E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, THE GOONIES or any other 80’s movie featuring mostly unsupervised gaggles of children may stand as a model for the Netflix series STRANGER THINGS, then sprinkle in some Stephen King for the horror elements and you got yourself a hit. The show takes inspiration from plenty exports of the decade, but surely no one thought a Chevy Chase movie would be among them. According to star David Harbour the third season indeed took inspiration from one classic Chase movie – particularly 1985’s FLETCH.
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Harbour was a guest at a screening of STRANGER THINGS at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles on Friday, and it was there he said to Variety that the show took a cue from the hit comedy, which even he thinks is odd given the darker, scarier tone of season three.
“The Duffers are so specific each year with the movies. And ‘Fletch’ is one movie we get to play around and have some fun with this season, which you wouldn’t expect from ‘Stranger Things’ and you wouldn’t expect from the Spielberg universe and you certainly wouldn’t expect from a darker season.”
FLETCH is about a journalist named Irwin M. "Fletch" Fletcher who takes on numerous, whacky disguises in order to investigate a story. The new season is adding several newcomers, including Cary Elwes and Maya Hawke, but where the season may get live out its FLETCH inspiration is in Jake Busey’s character Bruce, a “journalist for The Hawkins Post, with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.”
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Harbour is right in saying that FLETCH as an inspiration is the last thing you would expect from this show, but the Duffers love the 80's, so perhaps it isn't too far-fetched (far-FLETCHed, amiright?). Comedians like Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray (GHOSTBUSTERS nods were in season two) and, Chase had a big impact on the decade coming off SNL in the 70's, so perhaps the show taking cues from more of their movies was inevitable. But just you wait, season four is all about NATIONAL LAMPOON's VACATION.
STRANGER THINGS season three will arrive in 2019.