Special Report: Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2025)

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver inspired millions with her celebrations of nature, attention, and the examined life — yet she remained one of American literature's most intensely private figures. Filmmaker Sasha Waters spent years building an intimate portrait of Oliver from the inside out: sifting through thirty to forty boxes of correspondence, notebooks, and personal photographs before they entered the Library of Congress, and tracking down a long-lost video recording that captures Oliver speaking publicly for the first time about surviving childhood abuse.

Mike talks with Waters about the making of Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2026) — her path into documentary filmmaking through the school of Barbara Kopple, the subjects that have chosen her over the years, the creative problem-solving demanded by a subject who rarely allowed herself to be filmed, and what it felt like to introduce the film to a sold-out crowd of 1,100 at the Missouri Theatre during its world premiere at True/False. Waters also reflects on her parallel career as an experimental filmmaker and educator at VCU School of the Arts, and the pleasures of a good pie shake.

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World opens theatrically July 3, 2026, and airs on PBS American Masters on August 25, 2026. Find Sasha Waters online at pieshake.com and on Instagram @pieshakepictures.

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

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1000)

Special Report: Jackass: Best and Last (2026)

Twenty-five years ago, a group of idiots convinced MTV to let them hurt themselves on television. Now, Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass crew are back one last time — older, creakier, and somehow still...

6 Juli 44min

Special Report: Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror (2025)

Fifty years on, The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains the longest-running theatrical release in cinema history — and it shows no signs of stopping. Linus O'Brien, son of creator Richard O'Brien, joins...

3 Juli 30min

Episode 806: The Postman (1997)

Sci-fi month concludes with one of the great cinematic boondoggles of the '90s. Kevin Costner directs and stars in The Postman (1997), playing a wandering drifter who stumbles into a postal uniform an...

1 Juli 1h 47min

Special Report: Boy George and Culture Club (2025)

Few bands burned brighter—or more colorfully—than Culture Club, and director Alison Ellwood joins Mike to unpack the making of her acclaimed documentary Boy George & Culture Club. From the group's imp...

25 Juni 17min

Episode 805: I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

What kind of man doesn't drink, avoids women, and prefers the company of other strange men in the park? Gene Fowler Jr.'s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) plays the alien-infiltration premi...

24 Juni 2h 33min

Special Report: Dear Upstairs Neighbors (2026)

Editor Sarah Affleck pulls back the curtain on one of filmmaking's most invisible—and essential—arts. From cutting reality television to shaping animated features at LAIKA and Pixar, Affleck traces he...

23 Juni 19min

Special Report: Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul (2026)

Gregg Allman lived inside the central contradiction of American music — a white Southern kid who built his art on the blues, fled his demons while pouring them into song, and emerged as one of rock's ...

19 Juni 30min