Ferris: A Righteous dude

Jacob Skelton
Dr. Lawrence
Freshman English 2
April 25, 2011

Ferris: A Righteous Dude

Youth is an exceptionally tricky thing to define at best. After all, the image of youth is constantly changing so that what may represent youth culture today will not represent it tomorrow. However, there are exceptions to this never-ending cycle; there are representatives of youth that have survived the constantly shifting times to become synonymous with everything teenagers strive to be. Among these few exceptions is a movie made back in 1986, before I was born, and yet is still popular today, that movie is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What makes the movie so popular is the never ending charm of its lead character, Ferris Bueller, and the exceptional job that Mathew Broderick does while playing the character. Ferris Bueller has become an icon of awesomeness that continues to shine as a model of the ultimate teenager even today.

“Bueller,Ferris Bueller”

Bueller has a way of making even the most overused movie lines sound cool (see above example) and why not, James Bond is the stereotypical action hero, Ferris is just saying that he is every bit as awesome as Bond without being arrogant. Ferris has become more than a recognizable figure, he has become an icon, a symbol of what individual youth aspire to become. This is because of several reasons, but more prominently is how Ferris handles himself and how others view the actions that he does. It is because of this that Ferris well known charm continues to shine to this day.

Self-confidence is something that Ferris is overflowing with and when you overflow with something, it begins to affect anyone else within range, and in Ferris’s case this extends to everyone who has seen his movie. Mathew Broderick’s natural charm is what brings Bueller to life, and its the character that Broderick created that will live on as an icon. Everyone loves Ferris, it’s a love of attraction, because we all want to be like him because he is just awesome, he just has everything going for him. A most fitting quote in the movie about Ferris is made, it goes like this. “Oh, he's [Ferris] very popular Ed [Rooney]. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.” How true, even today within the new generations of youth people still know the name Ferris Bueller. Throughout the movie movie Bueller accomplishes feats that many students today would not attempt and did it with apparent ease. The foremost being that he skips school for a day off, now many can say that they skipped school, but I doubt they did it like Bueller did, which was to fool nearly everyone, including parents and the principal for a while, into believing he was sick. From there Ferris’s exploits only get more daring, in one particularly hilarious scene Ferris and his best friend Cameron, played by Alan Ruck, make a phony phone call to Principal Rooney and convince him that Ferris’s girlfriend, Sloane, just had her grandmother die and gets him to release her early so that she can join Ferris and Cameron on the day off.
(Rooney believes he’s talking to an adult) (Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane make their getaway)
Ferris’s exploits don’t stop there; in fact that’s just the warm-up to the rest of his day off. From there Ferris and the gang go on a sight seeing tour of Chicago, which is where this movie is set. However, those scenes do not do the justice of showing off Bueller’s incredible talent of getting away with doing things without ever being caught. I have two great examples that really show this off this talent, the first being the restaurant scene. Ferris and co. arrive at a very upper-crust French restaurant where Ferris pretends to have made a reservation. Unfortunately for Ferris the name he chose to use was Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, which of course makes the snooty maitre’d (see below) rather suspicious.

(the snooty maitre’d and one of his famous lines)

But this does not stop Ferris, instead he runs with it and in the end “convinces” the snotty guy that he is in fact Abe Froman by having Sloane call the restaurant and describing Ferris as he is. The facial expressions the maitre’d has after he’s been hoodwinked are hilarious, because now he’s forced to serve someone who he still hates, classic.

The final and greatest scene of Bueller’s day off is the parade. This scene is not difficult to explain, Ferris jumps onto a parade float and starts lip syncing music being played to the amusement of the crowd. With a song like “Twist and Shout” its no surprise that everyone there starting dancing to it, however there is actually more to this scene than what meets the eye. The truth is that nobody there actually knew a movie was being made, except the actors, so many of the scenes you see of people dancing are not fake, but real people shaking it up (IMDb).

(I think this pic explains itself dontcha think)

Now I have told you about the awesomeness of Ferris, so now lets see how others viewed him in the movie.
This picture (see above) does a nice job of summing up almost everyone’s feelings about Ferris, that is to say that in the one day that Ferris is sick his entire school, police station, and community rally around him to hope he gets better soon, much to the anger of some other characters. There are only a very few individuals who do not share the love for Ferris that everyone else does, actually by the end of the film Mr. Rooney is the only hater left. The most important of these haters to the movie plot are Ferris’s sister Jeanie and the Dean of Students, Principal Rooney. Jeanie, being the older sister of Ferris in the movie, hates him because he gets away with everything he does, while she always gets caught. By the end of the movie she stops being spiteful and starts being the nice sister towards her brother and actually helps him escape the grasp of Rooney. Ah yes, Rooney, Ferris’s “archenemy”, and the only one by the end of the film who still hates him, not including the snotty maitre’d guy as he didn’t know Ferris. Rooney was played by Jeffery Jones in a most amazing acting performance, one that makes you feel almost sympathetic for his always failed attempts to get the better of Ferris, almost.
Even today the name Ferris Bueller carries a weight with it, Mathew Broderick has stated that almost every day people will come up to him and ask him “is this your day off?” Ferris has become an icon not just to highschool students, which was the target audience, but to everyone who dreams of taking a day off to just enjoy life. Ferris has always been connected with the rebel figure, the one who breaks the rules so as to have some fun. When I first saw this film I was blown away by how incredible it was, Ferris was such an amazing guy that I instantly wanted to be like him, and I’m not alone in this feeling. When I entered the name Ferris Bueller into the online Urban Dictionary, I got definitions highlighting just how awesome he is and how he truly is a model for the ultimate teenager. Want more proof of Ferris’s stardom, in a speech given by then first lady Barbara Bush she quoted Ferris, “Find the joy in life, because as Ferris Bueller said on his day off, ‘Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’” The roaring applause afterwards is certainly worthy of Ferris. Ferris will continue to live on, not only as an icon of youth, but as a model of what we all wanted to be at the same age.

Works Cited

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off IMDb. IMDb. n.d. Web. 23 April 2011.
(Ferrari).Photograph. Car Club Blog. 14 May 2008. Web. 23 April 2011.
(Maitre’d). Photograph. Sugary Cynicism. 14 December 2010. Web. 23 April 2011.
Mathew Broderick (Edward Rooney). Photograph. Daily News. n.d. Web. 23 April 2011.
(parade scene). Photograph. Digital Polyphony. n.d. Web. 23 April 2011.
Picture of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Photograph. Listal.com. 15 May 2009. Web. 20 April 2011.
Save Ferris. Photograph. home.xnet.com. n.d. Web. 23 April 2011.
Bueller, Ferris. Urban Dictionary. n.d. Web. 27 April 2011.