The Projection Booth Podcast

Mike talks with director Sam Firstenberg and Reelblack founder Michael J. Dennis about Riverbend (1989). The discussion examines the film’s production, its depiction of racism in the Jim Crow South, and its unusual release history. Firstenberg reflects on working with Steve James, Larry Dobkin, and Margaret Avery, while Dennis provides broader context on the film’s place within independent Black cinema. The conversation also touches on the politics surrounding Riverbend, its themes, and how the film has been received over time.

Find out more at https://www.reelblack.com/

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www...

Mike talks with Eli Kooris and Martin “Mac” McNally about American Skyjacker (2025). The conversation covers the film’s examination of McNally’s 1972 airplane hijacking, his motivations, and the events that followed. Kooris discusses the project’s development and the process of working with archival material, law-enforcement records, and McNally’s own accounts. McNally reflects on the choices he made, the consequences he faced, and how revisiting the story for the documentary differs from living through it. The discussion also addresses the film’s structure, its approach to historical context, and the broader landscape of hijacking cases from the era.

Find out...

Mike talks with author and filmmaker John Gaspard about Held Over (2025). They discuss the book’s focus on theatrical exhibition history, the practice of long-running engagements, and the logistics and economics that kept certain films in theaters for extended periods. Gaspard outlines the interviews and research that shaped the project and explains why Harold and Maude became a central case study, noting how its slow-building audience, regional rollouts, and unexpected longevity helped define the book’s larger story about how movies find their viewers. The conversation also covers broader changes in moviegoing culture and exhibition practices over time.

Orde...

The Langoliers. Adapted from the Stephen King novella and directed by Tom Holland, the production follows a group of passengers on a redeye flight from Los Angeles to Boston who awaken to find most of the plane’s occupants gone and reality behaving in unfamiliar ways. The episode examines the story’s structure, the performances by David Morse, Bronson Pinchot, and the ensemble cast, and the miniseries’ place within 1990s television.

The conversation also includes interviews with writer-director Tom Holland and Aristotelis Maragkos, whose film The Timekeepers of Eternity reconstructs The Langoliers into a monochrome, collage-style reinterpretation. They discus...

Mike speaks with writer/director William Means and actress Rocky Shay and about their 2025 feature Junkie. The conversation covers the film’s development, its focus on addiction and recovery, and the production choices that shaped its grounded approach. Shay and Means discuss the project’s evolution, the performances at the center of the story, and the film’s path through the festival circuit.

Follow Will at https://www.instagram.com/rill.means/ 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.pat...

Carol Borden and Jackie Stargrove join Mike for a double-barreled deep dive into John Woo’s The Killer — both the 1989 Hong Kong classic and Woo’s own 2024 reimagining. They revisit the operatic gunfights, moral codes, and aching "bromance" that made The Killer a cornerstone of the “heroic bloodshed” genre, tracing its influence from Le Samouraï to Hard Boiled to the present day. Along the way, they take a detour through Hum Hain Bemisaal (1994), Bollywood’s gloriously unauthorized remake, and consider how Woo’s new vision reframes his mythic tale for a world that’s changed as much as cinema itself.

Become...

The Projection Booth pulls back the curtain on Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus (2025), a tense, docu-style thriller that pushes real-world chaos right to the edge of the frame. Mike sits down with special effects coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin, whose practical wizardry gives the film its authenticity. They dig into orchestrating high-stakes set pieces, blending practical work with digital augmentation, and engineering Greengrass’s signature controlled mayhem without ever losing sight of character and story.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http...

Daniel Kremer returns to The Projection Booth with an irresistible double feature of cinephile obsession. Mike dives into Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano (2024), Kremer’s exhaustive and heartfelt documentary about the fiercely talented, too-often disregarded director behind Georgy Girl, Loot, and Why Shoot the Teacher? Kremer lays out the decades-long fascination that fueled his mission to rescue Narizzano’s reputation from footnotes and dismissals.

The conversation then shifts to Kremer’s new book, Adventures in Auteurism: A Crusade for the Critically Neglected, a bold, deeply researched celebration of filmmakers who never got their due. He and Mi...

Noirvember closes with James B. Harris’s Cop (1988)—the first time James Ellroy’s feverish fiction hit the big screen. Mike teams with Andrew Nette and Rod Lott for a deep read of Harris’s adaptation, where James Woods’s unhinged Detective Lloyd Hopkins hunts a killer across eighteen years of buried violence.

