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If you’re in Generation X, there’s a pretty good chance you grew up adoring John Hughes movies. You probably also noticed that at least some of the movies, most notably and directly The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, took place at a fictional school called Shermer High. Shermer, IL, is a fictional town that John Hughes invented for those movies, based very closely on his hometown of Northbrook, IL, a suburb of Chicago.
It turns out that there are way more movies set in the fictional burb than even I realized, and I say that as a connoisseur of Hughes movies.
There Are Two That You Can Definitely Say Are In Shermer
The two most recognizable movies set in the fictional town of Shermer are The Breakfast Club and Weird Science. The opening scene of The Breakfast Club features an exterior shot of the high school with the name “Shermer High School” clearly visible, and Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) has a voiceover introducing the school and the town:
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Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon…we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for
whatever it was that we did wrong; what we did was wrong…
The other movie where it’s clear as day is Weird Science, where in the opening scene, Gary, played by Hall, and Wyatt, played by Ilan Mitchell-Smith, are watching the girls’ gymnastic team practice. On the walls of the gym are signs rooting Shermer HS on. At the end of the movie, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock) is seen as a new gym teacher, wearing a shirt that reads “Shermer HS Phys. ED.” So those two movies are easy to confirm.
A Sign In Ferris Bueller
In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the name of the school Ferris (occasionally) attends, other than the nine times he’s missed that semester, is not directly mentioned, but there is a scene in a hallway of the school where there is a poster on the wall that says “Go, Shermer.” I’m going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that it is, indeed, the same high school. That means that all the kids in The Breakfast Club and Weird Science were in classes with Ferris, right? Does that mean Emilio Estevez’s character in The Breakfast Club and Charlie Sheen’s character in Ferris Bueller were brothers? Makes you wonder.
It’s worth noting that another John Hughes classic set in high school, Pretty in Pink, doesn’t seem to take place at Shermer, as there is a poster on the wall in the gym that says “Meadowbrook High School.” There is also no direct reference to the name of the school in other Hughes movies featuring high schoolers, like Uncle Buck or any of the Vacation movies. That doesn’t mean they weren’t set in Shermer, though.
John Hughes Made It Clear
In a 1999 interview with Premiere magazine (via Wayback Machine), Hughes stated:
When I started making movies, I thought I would just invent a town where everything happened. Everybody, in all of my movies, is from Shermer, Illinois. Del Griffith from Planes, Trains & Automobiles lives two doors down from John Bender. Ferris Bueller knew Samantha Baker from Sixteen Candles. For 15 years, I’ve written my Shermer stories in prose, collecting its history.
So that means at least 11 movies (and maybe more) written, directed, or both by Hughes were set, or partially set, in the fictional suburb. That includes all three Vacation movies Hughes wrote (the original, European, and Christmas), Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Home Alone, She’s Having a Baby, and the aforementioned Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Uncle Buck.
Then there is a movie like The Great Outdoors; it’s reasonable to assume some or all of the characters are from Shermer, despite taking place in Wisconsin, and there are some exceptions. Some Kind of Wonderful, for example, is about high school, but it is set in Los Angeles. Career Opportunities, which I think is an underrated gem, was set in a small town somewhere in Illinois, but not specifically in or around Chicago.
Only the Lonely, with John Candy, takes place entirely in the city of Chicago, as do a couple other movies written by Hughes, not the suburbs, so they are borderline cases here. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is also set all over the Midwest, though Del (Steve Martin) is headed home to Shermer, so it counts. One of his earliest scripts, Mr. Mom, is set in Detroit, and obviously most of the action in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York takes place in Manhattan.
Hughes Loved His Hometown
It’s no surprise to anyone familiar with Hughes’ work that he adored his hometown of Chicago and the northern suburbs where he spent his teenage years. Not only did he often set his scripts in Shermer, but many of them were also shot on location in and around the towns Shermer was based on.
In fact, both Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which you can watch with a Paramount+ subscription) and The Breakfast Club (available with a Netflix sub) shot scenes at Glenbrook North High School, where Hughes actually attended high school. Even when the movies weren’t about high school, like Home Alone and She’s Having A Baby, the movies were set in the Chicago ‘burbs and filmed on location in them.
I’m not the only person to note all these connections, of course. One of the most famous connections came via Kevin Smith in Dogma, when Jay and Silent Bob admit they went on the road in search of one of the most famous fictional locations in film history.
It’s hard not to see this as an influence on Smith, even without the direct nod in Dogma, as all of his movies also take place in the same universe, albeit in New Jersey and not Illinois. Like me, Smith grew up loving Hughes films, and throwing in Easter Eggs like this would be one of the most fun things to do as a filmmaker, I would think.