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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of the greatest comedies of all time, directed by the legendary John Hughes. This generation-spanning classic captured the rebellious spirit of Ferris Bueller like no other. But did you know Hollywood tried to turn it into a TV show? When a Ferris Bueller TV pilot was announced, fans were curious but skeptical. However, to no one's surprise, the show was so bad that it was canceled almost immediately.
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This is television
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You'd probably think what you just saw was supposed to appeal to people who hated the
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John Hughes comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is why it's so bizarre to find out that
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the character beheading Ferris Bueller is also Ferris Bueller, though he's actually the TV
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version, and having him take a chainsaw to his filmic counterpart was a surprisingly honest
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visual metaphor for everything the show was about to do to the movie. Written and directed by John
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Hughes, already famous for making genre-defining teen movies like 16 Candles and The Breakfast Club
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Ferris Bueller's Day Off hit theaters in 1986. Played by Matthew Broderick, Ferris is a cool
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high school senior with a flair for manipulating people, a distaste for rules and authority figures
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and a habit of breaking the fourth wall to explain his thoughts to the audience
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I quote John Lennon, I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me
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A good point there. Doted on by his parents and having achieved folk hero status at a school
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Ferris is beloved by pretty much everyone. Sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, d**kheads
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They all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude. Except his resentful younger sister, Jeannie, and his school principal, Edward R. Rooney
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Despite being a bit of a slacker, Ferris also has a natural zest for life
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which stands in sharp contrast to his best friend Cameron, played by Alan Ruck
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Cameron is a sweet but depressed hypochondriac who lives in fear of his father
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and seems incapable of experiencing any real joy. The titular day off finds Ferris prodding Cameron into leaving his sick bed
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and then into helping Ferris steal Cameron's father's prized Ferrari. My father spent three years restoring this car
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It is his love. It is his passion. It is his fault he didn't lock the garage
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Along with Ferris' girlfriend Sloane, they head into downtown Chicago, where Ferris takes them to view great works of art at a museum
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a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and to a parade where Ferris sings Donka Shane as well as twist and shout to the whole city As the story unfolds we learn that the day off is actually something of an informal intervention for Cameron If anybody needs a day off it Cameron He has a lot of things to sort out
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before he graduates. Ferris is worried about his friend's future. He wants to show Cameron that
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there are amazing things in this world, and that he can't let petty authority figures stop him from
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experiencing them. In the end, Cameron has a catharsis over his relationship with his father
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and resolves to stand up to him after accidentally destroying the Ferrari
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Ruck's memorable performance makes Cameron the heart of the film, and the outcome emotionally justifies Ferris' antics
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The movie was embraced by audiences. It became the 10th highest earning film of 1986
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and would be enshrined as something of an instant classic for Generation X
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That's why it's not surprising that, in 1990, someone decided to try and remake it as a TV series
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Unfortunately, that someone was not John Hughes. None of the film's original actors would be returning either, so every role had to be recast
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including Ferris. And that was no simple feat. It was Broderick's uniquely gentle charm and measured performance that kept the devious
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character from ever seeming too smug, Do you have a kiss for daddy? Are you kidding
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or villainous on the big screen. Though the part was created with Anthony Michael Hall in mind, even Hughes was well
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aware of what Broderick brought to the table. In his own words, certain guys would have played Ferris, and you would have thought
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where's my wallet? I had to have that look, that charm had to come through
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It was eventually revealed that the TV version of Ferris would be played by Charlie Schlatter
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then best known for co-starring with George Burns in the long-since-forgotten 1988 body swap movie
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18 Again. But when the pilot debuted on NBC in August of 1990
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it only took a few minutes to see that the new Ferris was everything Hughes was afraid the character would be without Broderick
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The episode begins with Ferris breaking the fourth wall to explain that he's the real Ferris
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and that the movie was based on his life. I'm Ferris Bueller, and I've never changed mine
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Once they put me up on the big screen, I was out of the question. Schlatter Ferris is instantly unlikable Then comes what might be the single most incompetent attempt to take advantage of goodwill surrounding an iconic character in the history of television The script has Ferris insult Broderick by calling him
