David Berenbaum

David Berenbaum wants you to know that Aldo's Pizzarama on Bustleton Avenue in the Great Northeast serves the best pizza on the planet.

"And I've checked out a lot of pizza," insists the Philadelphia native, now residing in Beverly Hills, where, he laments, "the pizza is horrible."
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"He says, 'You know, there are a million Ray's Pizzas, but the original one is on 11th Street,' " reports Berenbaum, who caught the movie over the weekend with his girlfriend."That's Santa's sage wisdom."

Actually, Berenbaum, 33, has seen Elf many, many times - before it opened.
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Which seemed like a pretty inspired notion, except, Berenbaum says, Ferrell "hadn't left Saturday Night Live yet, and Old School hadn't come out yet."
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Berenbaum, a graduate of George Washington High School and the film program at New York University (M. Night Shyamalan was a classmate), is riding high these days.Not just because of Elf's great reviews and box office.
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Berenbaum wrote Mansion during a two-year stint as a writer-in-residence at Disney, a program the Mouse House modeled after the old studio system, in which screenwriters had offices on the lot and worked exclusively for one company.He also did drafts of a Herbie the Love Bug remake.His residency ended in January.

The Haunted Mansion, like this summer's smash Pirates of the Caribbean, was developed from a Disney theme park ride.Berenbaum, who had been scared silly by the ride when he was a kid visiting Walt Disney World with his family, spent a long time researching its origins, from Walt's initial concept to the years-long debate about how scary versus how funny the ride should be.

Although he didn't write the film as a vehicle for Murphy, Berenbaum says it lent itself to the comedy star's fast-talking, antic style.

Berenbaum, part of a filmmaking family, still has ties to the area.His mother, Cindy, lives here. (His father passed away "a long time ago.") His two brothers are in New York.One's in finance, the other's a film editor, nominated for an Emmy for his work on Sex and the City.
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Berenbaum remembers the day he quit Philadelphia for the West Coast: "It was literally the day after Mitch Williams gave up the home run in the World Series in '93.I left in disgust, pretty much."

It took Berenbaum a week to drive out there.
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Berenbaum was back home last month for Yom Kippur - and for a visit to Aldo's Pizzarama.He says that people have asked him how a nice Jewish boy from Philly ends up writing a Christmas movie.
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A diehard Eagles fan ("all I want is for the Eagles to win the Super Bowl, but I think they're going to bury me - it's agonizing"), Berenbaum is resigned to living in sunny SoCal.