The Projection Booth

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...

Writer, director, and star Joanna Arnow delivers one of the sharpest, most quietly uncomfortable comedies of recent years with The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023), a film that weaponizes awkwardness, deadpan humor, and emotional stasis. Arnow plays Ann, a thirty-three-year-old woman drifting through New York City, desperate for connection but seemingly incapable of advo...

Mike Thompson and Rob St. Mary join Mike to step into the rubble, rhetoric, and Roman cosplay of Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed, forty-years-in-the-making cinematic fever dream. A film obsessed with power, legacy, architecture, and Great Men Thinking Great Thoughts, Megalopolis feels less like a movie than a manifesto—one that demands to be taken seriously while daring you to la...

If you're not listening to the Chasing Chevy Chase podcast, here's an episode to whet your appetite...  Chevy Chase takes an unexpected turn into sci-fi thriller territory with Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992). Directed by John Carpenter and adapted from H.F. Saint’s novel, the film follows Nick Halloway (Chase), who becomes invisible after a freak laboratory accident. As he grapples with the pe...

Spencer Parsons and Rob St. Mary join Mike to unpack Ana Kokkinos’s unflinching 2006 adaptation of Rupert Thomson’s novel. The Book of Revelation, a film that refuses easy provocation, using intimacy, trauma, and performance as tools for something far more unsettling. The story follows Daniel (Tom Long), a dancer who vanishes during a mundane errand for his girlfriend Bridget (Anna Torv). What ini...

Mike talks with director Claudio Fäh about Turbulence (2025), a tightly constructed thriller set almost entirely in the air. Fäh discusses the film’s development, the practical challenges of staging action in a confined space, and the decisions behind its restrained visual style and controlled pacing. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--551323...

Radley Metzger pushes the boundaries of erotic cinema with The Image (1975), a film that treats desire as ritual, performance, and provocation. Adapted from the infamous novel by Catherine Robbe-Grillet—writing under the name Jean de Berg—the film unfolds as a stylized confession. Carl Parker plays Jean, the author surrogate recounting a charged encounter with his estranged friend Claire (Marilyn...

Jessica Shires and Samm Deighan join Mike for a deep, unflinching look at Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O (1975), the adaptation of Pauline Réage’s notorious novel. Corinne Cléry embodies O with startling vulnerability as she’s led by her lover René (Udo Kier) into the secretive Chateau at Roissy—an isolated world of ritual, discipline, and erotic power exchange. The conversation opens up the film’s...

Stuart “Feedback” Andrews never whispered his opinions — he weaponized them. The longtime Rue Morgue Radio rabble-rouser and Cinephobia Radio agitator carved out a cult legacy with his mercurial personality, meticulous audio collages, and an manical belief that cinema deserved passion, noise, and occasionally a little chaos. Mike revisits one of Stuart’s deep dives: “Jungle Gate,” a two-part Cinep...

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 c...

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 m...

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...

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 minise...