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He's too white bread. And then, For any Ferris Bueller fans who didn't tune out after the bizarrely alienating attack
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the show then offers a brief look at the new versions of Ferris' parents
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and his sister, Jeannie. Played by Jennifer Aniston in one of her earliest roles
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TV Jeannie actually turns out to be one of the few bright spots of the pilot
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You can pull the wool over their eyes, but not mine. Then we get the opening credits
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Possibly meant to evoke the vibe of Oh Yeah by Yellow, which was used prominently in the film
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the theme song is so bad it verges on parody. The embarrassingly cheesy-looking sequence it scores
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uses a green screen to let Ferris interact with animated text. It's cheap and shoddy-looking, even for the era
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Ferris then heads to school, where we meet the new Cameron. Played by Brandon Douglas
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TV Cameron is about as far from being the emotional center of things as he could be
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He plays pretty much no part in the story. The new Sloan, played by Amy Dolenz, then gets her
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own terrible introduction. Ferris asks her out on a date, and she obnoxiously checks to verify
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he has a car before accepting. Do you have a car? You're talking to him or to me. Written by John
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Macias, who had previously won an Emmy for his work on the medical drama Saint Elsewhere
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the pilot reimagines Ferris' world as a totally generic sitcom. Ferris, Cameron, and Sloan are
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never even allowed to be on screen together. But worst of all, the show is mostly just Ferris
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invincibly and effortlessly dominating all aspects of his school and the people in it
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a reputation the movie establishes, but also hence is likely exaggerated. See, we're collecting money to buy Ferris Bueller a new kidney
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They run about 50 Gs or so, so if you could help out. Go piss up a flagpole
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It makes him impossible to root for, and he comes off feeling more like a charmless version
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of kiddie Ferris Bueller clone Zach Morris from Saved by the Bell than like the effortlessly cool
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wise beyond his years character embodied by Broderick. TV Ferris is also petty, and he seems
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to get off on hurting people Rooney does get badly beat up in the movie but while it easy to forget none of the suffering he experiences is actually Ferris fault Though movie Ferris isn exactly a good person
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he also never really hurts anyone directly. The worst thing we ever see him do is briefly act superior to a snooty maitre d
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while assuming the identity of, I'm Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago
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TV Ferris does things like dropping Rooney through a trapdoor while he's on stage before the assembled class
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and using his computer to hack into the police system and increase his sister's bail after she's wrongly arrested for car theft
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Regardless of everything else that's wrong with the adaptation, and to be honest, this video is really only long enough to skim the surface in that department
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the show's egregious misunderstanding of Ferris' character doomed it from day one
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Riding high on name recognition, the pilot scored big in the ratings
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and once people saw what the show had to offer, they stopped watching real fast
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As early as episode four, NBC indicated the series was in danger of getting the axe
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It was ultimately allowed to air all 13 episodes ordered before quietly being canceled for its low ratings
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But it didn't have to be that way. The same year, Fox debuted an incredibly similar show
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called Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Clearly influenced by the Ferris Bueller movie
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Parker Lewis was a well-written show with likable characters and a lot of heart
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Even Schlatter himself would later say of the Ferris Bueller series, it wasn't very good
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We needed to be doing what they were doing with Parker Lewis Can't Lose. It ran for three seasons
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and prove that a more creatively successful version of Ferris Bueller might have had a shot
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Only four years later, CBS struck out with their attempt to make the classic 1982 Amy Heckerling
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teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High into a TV series without the original cast or creative team
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And that might be because the characters from iconic teen movies that we bond with
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can wind up feeling like real friends. Recasting them isn't emotionally the same as recasting a bigger-than-life franchise hero
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like James Bond or Batman, meaning regardless of quality, these particular kinds of TV adaptations
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lacking their original stars, might just be all but guaranteed failures. Hey, see you next week
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And can you try dressing a little better? Because if you're gonna hang out with Ferris Bueller
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you better show a little style