CHICAGO >> Life was moving fast for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” writer/director/producer John Hughes when he wrote the film’s script. It took him just four days to complete it.

“How did I come to write ‘Ferris?’ Well, let’s see,” Hughes said. “There was a writer’s strike coming up in a week and my agent called and warned me, so I thought, ‘Geez, John, you better write something,’ and so I got this sentence … out of the ozone. ‘I am 17 years old and I have no idea where my life is going,’ and I thought, ‘That’s it!’ I called Ned Tanen (head of Paramount films) and said, ‘I want to do this movie about a kid who takes a day off from school and … that’s all I know so far.’”

Hughes was fresh off “The Breakfast Club” release in February 1985, “Weird Science” in August 1985 and filming for “Pretty in Pink” in Los Angeles. He had just signed a five-movie deal with Paramount Pictures.

Ferris Bueller, Hughes told the Tribune, would be “the most popular guy in school, a guy with everything going for him, who could be really obnoxious except for the fact that he polices himself.” The character on the precipice of graduating high school but also about to miss his ninth day of school during the spring semester.

Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick)

Hughes choose the then-23-year-old actor to portray the teen, who was on the precipice of graduating high school but also about to miss his ninth day of school during the spring semester. Broderick accepted a Tony Award for Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and starred with “The Breakfast Club’s” Ally Sheedy in “WarGames.”

Three years before he became Ferris Bueller, Broderick told Gene Siskel that he didn’t regret skipping college.

“It wouldn’t have worked for me,” I would have ended up doing the minimum amount of studying to just pass, and I would have resented even giving up that much time. I love acting.”

Broderick was announced in June 1985 as the lead in “Ferris.” He initially had doubts about the role, which breaks the fourth wall.

“I was just starting out. I had done two Neil Simon plays where I spoke to the audience and Ferris spoke to the camera, and I had done (the 1985 movie) ‘Ladyhawke,’ where the character sort of talks to the camera,” Broderick said in 2016 interview. “And I thought, ‘I’m always going to be like this comedian who talks to the camera. I have to get a real part,’ or some stupid like that.”

Here’s a guide to the Chicago-area locations as they appeared in the film. Unfortunately, the Bueller house is not in Chicagoland — it’s in Long Beach, California. Many of the interior scenes were also shot in Los Angeles.

Cameron Frye’s house

370 Beech St., Highland Park

Cameron Frye tells his best friend Ferris Bueller that his father, Morris Frye, loves his 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder — with Illinois license plate “NRVOUS” — and it “is his passion.”

The song that plays when the car was revealed in the movie? That’s “Oh Yeah” by Yello. But you can’t buy a soundtrack for the film — it was never released per Hughes’ order.

The home was built in 1953, for textile artist Ben Rose. The steel-and-glass house was designed by A. James Speyer, a disciple of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The pavilion (where the Ferrari was housed) was built 20 years later.

Katie Bueller’s real estate office

538 Chestnut St., Winnetka

No longer home to the Koenig & Strey real estate office, but the building in downtown Winnetka looks almost the same as it appeared in the film.

Ferris Bueller’s high school

Glenbrook North, 2300 Shermer Road, Northbrook

Hughes and his wife, Nancy, who like Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson, were high school sweethearts when they both attended Glenbrook North.

In “Ferris,” it became Shermer High School, the same fictional high school where “The Breakfast Club” took place (but that was filmed at the former Maine North High School in Des Plaines). Screenrant.com went down a rabbit hole that concludes the characters from both films probably knew each other.

Tom Bueller’s office

333 W. Wacker Drive, Chicago

Had Tom Bueller looked out his office window upon hearing The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” he would have observed the Chicago River — not Dearborn Street.

The curvy, green glass-walled structure was designed by New York-based architecture film Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, which also designed 300 W. Monroe St. Completed in 1983, the building has 36 stories and more than 6 acres of glass that create a reflective facade that seems to bend along with the river just opposite the Merchandise Mart.

Chez Quis restaurant

22 W. Schiller St., Chicago

The French name, which roughly translates to “the house of who,” was not found in any Tribune restaurant reviews. With good reason — it was never a restaurant. The private residence was used for a brief exterior shot only in the movie. Abe Froman, “Sausage King of Chicago,” had a reservation at a Los Angeles restaurant instead.

Siskel called it, “a weak ripoff of a similar scene in ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’”