40 Little-Known Facts About Elf
Elf was an instant hit when it opened in theaters in November 2003, earning over $220 million in global receipts. Maybe more importantly, it earned a perennial place in people's homes at Christmas. But its current spot as the go-to holiday movie wasn't written in stone when the movie went into production. It took hard work, luck, and just a little bit of magic to make Buddy the Elf everybody's favorite holiday helper.
Jim Carrey could have been Buddy
The writers of Elf finished the first draft of the movie’s script a decade before it finally came out. Back then, Jim Carrey was Hollywood’s go-to funny guy, so he was approached to play the story’s main character.
But by the time the film finally went into production, the actor had moved on to other things; he had solidified his place as one the biggest stars in the world. He'd also scored his own holiday movie: How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
Elf was a love letter to New York
David Berenbaum wrote Elf after relocating from New York to Los Angeles. Christmases look very different on the West Coast, of course, and the writer was nostalgic for the classic Christmas feel of New York in December.
“It hits hardest at Christmastime when it’s 105 degrees out here [in Los Angeles],” Berenbaum told Variety in 2018. “It was very comforting to write a Christmas movie when you miss the snow, and there’s a heatwave outside.”
Zooey Deschanel was not the first choice for Jovie
Zooey Deschanel eventually secured the role of Jovie, the love interest for Will Ferrell's Buddy. But if the makers of Elf had got their way, the character would have been played by another actor.
“I went in as a backup,” Deschanel told Variety. “The person they cast couldn’t do it. A lot of the parts I got early in my career, I was filling in for someone else who had dropped out last minute.”
Deschanel didn’t like Jovie’s blonde hair
If you've seen Deschanel in other movies and TV shows, you'll know she doesn't usually have blonde hair like she does in Elf. The actress wasn't a fan of the look herself — even though it was her own fault for inspiring the hairdo!
“What is funny is I had dyed my hair for a screen test for a movie that never happened,” she explained to Variety. “I had a meeting for Elf while I was blonde, and I asked them if I could dye my hair back to brown. They said, ‘No, we want you to look the way you did in your audition.'”
Laughter was a problem on the set
It was never going to be easy to make a comedy with one of the most celebrated screen comedians in recent memory. The cast and crew have admitted that there were times that Ferrell's performance would send them over the edge.
“You went to work every day, and your biggest challenge was getting through a scene without breaking it,” Mary Steenburgen, who played Emily, told Variety. “It’s part of the beautiful, weird edge that you walk on when you work with Will that you can’t stop yourself from laughing at him.”
The didn't use CGI in Santa's workshop
Director Jon Favreau wanted to use actors — and not computer-generated imagery — to make it look like Ferrell's Buddy was twice as big as the other elves in Santa's workshop. So the filmmakers used forced perspective to create a bit of movie magic.
Ferrell would basically stand several feet in front of his scene partners. “As an actor, it’s tough because you don’t have the eye contact," Bob Newhart, who played Papa Elf, told Variety. "He’s looking one way, I’m looking the other.”
Buddy is not really sat on Papa Elf's lap
The filmmakers used forced perspective in one memorable scene to make it look like Buddy sits on Papa Elf's lap. In reality, actor Ferrell is not sat on his co-star Newhart at all. “There’s a small kid between me and Will that he was sitting on,” Newhart explained to Variety.
Don't worry: Ferrell sat on a box that was placed over the lap of an unseen young actor, while Newhart was placed further behind them both. That way, the young actor's legs are made to look as though they belong to Newhart. Clever!
People get confused when they see Bob Newhart
The forced perspective shots in Elf are pulled off so successfully that they've consistently left fans of Elf confused. Newhart told Variety, “When fans find out I’m taller than 3 feet and 2 inches, they feel cheated.”
“They don’t understand how I’m 5 foot 7,” he joked. “They’re going, ‘That’s not Papa Elf. He’s too tall to be Papa Elf.'” This is despite Newhart having enjoyed a long, successful career in Hollywood, appearing in successful shows and movies before and after the festive flick!
Favreau insisted that having no CGI would make the movie timeless
Favreau hinted to Rolling Stone that there had been some pressure to make Elf "a big CGI extravaganza." He particularly "had to fight very hard" to use forced perspective and stop-motion animation in the North Pole scenes instead of CGI.
"I wanted it to have the same flaws that it would have had [before CGI], to make the movie feel more timeless," he said. "It made for great souvenirs. I have a Louisville Slugger that’s 4½ feet long in my office, that the elves were building."
Mary Steenburgen did eat that pasta
Buddy creates a "unique" pasta dish in Elf using his favorite food groups of candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup. Unfortunately, that meant the cast had to eat the one-of-a-kind pasta. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as it looked?
