In the 1986 John Hughes comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the titular troublemaker (Matthew Broderick) brings his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) and his friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) with him on a day of hooky in downtown Chicago, skipping their suburban school to get a taste of the big city. As much as the film is an expression of youthful exuberance, carpe diem philosophies and the need to live life by your own rules, writer/director Hughes also uses this opportunity to craft a wonderful love letter to the city of Chicago, Illinois, where he grew up. Says Hughes of the location of the film, "I really wanted to capture as much of Chicago as I could. Not just in the architecture and landscape, but the spirit" (Chicago Sun-Times, 1986). The locations of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off take place in and around the Chicagoland area, and represent some of the more interesting flavors in the Chicago landscape. The whole film is a self-described love letter to the city, and the film’s use of Chicago as a setting lends itself to that reading; the film itself explores many of the major landmarks in the city’s architecture and culture.
Ferris’ School
The majority of the filming of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took place inside and around the freshman campus of New Trier High School (formerly New Trier West) located in Northfield, Illinois. This location served as the school that Ferris and friends attended, and from where Dean Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) attempts to catch Ferris playing hooky. Northfield is one of the northernmost suburbs of Chicago, located in Cook County and is 19 miles north of the city proper. The freshman campus of New Trier was founded in 1901 in Winnetka, Illinois; the Northfield campus was created for freshman only, and was called New Trier West until 1985, when the campus population became small enough that both schools could fall under the New Trier banner. The New Trier location is not the only place used for the school, When Ferris picks up Sloane while pretending to be her father, the location used for the school’s entrance is actually the Center for Performing Arts in River North.
Ferris’ Home
Unlike most of the other locations in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the Bueller family home is actually located in Long Beach, California. Located at 4160 Country Club Drive, this estate-sized home is historic, and is part of the Los Cerritos – Virginia Country Club Neighborhood. Ever since its inception in 1906, the Hollywood film industry has used its homes for location shooting, due to the all-American atmosphere its homes have. The house itself has appeared in other movies, including Not Another Teen Movie and Red Dragon.
Cameron’s Home
The modernist home of Cameron Frye, however, is back in Chicago, located at 370 Beech Street in the suburb of Highland Park, 23 miles from downtown Chicago. The location is 5300 square feet, has four bedrooms and four bathrooms and uses steel framing for its design. This home is known as the Ben Rose House (so named for the famous photographer who owned the house), and was designed by A. James Speyer and David Haid, who designed the primary building in 1954 and the pavilion in 1974, respectively (Landmarks Illinois, 2009). Rose himself had a car pavilion in his residence, which is used in the film to store Cameron’s fathers Ferrari 250 GT California. For the scene where they had to crash the Ferrari into the garage window, they actually crashed the car into the original window and Hughes paid $25,000 to have it replaced (Landmarks Illinois, 2009). Other Hughes movies that have used locations in the Highland Park neighborhood include Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck and Home Alone.
Art Institute of Chicago
When Ferris, Sloane and Cameron finally make it to Chicago, one of the most prominent locations from which they take in the city is the Art Institute of Chicago. In the film proper, the characters go through the Art Institute and look at many of the famous works of art stored there, including Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Located in Grant Park (111 South Michigan Avenue), the Art Institute is one of the most prominent art museums in the United States, holding a permanent collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, along with a variety of other rotating exhibits. The museum itself is one million square feet, making it the second largest art museum in America (Smith, 2009). The Art Institute was finally constructed as a building on the lakefront in 1893, in time for the World’s Columbian Exposition to be held in Chicago. The exterior of the building is a large Beaux-Arts style façade, with a pair of bronze lions guarding the two sides of the Michigan-Avenue western entrance. These statues were made by artist Edward Kemeys; his unofficial titles for the north and south lions are, respectively, “on the prowl” and “stands in an attitude of defiance.” As for the east entrance, the entryway is signified by the old Chicago Stock Exchange’s stone arch entrance, the Exchange having been torn down in 1972.
Different wings allow for different exhibits in the Art Institute; the lower level of gallery space is now called the Alsdorf Galleries (its name having been changed from Gunsaulus Hall), featuring art from the Himalayas, India and other parts of Southeast Asia. The ground floor of the museum holds the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, a section covering every period of art, but focuses on architecture from the 18th to 20th century. Though this took place after filming of Ferris Bueller, the Art Institute opened their Modern Wing expansion in 2009, adding 264,000 square feet to the space, holding the museum’s collection of art from the early 20th century (Ourossof, 2009). Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was the first film in history to be granted permission to film inside the museum.
Sears/Willis Tower
Following their stint at the Art Institute, Ferris and friends climb to the top of the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the city (and at the time, the tallest building in the world). Currently, it is known as the Willis Tower (223 South Wacker Drive), having been bought in 2009 by the Willis Group, usurping its initial title. The building stands 108 stories high (442 miles), and is currently the second largest building in the United States. The building was constructed and completed in 1973 as a building for Sears & Roebuck who needed a huge building to accommodate all of their Chicago-area offices into one building. The tower itself is a bundled tube structure, forming a 3x3 cluster of 9 rectangular tubes, each forming a building unto itself and varying in size (Podmolik, 2009).
The actual interior location used in the film is the Skydeck, the colloquial name for the Sears Tower observation deck on the 103rd floor of the tower itself. The tallest location in the building, it serves as a tourist attraction, allowing the public to look down all 412 miles in all directions from their location in downtown Chicago. In 2009, the owners of the now-Willis Tower added glass balconies which allow observers to step outside the confines of the tower and look directly below them at the city (these were not constructed until after the filming of Ferris Bueller) (Podmolik, 2009). Tourists are allowed to enter the Skydeck through an elevator that takes only 60 seconds to get to the top floor, with a noticeable pressure change as one gets higher; while there, the view extends all the way to the plains of Illinois, across the entirety of Lake Michigan to Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.
