Elf has cemented itself as a holiday movie staple, but Andy Richter and Aaron Karo‘s new oral history unwraps (quite literally) the ways in which the 2003 Christmas comedy nearly didn’t make its way down the chimney and come to fruition.
Elf Unwrapped, which hit shelves on Tuesday (Nov. 3), features insights from a slew of those involved with the fan-favorite film, including stars Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel, director Jon Favreau, and of course, Richter himself, who played Morris, a colleague of Walter Hobbs (the late James Caan).
While Richter’s role may have been small—as he teases in the new book, his character doesn’t even have a last name—Karo pointed out during a recent visit to DECIDER’s Manhattan studio with Richter that his co-author was the “secret weapon” in securing time with the power players behind Elf. Richter, who booked the interviews and credited his experience with his interview podcast The Three Questions with Andy Richter for feeling so “natural” during the process, was grateful for how many people were willing to open up.
“People were incredibly generous with their time. A couple people said, ‘I don’t do this, but it’s you, so I’ll do it.’ So that’s nice. I guess it pays to have dirt on people,” he quipped. “And it was really a fun process. It was fun to get to talk to people.”
As for Karo, he was unaware that Elf had “such a fandom” before being approached to co-write Elf Unwrapped, joking, “When our agent said to me, ‘We have a book project, it’s about a Christmas classic,’ I thought it was going to be Die Hard.”
“Then I, of course, realized that people go nuts for it. When I tell people I co-wrote a book about Elf, they go nuts like Buddy does when he finds out Santa is coming,” he shared. “So now I just drop the fact that I am writing a book about Elf even when no one’s asked.”
Just before we had Richter and Karo indulge us in taste-testing their own take on Buddy the Elf’s signature, syrupy spaghetti, we sat down with the co-authors for a conversation filled with laughs and Elf revelations. Keep reading for more of our sit-down with Richter and Karo.
DECIDER: It’s crazy to think that this movie is turning 23 years old this year. I was just doing a rewatch on HBO Max and they put it in a category titled, “Yes, These Movies Are 20 Years Old.”
ANDY RICHTER: Yes.
And so why was now the right time to revisit the making of this movie?
AR: You know, I didn’t make that decision. Carrie Thornton, who is the editor of Dey Street, she said,”Hey, I want to do book about the making of Elf, and I think Andy Richter would be a good person to write it.” And she was telling that to our agent, and he said, “Well, I think we can make that happen.” So it was kind of her call. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to say, “I’m going to chronicle Elf,” you know? So she brought it to us and we said “Okay.” And it is good— maybe five years earlier would have been better because people’s memories would be better. Because there was a lot, and I mean for me personally, I wrung out my memory banks for everything that I could remember from that, and it was the same for everybody we talked to. We’re like, “Any more particular anecdotes?” And they’re like, “Look, this is all I got. It’s 22 years ago.”
Yeah, there was a quote from Judd Apatow that was like, I have no recollection of [helping make] this movie.
AR: Yes, yes… There’s no way to verify […] Because different people came in, and this is a common thing, especially with comedies. They bring in a group of comedy writers to just do a quick pass and have suggestions, add jokes. And one of the producer said, “Judd Apatow came in and worked on it.” And I reached out to Judd. He’s like, “I have no recollection of working on that.” So he says he didn’t, but he might have and just doesn’t remember.
AK: I mean, I wasn’t even born when the movie came out, so this is all news to me.
And Aaron, coming into this project, were you an Elf fan? How familiar were you with the making of the movie?
AK: When our agent said to me, “We have a book project, it’s about a Christmas classic,” I thought it was going to be Die Hard. I was a very casual fan of Elf. I did not actually realize it had such a fandom. Then I, of course, realized that people go nuts for it. When I tell people I co-wrote a book about Elf, they go nuts like Buddy does when he finds out Santa is coming. So now I just drop the fact that I am writing a book about Elf even when no one’s asked.
AR: When Will Ferrell showed up for the interview, he was pissed that it wasn’t Bruce Willis.
AK: Yeah.
AR: It was weird.
AK: It was strange.
AR: Awkward.
AK: It was awkward, yeah.
The interview access you both got for this book was pretty incredible. The quotes span from Will Ferrell—who also wrote the foreword—to Jon Favreau, and even the actor who plays the iconic “Mailroom Guy” [Mark Acheson]. I loved getting to see those quotes. Take me through your process of reaching out to these interview subjects. How hard was it to get in touch with everyone?
AR: *Points to himself*
AK: Andy’s the secret weapon.
AR: I booked the interviews, too… Because I had access to everybody—some people I had to talk to their manager and see if I could get their email. There were other people where they’re just a matter of [reaching out]: Will and a couple of the producers I was friends with prior and continue to be friends with. But yeah, no, I just set up the interviews and kind of conducted them, because I have an interview podcast. I’ve been doing it for a while. It was kind of natural for me to do that. And Aaron was with me and helped me remember the things, like there are particular things that…
AK: I had to bring him his pills every morning.
AR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I just set them up and it was really great. People were incredibly generous with their time. A couple people said, “I don’t do this, but it’s you, so I’ll do it.” So that’s nice. I guess it pays to have dirt on people. And it was really a fun process. It was fun to get to talk to people.
Well, it was so fun to read.
AR: Thank you!
I could imagine there was a surplus of interview footage and information that you guys got to parse through for this book. Was there anything that you couldn’t include in the book, or that you had to cut out throughout this process?
AK: Oh, that’s a good question.
AR: Nothing that we’re going to tell you! I mean, c’mon! I don’t want to pay lawyers.
AK: I think more discussion of sequels, probably. There were two sequel scripts written. One was by Scot Armstrong, who did rewrites, who’s a buddy of Andy’s. New Line [Cinema] hired him, he got paid a bunch of money, and then the project just died. And then The Edge from U2 wrote a sequel of Elf on his own, and called one of the producers and said, “I want to meet with you.” And they never met, and we’ve never seen the script. No one knows what happened, and we need to find out what happened with The Edge’s [script].
AR: Yeah, Shauna Robertson said out of the blue, hey, The Edge wrote an Elf 2. Want to meet with him? And she was like, “Absolutely.” And then it just never happened.
AK: Do you think The Edge watches the Decider?
I hope so. We’re going to have to tag him and get this out to him.
AR: Come on, Edge.
AK: We need The Edge to release [the script].
AT: Cough it up.
Well, I saw an interview of you two and you both were divided on whether there should be an Elf sequel.
AR: An Elf 2, yeah, yeah.
But would you be open to collaborating on a book about the tribe of asparagus who hate the smell of their pee?
AR: [Laughs] I’m not sure that that really has legs.
AK: He doesn’t need me if the book’s only 25 pages.
AR: Yeah, I can do that on my own. I don’t need to cut him in on it. I think we’re done.Unless we do a book about the making of the Elf Broadway show, the making of the Elf animated special, the making of the Elf mannequin that Home Depot was selling that was frightening children. We could do those making-of’s.
Honestly on the costuming section alone. I loved all the quotes from [costume designer] Laura Jean Shannon, and learning about the [near legal action taken] with [regard to] Rankin/Bass and the likeness. That was super interesting.
AR: And there’s some original sketches. I mean, she did some amazing work. She’s gone on to work with Favreau, they’ve been together their whole career. The costume stuff is great. There was a definite tip of the elf hat to the styling of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and lawyers were afraid that the costumes were a little too close. So in the middle of filming, they were like, “We have to change all the costumes.” They ended up figuring it out, which is one of the real juicy details you gotta buy the book for. [Laughs] How did they resolve the wardrobe?
Exactly! […] There are so many “what-ifs” with respect to the making of this movie, especially when it came to its casting; how Chris Farley was originally up for the role of Buddy the Elf, Gary Shandling was being considered for Walter Hobbs, and Katie Holmes and Selma Blair were contenders for Jovie. What was the “what-if” that surprised you the most while writing this book and looking back?
