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Tim Allen always stayed in character while shooting The Santa Clause 2 because the child actors believed he was the real Santa.
Writer-director David E. Talbert actually spent over 20 years creating this movie, and it was inspired by several musicals from his own childhood, so it's kind of cool that it also features three real-life actors from Dreamgirls: Phylicia Rashad (Grandmother Journey) was the Broadway understudy for Deena Jones in the early '80s, Anika Noni Rose (Jessica) played Lorrell in the 2006 movie, and Marisha Wallace (who sang "Miles and Miles" on the soundtrack) played Effie on the West End in 2017.
Tim Allen revealed that playing Santa around the child actors was a huge amount of responsibility: "I didn't want to disappoint them. I had to stay in character all the time, so I couldn't swear or get mad. The elves would gaze at me all day long and ask me ridiculous questions about Christmas."
The movie itself was sort of autobiographical. DuVall had an outline for the film, and she later asked Mary Holland, her Veep costar, if she'd help write it with her. The two never had any scenes together in Veep, but they bonded over table readings, and DuVall thought it'd be easier to write a comedy with someone else to bounce jokes and ideas off of.
There's a popular rumor that Daniel Stern had to mime his scream during the scene, but that's not actually true. The animal trainer on set told Stern he'd be fine during the scene as long as he didn't make any sudden movements. Stern responded, "But I’m going to be screaming in Barry's face. Do you think he'll feel threatened by that?!” The animal trainer simply said, "Barry doesn't have ears. He can't hear. Relax."
Writer-director Richard Curtis said the scenes ultimately had to be cut, but they were so good that he made sure they were included in the DVD extras.
At the time, it was also popular to use asbestos as snow in films (like in the poppy field scene from The Wizard of Oz). But this new technique made filming a lot easier for Capra, rather than having to film the picture and audio separately and dub it in later. It also earned Russell Shearman and his team a special Technical Achievement Award at the Oscars.
Scott Schwartz, who played Flick, said the set directors actually put a piece of plastic over the flagpole to film this scene: "It had a little hole in it with a suction tube that went into the snow — you couldn’t see it. It was a little motor, like a small vacuum cleaner, [and] the hole's opening [in the plastic] was about the size of your pinky nail. So when you put your tongue there or finger or whatever, it just stuck."
In 1983, parents were camping out at stores to make sure they got their children Cabbage Patch Kids for Christmas. When doors opened to stores, adults would get into physical fights over the dolls, and some people were even trampled on, resulting in broken bones.
Maureen O'Hara wrote in her autobiography that Edmund Gwenn, who won an Oscar for playing Kris Kringle in the film, was the actual Santa in the 1946 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade because that was the only way they'd be able to get the necessary shots for the movie.
Matt Damon revealed that this was actually really common: "The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of his buildings, you had to write him in a part. Martin Brest had to write something in Scent of a Woman — and the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bullsh*t shot: Donald Trump walks in, and Al Pacino’s like, 'Hello, Mr. Trump!' — you had to call him by name — and then he exits. You waste a little time so that you can get the permit, and then you can cut the scene out. But I guess in Home Alone 2 they left it in."
They filmed in 90+-degree weather, so Frank Capra and the studio would shut everything down to give people a chance to recover from heat exhaustion.
In Netflix's The Holiday Movies That Made Us, Greg Gardiner, the director of photography for Elf, talked about how important these random shots were because they added a sense of realness to the movie.
Devin Ratray, the actor who played Buzz, admitted that the girl in the picture was actually the son of the movie's art director: "[They] decided it would be unkind to put a girl in that role of just being funny-looking. The art director had a son who was more than willing to volunteer for the part. I think if he had known it would become the highest-grossing family comedy of all time, he might have had second thoughts about it."
Emma Thompson admitted this a few years ago, saying, "Oh, and I wore a fat suit for Love Actually — and I knew just how to play that part [of a wife who has stumbled across evidence of what might be her husband’s infidelity]. I’ve had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom and then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer.”