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The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth Podcast

By: Weirding Way Media
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About this listen

 The Projection Booth has been recognized as a premier film podcast by The Washington Post, The A.V. Club, IndieWire, Entertainment Weekly, and Filmmaker Magazine. With over 700 episodes to date and an ever-growing fan base, 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.

Visit http://www.projectionboothpodcast.com

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.Mike White Art
Episodes
  • Episode 785: Shirley Thompson Versus The Aliens (1972)

    Episode 785: Shirley Thompson Versus The Aliens (1972)
    Feb 4 2026
    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 fractured psyche. The discussion also traces how the film anticipates Sharman’s later work, with its collision of spectacle, provocation, and musical disruption.

    The episode features an interview with production designer Brian Thomson, who reflects on the film’s theatrical roots, handmade aesthetic, and the creative freedom that allowed such a strange debut to exist. Part asylum drama, part pop-art warning, Shirley Thompson Versus the Aliens stands as a message from the margins nobody was prepared to hear.

    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
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    2 hrs and 35 mins
  • Episode 784: Arizona Dream (1993)

    Episode 784: Arizona Dream (1993)
    Jan 28 2026
    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 Arizona Dream bends tone and narrative into something closer to folklore than plot, balancing melancholy against absurdity. The conversation explores Kusturica’s outsider view of America, the film’s uneasy relationship with realism, and the way dreams—Inuit or otherwise—function as both refuge and trap. Mike also talks with screenwriter David Atkins about shaping the script, collaborating with Kusturica, and navigating a studio-era release that never quite knew what to do with a movie this strange.


    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
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    2 hrs and 24 mins
  • Special Report: Homegrown (2024)

    Special Report: Homegrown (2024)
    Jan 22 2026
    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 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
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    25 mins
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