The Projection Booth

Mike talks with multi-hyphenate Grace Glowicki about her new film, Dead Lover (2025). It's a stinky look at a gravedigger (Glowicki) who searches for a love who is taken too-soon. The film is playing theatrically around North America. Check local listings or visit https://deadlovermovie.com/ for more details. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth...

Kyler Fey and Michelle Kisner join Mike to dig into Bertrand Mandico's striking 2017 feature debut, The Wild Boys (Les Garçons Sauvages). A fever dream of transgression and transformation, the film follows five privileged boys who rape and murder their literature teacher — then are spirited away by a mysterious sea captain to the strange and sensual Dress Island, where nature itself begins to resh...

Re-recording mixer Martyn Zub discusses the new film from Padraic McKinley, The Weight (2026), the story of a battle-scarred veteran in The Great Depression who's hired to help smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of impenetrable wilderness. The film stars Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe and had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreake...

She's been dug up, renamed, reanimated, and gaslit — and Hollywood expects her to be grateful. Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! resurrects the Bride of Frankenstein for a 1930s Chicago that feels equal parts Weimar cabaret and fever dream, with Jessie Buckley delivering a ferocious, uncontainable performance at the center of a film that can't quite contain itself. Mike White and Chris Stachiw dig in...

Mike sits down with Julie Wyman, director of The Tallest Dwarf — a documentary that is as personal as it is political.  When filmmaker and UC Davis professor Julie Forrest Wyman set out to make The Tallest Dwarf, she discovered she has hypochondroplasia dwarfism herself — and that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. The film charts her quest to find her place within the little peopl...

Christine La Monte discusses her career and her latest work producing a pair of opera-themed documentaries, the uplifting Viva Verdi! (2025) and the stunning Ai Weiwei's Turandot (2025). La Monte talks about the importance of opera in the modern world and the Oscar-nominated song "Sweet Dreams of Joy." For more information visit: https://www.lamonteproductions.com/ Become a supporter of this podca...

Collision as courtship. Self-destruction as intimacy. Fatih Akın’s Head-On (2004) opens with two suicide attempts and spirals into a sham marriage between Cahit (Birol Ünel) and Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), German Turks who weaponize matrimony to escape themselves. What begins as a performance of tradition mutates into volatile love, violence, prison, exile, and a reunion that refuses catharsis. Keith G...

Sound designer Mark A. Mangini returns to The Projection Booth to discuss The Oldest Person in the World (2026), the Sam Green documentary about the successive holders of the oldest person title. Mark discusses the importance of using sound to tell a story and recounts his work on Dune and Mad Max: Fury Road.  Look for screenings of The Oldest Person in the World at https://www.theoldestperson.com...

Mike talks with editor Derek Boonstra about his work on Seized (2026). Premiering recently at Sundance Film Festival, the documentary traces the human fallout of asset forfeiture and the legal gray zones that allow property to be taken without conviction. Find out more about Derek at his website, https://derekboonstra.com/ Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pr...

Mike talks with editor Andres Landau about his work editing the 2026 documentary, Nuisance Bear. A sobering look at the uneasy relationship between polar bears and humans when humans are infringing on the bears' natural environment.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support . Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www....

Director Angelo Madsen joins Mike to discuss his latest film, the 2025 documentary A Body to Live In which focuses on the body artist Fakir Musafar who spent his lifetime manipulating his physical form. The film's edgy subject is matched by its confrontational visual style in a striking work that will not easily be forgotten. The film is currently playing at venues across North America.  Check you...

Australia month crashes to a delirious halt with 1997’s Welcome to Woop Woop, Directed by Stephan Elliott and adapted from Douglas Kennedy's The Dead Heart by screenwriter Michael Thomas, the film strands American grifter Teddy (Johnathon Schaech) in a surreal outback shantytown ruled by Daddy-O (Rod Taylor) and fueled by show tunes, superstition, and mob justice. Susie Porter co-stars as Angie, w...

Mike sits down with editor Ryan Kendrick to discuss Carousel (2026) and unpack how Rachel Lambert's film finds its rhythm in silence, hesitation, and the messy recalibration of adult love. Watch the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFJmY__SC8I Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support . Become a supporter of The Projection...

