The Projection Booth

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?

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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.

For five seconds of live television, Sammy Petrillo popped out of a crib beside Jerry Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour, the two pulling the same moronic face, and those five seconds shaped the rest of his life. WFMU's Dave "the Spazz" Abramson spent nearly two decades chasing the man behind the face for Your Time Is Now: The Sammy Petrillo Story, his new biography from Feral House. He tells Mike how it started: an 11-year-old reading one paragraph about Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), with Petrillo and Duke Mitchell as a knockoff Martin and Lewis; a punk single by his band The Sea Monkeys; a 1992 radio interview; and a blog comment war between Sammy and the son who says his father went out for cigarettes and never came back. Abramson worked it like a cold case, racing to reach sources in their 90s, and with help from cover artist Drew Friedman and foreword writer Scott Alexander got Jerry Lewis himself on the record. They dig into a Rashomon life: Doris Wishman's Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972), cable TV shows years before anyone had cable, film reels lost to unpaid storage bills, Barbara Loden's anonymous turn on the record All About Cleopatra, and why imitating Lewis, of all people, was a blessing and a curse. Plus: the original negative of Brooklyn Gorilla has resurfaced, and the 4K restoration screens at Nitehawk Prospect Park on November 12 and at the American Cinematheque's Los Feliz 3 on November 15.

Get the book, and sign up for news of the screenings, at Feral House.

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.

She has already buried her husband. Then a charming stranger comes to her aid during a robbery, and she lets him in. That's when the con begins. Cruel Love (2026), Nick Lyon's new thriller, now streaming, turns real marriage fraud into what star Elisabeth Harnois calls "a cautionary tale with an element of emotional horror." Lyon tells Mike how he and the late Christian Oliver made it their first co-production, how Ron Peer's twist-and-turn script grew out of real cons that exploit fiancé visas and even the Violence Against Women Act, and why he added a rainy Los Angeles opening in post to set a modern noir mood. Detroit-born Harnois builds Julia from grief: a woman who lost the love of her life before the movie starts and decides to trust again. Bai Ling, who tells reporters she landed from the moon, plays Mei Li, a role first written as a Russian named Lyudmila; Lyon's only job, he says, was pulling her back a little. A friendly argument breaks out over half a shot that didn't make the cut, and Lyon explains why even a favorite moment sometimes has to go. Oliver died in January 2024, before the film's release, and Harnois hopes it brings new eyes to his work. Plus: Lyon's FrightFest horror film Do You Want to Play? (2026), his next, about Arctic ice cores hiding insects you don't want on your spine, and Bai Ling's directing debut, My Quarantine Romance with Toilet Paper, in which she plays Charlie Chaplin.

Follow Cruel Love on Instagram and rent or buy it from the film's official website.

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.

Why did the one campus-protest picture that drew a crowd end up forgotten? Mike White, Andras Jones and Bill Ackerman reopen Getting Straight (1970), Richard Rush's comedy about a Vietnam veteran, played by Elliott Gould, who is trying to finish his teaching degree while the faculty makes it hard and campus unrest makes it harder. Candice Bergen plays his girlfriend, Jan.

The panel digs into Gould's all-in performance, Rush's long-lens, rack-focus style on a glass-walled campus, Jeannie Berlin's scenes, and what the film keeps and drops from the novel. They test it against The Graduate (1967) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), and ask whether Hollywood would make political youth films now.

Then director Richard Rush joins Mike to talk about winning over Columbia, working with Gould, and shooting in widescreen.

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 hedonistic heir loses his hands, so his mother buys him new ones wired to his subconscious. Big mistake: his subconscious is a nasty place. The Restoration at Grayson Manor (2025), Glenn McQuaid's new Irish horror film, premiered at Fantastic Fest and pits Chris Colfer against Alice Krige, the Borg Queen herself, in a crumbling estate where mother and son know exactly where to cut. McQuaid, a Glass Eye Pix veteran and the director of I Sell the Dead (2008), tells Mike how a YouTube video of an amputee moving a prosthetic with his mind sparked the idea, and how The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), watched with his dad, kept a creepy hand on his tail all through childhood. He and co-writer Clay McLeod Chapman turned the killer-hand movie queer, a story of bodily autonomy and the paranoia of growing up in a straight world, and kept the family's cruelty fun with cues from Tennessee Williams, The Lion in Winter (1968) and Harold and Maude (1971), and one rule: say the nastiest lines deadpan. Krige thanked him afterward; nobody had ever asked her to do comedy before. And the young local hired to play the hands? He ended up co-writing the score. Catch it in US theaters from Chroma or on Shudder from December 1.

Follow Glenn McQuaid on Instagram and find screenings on the film's official page.

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.