Matt Duffer

“I would feel really nervous doing something, especially something like one of Stephen King's classic books that meant a lot to me, because there would be nothing worse than screwing that up.”

“Steven Spielberg films were huge touchstones for us growing up.”

“We push ourselves and each other to be better. We're close enough that we're not timid around one another. We pitch so many ideas every day - sometimes good, sometimes bad. But it's great to have a safety net where hopefully, between the two of us, nothing really bad will ever get through.”

“We just loved scaring ourselves.”

“If you're doing a movie, the minute you put a monster in it, it becomes a horror movie.”

“The more that you reveal and the more you comprehend, the less scary it gets. That's sort of the H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker approach.”

“I loved the 'Lord of the Rings' books, 'The Hobbit.' And my parents, they still don't understand it because they hate fantasy stuff. Neither of them are into it. So I don't know where it comes from.”

“As you're writing it, you want things to evolve. You want characters like that to grow.”

“Yeah, I don't want to put it out like 'I don't want to do a movie,' because yeah, I do.”

“I think when we were developing Season 1 - and to Netflix's credit, they sort of pressured us to make sure we had this mythology really hammered out - we had like a 25-page sort of 'Stranger Things' mythology that only maybe a small handful of people have seen.”

“David Lynch is very esoteric. He doesn't explain anything.”

“When I go to my friends' places back home, I'm constantly fixing their TVs.”

“You have to go through a big process with the Directors Guild in order to get co-direction credit. They sit you in front of this microphone in front of like 40 legendary directors, and they start grilling you.”