The Projection Booth

In 2025, New Jersey's favorite hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength returned — twice. Writer/director Macon Blair's big-budget reimagining, The Toxic Avenger (2023), finally received a wide theatrical release in August 2025. Peter Dinklage voices Winston, a terminally ill janitor at a corrupt pharmaceutical company who falls into a vat of toxic chemicals and emerges as Toxie — a mop-wielding mutant vigilante. Kevin Bacon stars as the company's scheming CEO and Elijah Wood as his security-minded brother, in a film that wraps its splatter comedy around themes of healthcare, corporate greed, and unlikely heroism.

Also in 2025, Troma's own Andrew L. Miller and Adam Peltier reconstructed The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989) and Part III (1989) into the single film they were always meant to be. Titled Mr. Melvin, the 127-minute cut restores the narrative logic Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz originally intended  — following Toxie's post-heroic depression, a manipulated journey to Japan, and a Faustian deal with Apocalypse Inc. that turns him into a corporate sellout before the ultimate confrontation with the Devil himself.

Mike talks with Rob St. Mary about both films, and the episode includes interviews with Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman and Mr. Melvin co-producer and co-editor Andrew L. Miller.

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From indie narratives to deeply personal documentaries, filmmaker Mye Hoang has built a career around stories about identity, community, and unexpected connections. On this episode of *The Projection Booth*, Mike sits down with Hoang to trace her creative journey—from her early work to her breakout documentary Cat Daddies—before diving into her latest film, 25 Cats from Qatar.

The new documentary follows an extraordinary rescue effort as a network of volunteers races to save stray cats living on the streets of Doha, where the feline population has spiraled into crisis. What begins as an uplifting animal rescue story quickly reveals larger issues involving migration, class, labor, and global responsibility. Hoang discusses balancing advocacy with storytelling, capturing high-stakes rescue missions on camera, and why the film resonates far beyond cat lovers.

The conversation also highlights the film’s screening at the Arab American Film Festival at Cinema Detroit, where audiences can catch the film and a post-screening discussion with Hoang and subject Katy McHugh. It'll be sure to be lively conversation about documentary filmmaking, compassion, and the surprising ways a film about 25 cats can say a lot about the world we live in.  

Find out more at https://www.25catsfromqatar.com/

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Mike talks with Simon Glassman, the writer-director of the 2025 Canadian horror-comedy Buffet Infinity, a feature debut that premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival to instant cult acclaim.

Buffet Infinity takes place in the fictional Alberta town of Westridge County, where an all-you-can-eat restaurant chain arrives alongside a mysterious sinkhole and begins swallowing the local community whole — literally and figuratively. The film is constructed almost entirely from mock television commercials and news bulletins, building its cosmic horror narrative through the grammar of low-budget local advertising. 

Follow https://www.instagram.com/buffetinfinitymovie/ for more.

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Comedy Month wraps up as Mike talks with Rob St. Mary and Heather Drain about Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered (2001) and Producer Lauren Lloyd joins Mike for an interview about working on the film that was almost universally trashed on release. 

Green wrote, directed, and stars as Gord Brody, an aspiring cartoonist who heads to Hollywood to sell his drawings as an animated series. After a catastrophic pitch meeting, Gord retreats to live with his parents—long-suffering father Jim (Rip Torn), mother Julie (Julie Hagerty), and younger brother Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas). Also along for the ride: Marisa Coughlan as Betty, a wheelchair-using rocket scientist. 

Closer in spirit to Dadaist provocation than anything else at the multiplex in 2001. Mike, Rob, and Heather dig into Green's career, the film's reception, deleted material from the trailer and behind-the-scenes footage, and the question of what Freddy Got Fingered is actually trying to do.

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Mike talks with editors Martin Biehn and Kevin Hibbard about their work on Drift (2026), directed by Deon Taylor.

Isaac "Drift" Wright is an Army veteran and self-taught photographer whose trauma finds an outlet in illegal high-rise climbing — scaling some of the world's tallest structures to capture images from vantage points no permit would allow. The film documents his pursuit of art and healing while tracking an escalating confrontation with law enforcement that puts his freedom at risk. It premiered at South by Southwest in 2026.

Follow Wright on his Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/driftershoots/ 

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Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth