The Projection Booth

A birthday party, a rented house and a person you only thought you knew: I See the Demon (2025) turns a breach of trust into sci-fi horror.

This is a Special Report on a new voice and a festival film. First-time feature director Jacob Lees joins Mike to talk about the movie that premiered at Cinequest in San Jose, then played Grimmfest in the UK and FilmQuest in Utah. It stars Jon Heder and Alexis Zollicoffer, and it is now on VOD.

Lees explains where the sci-fi ideas came from, why the relationships are the real heart of the film, and how a first AD's blunt note sent the script back for a rewrite. He talks about shooting in ten days in a real house in Provo, cutting the film himself in Premiere, and living with one round of early test screenings. He also names the folk horror he wants to make next, and a dream take on the Sleepy Hollow legend.

Follow Lees on Instagram at @sir_lees.

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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.

A naked man walks out of the sea and into São Paulo, and nobody can agree whether he's the Messiah or a naughty boy with a beard. José Mojica Marins, best known as Coffin Joe, kicks off Shocktober 2026 with The End of Man (1971), a strange, scrappy sermon.

Mike White, Rob St. Mary and Ben Buckingham dig into Finis Hominis: the head-in, tail-away walks that carry Mojica from scene to scene, an ending that jabs Catholic society in the eye, echoes of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, and the follow-up, When the Gods Fall Asleep (1972). They also talk about Mojica's death in 2020.

Then Mike talks with André Barcinski, co-director of Coffin Joe: The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins (2001), about visiting Mojica in São Paulo, the dictatorship years, Cinema Novo, and a man who was never allowed to stop being his character.

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.

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.