“There are worse things in the world to eat than that, but we had been doing it for hours,” Steenburgen explained to Variety. “I was just thinking, ‘How the Hell am I going to get through this movie? I just need to laugh so hard right now.’ It was almost impossible not to do.”
It wasn't an easy shoot for Ferrell
Ferrell probably had to eat the fantastical food creations his character makes in Elf the most, and he didn't enjoy it. "I ingested a lot of sugar in this movie and I didn't get a lot of sleep," the star told The Sun.
"I constantly stayed up," he added. "But anything for the movie, I'm there. If it takes eating a lot of maple syrup, then I will, if that's what the job calls for." Somehow, though, we can't imagine he ever ordered spaghetti, syrup, and candy again!
Baby Buddy was played by three girls
Favreau had cast two twin boys to play Baby Buddy in an early scene in the film. These boys apparently looked just like Ferrell. There was just one problem: the twins couldn't stop crying while filming their scenes.
This led to the filmmakers replacing the twins with female triplets. Yet it seems as though Favreau was still not impressed with the kids' performances. In his audio commentary of the film, he says editor Dan Lebental was responsible for making the babies look good.
The elves weren't always kind-hearted
There was once a version of Elf where the elves at the North Pole were mean to Buddy because he wasn't like them. But director Favreau had a good reason for having that part of the script rewritten.
He revealed in the audio commentary, “It explained why Buddy was doing all these good things in New York if he grew up in a world where everybody was so sweet even when he’s obviously screwing everything up and doesn’t fit in at all.”
That's Ferrell's genuine reaction to the jack-in-the-box
The hilarious moment when Buddy is testing out jack-in-the-box toys was always part of the script. When they filmed the final jack-in-the-box gag, though, Favreau played a slight prank on Ferrell to get an honest reaction out of his actor.
He used a remote control to set off the jack-in-the-box — only Ferrell didn't know when Favreau would press the trigger. The director waited an extra half a second to get the reaction you see on film today.
The North Pole characters are stop-motion masterpieces
Favreau revealed in his audio commentary that he turned to the Chiodo Brothers to create the stop-motion characters in Elf. They used a special technique to lend the scenes the choppy look of an old TV show.
The filmmaker lamented that they'd probably just use CGI these days to create the same effect. Yet the art of stop-motion is not completely lost in Hollywood. You may have seen the Chiodo Brothers' work most recently in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
A hockey scene got deleted from the final cut
There was once a North Pole-based hockey game in Elf — but it got cut before the final film was released. Favreau said in his audio commentary that this was because the scene sucked some of the momentum out of the film. You can watch it on YouTube, though.
It must have been a hard decision to cut the scene, because it's clear that a lot of effort went into making it. There are all sorts of big stunts involved, as well as bespoke sets and staging to pull off the forced perspective sequences.
Favreau is proud that people watch every year
When Elf came out in 2003, Ferrell was not a movie star and Favreau was not a big-name director. Most people only knew Ferrell from either Old School or Saturday Night Live, and Favreau's biggest directing gig was the indie Swingers.
Yet Favreau was in no doubt about his ambitions for the film. “Our goal, even then, was to make a movie that could be part of that pantheon,” Favreau told Rolling Stone in 2013. “The fact that it’s in rotation is the highest honor that movie can have.”
The first draft of the script was "darker"
Favreau explained to Rolling Stone that when he'd first read the Elf script "it was a much darker version of the film." The script was so different from the finished movie, in fact, that Favreau "wasn't particularly interested" in being part of it.
But, he said, he spent a year rewriting the screenplay. "The character became a bit more innocent, and the world became more of a pastiche of the Rankin/Bass films [such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer]," Favreau said. That's when the movie got a green light.
The filmmakers caused "minor traffic accidents"
Elf was partly shot on location in New York, often while members of the public were still roaming around. "When we had [Ferrell] in the Lincoln Tunnel, the tunnel was open," Favreau explained to Rolling Stone. "Same thing with the 59th Street Bridge."
"Whenever [Ferrell] was out there in his suit, we’d hear screeches and fender-benders and lights smashing," the director continued. "People would be looking at him walking on the side and that would cause a few minor traffic accidents."
Macy's wanted to be part of Elf — but there was a catch
A big department store plays a crucial part in Elf, including providing the backdrop for some of the most memorable scenes. The filmmakers almost chose to use Macy's as the setting, and the world-famous department store was happy to be involved.
But, Favreau told Rolling Stone, Macy's asked the filmmakers to remove the scene "where Santa is revealed to be a fake because [the Macy's] Santa has to be real." In the end, Favreau chose to film their scenes in "a mental hospital in Vancouver," so they could build a set and keep the fake Father Christmas scene.
