Iconic scenes from movie Elf were unscripted as Will Ferrell would 'mess' with the public
Harley Young
Featured Image Credit: Everett Collection Inc/Sipa US/Alamy Stock Photo
Ask any group of people what their favourite Christmas movie is and you'll be certain that one of them says Elf. But, did you know that there's a handful of clips in this seasonal family film with Will Ferrell that aren't scripted?
The 2003 holiday comedy sees Ferrell play a loveable, clumsy human-amongst-elves named Buddy.
Raised at the North Pole, Buddy discovers that he's not like his peers and decides to travel to New York in search of his biological father.
However, many of the scenes of Buddy exploring New York for the first time aren't scripted and they feature real-life civilians of NYC reacting to Will Ferrell's awkwardly hilarious antics.
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A memorable sequence in the movie follows Will Ferrell (Buddy) around The Big Apple in his 'Elf' suit, giggling as he has his curly elf shoes shone, hopping from one side of the crosswalk to the other, and generally just having innocent, childish fun.
When asked about these scenes, Favreau told MTV: "The last day of shooting in New York, we just took cameras.
"We didn't even have the director of photography. We just took a camera man and a film loader and some PAs and went around the city in a van, jumped out and threw people some money and got to use all different locations...with all real people around him [Ferrell].
"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."
Amongst the unscripted havoc in NYC, another part of the movie that required little-to-no acting from Ferrell was the infamous jack-in-a-box scene.
The DVD commentary explains how someone on set had access to a remote control that would decide when the boxes would pop, causing a genuine surprised reaction from Ferrell.
However, some Twitter users aren't convinced that all of the scenes shown in the clip were entirely unscripted.
One wrote: "The coffee shop scene couldn’t have been unscripted. It’s a 2 camera shot," and another added: "Oh and no one saw the 80 person film crew walking with him? OK."
Regardless of how unscripted these scenes were, it doesn't take away from the incredible acting which took this holiday flick from box office hit to Christmas classic.
The film was nominated for the US Kids' Choice Awards in 2004 and bagging the Golden Trailer Awards for Best Comedy in the same year.