FILM 1609: KRAMPUS

TRIVIA: The film was originally to release on November 25 but was pushed back to December 4 to coincide with the Krampusnacht, a traditional Austrian festival held on December 5 that celebrates the Krampus coming to punish naughty children.

The Krampus's final design was distilled from various postcards and illustrations of the creature over the years.

According to Michael Dougherty, this is a Christmas film that is both scary and sentimental: "A Christmas Carol" and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) are nightmares that show you these broken characters who experience a darker side of divine intervention. They need to be scared straight."

Krampus is a huge part of Austrian and German folklore. In Austria and southern Germany, they have "Krampus Runs" where grown-up men dress up as Krampuses and parade through the city streets and scare children.

The snow on the ground was made from material that's usually used for diapers.

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."

FILM 1258: MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET

TRIVIA: In the untranslated dialogue with the Dutch girl, Santa Claus asks the child what she wants for Christmas the girl says she wants nothing, telling Santa she got her gift by being adopted by her new mother.

According to Natalie Wood's biographer, during the shoot, the young actress was convinced that Edmund Gwenn was actually Santa Claus (by all accounts, Gwenn was a very good-natured man on the set). It wasn't until Wood saw him out of costume at the wrap party that she realized he wasn't Santa.

Both the actual Macy's and Gimbel's department stores were approached by the producers for permission to have them depicted in the film. Both stores wanted to see the finished film first before they gave approval. If either store had refused, the film would have had to been extensively edited and reshot to eliminate the references. Fortunately at the test viewing, both businesses were pleased with the film and gave their permission.

Unbeknownst to most parade watchers, Edmund Gwenn played Santa Claus in the actual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade held November 28, 1946. He fulfilled the duties of most parade Santas, including addressing the crowd from the marquee of Macy's after the parade was over. He was introduced to the crowd by actor Philip Tonge (he played Mr. Shellhammer in the movie) and he later unveiled the mechanical Christmas display windows to the accompaniment of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite." This gesture symbolized the opening of the Christmas shopping season at the store.

Received a 'B' rating (morally objectionable in part) from the highly influential Legion of Decency because Maureen O'Hara played a divorcée.

Despite the fact that the film is set during Christmas, studio head Darryl F. Zanuck insisted that it be released in May because he argued that more people went to the movies during the summer. So the studio began scrambling to promote it while keeping the fact that it was a Christmas movie a secret.

When Dr. Pierce explains Kris' belief that he is Santa Claus, he offers for comparative purposes a Hollywood restaurant owner who believes himself to be a Russian prince despite evidence to the contrary, but rather conveniently fails to recall the man's name. This was a reference to Michael Romanoff, owner of Romanoff's in Hollywood, a popular hangout for movie stars at the time.

Valentine Davies got the idea for the script whilst struggling through the Christmas shopping crowds, trying to find a present for his wife. The commercialism he saw made Davies wonder what the real Santa Claus would make of it all.