The Projection Booth

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver inspired millions with her celebrations of nature, attention, and the examined life — yet she remained one of American literature's most intensely private figures. Filmmaker Sasha Waters spent years building an intimate portrait of Oliver from the inside out: sifting through thirty to forty boxes of correspondence, notebooks, and personal photographs before they entered the Library of Congress, and tracking down a long-lost video recording that captures Oliver speaking publicly for the first time about surviving childhood abuse.

Mike talks with Waters about the making of Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2026) — her path into documentary filmmaking through the school of Barbara Kopple, the subjects that have chosen her over the years, the creative problem-solving demanded by a subject who rarely allowed herself to be filmed, and what it felt like to introduce the film to a sold-out crowd of 1,100 at the Missouri Theatre during its world premiere at True/False. Waters also reflects on her parallel career as an experimental filmmaker and educator at VCU School of the Arts, and the pleasures of a good pie shake.

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World opens theatrically July 3, 2026, and airs on PBS American Masters on August 25, 2026. Find Sasha Waters online at pieshake.com and on Instagram @pieshakepictures.


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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Fifty years on, The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains the longest-running theatrical release in cinema history — and it shows no signs of stopping. Linus O'Brien, son of creator Richard O'Brien, joins Mike to discuss Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, his feature documentary tracing Rocky's unlikely journey from a Royal Court Theatre upstairs production to a global midnight-screening phenomenon.

Linus talks about growing up in the house Rocky built — guitar songs in the kitchen, shadow casts at the Beacon Theater, and a father who always expressed himself through music. He discusses the editorial partnership with editor Avner Shiloah, the structural decision to let the songs carry the film, and why celebrities like Jack Black and Trixie Mattel were included only when they had something specific to say. He also teases the case for a Shock Treatment documentary and his next project, Almost Normal, on neurodivergence and its impact on society.

Strange Journey is now available on digital platforms and Blu-ray.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Sci-fi month concludes with one of the great cinematic boondoggles of the '90s. Kevin Costner directs and stars in The Postman (1997), playing a wandering drifter who stumbles into a postal uniform and accidentally becomes the savior of a shattered America, restoring hope and democracy one undelivered letter at a time. Standing in his way: General Bethlehem (Will Patton), a Shakespeare-quoting warlord leading a militia of survivalist zealots called the Holnists. Mike talks with Emily Intravia and Carol Borden about the film's tangled politics, its baffling sense of time, its surprisingly thin violence for an R rating, and why a nearly three-hour epic about restoring the mail somehow still feels unfinished scene to scene.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Few bands burned brighter—or more colorfully—than Culture Club, and director Alison Ellwood joins Mike to unpack the making of her acclaimed documentary Boy George & Culture Club. From the group's improbable formation and meteoric rise to the personal relationships, creative tensions, and heartbreak that shaped their music, Ellwood reveals how she crafted an intimate portrait using the voices of Boy George, Jon Moss, Mikey Craig, and Roy Hay.

The conversation explores the joy and challenge of building music documentaries, why some stories are best told by the artists themselves, and how editing ultimately discovers a film's true shape. Ellwood also discusses Culture Club's unforgettable MTV presence, Boy George's groundbreaking public persona, the band's deep catalog beyond the hits, and the electric response to the documentary's Tribeca premiere. It's a lively look at the magic of collaboration, the power of pop music, and the enduring legacy of one of the 1980s' most iconic bands.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

What kind of man doesn't drink, avoids women, and prefers the company of other strange men in the park? Gene Fowler Jr.'s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) plays the alien-infiltration premise with surprising melancholy and remarkable restraint for a film with such a lurid title. Mike, Bill Ackerman, and Ben Buckingham dig into the film's overlapping readings — Cold War paranoia, the Lavender Scare, queer coding, and a feminist critique the film simultaneously makes and undermines.

