The Bold Survive: The Race To Pull Off The World's Biggest Ferris Bueller Celebration

In Chicago on a Monday in mid-May, David Blanchard is running late. He’s rushing to a WGN radio interview to promote Ferris Fest, the ambitious event he’s throwing that weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Blanchard, 56, has platinum hair and is wearing black thick-framed glasses and a gray SAVE FERRIS T-shirt.

He is not nearly as unflappable as Ferris. The interview's supposed to be at 9 p.m., but at 8:55, he still hasn’t found a place to park. He lives in Los Angeles, where he worked as a movie trailer editor for 13 years, and he and his wife, Rebecca Sanchez, had gotten lost on Chicago's multi-level streets. When Sanchez finally pulls into a garage, the attendant there, a chill guy named Endale, tells them it’s not the right building for the radio station. “Don’t panic,” he says. “When you panic, you don’t do anything.”

At its most basic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is about a high school kid who skips school and doesn’t get caught. But that pretty simple plotline — supposedly John Hughes wrote the script in less than a week — isn’t what’s made it beloved for 30 years. Rather, it’s the spirit of Ferris, so perfectly embodied by a then-23-year-old Matthew Broderick, as someone who knows how to really appreciate life that’s resonated. “Life moves pretty fast,” he says at both the beginning and end of the movie. “If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

In truth, though, most of us probably live more like Cameron, Ferris’s best friend who frets and limits himself most of the time. “Pardon my French,” Ferris says, “but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.”

David Blanchard

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By 8:58 by Endale is escorting Blanchard up the escalator, through the building, and over the plaza to the entrance of the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue, where WGN is. He checks in at the front desk, red-faced and sweating, and checks back with the security guard 30 seconds later to make sure WGN knows he's there.

"I told them," the guard responds.

WGN host Justin Kaufmann appears seconds later, untroubled by Blanchard's lateness, but bothered by something else. "You're not a Chicagoan?" he says soon after they sit down in the studio. "I thought you were a Chicagoan this whole time." He repeats the question moments later on air.

"I've been to Chicago a lot," Blanchard says.

"The only reason I'm surprised about it is Ferris Bueller means so much to Chicagoans," Kaufmann says. "It was shot here. It's John Hughes. Everything about it is very Chicago. It's in our blood. And for someone who's not from Chicago to organize Ferris Fest, that's something. I would have assumed this was a Chicago project."

"We're not a big company. We're just fans. We had to come here and we had to do it."

"Well, we're doing it," Blanchard says. "We're not a big company or a big corporation or anything. We're not even connected with the city of Chicago planners. We're just fans. We're so super passionate about it. We had to come here and we had to do it."

When Blanchard conceived of Ferris Fest, he thought of it as a small bus tour with a few friends to spots around Chicagoland that were in the movie — a repeat of a trip he took with Sanchez in 2008. But when he decided see if any other fans wanted to come and sent a press release to 1,000 news outlets in February, it got more attention than Blanchard anticipated. In a few weeks, Ferris Fest sold over 320 three-day tickets at $300 each and secured a licensing deal with Paramount Pictures as well as support from brands like Hulu and Virgin Hotels. The event was written up from the Chicago Tribune to the New York Times, with Blanchard pledging to donate some proceeds to anti-bullying organizations.

What Blanchard and his small team are attempting this weekend, in a city they’re not all that familiar with, is one hell of a high-wire act: They’ve scheduled a bus tour with six coach buses each carrying around 50 people to the film’s most famous locations. They’ve signed on impersonators for Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane, who’ll re-enact scenes all along the bus tour, plus some memorable actors from the film, if not the ones most people would pay to see. They’re re-creating Ferris’s bedroom — down to the fake snores — in a Chicago hotel. Perhaps most daunting of all, as a grand finale, they’re restaging the downtown parade that Ferris hijacks to perform Wayne Newton’s version of “Danke Schoen” and the Beatles' version of “Twist and Shout.”

To get as many people as possible to attend, they’ve created options besides the $300 all-weekend passes: 1,500 people bought $10 tickets to see Ferris’s bedroom and the parade. Others spent $50 to attend the kickoff ’80s dance, $25 to watch a screening followed by a Q&A with the cast, or $175 for a one-day bus tour.

And at this point, as he stands outside the studio texting his wife, it seems unlikely Blanchard and co. can pull this off. A group of fans who dearly love Ferris, but who have never planned anything on this scale before and don’t live in Chicago, are trying to re-create the film over three days in 10 locations, with the entire city watching. It's a bold proposition. But as Ferris tells Cameron: "Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive."

