The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth pulls back the curtain on Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus (2025), a tense, docu-style thriller that pushes real-world chaos right to the edge of the frame. Mike sits down with special effects coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin, whose practical wizardry gives the film its authenticity. They dig into orchestrating high-stakes set pieces, blending practical work with digital augmentation, and engineering Greengrass’s signature controlled mayhem without ever losing sight of character and story.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 

Daniel Kremer returns to The Projection Booth with an irresistible double feature of cinephile obsession. Mike dives into Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano (2024), Kremer’s exhaustive and heartfelt documentary about the fiercely talented, too-often disregarded director behind Georgy Girl, Loot, and Why Shoot the Teacher? Kremer lays out the decades-long fascination that fueled his mission to rescue Narizzano’s reputation from footnotes and dismissals.The conversation then shifts to Kremer’s new book, Adventures in Auteurism: A Crusade for the Critically Neglected, a bold, deeply researched celebration of filmmakers who never got their due. He and Mike dig into the joys of critical excavation, the thrills of uncovering overlooked filmographies, and the fight to keep forgotten artists visible. If you love cinematic passion projects, archival detective work, and spirited defenses of the undervalued, this one’s a feast.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 

Noirvember closes with James B. Harris’s Cop (1988)—the first time James Ellroy’s feverish fiction hit the big screen. Mike teams with Andrew Nette and Rod Lott for a deep read of Harris’s adaptation, where James Woods’s unhinged Detective Lloyd Hopkins hunts a killer across eighteen years of buried violence.The trio digs into Ellroy’s original novel Blood on the Moon and the wilder, abandoned incarnation that came before it—L.A. Death Trip, the unsold, manuscript that first birthed Hopkins. Using material from Ellroy’s own accounts and critical studies (including the brute-force early drafts, the rewrites demanded by Otto Penzler and Nat Sobel, and the shift to publishable structure), the conversation maps how a doomed finale turned into a tight serial-killer pursuit.The episode also features a new interview with James B. Harris, who breaks down the challenges of translating Ellroy’s structure, keeping Hopkins’s mania intact, and staying faithful to the narrative rhythms of the novel. What emerges is a portrait of a filmmaker wrestling with source material born in chaos—reforged into the dark, abrasive thriller that helped spark decades of Ellroy adaptations.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 

Mike talks with filmmaker Todd Rohal in a lively, no-holds-barred tour through one of the most delightfully unclassifiable careers in American indie cinema. From Knuckleface Jones to The Catechism Cataclysm, Rohal has carved out a lane where misfits, surreal detours, and emotional gut-punches live side-by-side.The conversation zeroes in on F*** My Son (2025), his bold and darkly comic new feature that pushes his sensibilities into feral, confrontational territory. Rohal talks process, chaos, collaboration, and why he wants to work in a hardware store.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 

The Projection Booth enters Edgar Wright territory with a deep dive into The Running Man (2025), his audacious adaptation of the dystopian classic. Mike teams up with Midnight Viewing’s own Father Malone to break down Wright’s maximalist world-building, razor-cut action choreography, and the film’s commentary on media spectacle and state-manufactured violence.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 

Noirvember 2025 keeps rolling as Mike teams up with author Dahlia Schweitzer and artist Rahne Alexander to crack open V.I. Warshawski (1991), Jeff Kanew’s glossy, big-city take on Sara Paretsky’s groundbreaking detective. Kathleen Turner commands the screen as V.I., whose night on the town swerves into murder, a dead former Blackhawks star, and a teenager who refuses to stay out of danger.This episode brings together an incredible lineup: Sara Paretsky, creator of the V.I. Warshawski novels; screenwriters David Aaron Cohen, Nick Thiel, and Warren Leight; and director Jeff Kanew. They share the inside story of adapting an iconic literary detective, shaping Turner’s formidable on-screen persona, and navigating the film’s winding path from page to screen.Along the way, we dig into Chicago’s cinematic grit, the film’s place in early-’90s studio genre filmmaking, and—yes—we spoil who killed Boom Boom and finally reveal what the initials V. I. actually stand for.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 

Mike talks with cultural critic Dan Schindel and Lyle Zanca of GKIDS to discuss Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 anime film, Angel’s Egg (AKA Tenshi no Tamago), a gorgeous lyrical film about spiritualism and redemption. The film has been recently restored and given a 4K scan that will be screened across the U.S. starting November 19, 2025. Check local listings and be on the lookout for the upcoming Blu-Ray release.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 

Noirvember keeps rolling with Helmut Käutner’s Black Gravel (1961), a scalding portrait of postwar Germany buried under guilt, corruption, and American occupation. Mike is joined by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan to dig into this bleak anti-Heimatfilm, where gravel trucker Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt) scrapes by on the black market and rekindles an affair with Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), now married to a U.S. officer. When an accident turns deadly, their secret unearths a moral wasteland of complicity and denial. Once condemned by the Oberhausen critics as “the worst achievement by an established director,” Käutner’s film now stands as a bold, unflinching noir that dared to confront the rot beneath Germany’s economic miracle.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 

Mike sits down with the sibling filmmaking duo Josh Holden and Nick Holden (a.k.a. the Holden Brothers) to unpack their sharp new dramedy Sell Out, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival. Shot in and around Austin and Louisiana, the film follows novelist Benny Dink as his career stalls, his love life unravels and a too-good-to-pass ghostwriting job forces him into a reckoning with art, ambition and identity.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 

Mike talks with Caleb Alexander Smith and David Krumholtz about Forelock, a dark, biting satire set on the margins of Hollywood. The film follows Caiden, a drifting ex-athlete pulled into the bizarre world of boulevard impersonators and small-time hustlers by Randy, a disillusioned veteran of the trade. Together they chase a missing payout and sink deeper into the city’s surreal underbelly.Smith and Krumholtz discuss the film’s blend of desperation, performance, and self-mythology—how Forelock captures a Los Angeles where ambition and delusion often look the same.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