A few years back, unknown screenwriter Rick Rapier (geez, I’m sorry but that sounds like a porn name) was gaining some notice by saying that he had written a spec script for a sequel to John Hughes’ 1986 classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off titled uncreatively Ferris Bueller 2: Another Day Off. Since then, there hasn’t been a single peep about the project and I wrote it off as nothing more than the crazed ramblings of a writer trying to create some heat for himself.
Well, Rapier popped back up recently, with a new chorus to his “I wrote a Ferris Bueller sequel” song. As he posted on twitter over the weekend –
Steve Spears over at the St. Petersburg Times‘ Stuck In The 80s blog followed up on the tweet with a short interview with the writer who elaborated –
There is definite interest in my Ferris sequel. Big name production companies that have first-look production deals with Paramount are reading the script. Your readers would know either their names or have seen movies they’ve produced, some of them classics. We have high hopes that one or more will take an interest, and that Paramount brass will go for it on their advice.
Additionally, Spears posted, with permission I’m assuming, several pages from Rapier’s script. The pages set up where Ferris and his friend Cameron are now. From the pages we can get the general set up of the film. It is Ferris’ 40th birthday. Since we last saw him, Ferris has managed to turn his “Take A Day Off” philosophy into a self-help phenomenon. He travels around the country in a private jet giving $2,000 a ticket seminars and makes appearances on Letterman and Entertainment Tonight. Think, of him as a Tony Robbins for goofing off.
But even with all this success and his best friend Cameron by his side as his business manager, Ferris is unhappy, turning to break the fourth wall to explain that his life is “Golden handcuffs.” His success has come from his advocacy of taking it easy, but he feels like he is being worked to death. After a fight with Cameron on-board the private jet as it takes off for Chicago and a big birthday gala, Ferris decides that he needs a day off from all his success. And so he opens up the jet’s emergency exit at 10,000 feet and gets sucked out of the plane! End of excerpt.
OK, while I’m not sure I buy into the set-up as presented here, I am intrigued to find out how Rapier manages to get Ferris to escape from plummeting 10,000 feet to his death. Ferris and Cameron’s dialogue mentions that their old high school principal nemesis Ed Rooney is still about, though he appears to have become mentally unhinged and occasionally needs to be arrested for stalking Ferris. Hopefully, this actually works in the script and doesn’t feel like just sticking the character in there, just to have the character in there.
I still am not 100% convinced that Rapier is actively getting interest in the script, though. I’m pretty sure that this is more of a way for Rapier to draw attention to the script as a writing sample. It’s something similar to what Ernest Cline did back in the 1990s when he circulated his Buckaroo Banzai sequel script online, though Cline never claimed that production companies were looking at it. Cline ultimately would go on to have his screenplay Fanboys produced and released in 2009.
Will we see Another Day Off actually get picked up for production, or is it just a door-opener for Rapier to get work? Time will tell.
