12 cash. If you're not listening to Bob Cash, the terrorists are winning. That's a James Worsen. Welcome to the Pope Cost.
Sit down and enjoy your point. Okay, we're back. Finally, after long hiatus, the Pope Cash is back. After the past few months, we've had to fight through all sorts of technical issues, software updates, the publishing platform not working properly, and then a little thing called coronavirus hit.
And apparently my computer caught it. It was in recovery for about three weeks. The jackasses who were fixing it must've been listening to Trump because the cure was definitely worse than the problem. But I make a computer back.
We can edit things. We can publish things. So we're all, we're all good. But so the podcast is back with a new format.
The old format was fine. You couldn't get together often enough to generate any sort of rhythm. So we're going back to our roots. This podcast was originally called Boardwalk Breakdown.
And we used this to go through that week's episode of Boardwalk Empire Breakdown, the themes and the characters and all that good stuff. So now we're going to mostly focus breaking down passive movies. Some of our favorite movies and maybe even TV shows, another pop culture stuff. So with this new format, I'm also going to experiment with some different music choices and different segments.
So things will evolve the next few episodes. So this first episode in our new format, we decided to tackle Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a classic movie that everybody likes. There's all sorts of behind the scenes stuff that we get into. We recorded this on day six of the quarantine seems like three years ago at this point.
This one ran a little long, so I broke it up in two parts. So be sure to check out part two. But for now, here's part one of the Ferris Bueller's Day Off Breakdown. I said it before and I'll say it again.
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once and well. You could miss it. So dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is.
He gives good kids bad ideas. Why should he get to skip school when everybody else has to go? Civilitic meningitis? He never gets caught.
This guy in my biology class said that if Ferris dies, he's giving his eyes to Steve he won. Well he's very popular yet. I recall a central park in full. Ferris Bueller, you know?
Yeah, he's giving out a summer school. They think he's a righteous dude. He can be alive this weekend. I can see him denying popular belief, setting off of some impossible mission.
He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body. He does whatever he wants. You know, I always have known him. Everything works for him.
Whatever he wants. He's very cool. And he never gets nailed. Ferris can do anything.
Oh, he's such a sweetie. Wake up and smell the coffee, Mrs. Bueller. It's a fool's paradise.
He is just leading you down the Ferris-Path. Matthew Bueller. Ferris Bueller. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Because life is too huge. Alright, so let's jump into this. Ferris Bueller. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
So here is the IMDB exclamation of the plot. Take this with a grain of salt if you want. High school student Ferris Bueller wants a day off from the school, from school. And he's developed an incredibly sophisticated plan to pull it off.
He talks to his friend Cameron into taking his father's prize Ferrari and with his girlfriend Sloan head into Chicago for a day. While they are taking in what the city has to offer, school principal Ed Rooney is convinced that Ferris is not for the first time playing hunky for the day and is hell-bent to catch him. Ferris has anticipated that much too shi- much too Rooney's shi-grin. Wow.
That's not exactly for me. It's fine, but I'm not a fan of that one. So Ferris Bueller's Day Off. When did you guys see it?
How did you react to it? Did you see it in the theatre? Was it a big deal when you saw it? Because I don't even know if I think I saw this in the theatre.
I'm not even positive. I definitely did not see it in the theatre. It's a bit 86. Yeah, I definitely did not see it in the theatre.
I think it was an end of year slumber party at Julie Bradley's house. And we watched this and Fright Night. End of the school year. Yeah, and I think 86 for us would have been seventh grade.
Yeah. And yeah, it was we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off first and then we watched Fright Night after that. So we rocked the 80s. So this would have come out in the spring of 86?
No, we watched it on the basis. So maybe it was at the end of eighth grade because it was definitely out of her house. Yeah, because VHS both days of movie release would be the only theatre later. Right.
Yeah, I don't think I saw this in the theatre. Definitely saw it on VHS a thousand times in junior high. I didn't see it in the theatre either. No.
That was well after when I saw that I think on TV or something. This movie was not that I don't remember being that big a deal. We all wanted to see it, but it was not like a must do thing for the summer or whatever. Like it was eh, you'll see it, whatever.
I think we were maybe slightly too young for it. Yeah. Did he let that jacked about it? Eric, you'd have been really really young for it.
