'm a 3.5 out of 5 on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's still really enjoyable. It's not like spectacular. It's not giving us some great message or anything like that, but it's a— to me, it's a very fun movie. Movie, I still really enjoyed watching it.

Nic

All right, yeah, so, um, like I said, I'm not as familiar with this. I think this was the second time I've seen it all the way through, uh, and we just came off a John Hughes movie that I felt like did such a great job with the, the development of the characters, and you felt like you could relate to the different characters. And that movie to me was such a masterpiece compared to Ferris Bueller's Day Off where I don't like Ferris Bueller. I— his motivations suck. He's, he's just a selfish, entitled fucking guy. I mean, it's fucking Ferris LeVay's day of do without wilt. Like, he, he's not offering anything. He's only a good friend when he needs something from, from people. Um, he ends up winning in the end against people that didn't really deserve to have the wool pulled over on him and his parents and stuff. Like, it's not getting revenge on bad parents, it's stuff. But I mean, not every movie has to be like a perfect moral example or whatever, but just as something of like, what am I getting behind when I'm watching it? Okay, I don't really like the character. I don't really feel like him doing this to his— I mean, yeah, him versus Rooney, fine, whatever. But that guy's worse than Ferris's. Yeah, that guy's bad anyway. So then the stuff that happens better be fun and funny. And the stuff that happens in this is not fun or funny enough for me to really like love it. The parade, I fucking hated. So anyway, this was— there's a lot of stuff in the culture, and I like Jennifer Grey's performance. I think Ferris's parents are good. I think Alan Ruck as Cameron is good. Very good. Yeah. And Mia Sara is very pretty, and I'm sure she had a long, successful career after this. I am a 1.5 for Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I know that I'm in the minority, and there's things that bother me that are not going to bother other people in this movie. It's definitely worth watching. It's definitely relevant, and it just, it didn't hit for me. Yeah, so yeah, okay, a little different, but I think it's the context of not growing up with it as much.

Steve

That's gonna be a big part of it, I'm sure, because nothing you said is wrong. I agree with all your statements. I think there's just, yeah, there's just definitely some of the nostalgia and different things for me, you know, hit in a way that make it still enjoyable more. Yeah, is what the thing is. So we are 5 out of 10 on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And yeah, that, that wraps up 1986 for us in Two Dads, Two Decades. Yeah, 1987 is next. Next. Nic, it's your pick. What are we watching from '87?

Nic

So '87, I just realized now we do have a carryover of an actor. Yes, into this film. Um, so, and somebody who was extremely good during the period of the '80s and '90s who we haven't seen yet, who I'm very excited to see. Uh, we are going in 1987 and we're gonna follow Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox, a very young up-and-coming Wall Street trader who's trying to get in good with Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, the great Michael Douglas, who we haven't seen yet, and I'm excited to see him. This is Oliver Stone, 1987's Daryl Hannah. We've got like a good supporting cast in this and should be a lot of fun. We're gonna watch 1987's Wall Street.

Steve

Love it. We've got some John C. McGinley in this, right? Yeah, yeah. No, Wall Street's fantastic. I will, I will do my best not to constantly reference the movie Boiler Room Boiler Room when we talk about this movie, but there are so many great references to Wall Street in the movie Boiler Room, which I don't know if you've seen that one.

Nic

I'll tell you what, Steve. Yeah. I am not going to stop a single Boiler Room reference. Good. Let those babies roll.

Steve

We'll do a little Vin Diesel doing a Gorgon Gekko impression. You know it. But yes, Wall Street, fantastic. Love it. I've seen it maybe half a dozen times already. It's a great movie. It's been a while, I think, since I've watched it. I think for myself, at least 7 to 10 years in that ballpark. Yeah. It's a classic. It's going to be interesting really to look at how this movie painted entertainment's view of Wall Street over the years and the types of movies like Boiler Room, like the show Billions, that really owe so directly to this movie in the way that it shows us the levers of power in the financial world. Absolutely. Super great. The greed is good speech is one of the best monologues of the '80s, in my opinion, up there with Alec Baldwin and Glen Gary Glenn Ross. So super excited to watch Wall Street with you. That's going to be a lot of fun. All right, that's a wrap. All right. So if you like what you hear, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a 5-star review. It helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check out our website at twodads1movie.com. That's the number 2 and the number 1. There you can explore the movies we've covered, sign up for our newsletter, The Rewind, and even get sneak previews of upcoming episodes. We'd also love it if you followed us on Instagram at Two Dads One Movie. Once again, Again, this has been Ferris Bueller's Day Off, another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve. And I'm Nic. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks, everyone.