Kessler's short features "found footage" from the police department in Montauk, which is located near a highly-secretive government laboratory. One detail from early versions of the Stranger Things script supports Kessler's lawsuit: The Duffer Brothers originally titled the show Montauk. This detail was widely known, in part because both the series and Kessler's short film are based on the mysterious Montauk Project . Investigating the story, TMZ discovered that the original casting call for Stranger Things bore the title "Montauk ." The Montauk Project was a mythologized — and likely fictional — government experiment program that took place on Long Island in the 1980s. It has been the subject of a number of works, including a 2014 documentary called Montauk Chronicles