T H E N A I V E F I L M M A K E R

“Life moves pretty quickly, if you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it”.

The small line that shot Ferris Bueller to motivational speaker stardom and became the Live, Laugh, Love sign of 1986. Barbara Bush even using the line in her 1990 commencement address at Wellesley College.

In secondary school John Hughes was my favourite filmmaker. The Breakfast Club played a huge role in my deciding to become a filmmaker and Ferris Bueller became one of many fictional best friends. The missing link in my friendship group.

Sixth form college was an environment vastly different to school. Teachers were called by their first names; uniforms were a thing of the past and most importantly the only politics that seemed to exist was in the walls of the debate club.

The rules of John Hughes films no longer seemed to apply. I didn’t need a detention to bond with some unlikely friends, I didn’t need Ferris to persuade me to skip classes (I did that on my own) and it’s hard to paint your teachers as oppressive villains when they’re teaching you the subjects that you literally chose to be taught.

But years later nostalgia not only keeps me coming back to these films, but always gives me the same buzz now that I had when watching them for the first time. I am reminded of the happiness I felt when escaping into their cinematic universes.

But Ferris Bueller goes slightly further than nostalgia. The film instils you with Ferris’ own optimism. His idealistic world view becomes yours for 103 minutes.

By breaking the fourth wall Ferris makes you complicit in his actions, you’re coming along for the ride and you’re the fourth friend enjoying one last ditch day. With Ferris you drive a Ferrari, go sightseeing, catch a baseball game and gate crash a parade, it’s impossible to spend so much time with Ferris and the gang without becoming his best friend and absorbing his devil may care approach to life.

Cameron is the everyman of the film, he is all of us, riddled with pessimism and anxiety and rarely able to enjoy the moment. He needs Ferris the most, to remind him of the fun and adventure in life. Something that we are all guilty of forgetting. Which brings us back to the line that spoke to so many people “Life moves pretty quickly, if you don’t stop to look around, you could miss it!”.