Christmas movie watching is all part of celebrating the season. You probably have your favorites memorized. Perhaps you have even been known, at least once or twice a year, to say, “You smell like beef and cheese, you don’t smell like Santa.” But here are some movie facts you probably didn’t know and might make you want to spend another evening watching these classics.
1. The fight scene in Gimbel’s department store between Santa and Buddy was filmed in one take so they could totally destroy the carefully crafted set.
Photo Credit: Elf (2003) Will Farrell, New Line Cinema
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas executive producer Lee Mendelson told Charles Shulz he expected the special to have a standard laugh track for the punch lines. Shulz left the room to compose himself and Mendelson dropped the subject.
Photo Credit: Lee Mendelson Films
3. In Scrooged, the Ghost of Christmas Present, played by Carol Kane, tore Bill Murray’s lip enough that filming suspended for a few days so he could heal.
Photo Credit: PARAMOUNT
4. Emma Thompson wore a “fat suit” for Love Actually, in which she played Karen, a woman who discovers her husband’s infidelity.
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
5. Super-fan Brian Jones bought the Cleveland-area home used for exterior shots of A Christmas Story for $500,000 to renovate and open as a museum for other fans of the classic film.
Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
6. Jim Carrey’s costume for his role in How The Grinch Stole Christmas was made of yak hair glued onto a spandex suit.
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
7. Bad Santa uses the “f-word” 147 times and is known as “Santa Is a Pervert” in the Czech Republic.
Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures
8. For Home Alone, Joe Pesci kept forgetting he was filming a family movie, and had to be instructed by director Chris Columbus to replace his many F-bombs with “fridge.”
Photo Caption: Twentieth Century Fox
9. For It’s A Wonderful Life, Frank Capra worked with special effects supervisor Russell Shearman to create a fake snow allowing him to record live sound during the snow scenes. The industry-wide practice of using colored corn flakes would be too crunchy.
Photo Credit: Liberty Films
10. One minute of the stop motion movie The Nightmare Before Christmas took an entire week to make, and the film took three years to complete.
Photo Credit: Touchstone Pictures/Walt Disney Studios
So jingle all the way to your movie collection and pull out these jolly classics for a closer look. It doesn’t even need to be Christmastime to enjoy them knowing these fun facts.
