The Projection Booth

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 strands, and her call to trade a boy-subplot for a betrayal that lands harder. Khan talks choreographers Phillip Chbeeb and Mackenzie Dustman, cinematographer Adam Carbone, shooting dance numbers in a single day versus Bollywood's usual five or six, and calibrating the "15% Bollywood" spectacle without tipping into Glee. She also talks working with Rizwan Manji, mining her own friendships to crack a character, and what's next with her project Baby. Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 cast, including Ben Russell's King Grimsquawk, built from one note ("Just do Werner Herzog as a bird"), the brutal two-week Asbury Park, New Jersey shoot (40 pages a day, 4 a.m. calls), and Workman's partnership with producer Lily Wachowski, whom she met by writing her a fan letter. She also talks up the mostly-women, largely-queer cast and crew, the Asbury Park locals who turned out as demons and extras, and Edinburgh Fringe. Find Cassie Workman on Instagram: @TheCassieWorkman. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 cinematographer Kenneth Wales while acting, surviving a long postproduction, and answering festival rejection with the gleefully defiant Rejecta Film Festival. Sometimes the best way forward is to wear “loser” as a badge of honor. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 of Energy reports, the challenge of joining investigative rigor to landscape portraiture, and the radioactive dinosaur bones he encountered along the way. The result asks what it means for a place—and its people—to be deemed disposable. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 Singapore’s chewing-gum ban, hearing an audience member weep at the film’s Rotterdam world premiere, and cinema’s power to assure people from broken families that they are not alone. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 Reefers placed in them, editor Richard Lowe (Muscle Shoals) and archival producer Adam Lawrence sorting through decades of footage, the Key West and Santa Barbara premieres — the latter a nearly two-hundred-seat sellout — and what it was like watching Jimmy Buffett's own sisters sit in the audience for an early screening. They also get into Key West itself as a magnet for outsized characters, name-checking longtime local artist David Wegman along the way. Narrated by Jeff Bridges, Occupational Hazard: The First Coral Reefers opens in theaters nationwide September 5th — Jimmy Buffett Day — through the end of October, before heading to digital. Showtimes and city listings are at occupationalhazardfilm.com. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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 know today. They also examine the movie’s version of the Earp legend, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt’s vendetta ride, Doc’s showdown with Johnny Ringo, and how Tombstone stacks up against My Darling Clementine, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Kevin Costner’s competing Wyatt Earp. Joining the episode is Thordur O. Thordarson of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, whose collection includes a replica of Doc Holliday’s unusually distinctive cane. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

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) started to take shape. They talk about writing the script out of their own friendship rather than research, shooting for thirty days on dot-com money borrowed from newly flush friends, and staffing the crew almost entirely with fellow San Francisco artists and musicians. They also get into the year-long restoration process — producer Steak House rebuilding the film from raw footage into an entirely new timeline — and why a movie about two "outsiders of the outsiders" still doesn't feel dated twenty-five years later. By Hook or By Crook is currently playing in select theaters and available on-demand from Altered Innocence, with a Blu-ray and DVD — featuring a new commentary track with Dodge, Howard, and Steak House — arriving October 13th. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Mia-Kate Russell talks with Mike about Penny Lane Is Dead, her Ozploitation slasher debut, now streaming on Shudder. After twenty years as a film and TV makeup artist, Russell wrote and shot the film off the back of five self-funded shorts, drawing on her own delinquent 1980s Australian childhood and a long-held urge to put a genuinely awful teenage girl on screen — the impulse that became Penny's cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn). She talks about landing at Fantasia and getting matched with producers at Umbrella Entertainment and Shudder, shooting in a wintry Adelaide with a cast and crew she'd mostly never met — including Bailey Spalding as Penny and Alexandra Jensen as Amy — cutting six pages from the third act mid-shoot after a scheduling error, and how filming in continuity meant her editor could hand back a rough cut every single morning. She also gets into the soundtrack, built around Aussie rock touchstones like AC/DC and The Angels' "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again," an in-joke for anyone who grew up in an Australian pub. Then there's Fantasia itself, where a scene involving a kitchen appliance made an audience member pass out mid-screening. Penny Lane Is Dead is streaming now, exclusively on Shudder. