‘We didn’t want him to be punchable!’: Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Matthew Broderick, played Ferris Bueller

I’d done WarGames and Ladyhawke and was getting sent a lot of “young guy” parts. I was a little concerned at first because Ferris talks to the audience – I’d done that in two plays and didn’t want to it to seem like that’s all I can do. Meanwhile, my agent said: “You’ve been asked to do a John Hughes movie. You’re doing it.” I didn’t know much about John at the time but I kept hearing him being referred to as the “Spielberg of teen films”.

I thought Ferris shouldn’t seem to be trying too hard, that things came easy to him. I wanted to be a little cool and aloof. We didn’t want him to be somebody you wanted to punch in the face. That’s always the danger with guys who get away with everything.

After a test screening, one young woman’s feedback was that she didn’t like Ferris because “he’d make me do things I don’t want to do” so they got rid of a scene where I try to get Sloane [Mia Sara] not to go back home and keep hanging out having fun.

Alan [Ruck, played Cameron] and I have timeless hair-dos because we’d both just been in a military play, Biloxi Blues. Given the date the film was made, had we been able to, we might’ve both had crazy mullets, in which case, it would not have become a timeless classic.

John could be a very exacting director. Often, I’d be doing his ideas as carefully as I could but the scenes where I’m alone in the house talking to the camera? We’d just make stuff up. I picked up the clarinet and started playing just because it was there and I pretended I was playing great. The plan was to replace the sound and make it really good but John saw the footage and said: “I’m not doing that.”

Marilyn Vance [costume designer] and John came up with my outfit. There’s details you don’t even see. My socks had flags of all the nations on them. The rabbit’s foot in my pocket was just there. John thought Ferris’s leather coat should be simple, like James Dean’s red jacket but we went very much the other way. The beret was my idea.

The parade scene was huge. We shot at an actual parade one weekend, then did closeups the next. They had a radio contest inviting people to be in a John Hughes movie and 10,000 people showed up. It felt real. The window washers dancing? The camera guys just noticed them. They were catching whatever they could.

I spent weeks with choreographer Kenny Ortega but blew my knee out doing those back yard running scenes. It made the dancing very spontaneous. John would be far away with a megaphone shouting: “Make something up!” I was scared but once everybody’s cheering you on, I felt like I was the king of the world.

When John was alive, I always thought, “Maybe we’ll do it again?” but too much time passed. What happened to Ferris? He’s pretty charming and creative but he probably turned into his dad. That’s what most of us do.

Alan Ruck, played Cameron Frye

John Hughes originally thought of Anthony Michael Hall or Emilio Estevez for Ferris but they wanted to move on to different things so he wisely cast Matthew. We were doing this play together, Biloxi Blues. In one scene, he’s writing in his journal and we’re supposed to be asleep. One night, he nudges me. I open my eyes and he shows me his journal. It said: “They offered me Ferris Bueller.”

The casting directors didn’t want to see me because I was 28 and thought I was too old. My agent said: “He plays opposite Broderick every night. They look the same age.” I auditioned and they thought, “This’ll work,” but they didn’t offer it to me right away. Matthew’s manager kept laying the idea in John’s ear, saying: “Matthew would like to work with Alan.” That went a long way to getting me the part. Matthew and I were already friends. We didn’t have to make that up.

I always felt on the outside of life. Besides having Ferris for his best friend, Cameron’s definitely on the outside too, I figured because of his repressive home life. He wasn’t free and easy. That was also easy to tap into.

Matthew has a photographic memory for comedy routines and movie scenes. We were big Richard Pryor fans and he knew every routine. He’d do monologues of Tony Montana from Scarface and crack me up. Biloxi Blues director Gene Saks would get mad at us because we were always screwing around. Matthew used to imitate him backstage, going: “I don’t believe you’re soldiers in world war two!” When John told me to come up with an authoritarian voice for Sloan’s dad, that was me imitating Matthew, imitating Gene. I did it just to see if I could make Matthew laugh – and it did.

I honestly can’t remember what was going on in my head during the gallery scene. I had a number of personal losses and tragedies in my life, as we all do and I tapped into some of that.

We had three cars. One had heavy-duty suspension for stunts. The one we drove was plagued with electrical problems. When we collect it after the parade, we’d do the scene and it wouldn’t start. We did 16 takes. When we sent the third one flying out the window, the whole crew erupted into an enormous cheer.

There was a period where I didn’t want anything to do with the film. I was having trouble getting work and everybody kept talking about Ferris Bueller. I thought that’s as good as it’s going to get for me. As soon as I started working again, I really came to appreciate it. My joke is that Cameron’s father came home and threw him out the window. The rest of that day wasn’t a happy one, but maybe things turned out OK. Maybe now he’s a lawyer in Chicago.