The Projection Booth

Joe R. Lansdale writes like everybody he knows is dead, and Hollywood has been trying to catch up with him ever since. The Texas storyteller joins Mike for a Projection Booth Special Report that runs from Batman comics to the movies he hopes to make next.

Lansdale, the author behind Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), argues the film needs no sequel: Bruce Campbell is that part. He explains why The Drive-In has been optioned again and again and never filmed, why he calls Hollywood a sack of weasels while happily cashing the checks, and how a screenplay for Ridley Scott paid for his house.

There is more: a four-year-old's love of Batman and the story "Subway Jack"; why he ended Hap and Leonard after 15 novels; his friendship with Bill Paxton, who sent him Frailty (2001) and optioned The Bottoms; Howard Waldrop adaptations, one starring and directed by Vincent D'Onofrio; and The Projectionist, the film he hopes to direct next year. He also talks Texas, genre, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a daily three-hour writing habit.

Visit Joe Lansdale's official website at https://www.joerlansdale.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.

David Mamet strips the political thriller down until almost nothing is left, and the gaps are the point. Spartan (2004) sends Val Kilmer's Robert Scott after the president's missing daughter, through a cover-up told in clipped, half-finished sentences.

Mike White, Jedidiah Ayres and Andrew Nette wrap up Valhalla, spoilers included. Is this the backstory of a long-running series hero in the Jack Reacher mold? Does Mamet's compression make the film or leave holes? They trace its pulp men's-adventure DNA, its post-9/11 Dubai slavers, and a president whose worst problem now looks quaint. Then comes Kilmer's no-nonsense performance, the lines they quote, the clunkers, and where it stands beside Heist (2001) and Ronin (1998).

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 if the Ouija board were an app, and the app were hungry? Do You Want to Play (2026), a new horror film fresh from its world premiere at Tubi FrightFest, turns the spirit board into an algorithm and lets a serial killer's demon climb inside a teenager through her phone.

Writer-director Nicholas Lyon joins Mike White with Ricco Ross, the Aliens (1986) veteran who plays Scary Gary, a priest turned YouTuber. Lyon traces the film to a Ouija script he wrote years ago, before the Ouija movies beat him to the board, and to the invented Demon Board at its center. Ross explains how he built Gary from the outside in: darker eyes, an island-tinged accent, and a reverence for the priest in The Exorcist (1973). The two recall an improvised exorcism, Latin lines and no stunt rigs, and why Ross trusts a director who lets him fail. Lyon also explains how casting Quinn Aune made him rewrite the script around her, why a small-budget horror film takes years to fund, and why he is weighing self-distribution against a big distributor.

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.

Is Moontide (1942) film noir, or a dockside melodrama with a hangover? Mike White, Heidi Honeycutt and Jedidiah Ayres take on Noirvember's strangest Hollywood experiment: 20th Century Fox's bid to turn French star Jean Gabin into a leading man.

Archie Mayo directed after Fritz Lang shot three weeks and quit. Gabin wakes from a blackout unsure whether he killed a man, Ida Lupino walks into the surf, and Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell circle them. The panel weighs Lupino's performance, Salvador Dalí's mostly vanished dream sequence, the film's kinship with Out of the Fog (1941) and Port of Shadows (1938), and Willard Robertson's novel. Plus: why Bobo?

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.

Before E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) there was Night Skies, a rural alien-horror movie that Steven Spielberg developed, spent roughly $700,000 on, and walked away from.

Max Evry, author of A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch's Dune, returns to The Projection Booth to talk about his new book, Stranded on Earth: How Night Skies Became E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, out October 27 from 1984 Publishing. A new book, a new look at old Spielberg.

Mike White and Evry dig into:

Why Spielberg traded a sinister project for a personal story about a lonely kid and an alien, and how the friendship at the heart of Night Skies became the whole of E.T.

The Rick Baker saga: his working aliens, the blowup that sent Spielberg to Carlo Rambaldi, and how much of the creature came from Baker.

Ron Cobb, John Sayles, Tobe Hooper and the myths the book corrects.

After School, the R-rated middle-school comedy from Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis.

How ideas migrated into Poltergeist (1982) and Gremlins (1984), and whether Night Skies could work after Disclosure Day (2026).

If Spielberg never lets a good idea die, what happens when someone writes down where they went?

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.