The Projection Booth Podcast

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/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

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 land desert bakes.A lone wanderer, Smith (Norman "The Norm" Boyd), emerges from the dunes and collides with siblings Felix and Betty Crabtree (Michael Lake and Melissa Davis), who survive on beans, religious fervor, and flying mania. Smith's arrival fractures their fragile world, igniting jealousy, spiritual dread, and Felix’s obsessive dream.Cullen Gallagher an...

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, an escapee from an asylum portrayed by David Argue, who recounts his time working as a surveyor at a decaying movie studio run by the grotesque siblings (or spouses?) EB and PB De Wolf. What follows is a barrage of unstable identities, pagan im...

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 radical shifts in tone and form: the oscillation between black-and-white and color, the omnipresent off-screen voices, the rock-and-roll aliens, and the way Sharman folds Cold War fears, ecological warnings, and Australian cultural touchstones into Shirley’s fractur...

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 Uncle Leo (Jerry Lewis) and the Stalkers—mother and daughter played by Faye Dunaway and Lili Taylor—each chasing a private version of freedom.Mike, joined by co-hosts Andras Jones and David Rodgers, unpacks how Arizon...

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 access and responsibility, and what it means to document extremism without caricature or spectacle. Homegrown emerges as a quietly unsettling portrait of radicalization unfolding in plain sight.Find out more at https://homegrown.film/Become a supporter of th...

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, violence—without softening Orton’s contempt for social respectability or his glee in watching social structures collapse.At the center of the film is Mr. Sloane, a charming, amoral drifter and occasional rentboy played with unnerving poi...

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 moves past spectacle to examine the film’s deeply anxious view of revolution, class conflict, and populist politics. Drawing connections to Occupy Wall Street–era fears, Mike, Spencer, and Chris unpack how Bane’s rhetoric of liberatio...

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 standard practice.The conversation digs into the channel’s daring programming philosophy, its outsized impact on American film culture, and the obsessive, self-destructive personality of founder Jerry Harvey. The hosts examine how the documentary balances cineph...

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 research, ethical choices, and the challenge of shaping archival chaos into a tense, humane documentary. They also discuss the struggles for distribution and the obligatory Hollywood remake, Dead Man's Wire, the 2026 release from director Gus Van Sant...

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 challenges of mounting an independent Spanish production, navigating international audiences, and crafting a film that resists easy answers while demanding engagement. From conception to execution, this episode pulls back the curtain on Luger and the collaborative vis...

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 advocating for herself. She works a job that barely registers as meaningful, endures social interactions that feel transactional at best, and navigates a BDSM relationship that has quietly slipped from consensual ritual into something emotionally hollow.Lisa Vandever and Keith Gordon...

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 laugh at it. Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), the troubled genius nobody appreciates (write what you know, Francis), strides through a New Rome built on vibes, speeches, and a miracle substance called Megalon. The episode also explores Megadoc, Mike...

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 perks and pitfalls of invisibility, he also tries to evade ruthless CIA operative David Jenkins (Sam Neill) and connect with Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah). It’s an ambitious mash-up of comedy, romance, and pa...

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 initially plays as a mystery gradually reveals itself as a confrontation with sexual violence, shame, and the long aftermath of violation—rendered without sensationalism and without moral shortcuts.Mike also sits down with direct...

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-podcast--5513239/support.Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

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 Roberts) and the young woman who becomes the focus of his controlled cruelties, Anne (Mary Mendum).Joining Mike are Jessica Shires and Heather Drain, as the conversation situates The Image alongside Metzger’s other works and within a broade...

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 legacy, its aesthetics, and its complicated relationship to the source text’s authorship and mythology. The episode also features two illuminating interviews: Pola Rapaport, director of The Writer of O, discusses...

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 Cinephobia takedown of the marketing circus surrounding Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno and Knock Knock. The original broadcasts unraveled into sprawling tangents and media theory rants, so Mike presents a cut Stuart would absolutely hate — a leaner, sharper, “Feedback-but-Edited” version that preserv...

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...