Lurking in the Lobby: a Reflection
The writings of H.P. Lovecraft have always had a strange appeal for me. Like many of you, I was exposed to HPL as a teen through paperback anthologies and his stories stuck with me long after I forgot what anthology the stories came from. Here I am thirty six years later amazed at their subtle and far reaching influence.
It is difficult for me to grasp the gulf of time that has occurred since I first started reading Lovecraft and starting the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival®.
Clearly, starting the festival was a misfiring of neurons having made the unlikely leap from a simple suggestion by director John Strysik to screen his 16mm short film “The Music of Erich Zann” to founding and running an annual film festival. Obviously something otherworldly influenced me from beyond.
Everyone said I was mad… no one will go… there are not enough films to show… it will never last. But here we are after the 20th annual festival in Portland (not including the almost dozen other festivals held in Austin, Salem, San Pedro and Vancouver B.C). What do we know… of the world and the universe about us?
When I was growing up I moved around a lot: three high schools, various grade schools, and always having to be “the new kid.” I think it was this feeling of not belonging of being an outsider and my lack of interest in the ordinary that made Lovecraft’s echoes of melancholy, otherworldliness, and cosmological dread resonate within me.
The festival was a labor of love. However, every year I would get to a point where I would ask… why bother with this silliness? Why continue the festival? It is a hell of a lot of work and I could definitely do other things. You can thank (and please do) filmmakers like Aaron Vanek, Andrew Lehman, Bryan Moore and Warren Banks for continuing to fan the embers, encouraging me to continue so that the light would not go out.
When 9/11 occurred and filmmaker George Highham informed me that he could not attend because he had to help identify remains for the NYC Medical Examiner, I really stopped and asked, “What the hell am I doing?”
It was my wife Linda who set me aside like she would a small child and told me that I had created something really positive that brought people together out of their darkened basements to share something they all had in common… “a dysfunctional family reunion where you are their king.” I don’t know about the king part but I did reflect on the amazing community that had coalesced where christians and satanists, liberals and conservatives, and gay and straight people would set aside their differences to gleefully talk about cosmic horror.
After 15 years of directing the festival I decided to step down as event director and pass the torch on to Brian & Gwen Callahan and Arraon Vanek to continue the madness while I could focus on other projects.
I would like to thank all of the attendees over the years personally and the Lurkers (you know who you are) for all the many wonderfully weird years.
So as I sit here in the lobby reflecting, I feel like the outsider as the festival that I gave birth to and nurtured, continues on under the loving care of others.
About the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival®
American author H.P. Lovecraft is known for his sub-genre of horror/science fiction that emphasizes Cosmic Horror: a combination of fear of the unknown, and the realization of man’s insignificance with respect to the cosmos. Fritz Leiber called Lovecraft “a literary Copernicus” because Lovecraft changed the orientation of horror from man vs. man (or monster) to the cosmos. Lovecraft and literary critics consider “The Colour out of Space” as one of Lovecraft’s best works. The Color Out of Time by Michael Shea was published as a sequel to the original Lovecraft novelette.
About the Author
Andrew Migliore is author of “Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H.P. Lovecraft” and founder (and the ordinal director for 15 years) of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® and CthulhuCon™. During daylight hours he is VP of Software Development.
