WHADDAYAGOT? PRODUCTIONS

We Put The “WTF” In WTF

MIKE CARAVELLA

September 16, 2026

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“Whaddayagot?” - Marlon Brando - THE WILD ONE

Johnny and his Black Rebels Motorcycle Club have descended on Bleeker’s Cafe. The jukebox is blaring while Johnny plays the drums on it. Beers are flowing, and the gang is raising hell. A local girl dancing with one of the Rebels notices the “BRMC” patch on a leather jacket and asks what it means. When her partner tells her, she calls out: “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” With effortless cool, Brando delivers his immortal, stone-faced response.

That’s who we are. That’s what I am. Gone are any thoughts of fitting into the system. You know, the one I’ve often spoken about that never really wanted me to begin with? And that’s cool. Instead, I’ll keep pushing my bold, independent, maverick spirit by injecting it in all of my creative content and continue to defy all entertainment industry and societal norms. That fits me better. Feels good.

And it’s all right there in the logo. The neon sign effect captures the glow of the old jukeboxes, just like the one in our namesakes famous scene. The outlaw image reflects both our rebellious spirit, and our playful side. It’s a nod to Yosemite Sam from Looney Tunes. And the brick wall? That’s my back... always up against it.

THE OUT YONDER WITH MAGIC MIKE was born in January 2018. I needed to put myself in front of the camera again. Speak on camera again. Without judgement. Now living in the desert and fully absorbed by all of its freedom and quirkiness, I decided that I wanted to host a podcast dressed as an old-school, Johnny Carson-style talk show with the set up right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Outdoors in the open desert. Why “MAGIC MIKE”? Well I thought a guy who just had a giant chunk of his tongue removed hosting a talk show was pretty damn magical.

I would do this every week and then post it on YouTube. Sometimes I’d have my famous friends come out. Sometimes it was a local desert weirdo. Sometimes it was family. It didn’t matter. The goal was to do it every single week whether I had a guest or not. There was no theme to it either. I just went wherever the guests' stories took us, and added my own brand of color. And the unpredictability of the environment - wind, sound, heat, animals, dirtbikes, whatever - became a character in the show. It was really raw, but also really fun. And people picked up on it and we actually built a decent audience.

In the summer, it began to become impossible to film in that environment anymore as the equipment simply stopped tolerating it. I decided to put the show on sabbatical until fall. And I was feeling really good. Health wise, maybe better than ever. Spiritually too. Confident and uncaring. Just doing me. While the show was down I decided to explore the possibilities of pursuing work again. Like, acting work.

And that is exactly what Whaddayagot? Productions will be going forward. Unique. Independent. Defiant. Unpredictable. There is a lot of content in many different forms, and none of it is designed to fit neatly into anybody else’s box, man.

The ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER story is far from over as I will continue to be out and about with it, appearing at events, and doing independent screenings with no end in sight. There are some new ways coming in 2027 that will be enhancing the screening experience as we continue to pursue producing the next two chapters, Part I and Part III of the DRIFTER story. The scripts for both are complete, and I will begin the process of making Part I in 2027.

I also have two other movie projects that I am attached to, both in the Horror genre, that will begin production in the coming months. One of them I will be co-producing, co-writing, and starring in with my long time collaborator, Jason Gajda, (my partner on LA LA LAND and also the composer of DRIFTER, under the name TUFF MOSEY.) A teaser for that one will be dropping shortly.

I’ll keep on putting out content in a multitude of ways - continuing this blog, as well as bringing back an enhanced version of THE OUT YONDER. The new T.O.Y. will feature episodes from the original middle-of-nowhere set, but also from the road from wherever we are appearing that week, as well as from different interesting locations with interesting people. The show will continue to be a raw, uncut, unfiltered form of discussion entertainment that we aim to grow to new levels on the YouTube Channel, and take it further than we did before. The return episode launches on October 1st, 2026.

And that’s the whole point of Whaddayagot? Productions. We’re not here to fit in, follow the playbook, or wait for permission. We’re here to keep making the kind of weird, wild, defiant, unclassifiable shit that only we can make. And I’m just getting started.

