The holiday season has officially begun, and while there are dozens of upcoming Christmas movies to watch, it’s always nice to revisit some of the best Christmas movies ever made, like Elf. Despite the Will Ferrell flick being over 20 years old, there are still so many stories coming out that have never been told before. Now, even more stories are coming out thanks to a new behind-the-scenes book co-written by Elf costar Andy Richter, titled Elf Unwrapped: Behind the Scenes of a Modern Christmas Classic.
Back in 2020, the classic Christmas film was featured on an episode of the Netflix docuseries The Christmas Movies That Made Us. Fans learned a lot of behind-the-scenes facts about the Jon Favreau-directed flick, including the dark ending the film almost received. Elf super fans already know that a large chunk of the interior scenes of the film were shot at an abandoned mental institution. Part of this was to keep costs down since the film was made on a $33 million budget. Richter talked about it with Us Weekly:
There was this old mental hospital that had a couple of empty wings, and that’s where the offices are, the Hobbs’ home, the mailroom; almost all the interiors of the movie are in a mental hospital that was still functioning a little bit. There was still a wing of the hospital that had patients in it.
Money wasn’t the only reason for the unusual filming location, according Ritcher told the outlet. The studio and soundstage space was limited due to a“big vampire movie” that was filming at the same time, so the production design team behind Elf made the unusual filming location work. It turned the space into the Gimbels department store, Greenway Press, and the Hobbs’ apartment. As magical as the locations looked on screen, some actors still found filming at the semi-functioning mental hospital unsettling, including Richter, as he said in the interview:
I wasn’t wandering around.. I went to the set. I went to the trailer. I got in the van. I went back to the hotel.
While filming aimed to stay on the abandoned side of the hospital, portions of the location were still occupied by patients. It’s unclear if any patients actually saw Ferrell traipsing around in his iconic green costume inspired by Rankin/Bass’s elves in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but Ritcher did speculate about what they might have thought if they caught a glimpse of the SNL alum:
Will was all over that place for a month or two, like what people were thinking? Patients were looking out the window and seeing this guy in February wandering around in an elf costume, and maybe recognizing, ‘Hey, isn’t that Will Ferrell?’
Ferrell himself had some apprehensions about the costume the first time he tried it on, so it’s valid for Richter to consider what outsiders who had no idea a Christmas movie was being filmed next door might have thought. Thankfully, it all worked out, and Elf continues to be a holiday movie must-watch for families.
Elf Unwrapped: Behind the Scenes of a Modern Christmas Classic is available at bookstores now, but if you want a more instant Elf fix, you can stream the film with an HBO Max subscription. And who knows, maybe Ferrell will dress up as Buddy the Elf once again to help promote the book.
