'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' Turns 25

Happy Anniversary to one of the great teen comedies of all time, 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.' In honor of today's 25-year milestone, our pals at Moviefone had a chat with Edie McClurg -- who played the hit film's hilarious school secretary Grace -- about working with Matthew Broderick, Jeffrey Jones and the late John Hughes. Turns out, she's a righteous dude.

What makes 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' so timeless?
McClurg: I think it's the anarchy of taking the day off, and how much fun you can have. He wasn't a bad kid. It was a beautiful day and they knew they'd be going to different schools after they graduated. It's the end of the semester. You know how you get itchy. I think that's what people really identify with.

Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck had been in the Broadway production of 'Biloxi Blues' together. They knew each other so well. It was a long run on Broadway, so they became very close friends. When the movie came up, Matthew had a good reputation already, and he suggested Alan for the best friend role and it was perfect. The people who played his mom and dad, they actually met and got married.

In the scene where you list all the different groups of kids who like Ferris, was it hard to keep from laughing?
Well, it was very hard to memorize that list, so I had put "and" in between, you know, to try and pair them up. I really had to concentrate when I was doing that....I said "the dweebies and dickheads, sportos and bloods" because that was the way I was able to memorize it, and I had to take out the "ands." [Hughes] said, "No, no, just the list." I did it in one take.

Did you know what all those words meant?
Well, dweebies are nerdy guys, dickheads are guys who are always mouthing off and messing around, sportos play sports, bloods are [in gangs].... I don't remember. I knew at the time, but it was a long time ago!

Did Jeffrey Jones, who played Principal Rooney, ever improvise?
He was petrified. [Laughs] He was used to a script. He was a stage actor....And John Hughes loved improvisers. So when we had done everything that was written, John Hughes said, "Okay, now let's just do some going back-and-forth between the offices." And Jeffrey's eyes got really wide, and he said, "What are we going to do?" and I said, "We're just going to play a game called 'Help, Hinder.' It'll look like I'm helping you, but I'm going to be hindering your progress. So whatever way I'm going, you go in the opposite direction and I'll produce obstacles for you to get around." So he says, "Okay."

We started out with the phone thinking it's the father of the girl....and I'm looking through the pieces of paper and getting in behind him and he's trying to get away from me and then he runs out, and he runs back in, and I run out and back and forth. And then we finished the scene, and everybody laughed, and John said, "Check the gate," which means, "That was perfect, let's move on."

That office scene was improvised?
Totally improvised.

Did you talk to your fellow actors after Hughes passed away?
I talked with Jeffrey right away and Alan Ruck, later. They had a midnight screening of 'Ferris' down on Hollywood Boulevard and we came and did a talk. But when he died, we were all just so shocked. His oldest son had just given birth to their first baby, and they were living in New York and [Hughes] came to New York to see the baby, and he went for a walk in the morning and fell dead on the street. Heart attack. It was so shocking. But the thing is, he was a chain smoker. I think he was 59 and then it was like, "You're gone." [Pause] So, never smoke.

In the past, you've talked about John staging the Ferris Bueller parade scene. Did you actually get to see them film it?
I was actually there. They brought me to Chicago as a rain scene, [meaning] they planned to do all outdoor shoot, but if rain happens, they have to have something else they can shoot. They can't just shut down, because that's just too expensive to have people sitting around waiting for rain to stop, so they have indoor scenes planned in case. They built the desk sets and bookcases and all that stuff in Chicago. I was there for a week, and then they were moving back to L.A. to do the indoor scenes, so they had to take everything they built for our two offices and pack it up, and ship it out to put it in this high school out in the West Valley. I said, "Wow. That's pretty expensive." They said, "Yeah, it costs $10,000." I said, "That's more than I'm being paid to be in the movie! The desk I'm sitting at costs more than my entire salary. I think that's wrong!" That's movies!

Over the years, are there any on-set details you've never mentioned?
They hired Mira Sara's hairdresser to do her hair, but he didn't know how to do any other kind of hair. I wanted to have the bubble hairdo. He didn't know how to do it. I said, "You pick up the hair, and you back comb it down...." He was pulling my hair. I said, "Give me the brush. I'll do it myself." So I did my own hair for the movie.

Grace's bubble hairdo was your idea?
Yeah....I didn't ask anybody, I just did it....I just decided I would do my hair like I was a woman from the 1960s, early '70s, and that's when women teased their hair and had big bubble hairdos. I walked on the set, and [Hughes] is just looking at me and we were gonna do the scene where I'm sitting at the desk, the first time you see me, and he said, "How many pencils do you think you can stick in there?" I said, "Let's just see." I put in one and leaned my head down and it stayed, so I put in another and leaned my head down, and it stayed and another and it stayed, and I put in a fourth one and leaned my head down and it fell. And I said, "I can hold three," and he said, "Okay, let's start with that." So he just had me going up into my hair and finding pencil after pencil. [Laughs]

It seems like Hughes was really collaborative.
He was totally not ego-filled with sharing ideas. He really wanted people to contribute. There was a whole group of us people that he used over and over again, and we were those small parts which would be not small characters, you know what I mean? We're memorable because he made us memorable.

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Source: http://www.popeater.com/2011/06/11/ferris-buellers-day-off-turns-25/

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