The Lockport Township High School marching band, who’d performed in the original film, dropped out three days before rehearsal. Lockport, the South Shore Drill Team — who were also in the original movie — the girls who will dance on the float, and the impersonators had scheduled an all-day practice the Sunday before the fest, until Blanchard found himself without a band. “It's been phone call city,” he had told me four days earlier from Los Angeles. “They were in the movie and that was a big point, and now it’s like, ‘Ugh.’”

Blanchard’s set on bringing in players from the original whenever possible, even if it makes more work for him. His goal is to immerse attendees in what Cameron calls “the best day of my life,” with as many references and nods to the film as possible.

Ferris Fest is far from the first of its kind. Lebowski Fest started out as scrappy bowling alley party in Louisville with diehards dressed in character and drinking White Russians. Today it’s approaching its 15th anniversary and has been held in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Seattle. Blanchard saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off four times in the theater in 1986, but this is not really about his own fandom or obsession — although quitting your job in your mid-50s to start a business for which you have little training is a bigger homage to Ferris Bueller's spirit than any cosplay ever could be. Using Ferris Fest as a springboard, he is building a company called “Filmed Here” to put on similar re-creations. He’s thinking about hosting a bigger John Hughes festival next.

But for today, he’s focused on Ferris, canceling the rehearsal and scrambling to find a new band. “There’s no time to practice with them now,” he says from L.A., so “I’m just going to gather them around a table with some cars to show them how this is going to go.”

There is some good news: The float company, ABC Parade Floats, is letting the dancers and impersonators practice in its warehouse, so Blanchard no longer has to pay $1,000 to get the float to the practice field. Ferris Fest has a few sponsors, but for the most part, “the ticket sales are paying for putting this on,” Blanchard says. “We have a certain budget we need to stick to.” He declined to disclose the fest’s total budget, saying he’d prefer to keep it private.

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So on Tuesday at 4 p.m., six high school girls in German dance costumes, a guy in an animal-print vest, another in a Gordie Howe Red Wings jersey, and a girl in a suede fringe jacket are all in a cramped, cold float factory on Chicago’s South Side.

The six fräuleins are dressed in low-cut lace shirts with tight sleeves, corsets, floral skirts with white aprons, white knee-highs, and loosely tied ribbon chokers. They’re moving around the lower tier of the float, running through the “Twist and Shout” number. The choreographer, Lee Ann Marie, a tiny blonde in wedge-heel boots, has done this routine before: She danced on the float with Broderick in the movie. As she puts the girls through their paces, she bounces and mouths the words to the songs. “It pains me not to do it," she says.

The Ferris mobile has been pulled out from the back of the warehouse, where ABC has 26 other floats in progress, but space is still tight. When the dancers leap, their heads graze the hanging florescent bulbs. After their hops cause the float to rebound violently, Blanchard jokes, “Yes, we have insurance.”

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After the run-through, Marie says, "Who had a problem?"

All six girls raise their hands.

"Oh, everyone had a problem,” she says. “Let's go through them one by one."

The float was a major expense at $4,500, but it’s a stellar replica. It should be: ABC Floats built the original. The new one’s a little shorter and narrower, but the key decorations are there. It’s covered in fake grass, and outlined with pink and purple flowers in the front, short evergreen trees near the back, and American flags at both ends. Later, they will add a Hulu banner to its front.

Hank Fiene, who’s standing near the back of the warehouse, helped build the original, but, unlike Marie, he isn’t feeling nostalgic. This is the fourth Ferris float he’s done — another one was for Virgin when it opened its Chicago hotel (Richard Branson rode on top). “It’s a job,” he says.

The plan is for ABC Floats' Thomas Neary to drive the float in the parade. He’s in his forties, but he’s never seen the movie. "When we did the Virgin launch,” he says, “I watched a little because I wanted to see what they'd be doing on top of me, but I haven't seen it and I'm not going to watch it."

Where exactly Neary is supposed to drive the float is a secret — for now. The original parade went down Dearborn Street, but for logistical reasons this one isn’t going to. Attendees won’t be emailed the location until a few hours before the event. This is the idea Blanchard and the city came up with to control the crowd and prevent freeloaders from camping out in the best seats. “That's sort of the plan, to make it so that it's not a huge mob scene, and to give people the opportunity and the time to get there,” Blanchard says.

Of course, that plan doesn’t account for annoyed ticket holders, or curious passersby, or someone spilling the address early. It’s about 8:30 p.m., and the ABC Floats guys have opened a bottle of red. Marie is giving the fräuleins their final instructions: tasteful eye makeup, push-up bras. She says she'll let them know where to get dropped off for the parade Sunday as soon as she can.

"You mean, you don't know where it's going to be?" one of the fräuleins asks.

"No, no one does," Marie says.

Neary is listening. "It's at Daley Plaza," he says. "Everyone knows that."

