“It was a send-up, Peter – a charade. Sunday-afternoon fun out on the lawn.”

Get ready, class, because we’ve brought in our first guest lecturer - amateur filmmaker and technical director for The Department of Menial Humor, Samuel Dumas - to discuss Welles’s first foray into filmmaking with the 1934 short film The Hearts of Age. We discuss this film’s surrealist influences, the parallels with Welles’s later work (especially his final film The Other Side of the Wind), and finally get into the details of Stephen’s fabled Wellesian bachelor party!

Homework for next week - ‘Voodoo’ MacBeth - https://youtu.be/9wmWBki06yc

Find our guest lecturer, Samuel Dumas, and his work in the following places:

• @iamyourpallbearer on Instagram
• Follow The Department of Menial Humor on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
• Watch Sam’s short films Epochs of Love and Eyes on You

Follow us on our (admittedly limited) socials to keep up with assignments and other exciting Welles-related news:

• @wellesupod on Bluesky and YouTube
• Email us at [email protected] to let us know how we’re doing!
• Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
• Read Hope’s blog at highimhope.com
• Listen to Hope’s other podcasts - High on Cartoons Presents DuckTakes!, The Matrix Reclamations, and The Lanes Between
• Follow Stephen at @chewywalrus on Bluesky and Letterboxd
• Listen to Stephen’s other podcasts - Disenfranchised Podcast and The Pod and the Pendulum
• Check out Stephen’s novel - Check In, Check Out - on Amazon, now available in paperback or ebook: https://amzn.to/44idk8y