Who are they?
Matt and Ross Duffer are 33-year-old twin brothers from North Carolina. They work together as writers and directors of TV and movies. They are best known for their creation of Stranger Things, an insanely popular Netflix original series that came out in the summer of 2016.
About the Show
Stranger Things is a science fiction-horror-thriller-drama series set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s. The first season centers around the disappearance of Will Byers and the supernatural events happening throughout the town, as well as a psychokinetic girl who helps Will's mother and friends find him. The show was nominated for 18 Emmys this past year--out of which it won 6--and it won TV Show of the Year at the MTV Movie and TV awards. Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven, won Best Actor in a TV Show at the MTV awards as well. Season 2 of the show came out in October of this year, and it has been renewed for a third season. The show has gotten high praise for its incredible cast, themes of friendship and wonder, and nostalgic tributes to 1980s pop culture.
The Creative Process
The Duffer brothers have been watching movies together their whole lives. While creating Stranger Things, they drew upon some of their favorite movies--including E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, and Jaws--as well as some of their favorite writers and producers--particularly Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Steven Spielberg. They also have subtle references to Japanese anime and video games within the show. Even the font for the title models Stephen King's novels.
Stranger Things has been praised for its excellent casting. When creating some of the characters, the Duffer brothers said that some of the cast member they found and fell in love with didn't actually match the characters they had in the script. Gaten Matarazzo, who plays Dustin, Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington, and Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike, were all noted as cast members who didn't exactly fit the mold for the characters they were written for. Instead, the Duffer brothers decided to tailor those characters to the actors themselves, something that isn't commonly done.
In Sunstein and Thaler's article on collaboration, they said, about Tversky and Kahneman's writing ethic, "As they began to produce work together, each sentence would be written, rewritten, and rewritten again, with Kahneman manning the typewriter...Everything was produced jointly; they did not really know where one's thought ended and the other's began" (Sunstein, 5). Matt and Ross Duffer work in a very similar way. In an interview with Wired, they said, "Up through college, we saw every movie together. We have the same life, many of the same life experiences, so we're as synced up as you can possibly be...The writing for us is the hardest, but also the most important. You want to get to the next part of it, to production, but it doesn't matter how beautifully made it is if something is wrong with the story arc." They have an extremely collaborative creative process, which is very similar to that of Tversky and Kahneman. Obviously all that work they put into the creation of the show has paid off--Stranger Things is one of the most popular shows on Netflix, and hopefully will continue to be for future seasons.
References to 70s-80s movies in Stranger Things
Sources
https://www.wired.com/story/stranger-things-season-2-duffer-brothers-interview/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/fien-print/duffer-brothers-talk-stranger-things-916180
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-stranger-things-the-duffer-bros-on-how-they-made-the-tv-hit-of-the-summer
Sunstein, Cass R, and Richard Thaler. “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” The New Yorker, 7 Dec. 2016, pp. 1–10.
This is so interesting! I wonder if the fact that they are twins would have anything to do with their collaborative creative process, in terms of genetically or environmentally shaping it.
ReplyDeleteI personally love Stranger Things and I am so glad that you did your blog on it. One of my favorite elements of the plot is the nostalgic inclusion of the '80s. In the ambient soundtrack, songs, references to movies and above all Dungeons and Dragons. There have been many nostalgic projects looking at the '80s, but I have never seen any media property include D&D to the extent that Stranger Things does. The monster villain, the party roles that the children assign themselves, the idea of the looming fortress of the villain, all of these contribute to the lighthearted but still scary tone of one of Netflix's best original shows.
ReplyDeleteI also love Stranger Things, and it was super cool to see all the references they make to past films! It's interesting to see where their inspiration comes from, and how what they've watched influences their work. Like Ruhi pointed out, I wonder whether the fact that they are twins affects how they collaborate. It's clear their upbringing definitely shaped their masterpiece.
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