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Berner talks with Mike about Splash City, the crime thriller he co-wrote, co-directed, produced, and financed himself — inspired by San Francisco's real-life "bipping" (smash-and-grab) epidemic. The Bay Area rapper and Cookies cannabis founder describes handing his own outline to co-writer David to build into a full screenplay, turning over most of the directing to his creative partner Alex, and stepping behind the camera himself for six scenes when the shoot ran out of money. He talks about the film's ballooning budget (from a planned $500,000 to $2 million), the two-year in-house edit at his own Cookies offices, scrapping and re-recording the score until it felt right, and the wild disparity between a quiet industry screening at Lionsgate and the 640-person standing ovation at Oakland's Grand Lake Theater. Splash City is now available to rent or buy on digital and VOD, following a limited theatrical run and a cross-country tour-bus screening tour. Berner also previews his next project, Pax, a Bay Area marijuana-trafficking film. Follow the film @SplashCityMovie and Berner @Berner415 on Instagram. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine talk with Mike about Teenage Wasteland, their documentary premiering on Netflix September 4th. The film resurrects five hundred hours of decaying VHS tape shot between 1991 and 1997 by English teacher Fred Isseks and his Middletown, New York, students as they investigated a toxic dump — and stumbled into a conspiracy involving organized crime and cover-ups reaching the state government. Moss and McBaine, the Boys State and Girls State team, describe tracking down Isseks, winning his trust over a twelve-course brunch, and the moment a crayon-drawn map of his gutted classroom convinced them to physically rebuild it on a Hollywood soundstage. They talk about editor Christopher Passig (Telemarketers) cutting the archive down from hundreds of hours, the ethics of dramatizing a documentary about documentary-making, and why they left the VHS's tracking lines and artifacts untouched rather than cleaning them up with AI. They also get into what it meant to bring Isseks's original students — now in their fifties — back together decades later, a story one of them had never told before about his father, and how a film about a 1990s toxic-waste scandal ended up feeling, in Moss and McBaine's words, urgently "of the moment." 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Music can build suspense, reveal emotion, and reshape a scene—but who ensures that it works in harmony with the picture? Mike talks with Emmy-winning music editor Ben Schor about the often-invisible craft of guiding a production’s score from the earliest temp tracks through recording and the final mix. Schor traces his path from singer-songwriter to film and television, beginning with Gigli and developing long-running collaborations with composers including Jeff Russo. He explains how Alien: Earth balances the musical legacy of Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner with eerie new sounds created using contrabass flute, Aztec death whistle, and the specially built bass desmophone. The conversation also explores Schor’s work on Ripley, Fargo, and Cape Fear, the perils of falling in love with a temp track, and why giving music room to breathe can transform a story. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Mike talks to director Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure) along with stars Andrzej Konopka and Noomi Rapace about their new film Hot Spot (2026). It's a dystopian detective story about where Djonny (Andrzej Konopka) investigates a murder at a refugee camp at the behest of a sentient A.I. where he encounters a witch named Rana (Noomi Rapace). Find out more at https://www.focusfeatures.com/hot-spot 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Rob Spencer joins Mike and Jedidiah Ayres -- our full-time co-host for this Val-halla series -- as we discuss some Val Kilmer films. We start with the neo-noir Kill Me Again from 1989. Written by David Warfield and John Dahl (who also directed), it stars Kilmer as a private detective who's hired by the two-timing Fay (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) who's on the run from the psychotic Vince "Vega" Miller (Michael Madsen). Dahl and Warfield speak about the making of the film and the struggle to get their visions to screen. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

DB Frick and director Julius Olivas talk with Mike about Saving Ferris Butler, their scrappy, sub-$30,000 documentary chasing down the wildest claim in comedy history: that Ferris Butler, a fired 1980-81 Saturday Night Live writer and the mind behind the underground cable-access sketch show Waste Meat News, is the real inspiration for John Hughes's Ferris Bueller. Frick met Butler at a New York open mic fifteen years ago and spent years hearing him make the case; Olivas came aboard after directing Inky, his documentary on forgotten Hollywood ghostwriter Neil Gumbel, and dove into what turned out to be thousands of hours of archival footage. They talk assembling an unlikely roster of SNL alumni and insiders — Denny Dillon, Patrick Weathers, Hugh Fink, Tom "Bones" Malone — thanks to journalist Andy Haugland, tracking down the Del Close connection linking Butler to Hughes, and reuniting Weathers and songwriter Neil Levy on stage for the first time since 1983 at the film's sold-out 40th-anniversary premiere at the Quad Cinema. They also dig into Butler's late-life health struggles, his decades-long marriage to songwriting legend Beverly Ross ("Lollipop"), and why they think his story of scrappy, self-made outsider comedy is bigger than just one Ferris Bueller theory. Visit https://savingferrisbutler.com/ to find out more. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Gloria Mercer and Aidan West talk with Mike about A Safe Distance (2026), their scrappy, off-grid Canadian crime thriller that started as a pandemic-era proof-of-concept short and grew into a full-blown Bonnie-and-Clyde riff shot on borrowed forest properties outside Vancouver. Mercer directs and West writes, and the two — longtime collaborators since their Simon Fraser University film school days — dig into how a straightforward drama about a woman who says no to a camping-trip proposal picked up a bag of stolen money and a pair of outlaw lovers along the way, channeling Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy and the Wachowskis' Bound in equal measure. They talk shooting entirely outdoors with bear visits and mid-scene thunderstorms, assembling a cast led by Bethany Brown, Tandia Mercedes, Cody Kearsley, and Chris McNally, and getting the film made with Canada Council and Creative BC funding plus a lot of neighborly door-knocking. Recorded on the ground at the Fantasia International Film Festival, where A Safe Distance played its Canadian premiere after stops at SXSW, Frameline, and Phoenix Film Festival. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Director Seth A. Smith joins Mike for a Special Report from the Fantasia International Film Festival on Permanent Damage (2026), his fairy-tale crime comedy about escaped convict Tommy Gods (Calem MacDonald), who holes up in a condemned Halifax housing complex and falls for Joe (Olivia Scriven), niece of the brutal landlord (Stephen Dorff) whose "golden goose" the two of them plan to steal. Smith talks about the spray-foam insulation that sparked the idea, shooting in a townhouse complex already vacated and slated for demolition, casting Stephen McHattie as an eccentric pet-shop owner who spends most of the film in a bathtub, writing with longtime collaborator Darcy Spidle, the drug that stiffens the tongue and mangles the voice, and scoring, editing, and sound-designing his own pictures. Plus the stolen $3,000 music video that turned him into a filmmaker in the first place. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Writer-director Tim Riedel joins Mike for Ancestral Beasts (2026), a Red River Métis horror feature in which Elyse (Morgan Holmstrom) retreats to a remote family cabin after her mother's death and finds something in the woods that feeds on everything she won't face. Riedel traces the film back to his mother's Sixties Scoop childhood and her later borderline personality disorder diagnosis — the creature he grew up sensing in the shadows — then through a documentary career, a shoestring proof of concept that landed at Frontières during Cannes, and a 20-day Manitoba shoot with a largely Indigenous cast and crew that a blizzard couldn't stop. He also talks about making horror in the woods as a kid with DP Joey Forte, telling 70% of a story so the audience can author the rest, and bracing for Fantasia's meowing crowd. Is the monster ancestral, or inherited? Find out more at https://www.michifkoonteur.com/ 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Rob St. Mary and Josh Hadley join Mike for The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's blood-soaked western about Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his aging outlaws chasing one last job against Robert Ryan's bounty hunter, a former member of the gang. When Angel is captured by the Mexican warlord Mapache, the Bunch has to decide whether to ride away or ride back for him. We have a plethora of interviews for this one with actress Lilia Castillo, actor Alfonso Arau (Herrera), screenwriter Walon Green, Kathryn Jones, author of Tall in the Saddle: The Life of Ben Johnson, Hollywood's Real Cowboy, and Bill Mesce, author of The Wild Bunch: The American Classic That Changed Westerns Forever. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Spider-Man: Brand New Day argues a hero can be both the mask and the man, no universe reset required. Mike welcomes Chris Stachiw of The Kulturecast for a crossover dissecting Destin Daniel Cretton's grounded, detective-flavored entry in the Tom Holland era, one that ditches multiverse noise for a genuine emotional throughline between Peter Parker and a scene-stealing Sadie Sink. Mike and Chris unpack why this might be the best Holland Spider-Man yet, how Marisa Tomei's Aunt May keeps the franchise grounded, the Man-Spider mutation plot pulled from The Other, Jon Bernthal's Punisher partnership, and what a psychic rampage signals for the MCU's slow-building X-Men rollout. Spoilers arrive after the setup, alongside a debate over secret-identity fatigue and whether Marvel finally made a superhero movie about being a person rather than a franchise cog. 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.patreon.com/projectionbooth