Special Guest: Brian Thomson Guest Co-Hosts: Heather Drain, Chris O'Neill
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.
Special Guest: David Atkins Guest Co-Hosts: Andras Jones, David Rodgers
Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993) 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 film features Johnny Depp as Axel, 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.
The Projection Booth turns its attention to Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), the adaptation of Joe Orton’s infamous stage play, directed by Douglas Hickox. Jonathan Owen and Rob St. Mary join Mike to dig into Orton’s razor-sharp wit, corrosive humor, and enduring legacy as one of Britain’s most provocative voices. The hosts unpack how the film confronts taboo subjects—sexuality, class resentment, violence—without softening Orton’s contempt for social respectability or his glee in watching social structures collapse.
At the center of the film is Mr. Sloane, a charming, amoral drifter and occasional rentboy played with unnerving poise by Peter McEnery. When Sloane encounters the aggressively lonely Kath (Beryl Reid) and her domineering, closeted brother Ed (Harry Andrews), he quickly embeds himself into their lives—sexually, psychologically, and economically.
The group also broadens the discussion to Orton’s screen legacy, touching on the other 1970 adaptation Loot, as well as the biopics Prick Up Your Ears and Joe Orton Laid Bare. Together, they consider how Orton’s work—and his life—continue to challenge audiences, remaining as abrasive, funny, and unsettling now as they were more than half a century ago.
Spencer Parsons and Chris Stachiw join Mike to dig into the ideological undercurrents of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan’s contentious capstone to his Batman trilogy. Released in 2012, the film finds a broken Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) pulled back into action as Gotham—now pointedly resembling New York—falls under siege by Bane (Tom Hardy) and the League of Shadows.
The conversation moves past spectacle to examine the film’s deeply anxious view of revolution, class conflict, and populist politics. Drawing connections to Occupy Wall Street–era fears, Mike, Spencer, and Chris unpack how Bane’s rhetoric of liberation masks authoritarian control, how mass movements are portrayed as dangerous and irrational, and how order is ultimately restored through elite sacrifice rather than systemic change.
Adam Long and Josh Hadley join Mike to explore Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004), the sweeping documentary from Xan Cassavetes about the rise and fall of Los Angeles’s most influential pay-TV channel. More than a cable station, Z Channel was a film school beamed into living rooms, programming uncut movies, international cinema, director’s cuts, and repertory favorites long before that was standard practice.
The conversation digs into the channel’s daring programming philosophy, its outsized impact on American film culture, and the obsessive, self-destructive personality of founder Jerry Harvey. The hosts examine how the documentary balances cinephile nostalgia with a clear-eyed look at the personal and institutional costs of that obsession, while also asking what Z Channel’s legacy means in today’s algorithm-driven media landscape.
Mike talks with Alan Berry and Mark Enochs, the filmmakers behind Dead Man's Line (2018), a chilling dive into one of America’s most disturbing true-crime stories. The conversation traces how the directors reconstructed the life and legend of Tony Kiritsis, whose 1977 hostage standoff transfixed the nation and blurred the line between media spectacle and lived horror.
Berry and Enochs unpack their research, ethical choices, and the challenge of shaping archival chaos into a tense, humane documentary. They also discuss the struggles for distribution and the obligatory Hollywood remake, Dead Man's Wire, the 2026 release from director Gus Van Sant and writer Austin Kolodney.
Writer, director, and star Joanna Arnow delivers one of the sharpest, most quietly uncomfortable comedies of recent years with The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023), a film that weaponizes awkwardness, deadpan humor, and emotional stasis. Arnow plays Ann, a thirty-three-year-old woman drifting through New York City, desperate for connection but seemingly incapable of advocating for herself. She works a job that barely registers as meaningful, endures social interactions that feel transactional at best, and navigates a BDSM relationship that has quietly slipped from consensual ritual into something emotionally hollow.
Lisa Vandever and Keith Gordon join Mike to unpack Arnow’s deceptively modest narrative and the precision with which it captures a very modern kind of paralysis.
Mike Thompson and Rob St. Mary join Mike to step into the rubble, rhetoric, and Roman cosplay of Megalopolis (2024), Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed, forty-years-in-the-making cinematic fever dream. A film obsessed with power, legacy, architecture, and Great Men Thinking Great Thoughts, Megalopolis feels less like a movie than a manifesto—one that demands to be taken seriously while daring you to laugh at it. Cesar Catalina, the troubled genius nobody appreciates (write what you know, Francis), strides through a New Rome built on vibes, speeches, and a miracle substance called Megalon.
The episode also explores Megadoc, Mike Figgis’s fly-on-the-wall documentary which attempts to chronicle the chaos, conviction, and sheer force of will behind Coppola’s production. Seen together, the film and the documentary form a portrait of an artist betting everything—money, reputation, legacy—on a single idea. Love it, hate it, or remain profoundly confused by it, Megalopolis refuses to be ignored. And once it gets into your head, it doesn’t leave.
Special Guest: Brian Thomson
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