Special Report: The Travel Companion (2025)

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike chats with co-directors Travis Wood and Alex Mallis about their debut feature The Travel Companion (2025), a painfully funny look at friendship, ambition, and emotional unraveling among aspiring filmmakers. The story centers on Simon (Tristan Turner), a struggling documentarian who clings to the one major perk in his life: the free airline travel he enjoys as the designated companion of his best friend and roommate Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck), a flight attendant. When Bruce starts dating the effortlessly cool and talented Beatrice (Naomi Asa), Simon spirals into insecurity and paranoia, terrified of losing his ticket—literally and figuratively.

Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, The Travel Companion marks a sharp, darkly comedic debut for Wood and Mallis, blending deadpan wit with painfully relatable emotional stakes. Mike talks with the directors about their collaborative process, casting from the comedy and indie film worlds, and crafting a story that pokes at the messy, ego-driven realities of creative life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hold your ears, folks. It's showtime.
0:08.6	People pay good money to see this movie.
0:10.9	When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
0:17.3	Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
0:20.0	Shut it off.
0:25.4	Turn it off.
0:26.6	Hey, folks. Welcome. Hey folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
0:43.4	I'm your host, Mike White.
0:44.7	On this episode, I'm talking with directors Alex Malice and Travis Wood about their new film, The Travel Companion.
0:52.4	It recently played at the Tribeca Film Festival.
0:55.4	Should be playing some more fests coming up.
0:57.8	Movies so new that they don't even have a trailer for it, but at least they've got a poster.
1:01.9	Well, it's a logo.
1:03.8	Enjoy the logo.
1:05.0	Enjoy the interview.
1:06.0	Thank you so much for listening.
1:07.6	Alex and Travis, thank you so much for joining me today. Obviously, I want to talk to you
1:11.1	about the travel companion, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about you and your guys' history,
1:16.1	I mean, because you've been both making films for a while now. So, Alex, can I start with you?
1:20.5	What's kind of your background in filmmaking? Like a lot of people, actually, it's not such an
1:25.5	uncommon story. I got started through, like, action sports, basically filming, filming my friends and, and,
1:33.0	and having them film me do think that skateboarding, skiing, and sort of shooting,
	...

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