I had to cover for a Year 11 class this afternoon, and was told that once I had made sure they had the notes they needed, I could just put on a DVD. (Their final week, and actual hard work is a slim possibility.)

So, having got their attention for a full five minutes, I started up Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1984). I didn't tell them what it was going to be, despite repeated requests. When the title finally showed up, I expected a few Ah-yeah-Ferris-Buellers, or even perhaps one or two oh-I've-seen-this-one-loads-of-timeses.

My heart sank when they looked utterly blankly at the screen, and then at me. I asked who had seen it or even heard of it, and not a single student out of a class of about twenty-five to thirty sixteen-year-olds had even so much as heard of the film.

When I was at school, everyone knew Ferris! It was the movie you never grew tired of, a film teenagers everywhere loved and cherished. Ferris was an icon to my generation.

Where did it all go wrong for this lost generation???

Fascinating!

If they're 16, then they were born two years after Ferris debuted. Their first movie (at 6) could have been The Lion King. They probably idolize those movies from the last six years, from 1998 onwards.

Think back to when you were 16, and try to remember as many films as you do now. You might not have been into movies, except for little kiddie fare. I wasn't even really aware of the Academy Awards until I was, say, twelve.

Did they watch the whole film? Did they like it? Were they distracted by 80s fashions?

Nick

Sadly, the sound quality of the DVD was below-par, and I had to replace it with a video. In a way I was relieved, 'cause the pain of seeing this generation completely reject Ferris Bueller might have been too much for me.

Btw, this thread was really more a reflection on me realizing I am grown-up now than an indictment on today's teens for not knowing Ferris.

How funny--and how different from my own Sunday School students. We had a lock-in a few weeks ago and one of the movies they wanted to see was Ferris Bueller. They had, for the most part, seen it before and liked it. And most of them are in their early teens.

Personally, I find the movie funnier now than I did as a teenager. I was a little like Ferris' sister and found Ferris and his charmed life more than a little irritating. Though I loved Cameron--and still do!


--Teresa

About eight or so years ago, I taught a seventh-grade catechism class at my church. It's an age I like working with because they're old enough to be reasoned with but not too old to be intimidated.

Anyway, at one point I was using a movie analogy from Back to the Future -- and fortunately the kids did know the film -- and so I said, "...so Marty goes to see Doc Brown in 1955 for help getting back to the present."

And then I added, "Well, not the present -- 1985."

And then it occurred to me to add, "...that probably seems like a really long time ago, doesn't it?" (It was only the mid-nineties at the time, so to ME 1985 was just a little way back there....)

And one of the kids goes, "I was two."

Check.

And then, a couple of years later, I was teaching another class of seventh-graders, and had recourse to the same analogy -- and, just for fun, I told them the story about the reaction I had gotten from the earlier class of seventh-graders.

And one of them goes, "Why were they in seventh grade? Were they left back?"

...because, of course, THESE kids had only just been born in 1985. So how could any seventh-graders have been two years old in that year?

So I had to point out that THOSE seventh-graders were now freshmen in high school.... (I refrained from raising the question whether any present seventh-graders maybe ought to have been left back)...

Postscript: I have no idea what point I was making with Back to the Future... although I'm sure if you sat me down with a class of seventh-graders it would come back to me eventually.

Now, were you trying to make a serious comment in your irony? In other words, are you a Ferris fan, or would you seriously suggest it's an unwholesome film for kids to view?

FWIW, Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of my 18-year old's favorite films. I think she discovered it 2-3 years ago, and it was one of her first purchases. She has shared it widely, so I guess there are pockets of well-educated kids here in Edmonton...

(I could add that I didn't find it very funny when I watched it again with her last year; since she was struggling with school/life, and some of the issues cut a little close to home. I did feel a bit like it reinforced her devil-may-care attitude about schoolwork.)

Confession....


I have never seen it (and I was 9 in 1984)



(Nearly goit it out on video the other day though)


Matt

It was released in 1986. I remember because I saw it on the first day of Grade 12, to get myself in the proper mood for my last year of high school.

Plus, as I recall, this was the first teen "comedy" that John Hughes had produced, after making more serious teen films like The Breakfast Club (now THAT film was made in 1984, I think) and Sixteen Candles (1983, I think?), and if I'm not mistaken, Pretty in Pink might have been made in 1985 -- I've got this weird idea that Hughes made three Molly Ringwald movies in a row, and then he made Ferris Bueller, and then he made She's Having a Baby in 1988, and then he sold his soul with Home Alone in 1990 and all the baby movies that came after that.

[ pause to check the IMDB ]

Aha! Turns out my years were off a bit. Hughes has DIRECTED only eight movies (of which I have only seen four, in bold):

1. Curly Sue (1991)
2. Uncle Buck (1989)
3. She's Having a Baby (1988)
4. Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
5. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
6. Weird Science (1985)
7. Breakfast Club, The (1985)
8. Sixteen Candles (1984)

But he has PRODUCED (and thus, in most if not all cases, WRITTEN) the following:

1. New Port South (2001) (producer)
2. Reach the Rock (1998) (producer)
3. Home Alone 3 (1997) (producer)
4. Flubber (1997) (producer)
5. 101 Dalmatians (1996) (producer)
6. Miracle on 34th Street (1994) (producer)
7. Baby's Day Out (1994) (producer)
8. Dennis the Menace (1993) (producer)
9. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) (producer)
10. Curly Sue (1991) (producer)
11. Dutch (1991) (producer)
12. Only the Lonely (1991) (producer)
13. Career Opportunities (1991) (producer)
14. Home Alone (1990) (producer)
15. Christmas Vacation (1989) (producer)
16. Uncle Buck (1989) (producer)
17. Great Outdoors, The (1988) (producer)
18. She's Having a Baby (1988) (producer)
19. Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) (producer)
20. Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) (producer)
21. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) (producer)
22. Pretty in Pink (1986) (executive producer)
23. Breakfast Club, The (1985) (producer)

Plus he wrote a few National Lampoon films before he got into directing and producing.

Not to hijack the threa... Er, anyway...

But Some Kind of Wonderful was a much better movie than Pretty in Pink given the similar plotlines (wrong-side-of-the-tracks teen angst).

Plus Mary Stuart Masterson was so hot! Whatever happened to her?