“YEAH MAN!” - Mike Caravella AKA The Drifter - ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER

To call ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER the capstone to my journey up to this point would be one way to look at it. But I see it as me laying the foundation. I had a very underwhelming career, from my perspective, as an actor up to that point in 2016 when I was diagnosed with cancer and had to step away from working for healing and recovery. Two years time away. Which is usually a death sentence in the entertainment industry.

When I came out the other side of cancer, I was ready for a complete transformation. My healing process wasn’t just physical. It was mental as well. No more wasted time. No more negativity. No more bullshit. We decided to move to the desert. Away from the majority of the trappings of “normal” society, and I fully embraced my freer, unencumbered, quiet existence. For the first time in my life, I was able to be me completely. Totally raw, and unfiltered, and unconcerned with pleasing anybody or anything. I decided to keep it like that forever.

Once fully healed physically in early 2018, I needed to figure out what I was going to do with myself work-wise. I wasn’t sure I could reclaim whatever acting career I had at that point, as I now spoke with a lisp from the tongue surgery, my voice was real gravelly from the radiation and I was the proud owner of a giant pirate scar going across the front of my neck. Insecure about all of it, and nowhere near ready to put myself back out there to be judged again by the limited, passive-aggressive, small-minded gate-keepers of the Hollywood machine. I decided to test out this creative experiment I had been turning over in my head.

With a totally new vibe, and a totally new look, things went way better, and faster, than I could have imagined. Within a couple months, I was auditioning regularly, had multiple agents in different parts of the country, and most importantly, I started to book regularly. And when I wasn’t landing major TV shows and Lifetime movies, I was coming pretty damn close. Almost every week I was brought back for second and third auditions for major TV shows but also legit Hollywood films. I had arrived. Fully in the mix. Nothing was going to stop me now. And then Covid hit.

You know the routine. We all sat home for months. For me, I believe, it was even more painful. I just got back to work after so much time off and also with my career finally doing things it had never done before. After six months of nothing, I was ready to creatively experiment again. On November 1st, 2020, an explosion went off in my head. A crazy, almost fully formed idea. An ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER idea.

I wrote the 10 minute, short film version of DRIFTER in six days. I called up my friend Joe di Gennaro, who had been my Cinematographer on LA LA LAND, and he was in. He knew an actress. I knew an actor. I enlisted my wife and kids as the filming crew. We all got Covid tested, bubbled up at my house for a few days, and the seven of us went out and filmed the short from December 1st to the 3rd. We spent a month in post-production, and started submitting it to film festivals on January 6th, 2021. By January 31st, ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER had won its first film festival. In twelve weeks, it went from a germ of an idea to an award winner.

While I toured the country with the short as it played, and won, multiple festivals over the following eighteen months, I knew DRIFTER had a bigger life. I started writing. First several follow-up DRIFTER shorts, and then my magnum-opus. The first ASTRAL PLANE DRIFTER feature script I wrote is the best thing I’ve ever written.

I sent inquiries to notable production companies. Some got back to me. One was immediately in. The budget on the first APD script is bigger than most first time feature film makers ever see. It was taking a while to find that kind of money. And by a while I mean 6 months, which for me is an eternity. By Summer 2022, I needed to get the movie done. So I decided to write another script, completely different, and to a budget that I thought I could raise myself. I went back to work and wrote that script in 4 months.

Now November 2022, and back on the money hunt with a different script and lower and more manageable expectations, I was able to put the budget together. First with a crowd-funder, then with several small investments, and then with me and my wife pushing all of our chips into the middle of the table. We started filming in November 2023. Filming was five weeks, post production took nine months, and then I started submitting to festivals again. And just like the first time, by October 2024, we World Premiered and won our first festival with the feature. Less than a year after we began shooting.

And so it went for fifteen months. BEST GENRE BENDER. BEST MIDNIGHT. TROMA AWARD. VISIONARY AWARD. INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARD. And on and on. The awards fully embracing who we are and our midnight-movie, cult-classic vibe. 27 total awards for the feature, plus 22 other nominations, culminating in the FILM THREAT AWARD THIS! show, where we came home with BEST WTF and were also nominated for MOVIE OF THE YEAR. Great success for a movie that, at its core, wanted to be an outlier, and a completely unique experience that cannot be categorized.