Lampton Enochs '79 Reflects on Unusual Path from Mississippi to Stranger Things

Lampton Enochs ’79 never imagined that a childhood spent watching movies in small-town Mississippi would lead to producing one of the most-watched television series in the world. But Lampton, now a veteran line producer whose credits include The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and Netflix’s Stranger Things, described a career shaped by curiosity, perseverance, and a willingness to say yes to unexpected turns.

Lampton’s path began in the most traditional of Hollywood ways: the mailroom. After a “quarter-life crisis” in his mid-twenties, he moved to California and eventually landed a mailroom job at the newly formed Castle Rock Entertainment, founded by Rob Reiner, Alan Horn, and Andy Scheinman. “I grew up loving movies, but it never occurred to me that people actually made a living making them,” he said. “Castle Rock was my crash course in how the industry worked.”

From there, Lampton worked his way up through location management, unit production management, and eventually line producing, all roles that required equal parts logistics, diplomacy, and stamina. “It’s a cross between the army and a carnival,” he joked. “Every day is different. Every day poses a new crisis. And at the end of the day, you hope you got another scene in the can.”

Though many in his profession remain tethered to Los Angeles, Lampton’s career took a less conventional route. In the early 2000s, he moved with his young family to Louisiana to be closer to relatives at the same time the state’s new film incentives were drawing productions to New Orleans. But when Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, Lampton relocated temporarily to Shreveport. It was an unplanned move that led to one of the most celebrated chapters of his career.

There, he partnered with director Brandon Oldenburg and children’s author William Joyce to launch Moonbot Studios, an animation company whose short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. “Going to the Oscars with that team was incredible. Totally surreal,” he said.

Moonbot grew to more than seventy employees, and Lampton spent several years producing animation and interactive projects. Eventually, he felt the pull back to live-action filmmaking, the field that first inspired him as a child. In 2018 he relocated to Newport, Rhode Island, and shortly afterward joined the production team of Stranger Things, a job that would consume nearly five years due to pandemic delays and industry strikes.

Producing Stranger Things, a series known for its mix of 1980s nostalgia, emotional storytelling, and high-scale visual effects, was one of the most demanding professional experiences of his life. A single five-minute action sequence, Lampton revealed, can require a month of daily rehearsal, stunt planning, and meticulous design. “The number of man-hours that go into a few minutes on screen is astonishing,” he said. “It’s probably as much work as some whole movies.”

He credits the show’s success not just to spectacle but to its humanity. “You stay for the characters’ relationships — Steve and Dustin’s friendship, Hopper and Eleven, Will and Max — and the way those relationships evolve. The explosions are great, but those human moments are what keep people coming back.”

Lampton also praised the show’s “phenomenally talented” crew and its directors, including the Duffer brothers, Frank Darabont, and Shawn Levy. “I never had a day on Stranger Things where I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this today.’ Even on the hardest days, I loved going to work.”

When asked what he tries to impart to young people entering the industry, Lampton was blunt: talent matters, but temperament may matter more. “You cannot underestimate being a good colleague,” he emphasized. “We work twelve to sixteen hours a day. If someone’s in the trenches with you, you need to know they have your back. I rehire people because they’re kind, collaborative, and dependable.”

Lampton credits much of his work ethic and creative exposure to his time at Woodberry Forest School. Coming from McComb, Mississippi, he said Woodberry offered transformative experiences — Woodberry-in-Britain with Richard MacKenzie, a semester at Emma Willard School in New York, regular arts trips to Washington, DC, and teachers who fueled his love of literature and the arts. He’s pleased that his younger brother Thomas Enochs ’82 followed him to Woodberry, and he enjoys keeping up with his classmates, including former roommate Owen Thomas ’79, the Chair of the Woodberry Board of Trustees. “I got exposed to so much I never would have seen in a small town,” he said. “It was a major turning point in my life.”

With the Stranger Things series finale released on Netflix, Lampton has already shifted to his next project: producing an eight-episode live-action Scooby-Doo series for Netflix in Atlanta. “I’m really excited about it,” he said. “It’s going to be great fun.”

Beyond logistics and long days, Lampton returns repeatedly to an idea he believes in deeply: that film and television expand empathy. “Movies and TV let you see different ways of life,” he said. “In a world full of echo chambers, storytelling can help us understand each other. That’s important.”