"No, no they don't," Blanchard jumps in hurriedly.

Marie tells the girls not to tell anyone what they just heard. “Pretend you’re working for a magician,” she — a former assistant to David Copperfield — says, “because magicians don't like when you say any of their secrets.”

Sloane and Cameron are on Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago, where the Von Steuben German Day parade is passing by. They’re looking for Ferris, who has disappeared.

“Cameron, he didn’t ditch us or anything. He’s here,” she says, as they search.

“For all we know, he went back to school,” he says.

“He would not go back to school,” Sloane says.

“Yeah, he’d do it. He’d do it just to make me sweat. Makes me mad,” Cameron says.

Blanchard was supposed to be in Ferris’s bedroom three hours ago, but no one can find him. The room has to be ready for media previews in less than 12 hours, but there’s almost nothing inside. The designer, Sarah Keenlyside, is MIA too.

The movie set's bedroom was on a soundstage, but this re-creation is being built in the private dining area of the downtown Virgin Hotel, a space called The Casting Room that has curtain-covered walls, velvet chairs, and vintage gold stage lights. Currently it still looks more like a swanky lounge than a teen boy’s haven. Only the four fake walls, inset with two doors and three Venetian-blind-covered windows, are up. There’s an unopened Ikea Fjellse twin bed frame on the floor and three boxes labeled “Ferris” (one of them contains a dartboard and a tennis racket).

When Keenlyside arrives at 9:30, it turns out she had to make an emergency run to the nearest Ikea, 40 minutes away. It’s her second trip today. She and Blanchard’s team went earlier, but forgot the wall unit they need for Ferris’s TV and stereo. “I thought I'd delegated someone to grab it, but they didn't,” she says. Keenlyside, who’s an artist and filmmaker, is easygoing, wearing a rainbow scarf, black printed leggings, and sneakers. She’s dreading putting together the Ikea furniture, but is undaunted by how late it is and how much work she still has to do. “I've done it before,” she says. “If I have to stay up till 6 a.m., I will. I've got a couple of Red Bulls.”

She shipped most of Ferris’s stuff from Toronto, where she lives and first re-created the room in an experimental art show called Come Up to My Room. A mutual friend introduced her to Blanchard.

Paramount Pictures

Not everything is authentic — Ferris’s parents didn’t shop at Ikea — but “the things that bring out the nostalgia factor are there,” Keenlyside says. Up in her hotel room, she has an IBM 5150 (it displays Ferris’s report card, programmed in green type, showing his missing nine days), a broken E-mu Emulator II keyboard (fixing it so she could have programmed in Ferris’s death coughs would have cost thousands), and a mannequin to tuck in the bed (like in the movie, it will be on a pulley system so it moves when the door opens). And of course, there’s a snore track.

She had Ferris’s original TV, but it broke so she’s planning to buy one that’s close enough on Craigslist in the morning (she has the MTV station IDs shown in the beginning of the movie prerecorded). “That's the nail-biter right now,” she says. “That's the cliffhanger. I'm like, ‘Jeez, am I going to get this TV?’”

The room is still empty, so Keenlyside starts searching for Blanchard, who’s supposed to help her put together the furniture. She even calls the documentarian she’d been traveling with to see if Blanchard is with him. Finally Blanchard appears, looking dazed and exhausted. He’s ready to help but first he has to call the guy who’s bringing up a replica of Cameron’s dad’s 1961 Ferrari. He tries to be enthusiastic. "Can’t wait to see your Ferrari!" he says before hanging up.

“It’s hard to say what happened in the last four hours,” he says wearily. “There’s a lot of balls in the air."

Blanchard’s feeling more confident tonight, waiting on Wabash Avenue in front of the Virgin Hotel to greet the actors he’s enlisted for the fest. “I’m having fun again,” he says. “Yesterday was not fun.”

All of the actors have traveled together from Los Angeles on the festival’s dime. Anyone on that morning’s Virgin Flight 232 from LAX to O’Hare would have seen iconic Ferris characters in first class: Edie McClurg (Grace the secretary), Lyman Ward (Ferris’s dad), Cindy Pickett (Ferris’s mom), Jonathan Schmock (the snotty maître d'), and Larry “Flash” Jenkins (a garage attendant who steals the Ferrari).

No one recognized them on the plane, but at the baggage claim Jose Taveras, 27, who’d come to Ferris Fest from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, saw them and bugged out. “I thought, What an amazing thing," Ward says. “It's humbling that someone would come that far and be that enthusiastic.”

Everyone walks through the hotel restaurant and into the re-creation of Ferris’s room, where Keenlyside — despite having been up till 5 a.m. — is still taping up some black-and-white shots of Buddy Holly. The cast is delighted; Ward and Schmock take pictures with their phones.