The department store is called Gimbel's for a reason
The real-life Gimbel's closed down in 1986 and hasn't been revived since. But the name Gimbel's still holds a special place in the hearts of people who love Christmas movies. It's the setting for Miracle on 34th Street, after all.
Favreau chose to use the name Gimbel's in Elf partly because of this Christmas connection. But there was another reason. "Ultimately, it’s better than having it be Macy’s," he told Rolling Stone. "It gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted creatively."
James Caan hated the title
Favreau admitted to Rolling Stone that it was "fair to say" that James Caan was "uncomfortable" on the set of Elf. And it wasn't only because he and Ferrell were often "starstruck" by the late Godfather star.
"He would always give me a hard time about it being called Elf," Favreau revealed. "'Why is it called Elf?' I think he was embarrassed about the title." But the director said Ferrell's "generous, disarming" nature — as well as some gentle ribbing — brought him around.
James Caan wasn't always on the same page as the cast and crew
"It took him a while to get with the programming," Favreau told Rolling Stone of Caan's performance in Elf. The issue seemed to be that the director had cast a lot of improvisers in the film and given them a long leash, "so every take was different."
But the filmmakers realized that if they kept Caan laughing, it would alleviate the tension. "Eventually, something just clicked in Jimmy, and he just went with it," said Favreau. "He was a lot of fun. We ended up hanging out a lot off-set."
They only added singing after hearing Zooey Deschanel's voice
These days, we know Deschanel as a celebrated actor and singer, but she was still a fresh face when she appeared in Elf. "I didn’t know she could sing," Favreau told Rolling Stone. "When I found out, that’s when I wrote that part in."
"I wrote it in because she has that great Doris-Day voice," he added. "The whole Christmas spirit, saving Christmas, that was pretty late in the game, too. That wasn’t in the original script." So, really, we have Deschanel's voice to thank for the movie's heartwarming ending.
Deschanel didn't sing live in the shower
Deschanel hadn't done much on-screen singing up until this point in her career, so she was surprised when she and Ferrell didn't sing their first duet live. "They recorded some live vocals as an option, but they almost never use those," she told EW in 2020.
The reason? "You just can't make it right," she said. "I'm in a shower, there's nowhere to hide a microphone, and then they wouldn't have a clean vocal at all. It would be completely mixed with the sounds of the shower."
It was cold in Central Park
The finale of Elf has gone down in cinema history as a heartwarming Christmas classic. But when the cast and crew filmed part of the scene on location in New York's Central Park, the weather was anything but warming.
“We just did that scene over and over,” Steenburgen told Variety. “I remember it being bitterly cold, and it was three in the morning. I was tired, but I had the feeling I was in a scene that would stand the test of time.”
Parts of the Central Park scene were filmed in a psychiatric hospital
The climatic chase in Central Park was filmed partly in New York City and partly on sets built in a mostly abandoned psychiatric hospital in Vancouver. We say "mostly abandoned" because Favreau told Rolling Stone that one building "was still open and had patients in it."
"How weird it must have been for them to look out their window and see Santa Claus and a guy in an elf suit running around with reindeer," he joked. "It may have been counterproductive to their treatment."
Peter Dinklage was cast for one reason only
Everybody knows Peter Dinklage now from his epic run in Game of Thrones. But he was basically another unknown actor in 2003. "We picked him because he’s a great, great actor," director Favreau told Rolling Stone.
Dinklage's big scene involves a fight between him and Ferrell. "He totally committed to the role, not playing the funny at all," said Favreau. "That’s the style of comedy that I like and that Will likes — letting the comedy come through the situation and the heavy commitment to the absurd, but never wink or smirk through it."
Someone did that burp for real
You may not know the name of voice actor Maurice LaMarche, but you will undoubtedly have heard at least one of his performances. He's done voices in The Looney Tunes and the Animaniacs — and he did that burp in Elf.
"I create a huge echo chamber with my tongue and my cheeks," LaMarche told The A.V. Club in 2012. He made a similar sound for an episode of Animaniacs, and that caught the attention of the Elf team. The "burp" sound he did for Elf was "one long, sustained 15-second patented Maurice LaMarche belch."
It took a long time to get Ferrell's costume right
Buddy the elf wears a now-iconic outfit in the movie, and that's all thanks to a lot of hard work from the costume department. Designer Laura Jean Shannon told Feel Christmassy in 2015 that the biggest challenge was sure the ensemble wasn't "off-putting or in bad taste."
"After all, I had to dress a grown man in tights and a cutaway coat," she joked. "Needless to say, we did have a fair amount of fittings to be sure we struck the right balance between absurd and adorable." The fact that Ferrell is 6'3" didn't help, either.
