by Don Hall

I couldn’t go to the DNC sites on Tuesday because the DCASE Film Dept. was showing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in the park so I had to run the front of house. The last time they presented John Hughes’s titular film the park attendance was reported at 20,000 (which means it was closer to 15,000 but still a significant crowd). The ushers and I debated how much the downtown barricades and news of protests would affect the anticipated audience.

“6,000,” predicted my second-in-command.

“1,500?” another piped in.

“I think we’re gonna have seven people, a kid, and a service dog that isn’t a service dog,” I told them.

I was wrong. By the time the film started I estimated approximately 6,000 people on the lawn and in the seats, ready to watch a uniquely Chicago icon on the screen.

There is something amazing about an audience of that size watching a movie together. They laugh at all the best moments collectively. They applaud at the same moments. There is a sense of unity that is so missing from the discourse bandied about on the internet—a crowd of human beings with one goal, one motivation. To enjoy a classic film together. They applauded and cheered as Ferris, Cameron, and Sloan drive into Chicago and Hughes gives us long shots of this iconic city’s iconic architecture.

Ferris gets up on the parade float to lipsync to a young Wayne Newton and the folks in the park sang along. And when Broderick launches into the Beatles’ Twist and Shout something I never thought I’d witness happened in the most magical way.

Awash in the lights of the skyscrapers surrounding the park and the screen in front of them, in the cradle of Chicago less than a mile from Lake Michigan and steps from the Art Institute, two-thirds of this commonly bound crowd got up on their feet and… did the twist. Singing along and dancing with Ferris Bueller. Miles away, there were speeches of hope and unity with a scattering of protesters, but here—in the gift to the city, a free public park with free entertainment for all, there was a kind of oneness that political parties and passionate causes could never achieve.

It was the most Chicago moment I’ve ever witnessed.