NEED TO KNOW
For Alan Ruck, filming a scene during a Chicago Cubs game in the iconic ’80s teen movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off felt like “coming home.”
The 1986 film follows Ferris, played by Matthew Broderick, as he and his perpetually pessimistic friend Cameron Frye (played by Ruck) embark on the most epic high school skip day ever, ditching class to spend time in downtown Chicago. The day they skip? June 5, 1985 — exactly 40 years ago.
Hours after his parents leave for work, Ferris takes both Cameron and his girlfriend Sloane to Wrigley Field, where they catch a Cubs Game and he catches a foul ball bare-handed.
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In an interview with MLB.com, Ruck detailed how the scene was shot at a real Cubs game in September.
“They had us in the morning and we did the close-ups first of just Matthew and I and the people around us who are all extras,” Ruck told the outlet. “In fact, John Hughes’ two young sons — of course they’re probably close to 50 now — were sitting behind us.”
He continued: “I think we got some longer shots of Matthew holding the ball up and everything when some fans were allowed to filter in with us carnie trash.”
For Ruck (who attended the University of Illinois in nearby Champaign), it was a scene that imitated life in some ways.
“I had gone to many baseball games as a Chicagoan, as a Cubbies fan, going out to the bleachers, eating Smokies and drinking too much beer,” Ruck told the outlet “Even though I’m from Cleveland originally, Chicago is sort of my adopted city, and so [the movie] was kind of like coming home.”
While the scene filmed at Wrigley doesn’t last long, fans have deduced that it wasn’t actually filmed during the Cubs’ June 5, 1984 game — but instead was filmed during the Cubs’ Sept. 24, 1985 game against the Montreal Expos (in real life, the Expos won 17-15, MLB.com points out).
Ruck, for one, isn’t surprised that fans were able to narrow down when the scene was shot.
“I mean, there are fanatics in every walk of life,” he told the outlet. “There are movie geeks, just like there’s sports geeks and everything else. So actually, no, it doesn’t surprise me, especially after all this time, that somebody somewhere would have gone to the trouble to find out absolutely everything there is to know about that movie.”
