How Editing Saved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Classic

“In our sal­ad days, we are ripe for a par­tic­u­lar movie that will linger, death­less­ly, long after the green­ness has gone,” writes the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in a recent piece on movies in the eight­ies. “When a friend turned to me after the first twen­ty min­utes of Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off, in 1986, and calm­ly declared, ‘This is the best film ever made,’ I had no cause to dis­agree.” Many of us react­ed sim­i­lar­ly, whether we saw the movie in its first the­atri­cal run or not — but we prob­a­bly would­n’t have, had the final prod­uct adhered more close­ly to writer-direc­tor John Hugh­es’ orig­i­nal vision. Such, in any case is the con­tention of the new Cin­e­maS­tix video essay above.

Incred­i­bly, says the video’s cre­ator Dan­ny Boyd, the Fer­ris Bueller screen­play “took Hugh­es less than a week to com­plete — and, by some accounts, just two nights, fin­ish­ing the script just as the Writ­ers Guild was about to go on strike, and just 36 hours after pitch­ing the movie to Para­mount with noth­ing but the tagline ‘A high-school­er takes a day off from school.’ ”

At the height of my own ado­les­cent Fer­ris Bueller-relat­ed enthu­si­asm, I actu­al­ly read it myself; all I remem­ber is appre­ci­at­ing that the mon­tage Hugh­es wrote of Fer­ris gath­er­ing up change from cook­ie jars and sofa cush­ions, set to Pink Floy­d’s “Mon­ey,” did­n’t make it into the final pro­duc­tion.

“Fer­ris Bueller’s first cut ran two hours and 45 min­utes and did­n’t work at all,” says Boyd, and its only hope lay in the edit­ing room. Luck­i­ly, that room was occu­pied by Paul Hirsch, edi­tor of Star Wars, Blow Out, and Foot­loose. The movie had to be not just cut down but rearranged into an order with which audi­ences — who’d already voiced their dis­plea­sure in test screen­ings — could con­nect. Ini­tial­ly, Fer­ris, Sloane, and Cameron’s trip to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go came last, after the parade scene in which Fer­ris gets up on a float. This may have felt right on the page, but it did­n’t on the screen: under­stand­ing that the parade “could­n’t be topped,” Hirsch and Hugh­es real­ized they had to fin­ish the tri­o’s excur­sion with it (and change up its score as well). Thanks to these post-pro­duc­tion inter­ven­tions, Fer­ris Bueller lives on in the pan­theon of mod­ern-day trick­ster gods.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Film­mak­ers Tell Their Sto­ries: Three Insight­ful Video Essays Demys­ti­fy the Craft of Edit­ing, Com­po­si­tion & Col­or

The Impor­tance of Film Edit­ing Demon­strat­ed by the Bad Edit­ing of Major Films: Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, Sui­cide Squad & More

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.