Stream it or skip it?

The holiday movies they made us is an extension of the popular Netflix The movies they made us docuseries, which examines the enduring appeal of modern classics by talking to some of the people who were involved in bringing them to the screen. This time, two modern holiday classics, Elf is The nightmare before Christmas, are profiled.

Opening shot: Will Ferrell is filmed dancing on a table … in a psychiatric institution.

The juice: In Elf episode, we discover that screenwriter Robert Berenbaum had this vision to make a film that pays homage to Rankin-Bass’s holiday specials such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. He also wanted to continue the warm tradition of family vacation movies he had relied on since his father died when he was young.

The original studio opting for the then unknown Berenbaum’s script wanted Chris Farley to star, which wasn’t Berenbaum’s choice. He then met producer Jon Berg, and the script eventually came to Ferrell, who just started his film career while still there. SNLand Cale Boyter, a junior executive at New Line Cinema. They chose Jon Favreau as director because, despite his relative inexperience as a director, his vision of the film matched theirs. None of them had much experience making films, but they ended up with a budget of $ 30 million and went from there.

The rest of the episode tells the stories of James Caan, who called himself “Jimmy The Dream,” the forced perspective shots that DP Greg Gardiner created to avoid a lot of CGI, last-minute legal cold feet that New Line had about the Rankin-Bass tributes and the shredded cut that the studio made for the film’s first screening.

What shows will it remind you of? The movies they made us perfected their particular storytelling style, which includes interviews with many of the producers and other creative people behind the scenes who made a particular film. They tell it in a fun style, so as not to take it seriously, but always look for the moving moments. The vacation version is no different.

Our opinion: Here’s what always surprises us The movies they made us: As silly as the jumps may be, they don’t stand in the way of giving a good insight into how the particular film being profiled was made. Each movie has its own unique journey to become a timeless classic, and those journeys are what this series excels at defining.

Just like its main series, The holiday movies they make us he’s not really that interested in talking to the movie stars. If they talk to one or two of the supporting players, the director or – in the case of Elf – the writer, the producers and the technical talent is more than enough for them. All the serendipity, coincidences, lucky breaks and incredible skills of the BTS folks are documented, and even for a popular film like Elf, there are facts that may be available if you look at the movie’s Wikipedia or IMDb page, but they are not of common knowledge.

We would have liked to see Favreau or maybe Bob Newhart being interviewed in Elf episode? Sure. But considering how long Berenbaum had been buying that script, the fact that he stayed true to his vision despite being a novice screenwriter fascinated us. The anecdotes about the method of shooting the guerilla warfare in New York and how Favreau angered Jimmy Caan during his confrontation scene with Ferrell were more than enough to make this episode worth watching.

Separation stroke: Berg says “I feel like shit holding it”, referring to a frame Variety article showing Elf at the top of the box office.

Sleeping Star: We enjoyed hearing from the Chiodo brothers, who made the stop-action effects and how quickly they made them in time for a studio screening.

Pilot line bridge: The obligatory scene in the series where one of the people interviewed goes back to a place to evoke nostalgia didn’t work here, because the café was Berenbaum and Berg met looked like a wreck in the middle of the renovation.

Our call: STREAM IT. Because of their entertaining yet informative take on the films they profile, the episodes of The holiday movies they made us it should fly.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting, and technology, but he doesn’t fool himself: he’s a TV addict. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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