NEED TO KNOW
Despite his charisma and composure on screen, Matthew Broderick wasn’t fully confident heading into Ferris Bueller’s Day Off due to one thing: his dancing.
Choreographer Kenny Ortega shares that Broderick, who played the titular character in the 1986 cult classic, was nervous to film the famous parade scene.
“Matthew, the first day I laid eyes on him was in a rehearsal,” Ortega told Entertainment Tonight in a recent interview.
“He was in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and he was a nervous wreck. He was like, ‘I’ve never danced before,’ and I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna figure this out together.’ ”
Mike Coppola/Getty
Despite the then-23-year-old’s nerves, Ortega said “he was the most charming, wonderful, sweet man to work with.”
The scene involved Broderick joining a parade and leading the dancers and crowd through a performance of “Twist & Shout” and “Danke Schoen.”
Along with choreographing the scene, Ortega — who also worked on High School Musical, Xanadu, and Madonna’s “Material Girl” music video, to name a few — also acted as a second unit director on the film.
“That was my first directing assignment for a motion picture,” Ortega said of the John Hughes comedy. “And he gave me 12 cameras. We moved the float into a real parade. And then we got one take. It was such a magical day, and working with Matthew Broderick.”
The movie follows Ferris, played by Broderick, now 63, as he and his perpetually pessimistic friend Cameron Frye, played by Alan Ruck, embark on the most epic high school skip day ever, ditching class to spend time in downtown Chicago.
Ortega, 75, also met Jennifer Grey on set of the teen comedy. The pair went on to work together on Dirty Dancing.
Paramount/Getty
While there were lots of moving parts in the parade scene, Mia Sara, who starred as the iconic cool girl Sloane Peterson, also previously said it was her favorite.
“I had so much fun doing that parade scene,” Sara recalled when talking to PEOPLE in June 2025.
“That was so crazy. Because we would do the dance and then we’d get in a van and they’d drive us blocks away, and the camera would go, and then we’d do the dance again and wait for Matthew to pass,” she explained.
“And so it was just this crazy… let’s catch it as many times as we can. So that was a great moment.”
