On the off chance it's escaped your attention, I like films. I like all kinds of films. Horror, action, comedy, fantasy, thrillers, dramas and on rare instances even a western. I have a curious relationship with the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yes, that's a brave statement to make, I know, I'm a hero. You can sit down from your ovation now and let me speak so that you, too, may understand.
I'm also going to nonchalantly spoil the film here. In further addition I'm going to repeat some things that dozens of other people have gone over in the past, live with this, get through; I think you'll find it's worth it. If not the doors over there, you whiny cunt.
When I first saw the film, in my mid-teens, I thought it was a fantastic film about a teenager bucking the system and skipping school with his friends to live large in Chicago for one day. The ease with which he outsmarted anyone who dared get in his way (this wording is important) I found comedically and narratively satisfying. When it seems he's about to get busted by his jealous, uptight sister that satisfaction when she softens and realises he's not quite so bad after all (you, know after she hooked up with a grotty-looking drug dealer* in a police station) is a moment of dramatic tension that settles you in for the climax. I enjoyed the film, is what I'm getting at.
Now, fast forward the better part of twenty years. There I am, sitting in front of the television looking for something to watch and I stumble on the film in question. Now everything that I loved from my adolescent viewings is still there: the teen rebellion, the hapless determination of the teacher, the parking attendants fucking the trio over, the faint hope that one of Sloane's boobs will pop out in that hot tub bit. However something else started to edge its way into my adult brain, something that set the hackles of my grown up sensibilities quivering. I was still enjoying this film, but I couldn't shake the feeling of nebulous outrage that took me until the end of the film to pin down.
Ferris Bueller is a horribly entitled and over-privileged shitweed! The revelation was like being slapped in the face with the week old corpse of a dog. Almost everything he does in the film is hideously reprehensible in some way. The way he emotionally blackmails his best friend into going with him. Hacking the school's computer. He commits several kinds of fraud** including impersonating a police officer. Grand larceny and makes Sloane and poor, poor Cameron accessories. And he does it all with a cocksure smile on his face that says, "Yeah, man, I should be allowed to do this. Why should the law apply to me, I'm fucking awesome!" and lo, he gets away with every criminal act and every instance of horrendous psychological torture he inflicts on Cameron†.
My sense of outrage was only stoked further when I realised I still liked the fucking film! How can this be? My new viewing revealed to me that Ferris Bueller was a reprehensible slime ball who would happily destroy the lives of people around him as long as he got a laugh out of it. He's an avatar of the '80s yuppie culture and everything I hate about the modern world. I put it down to the charming storytelling of John Hughes (RIP) and the supporting cast of flawed and likeable characters. You know, with the obvious exception of Ferris Bueller and the need to tell us everyone likes him when there's really nothing redeeming about him.
As an aside, I was witness to one of the worst Freddie Mercury impersonators (or impersonator of any kind) ever this weekend. It got me wondering if the guy was taking some kind of bizarre revenge out on the late singer because of some kind of trauma. For some reason it got me thinking about this next bit.
In case no one's noticed, I consider myself something of a writer, these rambling, incoherent blog blabbings notwithstanding. I started thinking about Ferris Bueller's Day Off and what could be done with a sequel. I'd had the same thoughts for another John Hughes classic: Weird Science‡. I've even gone in a similar direction.
For this little bit of speculation, we begin with Ferris Bueller, twenty-six years later. He's been to college, got a degree and gone into the same line of work as his father (whatever that was – vague business man?), got married to Sloane, had a couple of kids, got divorced from Sloane and is now living with his girlfriend who is still in college and looks almost identical to Sloane. He's got a good life.
One day he comes back from work to find his teenage son waiting for him in the flat. Ferris's son, let's call him Tom after Ferris's father, is a lot like Ferris, in that he's confident, successful and has wanted for nothing in life. Ferris knows something's up and his suspicion is horribly realised when he finds the raped and strangled corpse of his wife on the floor. Tom says she reminded him of his mother.
Ferris begins to help his son dispose of the body, but as he goes about this he learns more and more about his son's secret life of sneaking around without Sloane's knowledge and murdering hobos, as well as possibly Ferris's parents and dealing drugs. Ferris realises Tom's even more of a sociopath than he ever was and has to make the decision whether to put an end to Tom's murderous ways or cover up for his son. Then he realises he'll go to jail too and decides to cover up the murder and help young Tom in the future. Cos he'll be fucked if he goes down for someone else's murder.
There you have it a Ferris Bueller sequel fitting for the character. I didn't say it was going to be comedy, did I?
* Bonus! Played by Charlie Sheen!
** Admittedly one of the instances of fraud is down to the mass gullibility of his school-age contemporaries in what must have been the worst school of all time, but it still all stems from him being a dicky wad of manipulative shit.
† I can't really count poor Sloane, because, while she shows every sign that she should be very intelligent, for most of the film she wanders around with an empty-eyed grin, passively going along with whatever Ferris suggests.
‡ This one actually stands up to my recent viewings, probably because it's fucking bonkers and the Ferris Bueller-type characters are the utter bastards they should be.
Will
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