‘We didn’t want him to be nailed!’: Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck on Ferris Bueller Day | Culture

Matthew Broderick, played Ferris Bueller

I did WarGames and Ladyhawke and was sent a lot of “teenage” episodes. At first I was worried about Ferris talking to the audience – I’ve done that in two plays and I didn’t want it to look like that’s all I could do. At this point, my assistant said: “You have been asked to do a John Hughes movie. You’re doing it.” I didn’t know much about John at the time but I kept hearing him referred to as the “Spielberg of teen films”.

I thought that Ferris didn’t have to try so hard, that things came easily to him. I wanted to be calm and selfish. We didn’t want him to be someone you wanted to punch. They are always dangerous and the guys who fail at everything.

After the audition, a girl’s comment was that she didn’t like Ferris because he “makes me do things I don’t want to do” so she removed the scene where I was trying to get Sloane (Mia Sara) not to come home and go have fun.

Alan (Ruck, played Cameron) and I have permanent hair because we’ve both been playing, Biloxi Blues. Considering the day the movie was made, if we could have, we’d all have crazy mullets, it wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary.

John can be a very difficult director. Most of the time, I’m doing his thoughts as carefully as I can but the scene where I’m alone in the house talking to the camera? We just make things. I picked up the clarinet and started playing because it was there and I pretended to play a lot. His intention was to change the words to be better but when John saw the picture he said: “I’m not doing that.”

Marilyn Vance (costume designer) and John came up with my dress. There’s a lot you don’t see. My socks had all kinds of flags on them. The Rabbit’s Foot in my pocket was there. John thought that Ferris’s leather jacket should be simple, like James Dean’s red jacket but we went a different way. The beret was my idea.

The show was great. We shot a reality show the other week, then we shut down again. They had a radio contest to be in a John Hughes movie and 10,000 people showed up. It felt real. Dancing window washers? The camera guys just saw them. They grabbed whatever they could.

I spent a few weeks with songwriter Kenny Ortega but I blew out my knee doing it backstage running shows. It made dancing spontaneous. When John is in the distance, a loud speaker shouts: “Do something!” I was scared but when everyone made you happy, I felt like I was the king of the world.

When John was alive, I always thought, “Maybe we’ll do it again?” but too much time passed. What happened to Ferris? He is charming and creative but he may have turned into his father. That’s what most of us do.

Alan Ruck, played by Cameron Frye

John Hughes originally thought of Anthony Michael Hall or Emilio Estevez for Ferris but he wanted to go for something different so he wisely cast Matthew. We used to play together, Biloxi Blues. In another conflict, he writes in his book that we should be smooth. One night, he shook me. I open my eyes and he shows me his book. It said: “They gave me Ferris Bueller.”

The officials didn’t want to see me because I was 28 years old and they thought I was too old. My agent said: “They play opposite Broderick every night. They look the same age.” I tried it and they thought, “This will work,” but they didn’t give it to me right away. Matthew’s manager continued to put the idea in Yohane’s ear, saying: “Matthew wants to work with Alan.” That got me a long way. Matthew and I were friends before. We didn’t have to make that up.

I always feel like I’m outside of life. Besides having Ferris as his best friend, Cameron is also out, I thought because of his oppressive home life. He was not free and easy. It was also easy to use.

Matthew has a fondness for pictures of comedy shows and video games. We were big Richard Pryor fans and he knew every routine. He can do monologues Tony Montana from Scarface and confuse me. Biloxi Blues leader Gene Saks would get mad at us for just browsing. Matthew used to follow his example backstage, saying: “I can’t believe you’re a soldier in World War II!” When John told me to come up with a word of authority to Sloan’s father, I was imitating Matthew, imitating Gene. I did this to see if I could make Matthew laugh – and it did.

I honestly can’t remember what was going through my head during the photo shoot. I had a few losses and tragedies in my life, as we all do and I have experienced some of them.

We had three cars. One was severely suspended for exercise. The one we were driving had an electrical problem. When we picked up after the parade, we would do the same thing and it wouldn’t start. We took 16 minutes. When we sent the third one to fly out the window, the whole team was very happy.

There was a time when I didn’t want anything to do with the movie. I was struggling to get a job and everyone kept talking about Ferris Bueller. I thought it was as good as it gets for me. As soon as I started working again, I started to appreciate it. My joke is that Cameron’s father came home and threw them out the window. The rest of the day wasn’t fun, but maybe things worked out. Maybe now he’s a lawyer in Chicago.