Finn Wolfhard is already a multihyphenate – actor-director-guitarist-singer – and he hasn’t even turned 15. (That will have to wait until December.) And, though age is never a determinant of talent, Wolfhard proves again that whether he’s on screen as Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things or onstage slaying at a Mac DeMarco concert, he’s going to entertain you.
A video for Spendtime Palace’s song “Sonora” is simply another notch on his ever-expanding belt. It was a team effort to boot, co-directed by Wolfhard and his friend, Vine star Josh Ovalle. “Once we listened to the song a bunch of times we were thinking of what the tone was and we thought it had a western feel,” Wolfhard told Billboard. “We thought, ‘What if we do a western, but with two teenagers in 2017 California?’”
The western-themed video follows Iris Apatow (daughter of famed comedy director Judd Apatow) as she lives out a suburban life with a hard-nosed father keeping her busy with household chores. Wolfhard also stars as the peeping Tom next door who has a crush on her, helping her to escape for a party. Wolfhard and Ovalle’s direction took cues from 80s films like The Goonies.
“We were inspired by watching those kinds of classic Spielberg kid movies for sure, and I think it’s a cool idea that someone who is 14 can still make someone happy in the sense of taking them away from an awful person,” he explained. Next on the docket, the pair will team up for a film about a student who gets expelled. But not before we see him return as Mike Wheeler in the next instalment of Stranger Things, which returns this Halloween.
