Shermer (John Hughes)

Shermer, Illinois is a fictitious suburb of Chicago in several John Hughes films such as Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and National Lampoon's Vacation.

The name has numerous relationships to Hughes's hometown, Northbrook, Illinois. Northbrook was once called Shermerville. Hughes's former high school, Glenbrook North High School, is located on Shermer Road. Glenbrook North was actually used as a filming location for Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In The Breakfast Club, Shermer has the zip code 60062, which in real life is a Northbrook zip code. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the mascot is the Shermer Bulldogs.

  • Maine North High School, Glenbrook North High School, New Trier High School (West Campus), and Niles East High School have all represented Shermer High School in Hughes films.
  • In Kevin Smith's film Dogma, the characters Jay and Silent Bob mention a failed trip to Shermer. They were unaware that Shermer is fictional (the events of this trip are documented in Kevin Smith's comic book Chasing Dogma), and had wanted to visit because of its high ratio of beautiful girls to dorky guys (as seen in most of Hughes' Shermer-based films), as well as its apparent lack of any competing [...] dealers.
  • In a reference to The Breakfast Club, retailer J.C. Penney Company ran a television ad campaign (August, 2008) featuring the fictional Shermer High School, including a remake of the Simple Minds song Don't You (Forget AbOUT Me) and action sequences of models recreating key scenes from the film.