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."

BOOK 110: FRANKENSTEIN: MARY SHELLEY

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.

Science fiction author Isaac Asimov coined the term Frankenstein complex for the fear of robots.

Frankenstein or Franken- is sometimes used as a prefix to imply artificial monstrosity as in "frankenfood", a politically charged name for genetically manipulated foodstuffs. The Franken- prefix can also mean anything assembled haphazardly from originally disparate elements, especially if those parts were previously discarded by others—for example, a car built from parts salvaged from many other cars. For many years Eddie Van Halen played a guitar built in such a manner which he called the "Frankenstrat".

In 1971, General Mills introduced "Franken Berry", a strawberry-flavored corn cereal whose mascot is a variation of the monster from the 1931 movie.

"Frankenstein" is the name of a character in the 1975 movie Death Race 2000 and its 2008 remake Death Race. The first incarnation was portrayed by recently deceased veteran actor David Carradine and the second by Jason Statham.

George A. Romero's 1985 film Day of the Dead features a scientist conducting experiments on zombies nicknamed "Frankenstein."

The hit song China in Your Hand by the British rock band T'Pau employs the story of Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley's writing of it, in its role as a classic cautionary tale.

In David Brin's science fiction novel Kiln People, defective golems that become autonomous are called "frankies".

Mewtwo of the Pokémon franchise has been likened to Frankenstein's monster in regards to being born through an artificial means and discontent with the fact.

Stitch, the main protagonist of Disney's Lilo & Stitch franchise, was somewhat influenced by the monster, as he was created by a scientist from miscellaneous alien DNA. Unlike Shelley's monster, however, his intentions were initially evil until he discovered an inner loneliness, causing him, and eventually his creator, to turn from crime to justice. Throughout the franchise, Stitch also demonstrates the monster's herculean strength and childlike curiosity.

In season 3 of Beast Wars Megatron clones Dinobot, making a Frankenstein's monster out of the clone by transmetallizing him with the Transmetal Driver and adding the half of Rampage's mutant spark he cut out earlier. The result was an extremely mutated Transmetal II minion under the influence of his "half-brother's" evil.

In 2006, the book The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived listed Dr. Frankenstein's Monster (sic) at #6.

The California Medical Association, in a rather humorous gesture, chose Halloween 2006 to announce that Dr. Richard Frankenstein had been elected president of the organization.He had previously been president of the Orange County Medical Association in 1995-1996.

Frankenstein is a character in the Korean web-comic manhwa Noblesse. He, like that of the actual character Frankenstein, is a scientist, but the similarities end there. Through his research he has gained immortality and immense power. He now serves the most powerful of all vampires, the Noblesse.

Pop artist Eric Millikin created a large mosaic portrait of Frankenstein's monster out of Halloween candy and spiders as part of his "Totally Sweet" series in 2013.

The character Professor Franken Stein from Soul Eater is based loosely off Frankenstein's monster.