Dawn BonkerThis fall, Netflix saw its stock price leap 26 percent, and in its third quarter it attracted an additional 3.6 million viewers. In short, Stranger Things happened – and not just in a metaphorical way. This runaway summer hit is credited with boosting the entertainment company’s fortunes.
A 1980s-themed nostalgia trip down horror-movie lane, Stranger Things is the brainchild of creators and showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer ’07. During a scorching summer of superheated campaign rhetoric, the Duffer brothers provided an escape hatch into addictive storytelling that for many came to epitomize binge-worthy television.
The Stranger Things plot revolves around a town turned on a tilt when a boy named Will disappears, a weird little girl named Eleven arrives and a paranormal mystery unfolds.
The Duffers, graduates of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, are now busy filming the much-anticipated season two, scheduled for summer 2017 release. We visited with the bearded and slightly befuddled twin brothers earlier this year when the colossal fan following had just taken off.
Sitting in the quiet Hollywood Hills house where they holed up to write, the brothers shared insights into the message they tried to convey in their story, and the Chapman experience where it all began.
Q: First of all, we’re very worried about Will.
Matt Duffer: (smiling) I’m worried about Will. The whole idea is that they did bring him back, but he’s been in this environment, the Upside Down, for about a week, which can’t be healthy. That’s something we’re interested in potentially exploring and what kind of effect that would have on him physically and psychologically. Not good, it’s not good.
Q; Reviews have been terrific — The New Yorker, The New York Times and even Stephen King praised it. But it’s been really fun to watch the fan response on social media. People adore those kids and this story.
Ross Duffer: Yeah! We didn’t know what to expect. Netflix is a big company, but really it’s a small group of us putting this together, and we were in this little bubble. We were all excited about it, but we had no idea that it would have this response.
Q: In other interviews, you’ve compared yourselves to your characters — the nerdy kids playing Dungeons and Dragons and poor Barb, the uncool teen. But what about Jonathan, the kid behind the camera, communicating through his art? Is there a little of you in Jonathan?
Ross: (laughing) We weren’t stalking people with our cameras, but yeah, we obviously were going around making movies. … That outsider who doesn’t have a ton of friends but is trying to make art — there’s definitely a lot of us in that.
Q: Hooking a lot of the dramatic action to such young characters can be tricky. How did you sell that idea?
Matt: Our argument and pitch to Netflix was that it works on two levels. You can have 12-year-olds watching the show and they’re going to relate to these kids and they’re going to feel like they’re having an adventure just like we felt when we were their age watching Goonies. And it’s also going to work for people our age and older who grew up on these films.
Q: What about your experience at Dodge College helped foster your filmmaking careers?
Ross: You can try a lot of different things (at Dodge). … It gives you a safe place to play around. A lot of people come into film school and want to — and we made the same mistake — they want to make a masterpiece right away. And it’s like, just focus and try to tell a story.
Matt: When you move into Dodge it’s this beautiful community of film nerds, and they’re all into the same stuff that you’re into. That’s what’s key — being in a group of really, really smart kids who love the same things we did.
Q: A charming element of the Stranger Things plot is watching the boys teach the odd girl raised in a laboratory how to be a friend, how to trust people.
Ross: There’s something so innocent and sweet about how central friendship is to them. When you really boil it down, that’s what really matters. It’s those very simple life lessons — being a good friend can go a long way.
Matt: On television there’s been this huge avalanche of shows with antiheroes. A lot of our characters are good-hearted people. And they have a lot of compassion.
Q: Was that your universal truth you were trying to convey?
Ross: I hope so. Even when there’s darkness, people leave the show feeling a bit of hope there. … It’s about these friends who are there for each other, no matter what – that there’s this mom who’s there for her son, no matter what. And to us there’s something both universal and hopeful about that. … That’s where we wanted to go.
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