ELF Convention - Secaucus, NJ - an overview

[MatthewM]

Fellow BDers-

Today I had the luxury of journying to NJ with my girlfriend and two friends to The Lord of the Rings "ELF" Convention held at Crowne Plaza in Secacus. It was the first time the event was being held in the East Coast, so I had to make it happen. I had a great time, but I must say, I pictured it a little differently. I always see this pictures from Star Wars conventions and the place is crazy, there are booths with merch everywhere and fans talking to fans about what they are there for. Maybe I'm wrong about that though, as this was my first convention. Either way, This wasn't the way ELF went. We were handed a schedule of events and lead into a big room which had many rows of chairs, and in front was a small movie screen. Once the convention came underway, we saw a fan made music parody of LotR called "Middle Earth Idol" (they wrote M-e like that). It had some funny parts...kids dressed up like the characters and sang songs with movie clips flashing in the background. They showed 2 more fan made music videos through out the night, but they were terrible. After this, Tolkien Enthuisiast and analyzier Lynnette Porter spoke of the four hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin and their heroic deeds. She mixed both book and movie alike. It was a nice speech, but some points I disagreed with, such as this: in the beginning of the speech, she had a power point up with a list "Heroes". Aragorn was there, and she explained how he is an example of a classic hero. Then she moved on to Frodo, who had a strike through his name, unlike Aragorn's. She said that Frodo could not have been the hero, for he did not throw the Ring in the fire. This wasn't what I disagreed with however, it was when she put Sam's name up with a strike that made me think she didn't do much reading into The Letters. She claimed he could not have been the hero, because he had flaws in not showing mercy to Gollum. She later went on to say that the four hobbits were representative of the elements Hope (Pippin), Sam (Love), Frodo (Mercy), and Merry (Faith). She tied them to these elements in a way she described, although it wasn't all too convincing on Merry and Pippin. Anyway, after her speech she took questions. A woman raised her hand and said that in The Letters she read that Tolkien named Frodo as the true hero. Nobody else seemed to have read Letter #131, in which Tolkien cites Sam as the "chief hero". Maybe Tolkien names Frodo a hero in another letter in which I did not yet read. However, I was not letting this one go. I raised my hand and told them both that in The Letters Tolkien cites Sam as "the chief hero" and the "jewel amongst hobbits". Neither of them knew what I was talking about! So afterwards later on in the convention, I came up to her and told her that I know it is in The Letters, and I will e-mail her and cite right from the book. She was very nice about it and said it could only help. So, that's what I plan on doing after this post . I found it kind of shocking (although I loved it) however how I was the only one who knew (or the only one who spoke up) that Tolkien cites Sam as the hero (not that he is the only hero, of course).

Ok, I digress. Back to the convention. So after Mrs. Porter's speech we visited the room where the merch and food was. The merch was set up nicely, they had shirts, mugs, shot glasses (funny stuff), posters, and pictures of LotR. There was a bit too many Star Wars and other random sci-fi things, however. After that we came back in the middle of Daniel Reeve's speech. Mr. Reeve was the (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have the info on me) caligrapher for the films. We only caught the end, but he spoke well and sounded like he had given a good speech on his work. After this, it was the moment all were waiting for, the arrival of Sean Astin! Sean came out and started talking about life and such, and various other things he was doing at the moment. Sean was a really nice guy, and when questions came I asked him if he ever finds himself thinking or acting like Sam's character. After a funny story about him slaying a baby Shelob spider, he said that "Sam's always on my shoulders". I thought that was great.

We left shortly after Sean started signing autographs. It was a wonderful time, although I pictured it differently- I thought I would share it with you all.