The trio digs into Ellroy’s original novel Blood on the Moon and the wilder, abandoned incarnation that came before it—L.A. Death Trip, the unsold, manuscript that first birthed Hopkins. Using material from Ellroy’s own accounts and critical studies (including the brute-force early drafts, th...

Mike talks with filmmaker Todd Rohal in a lively, no-holds-barred tour through one of the most delightfully unclassifiable careers in American indie cinema. From Knuckleface Jones to The Catechism Cataclysm, Rohal has carved out a lane where misfits, surreal detours, and emotional gut-punches live side-by-side.

The conversation zeroes in on F*** My Son (2025), his bold and darkly comic new feature that pushes his sensibilities into feral, confrontational territory. Rohal talks process, chaos, collaboration, and why he wants to work in a hardware store.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.<...

The Projection Booth enters Edgar Wright territory with a deep dive into The Running Man (2025), his audacious adaptation of the dystopian classic. Mike teams up with Midnight Viewing’s own Father Malone to break down Wright’s maximalist world-building, razor-cut action choreography, and the film’s commentary on media spectacle and state-manufactured violence.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

Noirvember 2025 keeps rolling as Mike teams up with author Dahlia Schweitzer and artist Rahne Alexander to crack open V.I. Warshawski (1991), Jeff Kanew’s glossy, big-city take on Sara Paretsky’s groundbreaking detective. Kathleen Turner commands the screen as V.I., whose night on the town swerves into murder, a dead former Blackhawks star, and a teenager who refuses to stay out of danger.

This episode brings together an incredible lineup: Sara Paretsky, creator of the V.I. Warshawski novels; screenwriters David Aaron Cohen, Nick Thiel, and Warren Leight; and director Jeff Kanew. They share the inside story of a...

Mike talks with cultural critic Dan Schindel and Lyle Zanca of GKids to discuss Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 anime film, Angel’s Egg (AKA Tenshi no Tamago), a gorgeous lyrical film about spiritualism and redemption. The film has been recently restored and given a 4K scan that will be screened across the U.S. starting November 19, 2025.

Check local listings and be on the lookout for the upcoming Blu-Ray release.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

Noirvember keeps rolling with Helmut Käutner’s Black Gravel (1961), a scalding portrait of postwar Germany buried under guilt, corruption, and American occupation. Mike is joined by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan to dig into this bleak anti-Heimatfilm, where gravel trucker Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt) scrapes by on the black market and rekindles an affair with Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), now married to a U.S. officer. When an accident turns deadly, their secret unearths a moral wasteland of complicity and denial. Once condemned by the Oberhausen critics as “the worst achievement by an established director,” Käutner’s film now stands as...

Mike sits down with the sibling filmmaking duo Josh Holden and Nick Holden (a.k.a. the Holden Brothers) to unpack their sharp new dramedy Sell Out, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival. Shot in and around Austin and Louisiana, the film follows novelist Benny Dink as his career stalls, his love life unravels and a too-good-to-pass ghostwriting job forces him into a reckoning with art, ambition and identity.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

Mike talks with Caleb Alexander Smith and David Krumholtz about Forelock, a dark, biting satire set on the margins of Hollywood. The film follows Caiden, a drifting ex-athlete pulled into the bizarre world of boulevard impersonators and small-time hustlers by Randy, a disillusioned veteran of the trade. Together they chase a missing payout and sink deeper into the city’s surreal underbelly.

Smith and Krumholtz discuss the film’s blend of desperation, performance, and self-mythology—how Forelock captures a Los Angeles where ambition and delusion often look the same.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.sp...

Noirvember 2025 roars to life with Walter Hill’s sleek, existential chase film The Driver (1978). Ryan O’Neal plays the nameless getaway specialist who moves through Los Angeles like a ghost, pursued by Bruce Dern’s manic lawman hell-bent on taking him down. It’s a lean, hypnotic duel between predator and prey where style is substance and silence is power. Mike rides shotgun with Beth Accomando and Walter Chaw to unpack Hill’s minimalist approach, his homage to Melville’s Le Samouraï, and the cold precision that makes The Driver a high-octane hymn to professionalism and control.

Become a supporter o...

