THE FIXATE & BINGE PODCAST, with Host, Joe Curdy: Deep dives into cinema and storytelling with voices who create it

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Filmmaker, actress and provocateur Kansas Bowling joins The Fixate & Binge Podcast to revisit her audacious film CUDDLY TOYS, now returning to audiences with a striking new 35mm print.
Originally shot on Super 16mm, CUDDLY TOYS adopts the deceptively innocent language of 1960s and ’70s educational films to present a surreal, unsettling series of vignettes featuring a cast of 100 actresses. The result is a film that can be funny, shocking, disturbing and deliberately difficult to pin down.
Kansas joins Joe to discuss the film’s unusual production, its distinctive visual language, working with such an enormous ensemble, and what it means to see CUDDLY TOYS given a new life on 35mm.
But what does CUDDLY TOYS actually mean?
Bowling isn’t particularly interested in answering that question for us.
In a conversation about authorship, interpretation and the sometimes dangerous temptation to explain art, Kansas discusses why she prefers to leave CUDDLY TOYS in the hands of the audience — allowing viewers to wrestle with its images, provocations and contradictions and ultimately decide for themselves what they’ve just experienced.
🎙️ Kansas Bowling joins The Fixate & Binge Podcast to discuss CUDDLY TOYS — and why sometimes the filmmaker’s final word is letting the audience have theirs.
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Can we actually learn to be happier? And if we want a more peaceful world, does that change have to begin within ourselves?
This week on The Fixate & Binge Podcast, Joe welcomes acclaimed filmmaker Barbara Miller, producer and co-director of WISDOM OF HAPPINESS — the extraordinary new documentary offering audiences an intimate encounter with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and his deeply human message of compassion, inner peace, and our shared responsibility for one another.
Barbara takes us behind the making of the film and her remarkable experience working with His Holiness, while exploring the ideas at the heart of WISDOM OF HAPPINESS: Why do we struggle to find happiness? How much of our suffering begins within our own minds? And can changing ourselves ultimately change the world around us?
What follows is an illuminating conversation about filmmaking, compassion, self-reflection, and the difficult—but hopeful—journey toward inner peace.
In a world increasingly defined by division, anxiety, anger, and uncertainty, WISDOM OF HAPPINESS offers something remarkably simple:
Perhaps peace in the world begins with finding peace within ourselves.
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What happens when your scheduled guest cancels at the last minute? You throw out the script and start talking about whatever the hell you've been watching.
That's exactly what happened on this week's episode of The Fixate & Binge Podcast — and it turned into one of our most wide-ranging conversations yet.
First up: Zach Cregger's RESIDENT EVIL. I went in expecting a fun horror movie and came away convinced it may be the best horror film I've seen all year. I'll explain why — completely spoiler-free — and why Cregger's wildly entertaining take on the iconic video-game franchise worked so much better for me than I ever expected.
Then we take a very different turn with Russell Crowe's THE GET OUT, a film that got me thinking about the increasingly strange career trajectories of some of Hollywood's most acclaimed movie stars — from Liam Neeson and John Travolta to Nicolas Cage, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro — and why so many actors who once headlined major theatrical releases are now turning up in streaming movies.
That leads naturally to one of television's great exceptions: Gary Oldman in SLOW HORSES.
And speaking of Slow Horses… I've got a prediction.
I think Jack Lowden may be the next James Bond.
I'll explain exactly why I think River Cartwright has demonstrated many of the qualities that could make Lowden an intriguing successor to Daniel Craig — and why his work on Slow Horses may be the audition we've been watching without realizing it.
And finally, because apparently I needed to restore my wounded ego after watching Jeopardy! Masters, I wrap things up with a brief comparison between that brain-melting display of knowledge and The Nation's Dumbest Celebrity — one show that made me feel very, very stupid… and another that restored my confidence.
A canceled guest. A surprisingly great RESIDENT EVIL. Russell Crowe. The changing movie-star economy. Gary Oldman. Jack Lowden. James Bond. Jeopardy! And some truly questionable celebrity intelligence.
Sometimes the best episodes are the ones you didn't plan.
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Hollywood has run out of ideas.
We’ve all heard it: sequels, remakes, reboots, franchises, adaptations, spin-offs and prequels. But what if we’re asking the wrong question?
In this episode of The Fixate & Binge Podcast, we tackle the increasingly common complaint that Hollywood has “run out of ideas” and ask whether originality itself may be overrated in cinema.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: how many truly original stories are there? Shakespeare didn’t invent every story he told. George Lucas didn’t invent the Hero’s Journey. Quentin Tarantino has built an entire career by borrowing, remixing and reinterpreting the movies that came before him. Yet Shakespeare, Star Wars and Tarantino are hardly examples of uninspired filmmaking.
So what actually makes something original?
We explore the difference between novelty and originality, and why perspective, execution, combination and voice may matter far more than inventing a story nobody has ever told before.
From Star Wars and Quentin Tarantino to contemporary films including HEEL / THE GOOD BOY, FUZE, ONSLAUGHT, BUDDY, HOPE and THE GENTLEMEN, we ask a deceptively simple question:
Do filmmakers really need a new story—or do they need a new way of telling an old one?
Because maybe originality isn't about whether every ingredient is new.
Maybe it's about whether the recipe is.
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What if the technology threatening Hollywood could actually protect some of its most vulnerable performers?
Film producer Elizabeth Caddy returns to The Fixate & Binge Podcast for a provocative, wide-ranging conversation that begins with Gore Verbinski’s GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE and quickly evolves into something much bigger: the rapidly changing—and increasingly unsettling—relationship between artificial intelligence, entertainment, and humanity.
Elizabeth and Joe dive into the dangers AI poses to filmmaking, creativity, performers, and society itself, while also confronting an idea that is considerably harder to dismiss: Could AI actually be used to replace child actors—and in doing so, protect children from an entertainment industry with a long and disturbing history of exploitation, bullying, addiction, abuse, and trauma?
It’s an uncomfortable proposition. And Elizabeth doesn’t shy away from it.
The conversation also includes Joe’s review of HOKUM (which Elizabeth thinks may have been a little too generous), along with Elizabeth’s recommendations for HEEL, starring Stephen Graham, and STOP! THAT! TRAIN!, starring RuPaul.
But ultimately, this episode becomes a much deeper discussion about where we draw the line with AI—and whether the technology we fear might, in some circumstances, actually be capable of protecting the people Hollywood has historically failed to protect.
It’s provocative. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s a conversation Hollywood desperately needs to have.
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