They also take on the 1998 UPN TV remake directed by Nancy Malone (with a clever cameo from the original stars) and Rand Ravich's The Astronaut's Wife (1999), tracing how the same essential story mutates across four decades of American anxiety.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Editor Sarah Affleck pulls back the curtain on one of filmmaking's most invisible—and essential—arts. From cutting reality television to shaping animated features at LAIKA and Pixar, Affleck traces her journey through the editing room while explaining why animation offers creative possibilities unlike any other medium.

The conversation dives into her work on the acclaimed animated short Dear Upstairs Neighbors, exploring its painterly visual style, frantic creative energy, and the year-and-a-half process of transforming storyboards into a finished film. Along the way, Affleck discusses her love of Adobe Premiere, the unique relationship between editor and director, her unexpected stint editing The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and the challenge of finding the perfect comedic and emotional beats.

She also reflects on the film's sold-out premiere at Tribeca, the painstaking craft behind every minute of animation, and her upcoming directorial project, Nurture. It's a fascinating look at storytelling from the perspective of the person who helps every film find its rhythm, voice, and soul.


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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Gregg Allman lived inside the central contradiction of American music — a white Southern kid who built his art on the blues, fled his demons while pouring them into song, and emerged as one of rock's most essential voices. Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul traces that journey from a childhood shattered by his father's murder to the soulful authority the Allman Brothers Band carved out through relentless touring and hard-won survival.

Mike talks with director James Keach — whose previous documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me earned an Oscar nomination — and producer Michael Lehman, Allman's longtime manager, about the making of an honest film about a complicated man. They discuss the archival footage, the band's quietly radical racial politics, and the personal losses — Duane's death, the addiction years, the very public marriage to Cher — that gave the music its weight.

Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul opens in theaters June 17, 2026.


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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Rob St. Mary and Rob Spencer join Mike to dig into Alex Proyas's Dark City (1998), the tale of John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), who wakes in a cheap hotel room with no memory, a dead body nearby, and a city that refuses to add up. Detective Bumstead (William Hurt) closes in while the pale, bald Strangers rearrange reality every time the clocks stop — building a world that is simultaneously a locked-room mystery, a Philip K. Dick nightmare, a Kafka story with a superhero ending, and a filmmaker's self-portrait: the Strangers as producers, Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) as the compromised writer, and Murdoch as the protagonist who tears through the painted backdrop and seizes the apparatus.

The conversation covers the film's three screenplay stages and two finished cuts, the studio-mandated voice-over that Proyas spent a decade trying to undo, and Roger Ebert's role as the mechanism of the film's survival. Mike and the Robs also place Dark City within the remarkable 1998–99 cluster of simulated-world films — The Truman Show, The Matrix, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor — and examine what it means that Murdoch's triumphant ending leaves the city still a construct, still running on hidden machinery, with only the god changed.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Mike and Aaron Carruthers kick off Sci-Fi June with William Dear's time-travel oddity Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982), in which motocross racer Lyle Swann (Fred Ward) accidentally blasts a century into the past and spends the entire film completely unaware that he's done it. That central gag — a fish out of water who doesn't know he's a fish — drives most of the conversation, along with the film's quietly clever bootstrap paradox, its improbably stacked character cast, and the eclectic score produced by former Monkee Mike Nesmith.

Mike and Aaron dig into what makes Fred Ward's performance work, why Belinda Bauer's Claire registers as the true power center of her frontier town, and how Peter Coyote earns his villain credentials in a single scene. They also talk through Dear's resourceful low-budget filmmaking — shooting in desert locations, strapping cameras to bikes, hiring a second unit team for five grand — and the director's personal connections to early Sam Raimi and the Michigan indie scene, including The Northville Cemetery Massacre.

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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Kenji Tanigaki is anything but furious when he discusses his latest film, The Furious (2025). The film stars Xie Miao and Joe Taslim as two men united by a common enemy - child trafficking. The movie combines pathos with some breath-taking fight scenes in a film reminiscent of The Raid, Taken, and John Wick. 

Check local listings for where The Furious is playing near you.


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 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.