by Gabe Zaldivar
Last updated: 10:00 AM ET, Sun December 14, 2014
Image via YouTube
Let's make like Buddy the Elf and meander through the Candy Cane forest, waltz merrily through the sea of swirly-twirly gum drops and walk pleasantly through the Lincoln Tunnel.
Before Iron Man and a couple years after Made, director Jon Favreau managed to create something far more than an enjoyable movie with 2003's Elf. He delivered what now has to be considered a holiday classic.
It passes all the necessary tests: You can quote the movie from memory; if a showing is playing on television you have to cancel your plans and watch the rest of it in its entirety and it puts you in the special kind of mood wherein you don't really care how many holiday cookies you just threw down.
Like Home Alone 2 and Scrooged before it, Elf manages to also feature an unheralded character in the movie: New York City during the holiday season.
IMDB posts a wide swath of filming locations, which include Central Park West, the Lincoln Tunnel and Rockefeller Center. Some scenes were even shot in picturesque Vancouver, Canada.
Unless you hitch a ride in Santa's bag one day, you are out of luck visiting the North Pole. You can however enjoy a similar romp through New York as the one experienced by Buddy the Elf.
Movie Locations Guide, On the Set of New York and The Movie District are all excellent references for spotting nearly all of the scenes throughout the city.
Film School Rejects pored over the movie's commentary and found, among many other things, "All off the exteriors were shot in NYC, something Favreau takes great pride in."
Here are a few:
- Buddy's Home, where he places his Central Park tree and creates a yummy candied spaghetti is located at 55 Central Park West.
- The Empire State Building features in the movie-although there are not nearly as many elevator buttons as suggested in the film.
- Buddy leaps across the crosswalk at 175 5th Avenue. Though we might suggest waiting patiently for a green light, because the yellow ones don't stop.
- Gimbels may not exist on 34th street, but another department store does. IMDB states, "The outside of Gimbels is a digitally altered view of the 34th St. Macy's, a reference to Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Gimbels was Macy's main competition but it is now closed."
The only real hiccup we ran into was finding the coffee shop that boasts the "World's Best Cup of Coffee."
We assume this is a random shop turned into a diner for the movie or a film set. Those in the know, please offer up an answer. We just have to try a cup.
As for interior shots, those were mainly captured on a movie set in one of the more peculiar shooting locations.
Film School Rejects helps us out again: "Some of the sets for Elf, Walter's apartment, Gimbals' toy department, and the jail cell among them, were built in an abandoned mental hospital in Vancouver, the same hospital where New Line shot Freddy Vs. Jason. And now I'm never watching that Christmas special the same way again."
Because nothing says Holiday spirit like an abandoned mental hospital.
And, of course, no New York holiday movie would be complete without a glimpse of the mammoth marvel known as the Rockefeller Center Tree.
With an equally captivating soundtrack, Elf manages to pull off something rather rare in a movie. We are not only entertained for an hour-plus minutes; we get to enjoy New York City through the eyes of a man-child.
Crummy diners are treasures, forgotten landmarks are seen anew, Christmas Trees get the awe they deserve and we all get a small semblance of what it's like to take on an unbelievably huge city as a child.
It's a cheesy sentiment, but it's the time of year for such things. There have been countless movies to illustrate the seedy side of Manhattan. With Elf, we find that North Pole South exists wherever you choose to find it.
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