HP Lovecraft Film Festival 2008

The footage and stills are trickling in all over the Web, and I've blogged about the HP Lovecraft Film Festival at the old Hollywood Theatre in Portland many other places. 

I didn't bring a camera. It wasn't that kind of party. The truest parts of the weekend couldn't be photographed, or maybe shouldn't be. I took thousands of rolls with what Peter Murphy wisely called the miniature secret camera.

Like Richard Lupoff taking the bullet at the first Authors' Read, delivering the Arizona-fried "Petroglyphs" with such panache that I could see Dick's soul twinkling out, the soul of a witchy-eyed boy holding up a flashlight to his Kafkaesque face and telling tall tales around the campfire. Lupoff's read alone was worth the wait. 

It was a blowout. Everywhere. There was the usual amount of 'convention head' and bad drama behind the scenes. But no one stayed focused on that. Hell, even I couldn't keep my claws out for long. If I live to be a hundred and eighty six, I will never forget rehearsing 'Jihad Over Innsmouth' in the green room on Sunday, then going up and blowing the room away.

I don't make statements like that unless I can back them up. Two heads I didn't know came up and asked me to repeat my name a few times after I read. Laird Barron, Michael Shea and the inimitable Stan Sargent came up and thanked me profusely afterward. Barron called the 'Jihad' excerpt, "Wonderful writing." 

That round of applause, and the comments from the pros, were the best thirty-third birthday present I could ever get, bar none. 

Laird Barron's short story 'The Imago Sequence' is tied for first in my personal experience with Jeff VanderMeer's 'The Cage' as the scariest thing I've ever read in my life. Michael Shea is a warm-hearted poet who got Lovecraft's iamb right, which made me pay attention immediately (difficult to do in both cases.) And Stan... Everybody (with one exception who wasn't a guest,) was very personable and approachable, but Stan and I are brothers from another mother.  For a full list of attendees, see the earlier link. As stated, everyone was way cool and a joy to be around. 

I got to sit on three panels, too; "Lovecraft in Pop Culture" with Jovanka Vukovic from Rue Morgue , "Authors vs. Filmmakers" (a technical rant 'n reel session about translating Mythos stuff to film and paper), and a panel introducing "The Blair Witch Project" with director Aaron Vanek, and screenwriter Julia Fair, one head of the team that wrote 'Blair Witch' and 'Curse of the Blair Witch' on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Heady stuff. I spent most of the weekend charging around on this natural adrenalin kick. After many years as an ex-pat in the City of Roses, I finally made it to one of those. Ken Scholes saw to it that I got invited, one more reason why he gets a shrine.

Still a bit knackered from all that, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'll be at ScratchPdx next, then Orycon. I feel like I'm on some kind of weird reading tour. BRING IT...