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FILM 1607: ELF

TRIVIA: Will Ferrell caused several minor traffic accidents when walking through the Lincoln Tunnel in his costume because people were so surprised to see him wearing an elf outfit.

Will Ferrell turned down $29 million to be in Elf 2 in late 2013.

The cotton balls Buddy eats while in the Doctors office were actually Cotton Candy that had not been dyed.

On the final day of shooting in New York, it was just the director, Will Ferrell, and a camera man driving around the city looking for locations to shoot. They would jump out and ask pedestrians if they would be willing to be extras for some quick cash while Ferrell paraded around acting like Buddy. Much of the montage when Buddy first arrives in New York was filmed then, such as when he is getting his shoes shined and jumping between traffic.

The design for Santa's Workshop as well as the Elf uniforms come from the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) animated special. The Elf uniforms completely mirror the ones from the TV special. Most of the animals in the North Pole are also designed to look like the same form of stop motion animation used in Rudolph.

The scene where the fake Santa is chasing Buddy had to be done in one take because it was too hard to rebuild everything.

Director Jon Favreau drew Buddy's crayon drawing of himself in the card he made for his dad.

The apartment that Buddy's dad lives in is the same apartment building (exterior shot) that Dana Barrett lived in in Ghostbusters.

Buddy's 12-second belch was supplied by voice actor Maurice LaMarche, best-known for his cartoon character, "The Brain", from Pinky and the Brain (1995), and who also did the operatic belching in Animaniacs (1993) as "The Great Wakarotti". LaMarche also worked with Will Ferrell on the animated series, The Oblongs (2001).

When this screenplay first emerged in 1993, Jim Carrey was attached to star in the lead.

The sound effect used by the jack-in-the-box is the same sound effect used by the laughing hyenas at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World in Orlando, Fl. And was also used in the 1955 Disney movie; "Lady and the Tramp" for the laughing hyenas in the zoo, as well as for Ripper Roo in the Crash Bandicoot video game series.

The brief TV news clip showing Buddy walking in Central Park (just before Buddy's dad and brother find him), and the still picture of Buddy in the news clip, closely mimic the famous 1967 film of an alleged Bigfoot ("Patty") taken by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin.

The film was turned into a Broadway Musical; it premiered November 2010 and ran through January 2011.

When she first meets Buddy, Jovie asks, "Did Crumpet put you up to this?" Crumpet was David Sedaris' character name when he worked as a Macy's elf, as recounted in his Christmas story anthology "The Santaland Diaries." David Sedaris's sister, Amy Sedaris appears in the film as James Caan's assistant, Deb. It may also be a reference to Mount Crumpit from the Dr. Seuss Christmas story "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."