Yeah, summer of 86. I would have been nine years old. I remember seeing the commercial for it when it was released. I remember the shot of the parade and the huge crowd and everybody jumping and streaming during the parade.
And I remember that shot in the commercial and then didn't think about the movie again until I guess movie later was right on the heel of one Alton's thought. I think Alton's thought I just won the party and came home and said this movie, this movie, this movie, this movie, and we each set out. That makes sense. You set it at your party because I remember it was summer vacation when we rented it and watching a VHS at the house.
Yeah, absolutely. I specifically remember the movie. Hey, about about about that whole scene because we would see the clubs on the Superstation in the 80s when I was in Southern California. So I knew about the clubs in the really field was a big deal.
So I'm like, oh, that's really feeling. That's really feeling. How does kids get out of school for baseball games during the week? In the afternoon, what are you talking about?
There wasn't that. You know, let's say I never went to one. I would say that is probably the right way to phrase that. Yeah.
All right. Well, so this movie was happening or the idea of the pitch happened right before the writer's strike, apparently. John Hughes had made a couple movies, Breakfast Club and some others 16 candles right before that, right? So he walks into Paramount with a one sentence pitch.
He hadn't written it yet. His pitch was, I want to do this movie about a kid who takes a day off from school and that's all I know so far. Based on that, they greenlit the movie since previous successes. Yeah.
Greenlight is an extent, I think, probably. And then he wrote the script in six days. Six days? How long is this script typically, like a hundred pages?
I think it's on the outside. I think it's closer to 70-ish. 70 to 100. I think each page is like a minute of screen time, roughly.
So depending on. So Anthony Michael Hall of 16 candles fame, he believed that John Hughes wrote the roles of Ducky and Prane Pink and Ferris Bueller for him. Anthony Michael Hall thinks that? Yeah.
He thought it or still, what? Thought it and thinks it. And thinks it. So John Hughes, as always my understanding was very, he had like his acting trooper web.
Yeah. And like Molly Ringwald was being part of that. Oh, yeah. So, yeah.
So, Eric, hang on. Let me set up what the structure of this podcast is different. So we're going to go through some of these dopey sort of fun facts of the production and some of the details. Then we're going to dive into casting issues.
Then we can talk more about Molly Ringwald and all that stuff from casting issues. And then we'll talk about who almost was cast. We'll do, if we are recasting the movie ourselves in modern times, what that might look like, which I have nothing to offer. Rememberable scenes?
Yeah. What's that? Sound almost impossible. Yeah, it's impossible.
I feel like I've got a couple good ones. I don't know any actors under the age of 25. I feel like I've got some good ones. I can't possibly do it.
And I watched it today. Well, don't jump the gun. We'll go into pet peeves if you have any. We'll go into a lot of the tomatoes, scores, and reviews.
How much are the worth game at the end? Just for the hell of it. So, Eric, before we get into their Molly Ringwald stuff, let's go through some other sort of fun facts. Robert Smith of the Cure wrote a song for the art museum scene that was never used.
What? I can't imagine a Robert's, I guess. Like a Cure? The museum scene.
I think it was the Smiths. Oh, the Smiths. You're right. It was sort of a...
Yeah. Yeah. Like a real keyboard-y kind of... Slow sort of introspective sort of song that would have been the Cure.
Seems weird. And he wrote it specifically for the movie? Yeah. For that scene.
Apparently, I didn't find it. Apparently, it was, I think, recorded. They had it. They cut it.
Like it cut the whole... There's a whole like sub plot or something that they cut back. I don't know. Interesting.
I can't imagine Robert Smith's song specifically for a movie like that. You might know more about this, Eric. I don't know. Matthew Broderick says that Ferris singing the Doncashain song and the shower was his idea.
And then John Hughes had the idea of him doing that on the float in the parade. And then throughout the film, there's four different places where it's used. So the shower scene was the start of that song being throughout the movie. It wasn't like the parade, whatever German American, whatever.
Broderick says that was his idea. It was the shower part. And then she would expand it. Oh, that's great.
Let's have you do that throughout the movie. Yeah. That's interesting. Do you know what that...
