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PODCAST

The Projection Booth

Weirding Way Media

The Projection Booth features discussions of films from a wide variety of genres with in-depth critical analysis while regularly attracting special guest talent eager to discuss their past gems. The podcast has been recognized as a premier film podcast by The A.V. Club, IndieWire, Entertainment Weekly, and Filmmaker Magazine. Visit http://www.projectionboothpodcast.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

tv & film film history

All Episodes

20:32

Special Report: The World of Nancy Kwan

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/28

Nancy Kwan talks with Mike about The World of Nancy Kwan, her new memoir written with Deborah Davis and a foreword by her nephew Kevin Kwan. Kwan revisits how she landed The World of Suzie Wong almost by accident, tagging along to watch her favorite Hong Kong actresses screen-test before a casting director pulled her in front of the camera, which led to a Hollywood contract, acting lessons with Jeff Corey, and a national tour of the stage production after France Nuyen won the film role.They dig into

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30:24

Special Report: Take Me Home (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/25

When their mother goes unresponsive, Anna (Anna Sargent) calls for help and no one quite listens. Writer-director Liz Sargent built Take Me Home (2026) around her own sister, a woman with a cognitive disability, and made her the hero instead of the burden. Mike talks with Sargent as the Sundance Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award winner opens in theaters via Willa.Sargent traces her path from modern dance and experimental theater to a Mike Figgis-mentored short shot days before she met her biological

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34:04

Special Report: Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual...

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/25

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle join Mike for Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency (2025), third in their trilogy after Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story and Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure. Made with a Guggenheim grant, it grows from the 2020 CZU fire that forced the couple to evacuate their Santa Cruz Mountains home for two and a half months, turning a burn scar the size of Delaware into a portrait of a community, its goats, dog, and beloved peacock, that refused to

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38:48

Special Report: Digital Kitchen's Titles for Smoke...

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/25

Digital Kitchen's Mason Nicoll and Andrew "AJ" Julien talk with Mike about designing the Emmy-nominated title sequences for Spider-Noir and Smoke. They walk through the studio's pitch process, from log-line-only briefs to full pilot screenings, and how Spider-Noir's period-accurate 1931 noir look came from surrealist photography, Man Ray, Seconds, and a Lady from Shanghai homage they didn't know the show was making until after the fact.They dig into Smoke's objects-as-characters concept, physically

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23:27

Special Report: Girl in the Night (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/24

Rok (Urban Kuntarič), a lonely gas station clerk, steals a bicycle and ends up sidekick to its owner, The Girl (Lara Wolf), a blank-eyed, scarred vigilante who may or may not be a superhero. Luka Marčetić's Girl in the Night (2026) just took Best Picture in Fantastic Fest's Main Competition, and Mike talks with Marčetić and Wolf about the Slovenian deadpan charmer.Marčetić traces the film from a one-line logline and a scrapped romantic comedy to a tone shaped by Napoleon Dynamite, Yorgos Lanthimos,

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16:11

Special Report: Littermates (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/24

Sirens wail, smoke drifts past the hedgerows, and inside a tidy English cottage two grown adults earn "nifties" for good behavior. Scott Tinkham and Michael Woloson's darkly comic feature debut, Littermates (2026), turns a vague apocalypse into a strange, tender story of siblinghood, and Mike talks with both directors about how they pulled it off.Friends since film school, the pair recount reverse-engineering the script around a borrowed country house and three performers they know best, including

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17:12

Special Report: Lou Ferrigno on Hard Redemption (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/24

Lou Ferrigno talks with Mike about Hard Redemption (2026), the martial-arts action thriller from director-writer-star Jino Kang and co-director Christine Lam. The film plays out a Die Hard-in-a-classroom premise: a GED teacher with a hidden past (Kang) has to fight off a San Francisco gang holding his students hostage, one grudge match at a time through the school's hallways to a gymnasium showdown.Ferrigno, best known as television's original Hulk, joins the cast in a supporting role opposite David

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11:38

Special Report: Sick (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/23

Agata Trzebuchowska joins Mike for a Special Report on Sick (2026), her feature debut as writer and director, fresh off winning Best Director in Fantastic Fest's Next Wave competition. Sent to the Polish countryside to nurse their ailing grandmother (Monika Niemczyk), sixteen-year-old Maks (Konrad Kąkol) and his older sister Emma (Katarzyna Łubik) feel the summer heat bend their bond into something neither of them can name.Best known as the novice nun at the heart of Paweł Pawlikowski's

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140:28

Episode 815: The Salton Sea (2002)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/23

Rob St. Mary and Jedidiah Ayres join Mike for The Salton Sea (2002), D.J. Caruso's meth-fueled noir starring Val Kilmer in a dual role: junkie informant Danny Parker, who's secretly Tom Van Allen, a grieving trumpet player hunting the corrupt cops who murdered his wife. Chasing them drags Danny deep into the orbit of Pooh-Bear (Vincent D'Onofrio), a nose-less speed freak who'll snort anything, and Jimmy the Finn (Peter Sarsgaard), closing in as his double life unravels.Screenwriter Tony Gayton and

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17:55

Special Report: What Happened to Doris?