AR: I guess none of those really did. I’m happy that it all turned out the way it was. And Chris Farley was just—you know, the script was passed around for eight years before it settled at New Line, and he was just attached to it for a moment, and we don’t have any way of knowing exactly what that meant. It meant a few meetings, phone calls, but whoever had the option at that point, it passed to them. I think the thing that just surprised me the most was how close this movie came to not being made. And a good amount of the book is about that, it’s about how close it came to Bob Shaye at New Line not writing a check to start the movie. So it might have happened, because nobody was a sure bet. Everybody was fairly fresh and untested in terms of feature films. And that was the days when there was a big difference. There was TV and there was movies. Now it’s all together.
AK: To me, what was interesting is not just that Selma Blair was considered for Jovie, but it was because she skateboards.
AR: Jon wanted to have a skill of the actor’s be a skill of Jovie’s, which is why Zooey and Jovie sing. Zooey sings, so Jovie sings. And Selma—
AK: Skateboards, so they were going to have her skateboard.
AR: A skateboarding Jovie.
AK: And what was your special talent?
AR: Umm… showing up on time?
You know what? A very essential skill.
AR: It is. It’s rare these days.
And how many times did you both rewatch Elf in the process of writing this book?
AR: I think about three, for me.
AK: I mean, it’s so different because he’s in the movie! He was literally there. I think I pretty much have it memorized. It’s also a very short movie. It’s like 85 minutes long. I also watched all the director’s [cuts]. There’s a Will Ferrell commentary, and a Jon Favreau commentary, which they don’t really do that anymore…
There was a moment you wrote about in the book from the Elf premiere after party, where Toby Emmerich, a New Line executive and one of the executive producers of the movie sees the Time Warner CEO who hands him a pirated Elf DVD…
AR: Yeah.
Which is so crazy. How do you think this would have been handled now? Because with so many things being able to be leaked now on social media, it’s just so interesting what was happening then and how they were able to kind of put a stop to it, as opposed to now it’d probably just be out in the world.
AR: Yeah, I have no idea because that’s such a grown-up problem that I don’t want to know [laughs]. I mean, even as we were retelling it in the book, I just kind of felt like, well, what are you going to do? Because it was one of those classic, somebody holding a camcorder the entire time watching the movie. And all the movies that came out, there would be those versions of them on the street in New York. So, you know, Toby was very alarmed by it. I kind of would have been [like], “Eh, what are you gonna do?”
AK: I think they also took a picture of the poster and then Xeroxed it, and slid it in. Quaint. Very quaint.
AR: Apparently they put a stop to that somehow. I don’t know what that means. You know, kneecaps being broken.
AK: He still has the DVD.
Well, that’s a relic now.
AR: Uh-huh, it is.
Outside of Elf, what are your go-to Christmas movies to watch during the holiday season?
AK: Well, Die Hard is my favorite movie. So I would say Die Hard is 1 and 2 for me. What about you?
AR: Wait, you mean. Die Hard 1 and Die Hard 2? Or just watching Die Hard again?
AK: Both. I do like Die Hard 2. And I know Andy’s going to say, “The 1942 classic…”
AR: No! 1951 version of A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim. […] There is a version of A Christmas Carol that’s fantastic. There’s also this movie It’s A Wonderful Life. It’s pretty good. Christmas-themed, vaguely. That’s a good one.
At DECIDER, we’re a website that celebrates all things streaming, so outside of these holiday movies, what TV shows and movies are you watching right now?
AR: Oh boy. Right now, well, there’s The [Great] British Bake Off. Always invested in that every year. I’m mad that there’s not a thousand episodes of Slow Horses.
AK: Oh, you stole mine!
AR: Really? That’s so, so good. And I’ve only, over the seasons, grown to love it more and be more obsessive about it. That’s a good one.
AK: Widow’s Bay.
AR: Yeah, Widow’s Bay was pretty fantastic. I don’t have any, like, real sort of hidden gems. There is one that I have which is a French show called The Bureau. It’s a spy show. And The Agency with Michael Fassbender is based on it. It basically is just the English-language version of that, and it’s fantastic. I’d say it’s Sopranos-level, The Bureau.
AK: Have you ever seen Colin From Accounts?
AR: Yes! That’s a very, very funny show.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