The elves' costumes are from all over the world
Costume designer Shannon "made very strict rules" for the elves you see populating the North Pole. For example, none of the real elves have any Velcro on their costumes. Their outfits are also inspired by different cultures and time periods to give them an otherworldly feeling.
This is juxtaposed against the costumes of the Gimbel's elves in New York City. These were "a rag-tag bunch of thrown together pieces in synthetic fabrics with obviously showing elastic and hot-glue-gunned elements," Shannon told Feel Christmassy.
Ferrell thought Elf could be the end of his career
In 2018 Ferrell appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden and admitted there had been times early on when Elf seemed like a bad career move. This was during the first two weeks of the shoot when he was still "discovering what this movie’s going to be and running around New York City in yellow tights."
Ferrell said, “People [were] recognizing me from Saturday Night Live going, ‘Are you okay? What’s going on?’ [I was] thinking to myself [that] this is either going to be a home run, or people are going to go, ‘Whatever happened to you? Why did you do that one about the elf?’”
James Caan thought Will Ferrell was over the top
Ferrell explained on The Late Late Show with James Corden that his on-screen father had only been proud of him after they finished filming. Ferrell said Caan approached him at the premiere and said, "Hey, I got to tell you something."
Caan said to Ferrell, "Every day on set, I thought you were way too over the top, but now I see what you’re doing. Great job!" Ferrell joked, "I just love the thought that, there we were working every day, and he’s going back to his hotel room going, 'Jeez, get me out of this one!'"
Ralphie From A Christmas Story Appears in Elf
Christmas movie worlds collided when Peter Billingsley — Ralphie in A Christmas Story — played a minor role in Elf. He appears as Ming Ming, the elf who supervises Buddy's work in the North Pole.
There is a deeper connection between Billingsley and Favreau, too. Billingsley is an executive producer on Favreau's Iron Man and a co-producer on his Zathura movie. Favreau returned the favor when he appeared in Couples Retreat, directed by Billingsley.
Some New Yorkers didn't realize they were in a movie
Favreau and Ferrell filmed the hilarious New York montage on the final day of production. The director said it was just him, his star, and a skeleton crew in a van. "We just... jumped out and threw people some money and got to use all different locations," he told About.com.
"I put him in those situations and he had to improvise and stay in character while dealing with people who, for the most part, didn't even know they were in a movie," Favreau explained. They probably couldn't have got away with it in any other city!
They only had one chance to destroy Gimbel's
It took the art department more than two weeks to build that beautifully decorated set of Gimbel's. But then almost as soon as the set appears in the movie, it's trashed in a fight scene between Artie Lange's fake Santa and Ferrell's Buddy.
“They have to smash the whole [thing] — so we don’t really have a lot of resets,” Favreau told 20/20. “We shot right up until we destroy the place," Lange added. "So we had one take to destroy it. So Favreau says, ‘Just go nuts — but we got one take.’”
Will Ferrell had past experience as Santa
Ferrell revealed that before he became famous with Saturday Night Live he had a gig for a Chicago shopping mall... as a department-store Santa. His A Night at the Roxbury co-star Chris Kattan also had a part to play in this pre-fame job.
"Chris Kattan was my elf at this outdoor mall in Pasadena for five weeks, passing out candy canes," Ferrell claimed. "It was hilarious because little kids could care less about the elf. They just come right to Santa Claus."
Favreau has a secret cameo in the movie
Director Favreau makes an obvious cameo as the doctor who gives Buddy a DNA test, but that's not the only time he appears in the movie. He also says one of the most famous and oft-quoted lines from Elf.
“What I'm more proud of actually is the narwhal when it comes up out of the water, when Buddy's leaving the North Pole, that's my voice: ‘Bye, Buddy. Hope you find your dad,’" Favreau told 20/20. “That's probably my most famous role of anything I've ever done because that's the one that's on T-shirts and sweaters.”
Ferrell turned down $29 million for a sequel
In 2006 Ferrell told The Guardian that "it wasn't difficult at all" to turn down $29 million to appear in an Elf sequel. He said, "I remember asking myself: could I withstand the criticism when it's bad and they say, 'He did the sequel for the money?'"
"I decided I wouldn't be able to," he continued. "I didn't want to wander into an area that could erase all the good work I've done." But he seemingly didn't rule out a sequel completely. "You watch," he joked, "I'll do some sequel in the future that's crap."
Caan claimed they weren't all friends behind the scenes
Caan appeared on 92.3 The Fan in 2020 to talk about, among other things, the potential sequel to Elf. "We were gonna do it, and I thought, 'Oh my God, I finally have a franchise movie. I can make some money,'" he said.
There was just one problem. According to Caan, "The director and Will didn't get along very well. Will wanted to do it, and he didn't want the director. He had it in his contract. It was one of those things." No one else had made any claims to that effect, though.