The Projection Booth Podcast

Mike is joined by Payton McCarty-Simas and Rob St. Mary to dig into Fucktoys, the 2025 SXSW Special Jury Award winner written, directed by, and starring Annapurna Sriram. Sriram plays AP, a sex worker adrift in Trashtown — a candy-colored dystopia of industrial decay and pastel skies — after a swamp-dwelling tarot reader tells her a curse can be lifted for a thousand dollars and the sacrifice of a baby lamb. What follows is a picaresque night of surreal encounters, escalating absurdity, and a collision of intimacy, exploitation, and class in a pre-millennium alternate universe.The gang explores the film's John Waters–adjacent sensibility and its candy-coated production design, debating whether the aggressive tonal shifts and theatrical performances sharpen the film's satirical edge or tip into pure indulgence. They also dig into what the curse might actually represent, how Sriram's central performance holds the chaos together, and where Fucktoys fits within a lineage of underground feminist and transgressive cinema.Also featured is an interview with writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram. 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 filmmaker and archivist Mike Davis to discuss Dead, White & Blue — a gleefully subversive political satire assembled entirely from recycled public domain footage.Davis, whose previous "green movies" include Sex Galaxy and President Wolfman, sifted through more than 300 films — predominantly training and educational films produced by the U.S. government, military, and law enforcement — to construct a comedy about the KKK's use of a shrink ray to retrieve an incriminating bullet from the body of a Black man shot by a racist white cop, while an Atlanta mayor goes missing and the U.S. military closes in. The result is a film that plays like found footage as social X-ray, with flat-affect dubbing, sly sight gags, and a retro visual texture that doubles as pointed commentary.Mike and Davis dig into the art and obsession of the "green movie" — a tradition running from J-Men Forever to Kung Pow! Enter the Fist — and what it takes to build a coherent (or deliberately incoherent) narrative from hundreds of forgotten films. They discuss the particular satirical charge of repurposing government and law enforcement footage, why race relations make for such rich — and risky — comedic territory, and what drives a filmmaker to spend years hunting through public domain archives instead of just making a movie the normal way.Find out more at https://stag-films.com/ 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 director Stephanie Laing to discuss Tow — a true-story drama about one woman's year-long legal war against a predatory towing company and the system behind it.Amanda Ogle (Rose Byrne) is living in her 1991 Toyota Camry on the streets of Seattle when the car — her only lifeline — gets impounded, leaving her with a bill for $21,634 she has no hope of paying. What follows is battle for dignity against an indifferent bureaucracy, with support from a pro bono lawyer (Dominic Sessa) and a shelter manager (Octavia Spencer) who believes in her. Laing, a veteran of Palm Royale and Physical, brings an empathetic eye to the material without flinching from the grinding reality of homelessness and addiction.Mike and Laing discuss adapting a real person's story, the challenge of making systemic failure feel intimate, and what drew her from television to the feature format.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 writer-director Addison Heimann to discuss Touch Me — a psychosexual sci-fi horror-comedy about codependency, addiction, and the seductive promise that something out there could touch you and make all the pain go away.Codependent best friends Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Craig (Jordan Gavaris) find themselves homeless, Joey's mysterious ex resurfaces with an offer too good to refuse. Heimann  talks with Mike about mining autobiography for genre material, the influence of hentai on the film's plot, and what it means to make a movie about addiction from a place of real pain.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 

Owen (Justice Smith) is a quiet kid on the outskirts of everything — his school, his family, his own life. When he meets Maddy (Jack Haven), a fellow outcast devoted to late-night supernatural TV show The Pink Opaque, something stirs in him that he can't quite name. Together they lose themselves in the show's mythology, its heroes Isabel and Tara battling the dream-warping Mr. Melancholy from within the Midnight Realm. When Maddy disappears and the show gets canceled, Owen finds himself alone in a suburb designed to swallow people whole — watching years pass like seconds.Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow asks what it costs to not know yourself, wrapping that terror in the hypnotic glow of '90s television and the specific dread of adolescence that never ends. Horror film, coming-of-age film, and something harder to name — it builds a portrait of a person burying themselves alive.Lu Etienne and Maxi Breckwoldt join Mike to trace Owen's journey from the bleachers to the Fun Center and beyond, unpacking the film's psychic static, its suburban uncanny, and the question haunting every frame: what if you're already suffocating, and you just don't know it yet?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 writer/director Maya Annik Bedward about her feature documentary Black Zombie (2026). The film looks at Haitian Vodou and how it's been been bastardized by Hollywood in films from early works like White Zombie to modern movies like World War Z and everywhere in-between.The film had its premiere at SXSW 2026. Find out more at https://www.instagram.com/blackzombiemovie/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 Leslie Winston — legendary performer of the Golden Age of Adult Film and AVN Hall of Fame inductee — and Mark Jason Murray, founder of Ultra Flesh Archives, to celebrate the release of Wildheart: The Leslie Winston Collection, now available on Blu-ray.Ms. Winston looks back on her remarkable two-decade career, sharing personal memories of the era of loops shot between 1980 and 1982 showcased in this collection. Mr. Murray discusses the passion and painstaking work behind Ultra Flesh Archives, what drove him to preserve and restore these films from original 8mm and Super 8 elements, and what collectors can expect from the label going forward.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 writer Aaron Tracy about his new podcast series, The Secret Life of Roald Dahl, which tells the story of the (in)famous writer who once served in the British Secret Service before becoming the author of macabre tales and beloved children's books.Find out more about the podcast at https://www.listentoparallax.com/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 multi-hyphenate Grace Glowicki about her new film, Dead Lover (2025). It's a stinky look at a gravedigger (Glowicki) who searches for a love who is taken too-soon.The film is playing theatrically around North America. Check local listings or visit https://deadlovermovie.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 

Kyler Fey and Michelle Kisner join Mike to dig into Bertrand Mandico's striking 2017 feature debut, The Wild Boys (Les Garçons Sauvages). A fever dream of transgression and transformation, the film follows five privileged boys who rape and murder their literature teacher — then are spirited away by a mysterious sea captain to the strange and sensual Dress Island, where nature itself begins to reshape them.The trio explores the film's roots in transgressive literary tradition, its place within a rich lineage of queer underground filmmaking — from Jean Genet and Kenneth Anger to Guy Maddin — and Mandico's bold formal choices: tactile black-and-white cinematography, analog practical effects, and the provocative decision to cast women as the "wild boys," destabilizing gender from the very first frame.The conversation ranges across Mandico's developing filmography as well, examining how After Blue and She Is Conann extend the obsessions on display here: artificial worlds, collapsing gender binaries, and the body as a site of punishment and desire. More than a debut, The Wild Boys emerges as a manifesto for a wholly singular cinematic vision.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