‘Ferris Bueller’ celebrates middle age at Gun Bun

GunBun to screen ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’|

“Life moves pretty fast,” begins one of the most famous movie lines of all time, continuing with, “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Teenage truant Ferris Bueller may not have been the first streetwise philosopher to have suggested this notion. But thanks to John Hughes’s hit 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he is arguably the most famous. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the landmark movie, Gundlach Bundschu Winery is offering fans a chance to take their own evening off, and catch the film in an outdoor screening on the winery grounds.

Written in less than a week, filmed in Chicago in just under three months, the film made Broderick a star in the title role. Together with 1984’s “Sixteen Candles” and 1985’s “The Breakfast Club,” the filmic triumvirate established Hughes as the king of psychologically satisfying teenage-themed crowd-pleasers.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” released with little fanfare on June 11, 1986, earned $70 million on a budget of just over $5 million. Crammed with scenes in which the inventive, amoral, and profoundly lucky Ferris gets away with everything short of murder, the movie hit a chord among angst-ridden youth and nostalgic adults alike. “Ferris” was reportedly so beloved by film critic Richard Roeper that he had a license plate proclaiming SVFRRIS. That’s a reference to the “Save Ferris” campaign thrown by his classmates when he claims to be sick – a ruse so that he can take a day off to show his depressed friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) that life, when you pay attention, is always worth living.

Though the aforementioned “Life moves fast” line may be among the most famous of the ’80s, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” contributed at least one more to the annals of all-time great film quotes. It comes at the very end of the film, after the final credit has run, when Ferris appears on screen one last time to gently scold the audience for not having already gone home.

Like all of this classic homage to teenage optimism, it’s well worth catching one more time.

Email David at david.templeton@sonomanews.com.

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.