Mike talks with author Mark Edlitz to talk about his latest deep-dive into superhero history, Look Up in the Sky: The Forgotten Superboy Series. The book uncovers the behind-the-scenes story of the short-lived Superboy TV show (1988–1992) — a fascinating chapter in the Superman legacy that’s often overlooked. Edlitz explores how the series evolved across its four seasons, the creative battles that shaped it, and the actors who brought the Boy of Steel to life. From licensing chaos to Kryptonian lore, this is a must-listen for anyone who loves lost television history and the mythos of the Man of Tomorrow.

B...

George A. Romero trades zombies for suburban malaise in Jack’s Wife (AKA Season of the Witch, Hungry Wives), a spellbinding portrait of domestic despair and occult liberation. Jan White stars as Joan Mitchell, a disenchanted housewife drifting through a fog of loneliness and repression until she finds power--real or imagined--through witchcraft.

Rahne Alexander and Father Malone join Mike to dig into Romero’s haunting mix of feminist allegory, surreal dream logic, and kitchen-sink psychology. Mike interviews Professor Adam Lowenstein about Romero’s Pittsburgh years and scholar Payton McCarty-Simas about her new book That Very Witch.


B...

Filmmaker and frequent Projection Booth co-host David Kittredge returns to the show to talk about his stunning new documentary Boorman and the Devil (2025). Premiering at the Venice Film Festival and recently screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest, the film examines the making—and unmaking—of John Boorman’s unfinished masterpiece The Heretic, a project that became both a creative obsession and a cautionary tale.

Mike and David trace the film’s journey from inception to restoration, exploring the documentary’s mix of melancholy reflection and deep admiration for Boorman’s uncompromising artistry. As one critic called it, Boorman and...

Buckle up for one of the wildest rides of the year—Mike talks with Alex Phillips, the audacious filmmaker behind Anything That Moves, a gleefully transgressive, genre-bending erotic thriller that skids into the underbelly of Chicago’s gig-economy sex trade and emerges with something unexpectedly sincere. Phillips bridges the sleaze of 1970s exploitation with the high-concept perversity of modern indie cinema: a bike-courier/sex-worker named Liam (Hal Baum) pedals through the city delivering more than sandwiches—and soon finds himself tangled in a serial-killer conspiracy that feels equal parts giallo and queer pop nightmare.

Become a supporter of this p...

Shocktober 2025 spirals into demonic delirium with Juan López Moctezuma’s Alucarda (1977). This feverish blast of Mexican Gothic horror follows Justine (Susana Kamini), a sheltered orphan who finds herself drawn to the wild, otherworldly Alucarda (Tina Romero) within the stone walls of a convent that’s anything but holy. What begins as innocent friendship erupts into a blood-soaked storm of possession, blasphemy, and ecstatic madness.

Ryan Luis Rodriguez and Mark Begley join Mike to dissect Moctezuma’s infernal masterpiece — its ties to Jodorowsky’s surrealism, its place in the “nunsploitation” subgenre, and its bold feminist undercurrents that still scorch the scre...

Mike White dives into the making of Vindication Swim with writer-director Elliott Hasler, whose ambitious period drama brings to life the extraordinary true story of swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Set in the 1920s, the film follows Gleitze’s struggle for recognition and the grueling endurance required to overcome both physical and societal barriers. Hasler discusses the challenges of recreating open-water sequences, capturing the era’s atmosphere, and honoring a pioneer whose determination made history.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a su...

Mike White sits down with journalist and author Clark Collis to talk about his latest deep dive into the world of fear and fascination, Screaming and Conjuring: The Rise of Modern Horror Franchises. Collis explores how films like The Conjuring, Insidious, and Paranormal Activity revived mainstream horror, spawned cinematic universes, and redefined the genre for a new generation. From haunted houses to found footage, Collis traces the eerie evolution of studio horror from the 2000s onward—where box office booms meet demonic possessions, and clever marketing becomes part of the scare.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://ww...

Shocktober 2025 sinks its teeth into Raw (2016), Julia Ducournau’s visceral coming-of-age horror. Garance Marillier stars as Justine, a sheltered vegetarian entering veterinary school, where a brutal hazing ritual ignites her taste for flesh—both animal and human. Co-hosts Suzen Tekla Kruglnska and Beth Accomando join Mike to explore Ducournau’s blend of body horror and female awakening, peeling back the film’s layers of appetite, identity, and transgression. Special guest Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous-Feminine, offers insight into how Raw redefines the monstrous body for a new generation.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podc...

