Artist and IT professional Zane DeLong, the creator of Welcome to the Mess Lab on YouTube, devotes most of his channel to presenting articulate commentary on movies that, as he puts it, have something to say.
In this episode, he talks about several films, including 1984's "Surf II," which is on one hand trying to be a goofy "Airplane!" style comedy and, on the other hand, a rather disturbing portrayal of the anxieties of its characters. The comedy doesn't really work, but the film is interesting nonetheless, Zane says. And several of its actors — Eddie Deezen, Eric Stoltz, Linda Kerridge, Cleavon Little, Terry Kiser and Ruth Buzzi — are recognizable because they were in bigger and better-known shows.
Zane's movie commentaries, which tend to be pretty involved, generally take him a long time to produce, so he experimented with giving viewers shorter "impressions" of more movies. In his first of these short-form commentaries, he covers "The Story of a Three Day Pass" and "Watermelon Man," both by Melvin Van Peebles, as well as "Hanging Garden," "Lucky Chan-Sil," and "Are you in the House Alone?"
Finally, check out his episodes covering “House,” "Domino" and a compilation of films that he presented under the intriguing title “Great Walls of Cinema.” And there's one music video in the mix. Zane shot it in a beautiful cemetery in Columbus, Ohio, for his friend's band, Discount Tents. Quite serene.
You can get to Welcome to the Mess Lab here. You also can check out Zane's Twitter feed, where he goes by the handle @_noone_specific and where you'll see a sampling of his artwork, particularly the digital face he sculpted using the free program Blender.
This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to The Gale Hill Radio Hour!
This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to The Gale Hill Radio Hour!
The show is available in Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast directories. Also on Substack and YouTube; Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.