Go ahead. I was just wondering kind of why that song is coming after a movie? I guess Ferris Gueller, he kind of had his style with almost kind of rap-packing. But his room was, didn't seem like, didn't fit that style.
You see simple mind posters and stuff. So it didn't really why that song would be such a big deal to him. It always confused me a little bit. Yeah.
Well, the simple mind's poster, it was sort of a John Hughes nod to Breakfast Club. Oh, sure. Yeah. So the parade that Ferris was in, at first, I always forget that's a German parade.
I mean, if you pay any attention, it's clearly, everyone's in there hosting. Like it's definitely a German parade. But because it's Chicago, I always thought, oh, it's the Plasky Parade. It has to be.
It's not. It was the von Stuben's Day parade. Apparently some German parade. But it's happening in a movie on a school day in the afternoon.
Like it's like, I don't know, who's doing this parade? Yeah. Yeah. And apparently von Stuben's Day is in mid-September every year.
And this movie is clearly set in the spring. Like it's definitely, there's baseball. So it's definitely April or May. May baseball in September.
For Chicago in the 80s, not so much. But yeah. So there are a number of, I don't think you're calling continuity issues, but sort of seasonal issues with what's going on in the film because it's supposed to be spring, but it's clearly parts where it's definitely falling. We can get it set.
Right. von Stuben's Day parade. He's just highlighting what Chicago has to offer. Yeah.
The tourist car is over Chicago. Just going back to IMDB. So I think it's Robert Ebert's review of it. There's someone's review of it.
They say like, oh, you know, it's fine. He kind of goes on a tourist version of a Chicago day trip, whatever. He's like, yeah, this movie doesn't really work that well, but it does work well as a Chicago travel log because he goes to some of different places that are famous, but nobody would ever do the actual day. Back to this.
Oh, Ben Stein. So he's the economics teacher, apparently. But if there is a still frame of Ferris' schedule on Rooney's computer when he's looking at the grades or whatever, and Ferris does not have economics at any point on his daily schedule. So he says, Bueller, Bueller.
I always thought that was Homer because he's going through. He's going home to have his class. I didn't. I definitely, my home teacher was a French teacher, and I didn't have her ever as a teacher.
My room. What do you mean? How do you, how do you run their room and not have her as a teacher? You're there for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the day.
Sorry. Oh, that's different. No. Our homeroom was just a defamation of our second period class.
There was no, you didn't go to 10 minutes of homeroom and go to your real classes. Like, there was, it was a class. Like, oh, everyone has homeroom second period. Mine was math and so on, so it was English and so on, so whoever you have for second period, that was your homeroom.
No, I definitely know mine. I mean, I don't remember Eric if it was one day week or if it was every day, but. We did it. Well, my first year or two, it was once a week, it'd be like on Monday or something.
Right. But it's why the end of my time in high school, it wasn't even a weekly thing. We would just have homeroom when there were some specific thing that needed to happen. Yeah.
And I had the same homeroom class and teacher the whole four years. You go there for 10 minutes, like just like, how's keeping it? How's keeping it? Could be voting, or if there would be like some like weekly, like silent reading, like there were all sorts of things.
I have no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah.
You crazy westerners. Chicago and Milwaukee. That's right. But in your, in your defense, well, Brendan, the class, well, he's giving the attendance and everybody who's acknowledging that they're there, they're in, they're sitting in that classroom being taught that level.
Yeah, definitely. He's teaching D-O-O economics, food, new economics, and that was the, the, the bueller taking attendance thing. So, whatever. I don't know.
Oh, so Ben Stein, who is also a lawyer, we've all seen him on TV and he got those game show, Jimmy Kimmel, however long ago, he was also with Ben Stein's money. He was also a speech writer for Nixon and Ford. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that.
He's a real career outside of acting. I mean, that part I knew I just didn't know about the speech writing part. But I didn't know. Yeah, he was a, he was a full-blown legitimate economist.
Yeah. Before we started out, I was reading IMDB and talked about a little bit how, he sort of, how he and, how he sort of eventually got connected through, like he got six degrees of sub-rate and eventually, you know, from someone from Nixon's staff, you know, a couple different stops, you know, to a casting director, introducing the jockeys. Like he's known for being on screen for stuff or on TV, but that's like the least of his career. Interesting.
Interesting. So, I didn't have a chance to group all these sort of trivia together. So we're going to jump around all over the place in this movie. But, uh, Broderick heard his knee earlier in the movie.
They shot at a sequence. So he heard his movie running through the neighbor's backyards. Like, yeah, at least the earlier in some way. And so we couldn't do any of the dancing choreography on the float for the Dunkershame part.
So he just stands there. So he jumps a little bit at the end, but he's like, he can't move because his knees hurt. Wow. Yeah.
Uh, does anyone here, I guess, I know what you speak. Eric, do you speak French at all? I do not. Okay.
Rooney says that French phrase, Les Juson. Right. And he says it means the game is up, right? It actually means the better made.
As in, uh, was it a groupier at the roulette table? He says that the forbidden he knew best in the roulette game. So it's the better made like all bets are made not the game is up. It's like splitting hairs and no one cares.
I know you. How is Jill not commented on that Eric at some point? Yeah, she speaks French, right? Right.
She does. No, it's French. And she likes to she likes to make I've heard her make jokes saying that quote. Oh, really?
situation where like somebody threw or something, she'll try and use that. She'll make that joke. Juson thing. Uh, so remember when Cameron calls Rooney as Sloan's father?
Well, apparently he is doing an impression of and uh, Matthew Broderick's impression of their director on Bloxie Blooms. So they work together on this Bloxie Blooms play and their director sounded like this maniac that he does the impression of. Someone's an impression of an impression of a progress impression of this guy. Yeah.
So Bloxie was wondering where that boy came from. Very, very unique sort of voice. Oh, yeah. It's something that cartoon came out of him.
Yeah. That's interesting. I was kind of wondering where that came from. Uh, okay.
So yeah, here's like the thing about the spring and the fall deal. Uh, the movie takes place in the spring yet a Cameron's Dazz garage. Some of the leaves on the trees are changing colors. You can see them sort of getting brownish, orangeish, whatever, uh, yellow, uh, because it's clearly in the fall.
Um, because it was filmed during the fall and they, they had these cubs scenes and it was definitely, they put it in the spring because of the grades and whatever. Uh, some of the leaves were hand painted green for the shot. Like some of them were changing to, you know, orange or whatever, but they painted green. You know, and I even kind of made a point of looking at the leaves in the background just to kind of get a sense of when it would have been filmed.
And I, I missed it. I mean, I saw a lot of flowers and stuff. I didn't see sure how they're not being leaves spring fall here. Yeah.
Okay. Here's, here's a good one. Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen in the movie is the, the drug guy at the end.
Okay. So, uh, to get his look, I know we'll all be shocked. He stayed awake for more than two days to achieve that. Oh my God.
I'm sure he was, he was, you know, jogging every morning and drinking a lot of water. But yeah, he was, he was doing his tiger, tiger blood, is that it? Winning? Yeah.
He was in that for someone already. So, he is playing a character that had a name in the script and had a whole backstory. His name was Garth Volbeck. And apparently there was a whole version of the script.
I've never seen it. I mean, it's out there. The six days. The six days.
Probably an early version of the script. Where Garth Charlie Sheen's character was a friend of Pharisees. Like they were friends in eighth grade or something. And Pharise had tried to help him because he knew his, his home life was bad.
He tried to help him a lot, or in some ways to improve his life and get him out of the house and whatever. And Garth wouldn't take his help and turn the drugs and went down this bad path of, and it ends up in, at the police station at the end of the night. There's a whole scenario there where Mrs. Bueller is showing a house to the Volbeck family, to Garth's family, because they're moving in or moving out or whatever the hell.
And the towing service that toes really his car is Volbeck wrecking. So, so, Charlie Sheen's dad, I guess, is the tote truck driver. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's like the tote truck company?
Right. That goes to Pharise's house to take away these cars. There's a whole back story there that seems strange. I can't imagine what that movie is.
That's a different movie. It's a different movie because everything takes place in somewhat real time. So there's no like going back. There's no next story is only the current.
Yeah. But at least another like 30 minutes of free time to slip out. Well, and so, and I was reading about this, this sort of dovetails into what what Pharise is doing in this movie, supposedly, is because of this failure to help Garth and his turn to drugs and getting in trouble with the police, whatever. That's why he's he's so hell-bent on getting Cameron out of his house to take him to go skip school for a day.
Because he sees Cameron's bad home life and Pharise is this do-gooder who wants to help everybody supposedly. And so he wants to help Cameron because he had these failures with Garth. Interesting. I don't I mean, I think that's reach.
How can that possibly be? Yeah. That's not the case in this movie. I don't see that.
But a number of people have made that connection. And even in I think it's Eberts or Cisquals review, they kind of mentioned that a little bit. Really? Yeah.
So it's not just Pharise skipping a day and being an uncle and hey, you have a car so drive me. It's I want I'm doing this for you. I want you to get out. I don't care about me.
I want to get you out to skip school. Okay. Except for I know I'd be expected to go to school on a day like this, right? It doesn't it doesn't the dots don't connect there.
I don't see it. There's a little bit about it who's the way he's talking about Cameron when you talk in the bathroom talking with Cameron's sort of catatonic by the lake. He's talking about some of that sentiment. But yeah, that's a completely different movie.
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. There are bits and pieces there.
But that's not in no way is it hinted that that's his motivation for anything. Right. Okay. The high school that you do is actually Glenbrook North, which is not far from here.
Right. So while the high school's name is never stated in the movie, it's suggested that Ferris Bueller and his buddies give the same high school as the Breakfast Club. Right. Because almost all of John Hughes films take place in the Sherman, Illinois.
In the Breakfast Club, when you see the Breakfast Club school from the outside, it does say Sherman High School. Right. And the poster inside of Ferris's school, when they show a couple of the inside shots, the poster says go Sherman right. So they're definitely in the same school.
Same universe. Same universe. Yeah. The John Hughes shared universe.
I don't know if that's the case with Pretty Pink though. Yeah. You can see 16 candles maybe. Pretty pink.
I don't know. Yeah. Where is Pretty Pink? Pretty Pink.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's really obvious. I'm trying to think if there's anything that would suggest that it is.
If you told me it was outside of Cincinnati or something, I believe it. But I have no idea. Eric, what are your thoughts? Yeah.
Pretty in pink does not fit in there at all. I would almost, to be what I was, you said Cincinnati and I was thinking of what it's how what kind of might be you. It's almost like, I don't know like Pittsburgh or something. Yeah.
Yeah. It feels like a suburb, sort of, yeah, a blue collar town or blue collar adjacent. You know what I mean? With what's your face is dad?
I'm all the name of that. Sort of a depressed former steel worker or something, you know? I don't know. Yeah.
I worked in a middle somewhere or something. Yeah. For factory. So back to Ferris.
Ferris changes clothes nine times before leaving his house. Nine times. And of course it's 90. I mean, nine times.
Hopefully there's purposeful symmetry with the nine times of changing clothes and nine times of the absent. But yeah. He put on a bathing suit hanging outside for four minutes to call camera and he's putting on the get up with the horn, the flute, the clarinet, the pot. You didn't grow up with the mother as a music player?
I didn't pull clarinet. Okay. So the Ferrari is license plates. License plates are a big deal.
Yes. The Ferrari license plate reads in nervous. Right. And apparently all the other, some of the other license plates in the movie are nods to John Hughes's earlier films.
Mr. Bueller's license plate reads M. M. Mom from Mr.
Mom. Mrs. Bueller's reads V. C.
T. N. Right. Vacation for National Land Prunes Vacation.
Oh. I was trying to figure out what that license plate was. I'm like gosh, it's so odd that it's four letters. Mr.
Rooney's plate reads four F. B. D. O.
For four, I don't know about the four part four Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Oh. And then Gini's plate was never seen on screen, but supposedly it read TCB for the Breakfast Club. D.
B. C. T. Yeah.
T. T. C. Right.
Watching the movie today, it was Mr. Bueller's license plate. The V. C.
T. N. was driving me insane. I think I could hear it with that plus.
I totally agree with your. Yeah. Like you said, I was at four letters. That means something, but it was driving me insane.
I could hear it a little too obvious. None of us realized it the first time we saw it, I'm sure. But I mean, they're all like Vandy plates. What's family's having Vandy plates for no reason in the 80s?
It's just a weird thing. Aren't they freaking Illinois know? Yeah. Vandy plates?
Yeah. Yeah. There's no fee to get a Vandy plate. So they're kind of...
They used to get a deal, but he's running a box in Illinois with Vandy plates. Although all the fun ones are either taken or illegal. You can't do anything. You can't do the ass man or anything like that.
Right. Yeah. So Ferris Bueller has a poster for Simple Minds. Don't you forget about me in his room.
That's Refis Club. The disguise that Ferris wears to pick up Sloan is on his mannequin in his room. It's so funny you say that because I noticed that today for the very first time and I've seen this movie a hundred times. And I'm like, oh my god, it's either on the left.
Yes. On the mannequin. That was in the bed. It's weird.
Is it just like, is it supposed to be some kind of weird foreshadowing or something, but it's a comedy. You can't really. I mean, I think it's just showing that he's got all of this stuff. It's just kind of ready to do whatever.
He's ready. Can you ever see that? I just did not notice that before. Yeah.
And we are looking at earlier when he's adjusting the dials on his stereo, whatever. In the back, right behind him, you see he has a little monitor, a TV set behind him. You can see it showing a chair with a horse on it or whatever. And then 30 seconds later, you see the chair is actually in a different part of his room.
He has a security camera in his room set up. Who knows why? It's such a weird thing. His room is not that big.
I could think of is like, does he do like any sort of like, is it on YouTube channel? Pretty historic. It's like MTV. It's weird.
I mean, it's fine, but it's a weird little thing. Yeah, what if it was all of that besides snore and coughing and sneezing, what did he have all that equipment for? Yeah. Well, we should come back to that when we talk about if this had a sequel, what would that sequel be like?
Because maybe there's a whole thing with him in all this technology and what the hell is it on there? Yeah. And Rooney's car was a mid-80s Chrysler to K car. It's almost the exact car that I had in my school.
His is light blue with four doors. Mine was dark blue with two doors, but it's effectively the same car. K car is a piece of shit. But it's fine.
Yours. You don't even have a piece of shit. I can't even have a piece of shit. I can't even have a piece of shit.
Oh, thank you. You got a car? Well, you need to do that. I know.
I got a car. He got a computer. Right. Oh, so this is a personal thing for us.
Well, it came up for us. When you, Eric, you got to walk me through this one. How this could happen? When you rent this movie on Amazon Prime, it lists, you know, the director, whatever, it lists some little tidbits about it.
It lists who's starring in the movie. And in order, it only lists three people as starring. So in order, it lists Charlie Sheen, Jeffy Jones, Jennifer Gray. I know.
So Charlie Sheen is in the movie for 43 seconds at the end. A character without a name. Jeffy Jones, who is Ed Rooney, and Jennifer Gray, who's the big sister who's a third, fourth character at best. They don't mention Matthew Brumwick.
That's insane. The three main characters. Yeah. The three people that you follow through the entire movie.
Yeah. I can see them. After who plays the title of the movie, Ferris Plucking Bueller. I could see them doing Matthew Project and then doing Charlie Sheen and Jennifer Gray just for name recognition because they're not, I mean, nobody knows who's on Peter's leg.
I don't even know what her. Oh, yeah. But I know it's ridiculous. It's crazy.
That's yeah. There's some ridiculous algorithm similar that they have for rating celebrities and who's the most popular that's how that job is. Yes. So but is number two, Jeffrey Jones?
Is that roll off your tongue? Oh, let's go see that new Jeffrey Jones movie. Ferris Bueller. What?
Okay. So casting. Casting is kind of. Well, is there any other, Eric, you had said that you had some trivia.
Were there any other bits of trivia that you think are good to talk about? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot with this movie. So I'm sure I missed a lot.
Brendan, you hit because I was reading through it. I didn't even get to finish reading through it when you called. But all the ones that struck me, Brendan, you did, you hit most of them. Like the license plates and the shearer and stuff like that.
Yeah, all that service stuff was taken up to be all right. So yeah, I don't have anything else. I guess the only thing that I do want to come back to the story about John Hughes having the one, like just the one sentence pick up the movie and that took six minutes to write. I thought I heard a story where like the idea for the movie, like John Hughes was working with somebody else on a different movie and they were working living in the same house and you know, working through a script.
