Creators of Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ share memories of growing up in Durham

The creators of the Netflix hit “Stranger Things” have been making movies nearly all their lives.

Brothers Matt and Ross Duffer grew up near a tobacco farm in Durham, a few miles from Duke Forest, and started making short films in third grade.

In an interview with Sam Briger in November 2017 on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” The Duffer Brothers, as they are professionally known, talked about making movies for fun and to help classmates with school projects.

We wrote about some of the interview highlights at the time, and with the first installment of Season 5 hitting Netflix on Thanksgiving Eve, it’s a good time revisit.

Duffer brothers from the NPR ‘Fresh Air’ interview

“We flirted with popularity in high school, which was when people realized that our videos, if used for a class assignment, would get you an automatic A,” Matt Duffer told Briger. “It took me a few months to realize I was just being used,” he laughed.

“They would only hang out with us while we were making the film for them. And then once they got their A, I would never hear from them again until they needed another video.”

For a WWII history project in high school, Ross said a “cool kid” called one day and asked him to film the storming of Normandy at Jordan Lake. It’s the scene that opens the Oscar-winning Steven Spielberg film “Saving Private Ryan.”

Ross describes adjusting the color and shutter speed on his camera, and then shaking the camera as the kids “with squirt guns and rafts” ran around. Then he ripped the audio from “Saving Private Ryan” in editing, he said.

“If you put that with a shaky camera of kids, suddenly this thing came alive. For ten years, history class still showed that project. I’m sure maybe now they’ve stopped,” Ross continued. “But that was the catalyst … after that every weekend we had to film a movie for people.”

Honoring Durham friends and neighbors with ‘Stranger Things’ shoutouts

The brothers sprinkle references to Durham and the Triangle throughout each season, even naming characters after people they knew.

In Season 1, the kids who are the stars of the show are playing Dungeons and Dragons, and King Tristan is named.

“Tristan, he was our next door neighbor,” Matt Duffer told The News & Observer in 2017. “And he made movies with us all throughout childhood, and he was our closest friend.

Duffer also noted an instance when a childhood neighbor gets a mention.

“When Dustin’s talking on the phone he’s pretending to talk about the cat, he’s talking to Mr. McCorkle,” Matt Duffer said. “Mac McCorkle was our neighbor next door.”

When is “Stranger Things” Season 5?

The fifth season will be released in three installments: Volume 1 (episodes 1-4) will be released on Netflix Wednesday, Nov. 26, followed by Volume 2 (episodes 5-7) on Thursday, Dec. 25 and the season finale on Wednesday, Dec. 31.

Fans across can watch the finale on the big screen at select theaters nationwide, Netflix announced this fall. (The finale will also stream on Netflix.)