John Hughes would likely smirk, but you’ll smile.
The full commercial we told you about a few days back, in which Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller (the first time the actor has played the character since Hughes’ 1986 hit) plugs Honda’s CR-V, is online.
Todd Phillips, of “The Hangover” fame, wrote and directed the piece.
It’s fun, but not overly amusing- but then, it’s supposed to be about the car, not the funny bone. Best part of it? Broderick still has the Ferris Bueller thing down pat. Anyone else keen to see a sequel!? Come on Paramount!
And just for the record, there is a script doing the rounds for a “Ferris Bueller 2” – but it’s an uncomissioned spec that hasn’t landed on Paramount’s radar. I believe the writer, Rick Rapier, has contacted the powers-that-be, including Mr Broderick, about getting the script turned into a film – which would take place on Ferris’s 40th birthday; Cameron, of course, roped into his buddy’s mischievous doings again – but nothing’s really happened with it. One can only hope this commercial has refueled Broderick’s interest in reprising his legendary character and he gets the ball rolling on a sequel. Alan Ruck and Mia Sara are available to reprise Cameron and Sloan, Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen could make a reprise as Bueller’s sister and her criminal boyfriend, Edie McClurg and Ben Stein could be slotted in, and Jeffrey Jones… er, well, maybe Dean Rooney will have to sit this one out.
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is such a terrific film – just as most of Hughes’s movies are. And though, I believe, Hughes was initially disappointed that his go-to guy Anthony Michael Hall wouldn’t play Cameron (the “Sixteen Candles” and “Breakfast Club” actor had begun to fear the dreaded typecasting curse – ‘no more geeks!’) I’m sure his frown turned upside down once he bought Broderick into audition as Bueller. And, of course, Alan Ruck made for a great Cameron.
But Emilio Estevez was actually offered Cameron before Ruck, who had appeared with Broderick on Broadway in “Biloxi Blues”, was cast. “Every time I see Emilio, I want to kiss him,” said Ruck. “Thank you!”
Ruck, 29 at the time, said “I was worried that I’d be 10 years out of step, and I wouldn’t know anything about what was cool, what was hip, all that junk. But when I was going to high school, I didn’t know any of that stuff then, either. So I just thought, well, hell—I’ll just be me. The character, he’s such a loner that he really wouldn’t give a damn about that stuff anyway. He’d feel guilty that he didn’t know it, but that’s it.”
“My realization of John’s impact on the teen-comedy genre crept in sometime later. Teen comedies tend to dwell on the ridiculous, as a rule. It’s always the preoccupation with sex and the self-involvement, and we kind of hold the kids up for ridicule in a way. Hughes added this element of dignity. He was an advocate for teenagers as complete human beings, and he honored their hopes and their dreams. That’s what you see in his movies.”
In an interview from a few years back, Broderick mentioned the possibility of a sequel – – but he was never very keen on the idea.
“We thought about a sequel to Ferris Bueller, where he’d be in college or at his first job, and the same kind of things would happen again. But neither of us found a very exciting hook to that. The movie is about a singular time in your life.”
“Ferris Bueller is about the week before you leave school, it’s about the end of school—in some way, it doesn’t have a sequel. It’s a little moment and it’s a lightning flash in your life. I mean, you could try to repeat it in college or something but it’s a time that you don’t keep. So that’s partly why I think we couldn’t think of another,” Broderick added.
“But just for fun,” said Ruck, “I used to think why don’t they wait until Matthew and I are in our seventies and do Ferris Bueller Returns and have Cameron be in a nursing home. He doesn’t really need to be there, but he just decided his life is over, so he committed himself to a nursing home. And Ferris comes and breaks him out. And they go to, like, a titty bar and all this ridiculous stuff happens. And then, at the end of the movie, Cameron dies.”
Um, no. How about we do one now, guys!?
