SIAP: Duffer Brothers sued for stealing “Stranger Things” idea from short film

Lebron is out of control

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This is a laughable connection. The owners of Dungeons and Dragons have a better case for them stealing ideas.

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Read one paragraph down, that wasn’t the only connection.

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The centerpiece of the flick involves top secret government experiments ... a key plot point in "Stranger Things."

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Yea that's never been done before.

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Charlie Kessler claims in a new lawsuit, he produced a short film called "Montauk," which premiered in 2012 and even won an award at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

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Montauk? Never heard of such a place. Expect for in movies and TV like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Cocaine Cowboys, The Affair....

Guy is gonna get rich off this.

Anyone have a plot summary for Montauk? I would have sworn that Stranger things was more of a X-files + The Goonies inspiration

When looking for footage of the short film in question I also found this on Wiki.

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Coordinates: 41°N 03°E The Montauk Project is an alleged series of secret United States government projects conducted at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station on Montauk, Long Island, for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and exotic research including time travel. Jacques Vallée describes allegations of the Montauk Project as an outgrowth of stories about the Philadelphia Experiment.[1] The history of the Montauk Project story is closely associated with — and often believed to originate in — the Montauk Project series of books by Preston Nichols.[

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So unless the script is extremely similar to Stranger Things I'm not sure how this guy is claiming his idea is original when the area has been rumored to be the site of secret experiments and has had books written about it since the 1980s.

also from wiki

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Origin

Stories about the Montauk Project have circulated since the early 1980s. According to UFO researcher Jacques Vallée, the Montauk Experiment stories seem to have originated with the account of Preston Nichols, who claimed to have recovered repressed memories of his own involvement. Nichols, born May 24, 1946 in Long Island, New York, claims to have degrees in parapsychology, psychology, and electrical engineering, and he has authored a series of books, known as the Montauk Project series, along with Peter Moon, the primary topic of which is alleged activities at Montauk. These center on topics including United States government/military experiments in fields such as time travel, teleportation, mind control, contact with alien life and staging faked Apollo Moon landings, framed as developments which followed a successful 1943 Philadelphia Experiment. These culminate in "a hole ripped in space-time" in 1983.

The authors have encouraged speculation about the contents; for example, they wrote, "Whether you read this as science fiction or non-fiction you are in for an amazing story" in their first chapter, describing much of the content as "soft facts" in a Guide For Readers and publishing a newsletter with updates to the story.

Nichols' participation at Montauk

Some sources report that Nichols claims to have worked on the Montauk Project and recalls it only through recovery of repressed memories. Others hold that he believes he is periodically abducted to continue his participation against his will. Most treat Nichols' work as fiction.

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LINK

this is from the Wiki on the book series by Nichols

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Key parts of the original book

Experiments began in earnest in the early 1970s and during this time one, some or all of the following are claimed to have occurred at the site:

--- The facility was expanded to as many as twelve levels and several hundred workers, without anyone in the town noticing the tons of building materials or hundreds of workers required. Some reports have the facility extending under the town of Montauk itself.

---Homeless people were abducted and subjected to huge amounts of electromagnetic radiation. Few survived.

---People had their psychic abilities enhanced to the point where they could materialize objects out of thin air. Stewart Swerdlow claims to have been involved in the Montauk Project, and as a result, he says, his "psionic" faculties were boosted, but at the cost of emotional instability, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other issues.

---Experiments were conducted in teleportation.

---A "porthole in time" was created which allowed researchers to travel anywhere in time or space. This was developed into a stable "Time Tunnel".

---Contact was made with alien extraterrestrials through the Time Tunnel and technology was exchanged with them which enhanced the project. This allowed broader access to "hyperspace".

---An alien monster traveled through the time tunnel, destroyed equipment, and devoured researchers. The tunnel was shut down and the creature destroyed.

---Mind control experiments were conducted and runaway boys were abducted and brought out to the base where they underwent excruciating periods of both physical and mental torture in order to break their minds, then their minds were re-programmed. Many were supposedly killed during the process and buried on the site.

---On or about August 12, 1983, the time travel project at Camp Hero interlocked in hyperspace with the original Rainbow Project back in 1943. The USS Eldridge was drawn into hyperspace and trapped there. Two men, Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron both claim to have leaped from the deck of the Eldridge while it was in hyperspace and ended up after a period of severe disorientation at Camp Hero in the year 1983. Here they claim to have met John von Neumann, a famous physicist and mathematician, even though he was known to have died in 1957. Von Neumann had supposedly worked on the original Philadelphia Experiment, but the U.S. Navy denies this.

Staff from the Camp Hero site traveled to the USS Eldridge and shut down the generators, causing the ship to return to Philadelphia naval yard in 1943 and causing the time tunnel to collapse.

---Metahumans and experiments in special serums to create such individuals were tested there.

---After the experiments were completed or the destruction of the facility, depending on which book you read, the facility was closed for good, all the staff were brainwashed, shot, or sworn to absolute secrecy, and all records destroyed. According to some stories, research continues at the site to this day with enhanced security.

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If anyone was ripped off it seems more like this Nichols cat is the one that got screwed just from this summary of what the book has in it.

If I can find a link to the full short film I will post it but so far no luck. I'm also still not sure the clip/trailer I posted is actually from that film b/c it seems like a dude on Youtube has taken advantage of this by renaming a short on his page Montauk w/"like stranger things" as keywords in a search.

more research indicates the movie was up on Vimeo but was taken down on Tuesday.

from an article on CNN

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"Montauk," which won an award at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2012, was a found-footage sci-fi short that told the story of a violent event that took place in the Long Island community. The premise dealt with conspiracy theories, secret government projects and the paranormal, as described in the lawsuit. A cop haunted by his past was among the key characters.

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That makes me pretty sure the clip I posted earlier is in fact from the movie in question.

However, w/o being able to see it it really does seem to me that if anything was ripped off it's Preston Nichols' book The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time.

It should be pretty easy to prove if the writer did in fact have a meeting with the Duffer brothers and pitched his idea to them.

Welp, this explains a lot. They should have paid him and kept him around to give ideas for season 2.

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They should have paid him and kept him around to give ideas for season 2.

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:micdrop: