Finn Wolfhard made his directorial debut in 2020 with short comedy film Night Shifts, and in an extreme instance of life imitating art, filming of the project centred around an armed robbery was interrupted by an actual armed robbery.
The Stranger Things star shared the story while putting his tastebuds to the test in a recent appearance on Hot Ones, reflecting on how the 12-hour shoot in Vancouver convenience store turned into something of a standoff.
“[Night Shifts] is about a robbery that happens between a clerk and a robber, and they end up being old friends from high school. And in real life, while we were shooting the robbery scene, a guy came in with a fake… he welded a fake gun together through like, bike springs? It was the weirdest thing ever,” Wolfhard recalled.
“He came in just kind of brandishing this fake gun and [Artoun Nazareth], the guy who was playing the burglar, turned around with his fake gun and they were just pointing fake guns at each other like a standoff.”
Wolfhard admitted that, due to intense concentration on his directorial duties, he didn’t fully grasp the gravity of what had just happened on the set: “I was like, ‘Cool, let’s move on,’ and everyone was like, ‘No! What just happened?'” If Wolfhard kept the cameras rolling, the bike spring weapon sequence would make for one heck of a director’s cut.
Wolfhard’s time on the show also saw him answer questions about music-making with the Aubreys, his home city being something of a Hollywood hotbed, and local legends including Neptoon Records and Nardwuar the Human Serviette — a towering figure of interview knowledge that Hot Ones host Sean Evans has shouted out before.
Revisit Exclaim!’s recent interview with Wolfhard, and watch Night Shifts and his Hot Ones appearance below.