Joel Gunz

Host, HitchCon, LynchCon & MacGuffin Film Club

Joel Gunz believes that the search for meaning is among the highest of human pursuits, and it’s this impulse that drives his work. He’s a writer, filmmaker, the host of the annual HitchCon and LynchCon film conferences and the weekly MacGuffin Film Club and is the editor of The Hitchcockian Quarterly. His recent publications include “Hermetic Hermeneutics in Hitchcock’s Vertigo” (Book TBA, David Sterritt, ed., forthcoming 2026), “Travels in Hitchcock’s Multiverse” (Re-viewing Hitchcock: New Critical Perspectives, Robert Kapsis, ed., 2025) and “A Comparative Look at Hitchcock’s Murder! and Mary” (Hitchcock Annual, Sidney Gottlieb, ed., 2025). His 2021 film essay Spellbound by L’Amour Fou was selected by several festivals and won Best Short Documentary at the Medusa Film Festival. Joel and his partner, Christy La Guardia, live with their beagle, Charlie, in Seattle, Washington.