We Can Be Who We Are: Lee Gambin, 1979-2024 (2024)

Like many people who had the privilege of knowing Lee Gambin, I have spent the last few days going over some of his film writing I had somehow forgotten about. Thanks to his background as a prolific writer – including for FANGORIA, where he was a contributor for many, many years – the sheer scale of his output is frankly dazzling. Putting aside his work in physical media as a commentator and video essayist and the countless interviews, articles and essays he published in magazines and zines and going back almost two decades, Lee was also the author of eight books, the most recent of which was Like Being on Mars: An Oral History of Carrie (2023). On top of this, he had also written exhaustive books on John Carpenter’s Christine, Joe Dante’s The Howling, and Lewis Teague’s Cujo, just to name a few.

But Lee’s passion was never contained to just horror, as his books on 1970s musicals and the “very special episode” sitcom phenomena most immediately indicate. In all the emails and text messages and drunken (oh so very drunken) phone and in-person conversations I have had over the past week since the cruel, unexpected news of his death at the mere age of 44 from a heart attack broke, this has emerged as something of a recurrent drumbeat. Lee did not give a sh*t about boundaries. In every aspect of his life – from the all-encompassing dedication to his professional craft to which he committed almost every waking hour, right through to the dazzling intensity of his social presence – if the essence of Lee Gambin can be encapsulated in a single philosophy, it is that with every single breath in his far-too-short life he actively fought to smash the isolating, restrictive barriers the rest of us simply accept as a given.

And it is here where my objective reflections seem to inevitably grind to a halt. I have been circling this particularly agonizing writing task for a number of days now, partially out of good old fashioned denial, but mostly because the sheer scale of it feels almost viscerally insurmountable. To keep myself tethered to the practical demands of writing an obituary for one of the dearest friends I will have in my life, I have been subconsciously trying to distract myself from the bruising reality that he’s really gone by repeating in my head – over and over – my self-imposed rules of engagement: Remember to list all of his books. Make a point of amplifying the diversity of his work. And – above all else – don’t make yourself the main character.

But then, in a lightning bolt flash of understanding – Lee speaking from the beyond, perhaps – it dawned on me. There is, in fact, no possible way of fully memorializing Lee Gambin without talking about yourself, for the simple reason that this was precisely his most remarkable quality. Lee had the extraordinary gift of making everyone he met feel that, for that moment at least, you were the most important person in the world: the smartest, the funniest, the hottest, the most necessary. I met Lee at a very tumultuous moment in my life both personally and professionally, and it transformed me on an almost molecular level. Lee’s friendship, love and ceaseless, unquestioning faith gave me a kind of lasting courage that I never knew I had the capacity to feel. It is no exaggeration to say that I simply would not have accomplished the things I have in my life since I have known him without the foundational, immovable belief that, quite simply, I could achieve anything I put my mind to – if only because Lee believed that I could.

But it was never just about me, and Lee was, above all things, a staunch believer in community. Lee built communities in very real, tangible ways, from right back in his grassroots punk music and theater days through to his work with the Cinemaniacs film collective who, with Lee at the helm, have held screening events here in Melbourne, Australia for the last 13 years. Alongside the other Cinemaniacs members, we were and remain proud to support Lee’s vision that not only boasted some of the most audacious and original film programming in this country (who else but Lee would play Basic Instinct, Jesus Christ Superstar, Desperate Living, Ordinary People and The Children’s Hour next to each other, to sell-out crowds?) but would – even more importantly – bring people together in a quite literal way, not just in the cinema itself but to the now-legendary post-screening drinking sessions, an invite to which was openly offered to anyone who made it to a Cinemaniacs screening.

Lee brought people together, and saw in every single person who shared his passion for art something fundamentally beautiful and humane, and worth being nurtured and celebrated. In Lee’s eyes, if your passion was sincere, you transcended mere fandom; you were, for him, a historian, a scholar, a thinker, and, most importantly, a peer. Art mattered to Lee, and people mattered even more, and he believed with deep passion that the two could never be separated – art gave shape to humanity at its best. Lee was an open and vocal queer activist, he championed animal rights, and was a self-identifying feminist who time and time again put enormous energy into signal boosting the causes he believed in. He was an environmentalist, whose very first book was about eco-horror. And yet, he was never what the dunderheaded simpletons of our time might reductively dismiss as “woke.” Lee was frequently outrageous. He regularly crossed the lines of good taste with a signature abandon familiar to anyone who knew him in real life or on social media, and he only-half jokingly would talk at times of the seemingly ever-looming possibility of being “cancelled.”

So yet again, it becomes almost inescapable when talking about Lee that we come back to his fierce, almost defining rejection of borders and boundaries. Lines – be they the ones that distinguish class, gender, race, sexuality, or even genre – are there only to be transgressed, subverted, eradicated and ferociously, hilariously, and joyfully mocked. In a world where performative cynicism feels like it has all but won the fight to become the dominant tone in cultural discourse, Lee stood in unrelenting, defiant opposition. He loathed irony and abhorred insincerity in all its insidious forms. He believed, fundamentally and quite simply, in love: the experience of feeling it, the joy of receiving it, and the artistry of expressing it. He loved horror for the same reason he loved musicals, daytime television and sitcoms: he believed in the bold, fearless display of big feelings. This was the plane of being where he felt most at home, where significant emotions – love, fear, laughter, desire – demanded an open acknowledgement, to be celebrated without irony or ambiguity.

On Lee’s passing, I had the privilege of speaking to one of his favourite filmmakers, Joe Dante. In 2018, Lee published the extraordinary book The Howling: Studies in the Horror Film during whose creation he spoke at length not only to Dante but a vast swathe of the iconic talent that went into making that film the masterpiece that it is, both in front and behind the camera. On the news of Lee’s death, Joe wrote to me the following:

In my experience, no more diligent, committed and knowledgeable writer ever put pen to paper on the subject of movies. And when one of his books is based on a movie you made and know intimately, the real depth of his reportage is revealed, as it certainly was to me.

It was a pleasure knowing Lee personally as well as gleaning the mountains of informed commentary throughout his books on genre classics like Christine, Cujo, Carrie as well as musicals, sitcoms and personalities. A real loss for us all.

As Billy Wilder said about the passing of Ernst Lubitsch when someone remarked ‘no more Lubitsch’: ‘Worse. No more Lubitsch movies.’

Imagine all the books Lee still had to write.

It is within these words that we start to get a sense of the sheer scale of what we have lost with the death of my beautiful, kind, cutting, enthusiastic, silly, productive, genius friend Lee Gambin. As Lee’s dear friend, the artist Peter Savieri, wrote in a deeply moving Instagram memorial, “losing him feels like a kind of silence I can’t bear.” Borrowing a line from the extraordinary Australian poet Genevieve Callaghan (another dazzling creative spirit Lee was proud to call a friend), Savieri concluded, “It feels like a vast library has burned down.” The greatest tribute we can pay to Lee is to live like he did: unapologetically loving, for art and each other.