Mike talks with writer and podcaster Brian Raftery about his latest book, Hannibal Lector: A Life. It's a look at Thomas Harris and his most famous creation, the genteel boogeyman Hannibal Lector in his various book, film, and TV incarnations from Red Dragon to Bryan Fuller's captivating series. Buy the book now at https://amzn.to/4qMuNzB Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.co...

Mike talks with Cody Jarrett and Siouxzan Perry about their 2025 documentary TURA! The filmmakers discuss how the project came together and how they shaped the voluminous material into a feature-length film. How can one film contain the power and strength of the one-and-only Tura Satana?  VIsit https://turamovie.com/ for more details.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/p...

We continue our Australian month with Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds, the stark 1989 feature debut of Alex Proyas. Before The Crow or Dark City, Proyas delivered this sun-blasted sci-fi Western set in a post-apocalyptic desert where the wind blows and desert bakes. A lone wanderer, Smith (Norman "The Norm" Boyd), emerges from the dunes and collides with siblings Felix and Betty Crabtre...

The Projection Booth continues its dive into Australian cinema with Pandemonium, the delirious 1987 feature from writer-director Haydn Keenan. A film that plays like a fever dream filtered through exploitation cinema, absurdist theater, and cultural anxiety, Pandemonium resists easy summary—and happily punishes anyone who tries. The story unfolds through the fractured testimony of Kales Leadingham...

The Projection Booth kicks off a month devoted to Australian oddities with Shirley Thompson Versus the Aliens, the startling 1972 debut from director Jim Sharman. Long unseen outside of archival corners of the internet, the film sits at the crossroads of experimental theater, pop music, political anxiety, and institutional paranoia.  Heather Drain and Chris O’Neil join Mike to unpack the film’s ra...

Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream drifts between deadpan comedy and waking dream, a film where ambition, escape, and American myth collide at odd angles. Written by David Atkins and directed by Emir Kusturica, the 1993 features Axel (Johnny Depp) stranded between New York routine and Arctic fantasia after his cousin (Vincent Gallo) drags him west to Arizona. There, Axel falls into orbit around his Un...

Mike talks with Michael Premo, director of Homegrown, about embedding himself with right-wing activists in the years leading up to—and following—January 6, 2021. Rather than treating the Capitol attack as an aberration, the film traces how grievance, conspiracy thinking, and political identity seep into everyday life.  The conversation digs into the ethics of proximity filmmaking, questions of acc...

The Projection Booth turns its attention to Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), the adaptation of Joe Orton’s infamous stage play, directed by Douglas Hickox. Jonathan Owen and Rob St. Mary join Mike to dig into Orton’s razor-sharp wit, corrosive humor, and enduring legacy as one of Britain’s most provocative voices.  The hosts unpack how the film confronts taboo subjects—sexuality, class resentment,...

Spencer Parsons and Chris Stachiw join Mike to dig into the ideological undercurrents of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan’s contentious capstone to his Batman trilogy. Released in 2012, the film finds a broken Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) pulled back into action as Gotham—now pointedly resembling New York—falls under siege by Bane (Tom Hardy) and the League of Shadows. The conversation mov...

Adam Long and Josh Hadley join Mike to explore Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004), the sweeping documentary from Xan Cassavetes about the rise and fall of Los Angeles’s most influential pay-TV channel. More than a cable station, Z Channel was a film school beamed into living rooms, programming uncut movies, international cinema, director’s cuts, and repertory favorites long before that was...

Mike talks with Alan Berry and Mark Enochs, the filmmakers behind Dead Man’s Line, a chilling dive into one of America’s most disturbing true-crime stories. The conversation traces how the directors reconstructed the life and legend of Tony Kiritsis, whose 1977 hostage standoff transfixed the nation and blurred the line between media spectacle and lived horror. Berry and Enochs unpack their resear...

Mike talks with the creative team behind Luger, a provocative Spanish thriller that blurs the line between obsession, power, and violence. Joining the conversation are filmmaker Bruno Martín, director Santiago Taboada, and producer Mario Mayo. Together, they dig into the film’s origins, its unsettling themes, and the choices that shaped its stark tone and moral unease. The discussion explores the...