Showing posts with label Bruce Spence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruce Spence. Show all posts

June 17, 2026

Episode 804: Dark City (1998)

Episode 804: Dark City (1998) Guest Co-Hosts: Rob St. Mary, Rob Spencer

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.

Listen/Download Now:

Links:
Become a supporter of The Projection Booth
Buy Dark City on Blu-Ray

Music:
"The Night Has A Thousand Eyes" - Bobby Vee

Watch:

May 15, 2019

Episode 415: The Mad Max Series

Special Guests: Roger Ward, Vernon Wells, Virginia Hey, Bruce Spence, Luke Buckmaster, Hugh Keays-Byrne
Guest Co-Hosts: Mike Thompson, Ben Buckingham

On this epic episode of The Projection Booth, we remember the road warrior, the man we called Mad Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything and became a shell of a man, a burnt-out desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again.

Ben Buckingham and Mike Thompson join Mike White to discuss the ever-shifting landscape of George Miller’s Mad Max series from its audacious beginning as a bikie exploitation / revenge Mad Max (1979) to the post-apocalyptic Western Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) to the troublesome Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and concluding (?) with the spectacular Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

Interviews feature actors from three of the four films — Roger Ward, Vernon Wells, Virginia Hey, Bruce Spence, Hugh Keays-Byrne — as well as writer Luke Buckmaster, author of Miller and Max.

Listen/Download Now:

Furiosa - A Mad Max Saga:

Interview: Terry Hayes

Bonus: Stone (1974):

Bonus: The Man from Hong Kong (1975):

Watch:














February 21, 2017

Episode 311: The Cars that Ate Paris (1974)

Special Guests: Jonathan Rayner, Hal McElroy, Terry Camilleri, Bruce Spence
Guest Co-Hosts: Ben Buckingham, Kevin Heffernan

Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) stars Terry Camilleri as Arthur Waldo, a meek man whose brother dies in a car accident outside of Paris, Australia -- a town whose economy relies on scavenging on the wrecks they create.

Also released (in a truncated form) as The Cars That Eat People, the film is the first feature from and was produced by Jim and Hal McElroy.

Ben Buckingham and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss the film, Mad Max 2, and more.

Download Episode Now:

Links:
Buy The Cars That Ate Paris on DVD
Buy The Films of Peter Weir by Dr. Jonathan Rayner
Learn more about Mapping Cinematic Norths
Learn more about Filmurbia
Visit the Peter Weir Cave
Visit the Trench website
Read some of Ben Buckinghame's writing at An Online Universe
Visit Kevin Heffernan's Knot and Gender blog
Visit Kevin Heffernan's The Crawling Eye: A Bloodshot Look at International Genre Film, Television, and Cult Media
Read Killer Cars: Death on the Highway by Mike White

Music:
"The Visit" - Bruce Smeaton
"The Cars That Ate Paris" - Bruce Smeaton

Watch: