Special Report: Saving Ferris Butler (2026)

DB Frick and director Julius Olivas talk with Mike about Saving Ferris Butler, their scrappy, sub-$30,000 documentary chasing down the wildest claim in comedy history: that Ferris Butler, a fired 1980-81 Saturday Night Live writer and the mind behind the underground cable-access sketch show Waste Meat News, is the real inspiration for John Hughes's Ferris Bueller. Frick met Butler at a New York open mic fifteen years ago and spent years hearing him make the case; Olivas came aboard after directing Inky, his documentary on forgotten Hollywood ghostwriter Neil Gumbel, and dove into what turned out to be thousands of hours of archival footage. They talk assembling an unlikely roster of SNL alumni and insiders — Denny Dillon, Patrick Weathers, Hugh Fink, Tom "Bones" Malone — thanks to journalist Andy Haugland, tracking down the Del Close connection linking Butler to Hughes, and reuniting Weathers and songwriter Neil Levy on stage for the first time since 1983 at the film's sold-out 40th-anniversary premiere at the Quad Cinema. They also dig into Butler's late-life health struggles, his decades-long marriage to songwriting legend Beverly Ross ("Lollipop"), and why they think his story of scrappy, self-made outsider comedy is bigger than just one Ferris Bueller theory.Visit https://savingferrisbutler.com/ to find out more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth