The author says that he’s long been fascinated by John Hughes’ 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago, he visited various locations shown in the film. His eagerness to understand how it was made led him first to film school and, ultimately, to interviewing much of the cast (including stars Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck) and crew. The resulting book presents the most comprehensive and thorough examination of the film yet written, one that is less interested in film trivia than it is in the rigors of production and the mystery of how a piece of commercial entertainment becomes a classic work of art. Readers learn how, early in his career, Hughes and his fiancée rented a converted boxcar for $110 a month; how he penned the piece that would become the basis for the film National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) while stranded at home during a blizzard; and of the numerous changes made to Ferris between scripting and the final film (an early draft would have had Broderick smoking). Klamm reveals that Molly Ringwald initially hoped to play Ferris’ girlfriend, Sloane Peterson; that Polly Noonan, who played the Gummy Bear Girl, later graced a classic album cover; and that a scene set in a strip club was nixed by the studio. The book provides invaluable insights into Hughes’ philosophy of writing (“Character comes first,” he said, “because I think people are more interesting than plot”). Klamm’s love for the film is palpable, and his film-school background makes him ideally positioned to discuss costuming, line delivery, location scouting, and the logistics of pretending to drive a car through a “mid-century, glass-and-steel structure.” As anecdote piles on anecdote, even readers with little knowledge of the movie industry may find themselves pondering dolly shots and wardrobe tests while developing a deeper respect for the hundreds of small decisions involved in making even a single minute of film.