When The Sopranos came out that sort of blew our minds. It was the first time I had seen anything on television that looked and felt like a movie. But then you also see people that we really look up to, like Soderbergh and Cary Fukunaga, or whoever. But there’s been such a migration of filmmakers to television, and the shows have become so cinematic on top of the great writing. So that got us really excited about basically doing a really long movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxyRG_tckY

Your show is essentially split up into three age demographics between the young kids, the teenagers, and the adults. But you also seem to use a different ’80s influence on each of them, as if they’re in their own movie. The kids have a Spielberg and Chris Columbus kind of going on, there’s a Carpenter vibe with the teens, and then a more traditional Spielberg and Stephen King sort of feeling with the adults. How did those particular inspirations come to be?

Well I think part of it was us going back and looking at all of these movies that we fell in love with growing up, and these were the things that made us want to do what we’re doing. And it’s not just movies, but also that Stephen King late ’70s attitude. Those are what we read growing up and what inspired us. I think the one thing that connected all of these stories for us was the idea of the ordinary meeting the extraordinary. We had a normal childhood growing up, but we’d watch these movies and we were sort of transported.

I think part of it is that we’d go out with our friends into the woods with a video camera, and you’ve got no cell phone, and your parents have no idea where you are. It’s this idea of going on this big adventure, whether that’s Spielberg, or Carpenter, or King, and that idea would connect all of these stories. Lately, I think we’re seeing a little less and less of that in the movies—these ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It’s not that we don’t enjoy these superhero movies, it’s just that a normal family caught up in this amazing thing means so much more to us. It’s that thing that Spielberg does so well. So I think it was just a desire to go back to that style of storytelling.

I mean the fact that you decide to label your episodes as chapters ends up giving the thing a very novelistic structure to it. There’s a definite Christine vibe going on there too in terms of the ordinary meeting the extraordinary. I really love that you guys use Dungeons and Dragons as sort of an allegory for the kids’ quest to find Will. Juxtaposing that fantasy peril with actual danger works so well. Were Dungeons and Dragons or any sort of role-playing games a part of your childhoods?