Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk in Hell of a Summer. Credit: Allanah Elster via EF Neon
Though “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard is no stranger to acting, he said directing has been an entirely new challenge for him and his co-director and fellow actor Billy Bryk ( “Saturday Night”).
The duo recently teamed up to create “Hell of a Summer,” a slasher-comedy set in a remote summer camp and distributed by the indie powerhouse production company Neon. Though Wolfhard and Bryk also star in the film, they said they took turns behind the camera for their first venture into the world of feature-film directing. At a virtual roundtable Monday, hosted by Neon for a select dozen student film critics from various universities, Wolfhard and Bryk spoke about the challenges and joys of this process.
Inspiration
Bryk and Wolfhard said they first bonded over a love of coming-of-age ensemble movies, while also sharing an appreciation for films that equally balance the horror and comedy genres.
“Making a horror-comedy sort of felt like a no-brainer because it really felt like a way for us to push the comedy further and try to make a movie that wasn’t a horror movie and then a comedy, that had them both forming and elevating the other,” Bryk said.
In fact, Wolfhard said he and Bryk had both written similar short stories, which eventually merged into the idea for “Hell of a Summer.”
“We both had written comedy slashers before we had met each other, and it just felt like the perfect place to start as a writing duo,” Wolfhard said.
As for why they were drawn to the summer-camp-slasher microgenre in the first place, Wolfhard and Bryk said it was their shared longing to attend summer camp — something that neither had as children.
“I think, selfishly, we wanted to give ourselves the ability to have a summer camp experience,” Bryk said. “A big goal of this film was to sort of rid audiences and older generations of this idea that there’s this massive divide between older generations and Gen Z. We wanted to put these younger characters in this very timeless setting. We were sick of reading scripts that felt like older people talking down on younger people.”
Difficulties
Though the pair said having experience in front of the camera made some aspects of directing easier — such as their comfort with the film medium and understanding of actors — transitioning to a directorial role still came with its fair share of challenges.
“We wrote ourselves into a lot of scenes in the movie, so [it’s hard] to transition [out of] being the leader of the set and someone who you want the crew to listen to,” Wolfhard said. “But at the same time, we’re playing idiots in the movie, so it gives people mixed signals.”
Both Wolfhard and Bryk said they originally got into acting because of their shared passion for filmmaking, and they had each paid special attention as actors on previous projects to the process of filmmaking.
“I wanted to act because I had known since I was a kid that I had wanted to be a filmmaker,” Bryk said. “I had directed a bunch of short films on a much smaller scale, and now we’re working on a much bigger scale, but weirdly at its core it’s the same; there’s the same energy at the end of the day.”
The biggest challenge of the film, Bryk said, was finding a camp to shoot the film at.
“It was an insane process,” Bryk said. “The issue with our production was we were filming the summer after [the] COVID[-19 pandemic]. By the time we got money for production, every summer camp had opened up again, so not only were they packed with kids, but [the camps] were like, ‘You’re an insane person if you think you’re ever going to be able to film this summer. We need the money.’”
With no money for a location scout, Wolfhard said the duty of securing a location fell on his and Bryk’s shoulders.
“Billy had just been spending every single day calling camps,” Wolfhard said.
After multiple months of scouting summer camps to no avail, Bryk said he began to look to other options for filming locations.
“Every single camp was closed,” Bryk said. “I’m looking at camps that got shut down and abandoned camps that we could maybe rebuild. I was looking for fishing lodges that could be repainted to maybe look like a summer camp.”
Bryk said it was only when he reverse-image searched a painting of a summer camp and reached out to its owners on Facebook that they finally found what would become Camp Pineway.
The joys of working together
Wolfhard reflected fondly on how the challenges of filming brought him and Bryk closer together.
“We had a pretty great experience collaborating together on this,” Wolfhard said. “What’s really nice about this film is that for Billy and I, we’re able to look back at this movie and think about it as an artifact of who we were at this time and our relationship.”
Bryk shared the sentiment, adding the film is also an artifact of their close bond.
“This is a movie that we started writing at the beginning of our friendship, and this is a movie that’s just now coming out after six years,” Bryk said. “We’ve gotten so much closer throughout the process of writing the film. It was, in this weird way, this embodiment of our friendship. This was something that was making us laugh together.”
Bryk said the fact that the two were such close friends also made the movie easier to direct.
“[There] was something about us writing this together that felt specific to our relationship, and that made it a lot easier to collaborate,” Bryk said. “It always felt like our movie, and we never felt at odds with each other over whose movie it was.”
Advice to young filmmakers
Wolfhard and Bryk said they could relate to young filmmakers who often second-guess themselves, admitting that they too experienced frequent doubts throughout the film, especially during the editing process.
“Of course you can tinker with something forever, and I think there’s a dangerous side to that, where at some point, you just have to trust yourself,” Bryk said.
Bryk and Wolfhard said they both value “Hell of a Summer” as a memento of the time in their lives when they made the film. Bryk even compared the movie to a tattoo he got when he was younger, saying that he’s very proud of the film, but it’s not the kind of movie he’d make today.
“I have this tattoo that I’m not really crazy about on my chest, but I want the movie to be a tattoo,” Bryk said. “This tattoo meant a lot to me at that time, and even though I don’t like it now, I can still like it as a symbol of something that I really liked at that time. This isn’t the film that I would make if I was making a film today, but at that time, this was a story that I wanted to tell.”
Wolfhard said when it came to filmmaking, he had to learn to balance his creative instincts with the reality of creating a movie.
“I think what’s really odd about making a film and what’s really special about it is that sometimes you’re going with your instincts creatively, but when it comes to actually making the film, sometimes you’re going against your instincts,” Wolfhard said. “You have to compartmentalize and have this blind confidence and optimism to make something.”
Wolfhard said his background as an actor didn’t save him from countless rejections along the filmmaking process, mainly due to the pair’s ages.
“We definitely evolved as people and filmmakers in order to get this made,” Wolfhard said. “Don’t be afraid of people saying no and rejecting you because that’s just what the process is. The worst that they can say is, ‘No.’”
Bryk also had some wisdom to impart to younger filmmakers.
“There is no age limit on filmmaking,” Bryk said. “Try to find other people who are as passionate about film as you are, but it has to come from you first. Just go make your movie, and the worst thing is that you make something that you’re not stoked about, but the next thing you make is better. Trust yourself to let yourself go try and make something.”
