John Hughes, the writer and director of 'Ferris,' was an obsessive music fan who cemented the legacies of several artists by building film scenes around their songs. 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,' which celebrated its 30 th birthday in June, has long been the most popular movie without a soundtrack from a decade crawling with them - whether baked into a film’s plot ('The Blues Brothers,' 'Footloose,' 'Dirty Dancing'), tangential to it ('Back to the Future') or bolted on to grab a piece of MTV’s action ('Top Gun').