Ego Fest XV cracks open The Projection Booth once again as Mike faces a barrage of listener questions from the devoted and the deranged. From the mysteries of the long-teased 2001: A Space Odyssey episode to favorite decades of filmmaking and the highs and lows of a year’s worth of interviews, nothing’s off the table. Mike talks shop on balancing multiple podcasts, favorite co-hosts, and whether a Dabney Coleman series might lurk in the future. Fans ask about Elliot Gould, Malcolm McDowell, the Weirding Way family, Kurt Cobain, and even Mike’s clarinet. It’s a revealing, and deeply personal...

Shocktober continues with Marina de Van’s unnerving and unforgettable In My Skin (Dans ma peau, 2002). Written, directed by, and starring de Van, the film follows Esther, a successful marketing executive whose accidental leg injury opens a darkly intimate portal to obsession and self-discovery. As she becomes fixated on her own wound, Esther’s relationship with her body—and reality itself—begins to unravel in a visceral exploration of autonomy, alienation, and flesh as frontier.

Axel Kohagen and Ben Buckingham join Mike for a deep dive into de Van’s fearless vision, its connection to the New French Extremity...

Crispin Hellion Glover discusses his long-awaited directorial effort, No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance. Nearly a decade in the making, the surreal 35mm odyssey stars both Crispin and his father, Bruce Glover, in multiple roles that span generations, myth, and madness.

Shot primarily on sets built in Glover’s Czech stables, the film weaves together science, symbolism, and the uncanny in only the way he can—part family drama, part metaphysical riddle, all unmistakably Glover.

Mike digs deep with the actor-filmmaker about the project’s long evolution, his singular touring approach that blends l...

Shocktober 2025 begins with Sutton Roley's Sweet, Sweet Rachel (1971), the eerie TV movie that launched The Sixth Sense series. Written by Anthony Lawrence, the film stars Stefanie Powers as Rachel Stanton, a glamorous woman whose husband dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving her caught in a web of supernatural intrigue. Alex Dreier play Dr. Lucas Darrow, a psychic researcher who, along with Carey Johnson (Chris Robinson), investigate the strange goings-on of the Piper family.

Mike is joined by Amanda Reyes and Kendall R. Phillips to dissect the film’s blend of paranormal thrills and TV Gothic atmosphere. Plus, Stefanie Powers he...

Czechtember 2025 wraps with Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), a delirious, dialogue-free plunge into fetish and surrealism. Mike teams up with filmmaker Jim Vendiola and critic Samm Deighan to unravel the tangled lives of six Prague eccentrics whose private obsessions—ranging from papier-mâché contraptions to elaborate role-play—collide in hilariously unsettling ways. The result is a darkly comic meditation on desire, ritual, and the pleasures of the bizarre, filtered through Švankmajer’s singular stop-motion, tactile textures, and Surrealist imagination.

We're joined by Peter Hames, editor of The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy.

Become a supporter of...

Czechtember charges ahead as Mike, Spencer Parsons, and Emily Barney dive into Otakar Vávra’s Romance for Bugle (1967). Vávra adapts František Hrubín’s celebrated poem into a lyrical love story set in the Czech countryside. Terina (Zuzana Cigánová), a young Roma woman, ignites passion in Vojta (Jaromír Hanzlík) and Viktor (Štefan Kvietik), pulling the two men into a tense triangle of longing and rivalry. The film also reflects back through the eyes of Vojta as an older man (Július Vašek), who recalls his youthful heartbreak. Cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera saturates the screen with stri...

We knew it would happen and here it is! It's the return of our short-lived ZAZ show, From the Files of Police Squad (In Color), where Mike White, Mark Begley, and Chris Stachiw discuss the 2025 reboot of The Naked Gun franchise with... The Naked Gun! The film stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser as Ed Hocken Jr., with Pamela Anderson along as the love interest, Beth Davenport—an author of true crime novels based on fictional stories that she makes up.

The film reunites the powerhouse trio behind Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)—Dan...

