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. 


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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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

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 

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