Elf Producers Wanted to Cut One of the Funniest (And Weirdest) Lines From the Movie

Non-sequiturs and subdued one-liners are a signature of Will Ferrell’s comedy movies of the early-2000s, but one of the funniest such lines in Elf was almost cut. Last year, actor Mark Acheson talked about his experience on Elf in an interview with The Daily Mail, celebrating the movies 20th anniversary. He played the gruff mailroom worker who befriends Buddy the elf, but he revealed that his entire part was nearly cut.

Acheson shows in up Elf at around the one hour mark, when Buddy’s father (James Caan) sends him to the mailroom to get him out of the way. Buddy is assigned to work beside Acheson’s unnamed character, who shares his flask of liquor with an unsuspecting Buddy. Acheson probably gets no more than three or four minutes of screen time, but he revealed that he was actually on set for about 22 hours. He said that director Jon Favreau asked him to deliver just one line, but his riffing and ad-libbing with Farrell completely took over the film set for a day.

Acheson was just glad that he was left in the movie at all, revealing that “the producers did want to cut me out of the whole picture and Favreau had to fight for me.” In particular, he was proud of the ad-libbed line where he casually mentioned his character’s age. He said: “I mean, I’m 26 years old and I got nothing to show for it!” In his interview, he recalled the producers’ reaction to that joke.

[RELATED: The Real Reason There’s Never Been an Elf Movie Sequel]

“They said ‘Who the hell is gonna believe this guy is 26 years old?’ And Favreau went, ‘That’s the joke!’ I mean, I was actually 46 when I delivered that line!” Acheson recalled. He also said that scene was essentially improvised. It was filmed with Acheson’s drunken character and Buddy lying on their backs side by side on top of piles of mail. He said: “All of it was ad-libbed. They put a few notes up on the ceiling, things about age, ideas, where to go to, but they just said, ‘Have some fun.’”

Acheson was initially called in for a single two-word, scripted joke. When Buddy arrives in the mailroom, he tells his new friend that he came here from the North Pole, and asks: “So how’d you get here?” Acheson replies: “Work release.” Acheson explained that the part extended as Favreau, Farrell and others tried to get as much as they could out of their final day of filming.

“It was a real tough gig,” he admitted. “Laying next to one of the funniest guys in film and TV and having a laugh. It was one of the easiest shifts I’ve ever done, and Will Ferrell and Jon Favreau… I just followed them along and they were so nice and sweet to me.”

What Did Acheson’s Part Get Cut?

Obviously, a lot of Acheson’s footage was removed to cut a 22-hour day of filming down to a few minutes. The actor revealed that he filmed an elaborated dance scene with Farrell that he has still never seen to this day – not even in special features or behind-the-scenes featurettes.

“The very last thing that Favreau [said]… and this is something that’s really puzzled me… is that we were doing the dancing thing at the very end where Will Ferrell’s dancing on the tables and Jon Favreau goes, ‘Mark, we want Will to pull a water main down on you and force water down on you, and do like a Flashdance sort of thing. And we want you to sing a Christmas carol as loud as you possibly can with the gallons of water coming down on you all at once… Are you good with that Mark?’”

Acheson didn’t hesitate, saying: “‘Yes, I’m absolutely golden with that idea!’ And they drowned me like a rat! I walked into that trailer at the end of the day, 22 hours later, and I was just completely soaked and drowned and I couldn’t believe what kind of day I’d had!” All these years later, Acheson is still surprised that scene hasn’t circulated anywhere. He said: “There’s no outtakes or anything like that, which really threw me because I understand it’s not in the movie, I get that, but you’d think something that took two hours to set up would be in the outtakes somewhere but no!”

Acheson and Elf

Acheson had a long and successful career before Elf, and he has had some excellent roles since then as well, but he still regards the Christmas movie as one of the highlights of his career. He credited it with helping him get “so much work” since then, calling it “free advertising for my career. He also joked that the movie is “sort of like my retirement account,” because it pays consistent and reliable residual checks.

The big difference between Acheson and other fans is that he doesn’t watch Elf every single December, which is understandable. He joke: “I do watch it every once in a while but I don’t watch it every Christmas like other people are forced to!” However, he had watched it recently before this interview, and he said: “I looked at it and I thought, ‘this is a well-crafted movie.’ It was done well, it really was.”

Elf is streaming now on Hulu and Max.