The Projection Booth26 Nov 2025

Episode 774: Cop (1988)

Noirvember closes with James B. Harris’s Cop (1988)—the first time James Ellroy’s feverish fiction hit the big screen. Mike teams with Andrew Nette and Rod Lott for a deep read of Harris’s adaptation, where James Woods’s unhinged Detective Lloyd Hopkins hunts a killer across eighteen years of buried violence.

The trio digs into Ellroy’s original novel Blood on the Moon and the wilder, abandoned incarnation that came before it—L.A. Death Trip, the unsold, manuscript that first birthed Hopkins. Using material from Ellroy’s own accounts and critical studies (including the brute-force early drafts, the rewrites demanded by Otto Penzler and Nat Sobel, and the shift to publishable structure), the conversation maps how a doomed finale turned into a tight serial-killer pursuit.

The episode also features a new interview with James B. Harris, who breaks down the challenges of translating Ellroy’s structure, keeping Hopkins’s mania intact, and staying faithful to the narrative rhythms of the novel. What emerges is a portrait of a filmmaker wrestling with source material born in chaos—reforged into the dark, abrasive thriller that helped spark decades of Ellroy adaptations.

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

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(1000)

Episode 347: Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965)

Directed by Joseph Cates and written by Arnold Drake and Leon Totayakan, Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965) stars Sal Mineo as Lawrence Sherman, a waiter at a nightclub and Juliet Prowse as bartender Norma...

2 Nov 20171h

Episode 346: Fire Walk with Me Redux / Twin Peaks The Return (2017)

Is it future...? Or is it past...? It's a bit of both as we revisit David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me (1992) along with "Twin Peaks" Season 3 (AKA "Twin Peaks: The Return") on this final #Shocktober2017...

25 Okt 20173h 28min

Episode 345: TerrorVision (1986)

Shocktober 2017 continues with a look at the offbeat horror comedy TerrorVision (1986). Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou, the film centers on the Putterman Family who, while father Stan -- Gerrit ...

19 Okt 20172h 42min

Episode 344: The Tenant (1976)

Shocktober 2017 continues with a the 1976 film from Roman Polanski, The Tenant . Adapted from a book by Roland Topor (Fantastic Planet), the film also stars Polanski as Trelkovsky, a man in need of a ...

10 Okt 20171h 37min

Episode 343: Mad Love (1935)

Shocktober 2017 kicks off with Karl Freund's final film as a director and Peter Lorre's film film in America, Mad Love (1935). Based upon Maurice Renard 's The Hands of Orlac, the film shifts focus fr...

3 Okt 20172h 33min

Episode 342: Happy End (1966)

We wrap up the first Czechtember series with a film from director Oldrich Lipský, 1966's Happy End, an experimental comedy (which is as unusual as that sounds) that puts scenes in opposite order and r...

26 Sep 20171h 21min

Episode 341: The Cremator (1968)

Czechtember continues with a look at Juraj Herz's The Cremator (AKA Spalovac mrtvol). Released in 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, the film stars Rudolf Hrusínský as Karl (or Roman) Kopfrkingl, a ...

20 Sep 20171h 44min

Special Report: Patty Farmer on Starring the Plaza

On this special episode, Mike talks with author Patty Farmer about her work including her latest books, Starring the Plaza and Playboy Laughs. Find out more at www.patty-farmer.com.Learn more about yo...

15 Sep 201733min