Quotes from Ross Duffer

All I know is it was very easy for us to write the Barb character and I think that, you know, Shannon Purser - who had never acted before - just did such a brilliant job realizing her. And, again, without very many lines - 25 lines. And I think everyone feels like either they knew this girl or they were this girl.

The biggest and most important part of our childhood was making movies. Our whole drive in life was to do this for a living, and then also to try to recapture that feeling that we had when we were telling those stories in the summer.

At the end of the day, 'Hidden' was a great experience. Because we know what it's like to fail. And we know it will happen again.

It was Tim Burton's 'Batman' in, what, '89, I think? What we could see was there was someone behind the curtain controlling all of this, and you could see it from one Tim Burton film to the next, that the guy who made 'Edward Scissorhands' also made 'Batman.' You could connect the dots because his style was so distinct.

Tim Burton - he's not exactly a subtle filmmaker. I mean that in a good way.

When I look back at something like 'E.T.,' not only does it hold up beautifully but it feels timeless.

I love playing into those horror tropes of 'don't go into the basement, you idiot.' I love that, so it's fun to sometimes play into it and sometimes against type and the tropes.

Game of Thrones' really opened the door. It let people see that genre shows are worthy.

We always loved that idea of the Amity feel in 'Jaws,' in a coastal town.

Some of our favorite movies, like 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'Breaking Away,' were set in Indiana.

It was strange initially to be directing Winona Ryder. Of course it was.

I perform the best when I'm isolated or with a few friends.

Jaws' was a big one. It's a classic. The shark not working while making that movie made it much better.

When you look at it and see, 'Oh,they made their first movie at 27,' you feel like a jerk saying it felt like forever, but at the time it did.

We just want to make sure we're excited every year and we're not treading water.

What I liked about 'Get Out,' which is so rare, is that there's just as much focus on getting to know and care about these characters on top of the film being clever and scary.

We were seeing TV becoming increasingly cinematic, with stuff like 'True Detective.' And 'Game of Thrones' opened up 'genre TV' and showed it doesn't have to be cheesy.

Chapman pushes internships a lot, and starting the summer of sophomore year we started interning because we knew that was the best way to make connections.

At the end of the day, what really matters in 'Poltergeist' is that Carol Anne is missing and they have to go through a portal in the closet to get her back. That matters more than the backstory.

Sometimes you see a monster sitting down in a chair and it looks ridiculous.

There's so much art out there, and I'm happy to see people who are drawing monsters that are very simple designs.

One reason I loved '80s monsters is after I watched the movie, I could go into my room with crayons or markers and I could very simply draw these monsters that I fell in love with.

The format of Netflix was the dream for us. It allowed us to make cinematic, longer episodes without interruption.

If you look back at a lot of these Spielberg movies and Stephen King books, even though there's a lot of fun and a lot of camaraderie, there's also a bit of sadness there, whether it's 'E.T.' with the divorce or in Stephen King's 'It,' where there's racism. There's always some sort of evil - there's sadness and people aren't happy.