The Parade
One of the film’s signature scenes is the occasion where Ferris spontaneously joins a parade and sings “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles and “Danke Schoen.” This parade scene happened in the midst of an actual parade happening on Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago at the time – Chicago’s annual German-American Von Steuben Day parade (Harris, p. 56). Here, many of downtown Chicago’s more famous landmarks and art installations can be seen, including the Flamingo on West Adams Street. During filming, one of the days was filmed during the actual parade, with a second simulation of the parade happening on the second day. After a quick cattle call for extras, Hughes and crew gathered more than 10,000 people on the street to cheer on Ferris during his hijacking of the parade.
Wrigley Field
Two of the film’s major scenes also take place at Wrigley Field, the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs for the past century. In these scenes, Ferris and crew are spotted on the TV behind Dean Rooney during his search for Ferris, and later Ferris talks about the dangers of following the rules with Sloane and Cameron. Constructed in 1914, it was originally called Weeghman Park and was created for the Chicago Whales baseball team. Between 1920 and 1926, it was dubbed Cubs Park, until it was finally renamed to commemorate William Wrigley, Jr., the Cubs team owner. The field is located in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood between Clark and Addison, and this particular area is now known as Wrigleyville due to the many bars, restaurants and shops that surround it. With a capacity of 41,009 people, it is the tenth-smallest baseball park in active use today; it is also the oldest ballpark in the National League. During the film itself, filming took place during the Cubs-Braves game on June 5, 1985 and the Cubs-Expos game on September 24, 1985, respectively. These two scenes were edited togetherWrigley Field has been a haven for film locations, including The Blues Brothers, The Natural, Rookie of the Year, The Break-Up, A League of Their Own, and a number of television shows (Shea, 2006).
Miscellaneous
There are many other minor locations used for small scenes in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; the infamous “Save Ferris” water tower is located slightly north of Glenbrook Station, lying between Meadow Road and Cedar Lane – the lettering is no longer there. When we get scenes of Katy, Ferris’s mother, at her workplace, these scenes were filed at the Winnetka branch of Koenig and Strey, a real estate company located at 583 Chestnut Street in the Winnetka suburb of Chicago. Ferris’ father, meanwhile, works at one of the glass-fronted buildings at 333 West Wacker Drive, as evidenced by his huge view of the Chicago River. During Ferris, Sloane and Cameron’s tour through Chicago’s downtown area, location shots are provided of the LaSalle Street Canyon , the Tribune Tower, Marina City, and more. During the scene where the gang leaves Cameron’s Ferrari at the parking garage, that was filmed on West Madison Street and Wells Street, underneath the Washington/Walls CTA train station. During the scene where Ferris asks Sloane to marry him (while Cameron tries out his hand signals), filming took place over the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade on 141 West Jackson Boulevard. In one scene, Ferris and crew find themselves bluffing their way into a fancy restaurant; in reality, the interior was filmed in Los Angeles, but the exterior of the restaurant was a private residence located on 22 West Schiller Street in River North. In the scene where Dean Rooney looks for Ferris, that scene took place also in Los Angeles, in a pizza place in Brentwood. When Ferris attempts to cheer Cameron up, they are doing so on Glencoe Beach, one of the largest beaches on the North Shore.
In conclusion, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is as much a celebration of Hughes’ hometown of Chicago as it is a film about its characters. By having the characters run around and find themselves in the context of encountering the city’s many treasures (from the Art Institute to the Sears Tower to Wrigley Field and beyond), Hughes allows himself to show his audience the attractions of the city he loves. According to Hughes:
“A lot of Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city. And the more people who get upset with the fact that I film there, the more I'll make sure that's exactly where I film. It's funny—nobody ever says anything to Woody Allen about always filming in New York. America has this great reverence for New York. I look at it as this decaying horror pit. So let the people in Chicago enjoy Ferris Bueller.” (Barrett, 1986).
Despite some locations being filmed in Los Angeles, they are mostly restricted to interiors that are more convenient for scheduling; when it comes to the exterior shots, he specifically chooses mostly Chicago locations. Even the use of suburban high schools and neighborhoods reflects Hughes’ suburban childhood and adolescence, and these are given a unique Midwestern flavor that is difficult to replicate. Like many of Hughes’ films before and after, he espouses the beauty of this city through his characters- Ferris at one point admonishes Cameron for seeming bored by saying, “[We saw] nothing good? We’ve seen everything good! We’ve seen the whole city!” (Hughes, 1986). It is through this careful location shooting and lavish tourism of Chicago, Illinois through the film that John Hughes gets to show off just what makes his city so beautiful.
References
Barrett, S. (1986). Hughes Takes Time Off From Teen Films. Chicago Sun-Times.
Harris, S.J. (2013). World film locations: Chicago. Intellect Books.
Hughes, J. (dir.) (1986). Ferris Bueller’s day off. Perf. Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck.
Paramount Pictures.
Landmarks Illinois. (2009). Rose House and Pavilion. Landmarks Illinois. Retrieved from
http://www.landmarks.org/2009_5.htm.
Ourossof, N. (2009). Renzo Piano embrace Chicago. The New York Times (NYTimes.com).
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/arts/design/14muse.html.
Podmolik, M.E. (July 16, 2009). "Sears Tower name change: Building today officially
becomes Willis Tower". Chicago Tribune.
Reeves, T. (2001). The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. A Cappella Books.
Shea, S. (2006). Wrigley Field: an unauthorized biography. Potomac Books.
Smith, R. (13 May 2009). A Grand and Intimate Modern Art Trove. The New York
Times (NYTimes.com). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/arts/design/14inst.html?ref=design&_r=0.