And essentially John Hughes woke up one, like he especially had a dream and in the dream is where he came up the idea for the movie. And the other guy woke up to John Hughes sort of writing something out and John, he's like, Oh, you want to read this? If I do my idea for movies called Ferris Coolers Day Off. No.
And that other guy was Quentin Tarantino. No, yeah. I was thinking about just the name Ferris is so good. It's so good.
I want to know where it comes from. It's got a family name or something, you know. Yeah, but you know, you got G is a fairly traditional name that you get Ferris is interesting. Yeah.
I was one of the things I did read where he talked about it's like, you know, like his maternal grandfather's name or something like that. So that's like a Mueller fun, but then but his name is like, you know, birdie, Mueller. Like where's Ferris come from? I don't know.
It's the name I've never heard before or since. Yeah. It's crazy. All right.
Let's get into casting. If you have any other trivia that comes up, you can blur it out, whatever, but we'll move on. So a lot of times you'll have these sort of weird casting things or casting stories like not just that came in from audition, but you know, some weird thing happened and by fate, this person got this thing. I didn't really have, I didn't see much of that for this movie.
It was pretty straightforward stuff. Other than like your comment where Anthony Michael Hall claims that he was Ferris Mueller, you know, that's a very different way. He says that. Yeah.
But John Hughes says, I wrote this for Matthew Braback like I didn't in my own time. Who knows whatever. Right. But so which we are reporting this on Matthew Braback's 58th birthday.
So happy birthday Ferris. So the part was written for Braback. So I have nothing really. It is hard to believe if he's 58, the part he was playing, he was 18.
So 40? He was no, he was he was a 24 to five. No, the part he was playing was 18. Not how old he was playing the part.
I'm just saying, I mean, it's kind of like a 40 year stretch. It's just interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
So so Braback got the part for the lead and then Alan Rock who plays Cameron. He was doing blocks he blues with Matthew Braback. And his agent convinced the the he was or the production people to give him an audition because he worked well with Matthew Braback. They looked the same age even though he's six years older than Matthew Braback.
So he was almost 30? He turned 30 like just after the movie came out. Oh my God. So he's 29 or whatever when they were filming this.
So that's how he got the part was basically having worked with Braback right beforehand. The blocks he blues me. I don't know that movie very well. I mean, I've lost the blues.
Yeah. The movie that was the play. Oh, got it. They did the play on Broadway.
Movie came. Matthew Braback did the movie, but later. Okay. That's why I was confused.
I'm like, blocks he blues came first. Okay. Okay. That makes much more sense.
Okay. So Matthew Braback's 25, let's say 24, 25. Alan Rock is 29. Mia Sarah was 17 and 18 when she was filming.
Her first movie was legend with Tom Cruise. So she had had these two movies and then disappeared like did some stuff but nothing you would ever recognize. Did some stuff and then the last time we see her basically is in Time Cop in 1994 with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yeah.
This is a very legend and Time Cop were the only three references to her and any other. Yeah. She was working at Did some stuff, I guess, but there are nothing you would notice. So fun fact about Mia Sarah.
Fantastic. I found this one. She was married to Jason Connery, John Connery's son. They divorced and she is now married.
So she married Sean Connery's son. Got divorced and then she married Jim Henson's son. Oh, the Muppets. Brian Henson?
Yes, sir. I love that you know Jim Henson's son. Oh, he's a cool. Brian Henson is a filmmaker and he made a Muppets Chris Carroll and the movie that came up a couple years ago with Melissa McCarthy that everybody hated.
Oh, yeah. The Happy Time murders? Oh, yeah. Chris, the adult puppet movie that was highly offended everybody.
He directed that too. I forget if we go into Muppets territory, Eric's going to crash with trivia. Okay, so that's Roderick, Ruck, Mia Sarah. During production, onscreen, brother and sister, Ferris and Jeanne were dating.
They were? They started dating while they were filming the movie. Oh, I think I did know that. And they got engaged just before the movie came out.
It's fine. It's weird. Yeah. It's weird.
And they have very few scenes together. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. So here's another one.
So that happened. And then Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward play Ferris' parents. They met on set and eventually got married and had two kids. Well, Ferris' parents are actually married.