Filmmaker Brook H. Cellars sits down with Mike to discuss her audacious feature debut The Cramps: A Period Piece (2025). This blood-soaked, campy horror-comedy transforms menstruation into a monstrous force of nature, gleefully smashing taboos and splattering stigma with buckets of style. The film leans into outrageous gore, wicked humor, and a feminist bite. Mike and Brook dig into the film’s conception, production challenges, and its place in the tradition of body horror that finds power in the grotesque.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of Th...

Mike welcomes Emirati filmmaker Majid Al Ansari to discuss The Vile (2025), his long-awaited return to the director’s chair after nearly a decade. Known as Hoba in Arabic, the film is a psychological horror story about Amani, a wife and mother whose world collapses when her husband brings home a second wife with seemingly supernatural powers. Drawing on myths and superstitions surrounding polygamy, Al Ansari literalizes whispered fears into a chilling tale of possession, betrayal, and domestic dread. Mike and Majid talk about his journey from his acclaimed debut Zinzana to producing and directing for television, his cinephile passions, and ho...

Czechtember gallops forward with Oldřich Lipský’s madcap musical parody Lemonade Joe (1964). Adapted from Jiří Brdečka’s novel and play, the film stars Karel Fiala as the squeaky-clean pitchman of Kolalok Cola who rides into town to clean up the Wild West. Standing in his way is Miloš Kopecký as the dastardly Horác Badman—better known as Hogofogo. With tinted black-and-white visuals, slapstick invention, and a send-up of both Hollywood westerns and consumer culture, this is pure Lipský—irreverent, dazzling, and completely unforgettable. Mike is joined by Jonathan Owen and Alistair Pitts to unpack this fizzy Czech classic.

Blue hearts, high school dreams, and one unforgettable rock anthem — we’re diving into Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda (2005). The film follows a group of teenage girls in a Japanese high school who form a last-minute band to play the Blue Hearts’ classic “Linda Linda” at their school festival, with a quiet Korean exchange student unexpectedly stepping in as their lead singer.

Mike White is joined by Chance Huskey of GKIDS to talk about the film’s enduring charm, its place in the coming-of-age canon, and GKIDS’s North American release. From Yamashita’s understated style to Doona Bae’s breako...

Czechtember 2025 kicks off with Cosy Dens (AKA Pelíšky), Jan Hřebejk’s bittersweet 1999 coming-of-age dramedy adapted from Petr Šabach’s novel Hovno Hoří (Shit on Fire). Written by Petr Jarchovský, the film unfolds between Christmas 1967 and the Prague Spring of 1968, chronicling the warmth, absurdity, and heartbreak of two neighboring families caught between tradition, rebellion, and history itself.



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Buonopalooza wraps up with Howard Morris’s caper comedy Who’s Minding the Mint? (1967). Jim Hutton stars as Harry Lucas, a hapless Treasury worker who accidentally swipes $50,000 and scrambles to replace it before he’s caught. To pull off the fix, he enlists a motley crew of oddballs, including Dorothy Provine’s Verna Baxter, who’s more interested in perfecting her brownies than in breaking and entering. The ensemble bursts with familiar faces—Milton Berle, Joey Bishop, Walter Brennan, Jack Gilford, and of course, Victor Buono.

Mike White, Otto Bruno, and Tim Madigan close out the Buono-palooza celebration with this br...

Mike talks with writer Katharine Coldiron about her new book, Out There in the Dark (Autofocus Books). Blending film criticism, memoir, fiction, and experimental forms, the collection uses movies as prisms to explore truth, kindness, the female body, the American West, war, and more. From The Sound of Music to Apocalypse Now, Coldiron examines how cinema shapes memory and myth. Praised as “thoughtful, trenchant, and keenly observed,” her essays prove that sometimes the best way to understand life is through the flicker of film.

Find out more at https://autofocusbooks.com/store/p/out-there-in-the-dark

Become a supp...

Buonopalooza rolls on with Robert Aldrich’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Following the massive success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Aldrich re-teamed with Bette Davis for another Southern Gothic nightmare. This time, Davis plays Charlotte Hollis, a reclusive woman haunted by whispers of murder and locked in a decaying Louisiana mansion where secrets fester and madness simmers. The film co-stars Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and—of course—Victor Buono in a pivotal role. Mike White is joined by Tim Madigan and Otto Bruno to dig into the history, the production troubles, and the legacy of one of the j...