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/22

Nick Simon talks with Mike about What Happened to Doris? (2026), his film revisiting the real case that inspired The Entity (1982). Doris Bither was a Culver City single mother whose reports of violent supernatural attacks drew paranormal investigators from UCLA and became one of the most documented hauntings in American history. Simon developed the project with the blessing of Doris's real son, Brian, adjusting details to honor her experience while centering the story on her fight to be believed

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49:50

Special Report: Peter M. Hoffman on Karmic Winds

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/21

Peter M. Hoffman talks with Mike about Karmic Winds: Reflections from the "Smartest Guy in Hollywood", his memoir written largely in pencil during an eight-month prison sentence for a tax-credit case a federal judge had already ruled legal. Hoffman traces his path from Yale tax law into the movie business, tax-engineering Superman for Alex Salkind, working with manager Albert Grossman, and untangling Dolly Parton's publishing split from Porter Wagoner so she could reclaim her catalog outright.They

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22:07

Special Report: Baby Doe (2025)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/20

Director Jessica Earnshaw talks with Mike about Baby Doe (2025), her documentary on Gail, tried decades after a newborn's 1993 death, and the phenomenon of pregnancy denial. Earnshaw traces her path from photojournalism, including a National Geographic essay on aging in prison, to her debut Jacinta, and how the film began with Emily Weaver's case before an appeals delay sent her searching for another, leading her to Gail.They dig into building trust as a nearly one-woman crew, archival footage

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23:43

Special Report: Best of the Best (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/19

Director Lena Khan talks with Mike about Best of the Best (2026), her Bollywood-fusion dance comedy for Netflix from writers Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam. Khan traces her path from UCLA activism and music videos to her debut The Tiger Hunter, and how Minhaj and Venkataramanujam brought her on after asking for script notes and liking what she said.They dig into the rewrite process, Khan's push for tonal consistency across the film's teen-comedy, dance-movie, and female-friendship

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16:55

Special Report: Cassie Workman is Witchy AF

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/19

Cassie Workman talks with Mike about her new horror-comedy series, Cassie Workman is Witchy AF, a puppet-and-drawings deep dive into occult history that plays, in Mike's words, like "a demented kid show." Workman traces her path from stand-up in Perth, Australia, and a run as head writer on The Aaron Chen Show, to fusing comedy and the occult into a series she finally pitched after years on the back burner, landing with manager Lawrence and Etch's Will Battersby and Phil.They dig into the puppet

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33:10

Special Report: Mooch (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/15

Failure becomes a creative strategy in Mooch, Jeff Ryan’s scrappy New Jersey crime comedy about a nearly thirty-year-old caddie who stumbles into private-eye work. Mike talks with the film’s writer, director, editor, and star about transforming a teenage insult into an intensely personal character, channeling Jim Carrey’s physical fearlessness and the Coen brothers’ off-kilter language, and building the story to an emo soundtrack. Ryan also gets candid about wearing too many hats, trusting

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21:42

Special Report: To Use a Mountain (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/14

When government planning turns communities into maps and statistics, whose lives disappear from the page? Mike talks with director Casey Carter about To Use a Mountain, his visually arresting journey through six American sites considered for a permanent nuclear-waste repository. Carter traces the film from his study of photography, physics, and architecture to six years of fieldwork, relationship-building, cinematography, animation, and editing. He discusses the human stories missing from Department

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30:00

Special Report: Ah Girl (2026)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/11

A child’s inner life deserves to be taken seriously. Mike talks with writer-director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla about Ah Girl, her tender, funny feature debut set amid family fracture in 1994 Singapore. Ang traces the film’s decade-long path from painful autobiographical memories to a story of healing, explains how counseling transformed the script, and reveals how play, trust, and close observation shaped the remarkable performances of young actors Ong Xuan Jing and Sydney Wong. She also discusses

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18:38

Special Report: Occupational Hazard - The First Coral...

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/10

John H. Cunningham and Ted E. Haynes talk with Mike about Occupational Hazard: The First Coral Reefers, their documentary on the founding members of Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band. The pair met at the Key West Film Festival and set out to make a short about steel guitarist Roger Bartlett; six interviews in, they knew they had a feature, and by the time they wrapped in April 2025 they'd shot eighteen more and amassed six hundred pieces of archival material.They talk about the trust the surviving

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119:04

Episode 814: Tombstone (1993)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/09

Mike White is joined by El Goro and Jedidiah Ayres to discuss George P. Cosmatos’s 1993 Western, Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer in his career-defining turn as Doc Holliday. The conversation digs into Kevin Jarre’s ambitious original screenplay, his short-lived stint as director, Kurt Russell’s unusually hands-on role after Jarre was fired, and the material that disappeared as Tombstone transformed from a sprawling historical epic into the lean, quotable film audiences

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19:41

Special Report: By Hook or By Crook (2001)

The Projection Booth ·

2026/09/08

Harry Dodge and Silas Howard talk with Mike about By Hook or By Crook, their 2001 queer-cinema landmark, now touring U.S. theaters and streaming on VOD in a new 4K restoration. The pair met working at a dyke-run cafe in late-1980s San Francisco, and trace the film's origin story to an absurdly literal turning point: Dodge getting a cigarette-littering ticket that forced a thirteen-hour drive to Portland and back, during which the idea for a buddy story about Shy (Howard) and Valentine (Dodge)

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1,351 results

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