Dean is back in Los Angeles and Phil picks him up at the Eastern Columbia and they take to the mean streets of Los Angeles at the outset of this week’s show! Topics discussed include Dean’s experiences with the late character actor Tom Sizemore, the live-streamed Chris Rock special on Netflix, and the disappearance of the great actor Julian Sands. Then, Phil is joined (via zoom) by Yoshi Kato to discuss the career and legacy of jazz great Wayne Shorter, and later, Phil is joined (via zoom) by Marc Hershon, who shares a great story about the late comedian-turned-actor Richard Belzer. After that, and after several cocktails in Hollywood (!), it’s back into the car for a return trip to the Eastern Columbia where Phil stumps Dean with a very interesting trivia question pertaining to the relevancy of the Oscars. This leads to Dean and Phil deciding (for the first time) to not do any Oscar-related show this year, though they do establish one way in which the Academy Awards probably do matter culturally. 

 

You will be hard-pressed to find another episode of this or any other show biz-centric podcast that covers as much ground thematically OR temporally as this installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! Silent film legends John Gilbert and Harold Lloyd both made transitions to the sound era and Dean and Phil, with the help of a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU) dig into this history. Dean’s live streaming sci-fi adventure series “Gravity Hole” is back and Dean will tell all! Last week, Phil waxed rhapsodic while singing the praises of two female performers of Asian-American descent. This week, he reveals a startling personal connection to one of them, while previewing a potential “Live Event of the Week” and celebrating another actor he believes is due great things. The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA held a contentious (possibly contested) election and your friends in podcasting will try to make sense of it. In a jam-packed installment of “Celebrity Deaths” a multi-Emmy-winning TV star, a modern-day “robber baron”, the “king of puns”, a pioneering animator, a “Star Trek” actress, a comic book artist, and a counterculture icon of the late 60’s and 1970’s all get remembered. 

Because this show was recorded early Sunday morning, before America awoke to the horrific news of a 2nd mass shooting in a handful of hours, your friends in podcasting only address their thoughts concerning the El Paso shooting – thoughts that concern conspiracy theories, their film The Truth is Out There and more. 12 years ago, Dean and Phil were discussing the “dog days” of summer, “slow news weeks”, the stars that Entertainment Weekly were in love with, a true-life nightmare plane flight, and great sci-fi movies. All those topics get revisited, and a clip of CHH #14 gets shared, in an hilarious segment. Dean and Phil finally answer two emails from listeners, one about an interesting documentary and the other about the lost (?) art of long-form conversation on TV as well as the “rebirth” of Detroit, and the rebuild of one of that city’s icons. All that, plus a great voice performer and a Broadway legend (perhaps THE Broadway legend) get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. 

12 years ago this week, your friends in podcasting were recording their first show in stereo (rather than the two channel mono that was absolutely bonkers) and were discussing Gary Oldman’s sex appeal and The Last Mimzy. A clip from that discussion opens week’s show before Phil provides an update on his recovery from AND preparation for eye surgery, and Dean provides an update on some very interesting live comedy shows he is doing. One is his improv episode of “The X-Files” and you can see it this month in Detroit! Then, the gents move this week’s episode into the Chillpak morgue, where a maverick U.S. Presidential candidate, an all-star pitcher who became a controversial author and a successful actor, one of the greatest character actors of all time, a legend of Italian cinema, and a star of the original “Willy Wonka” all get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. A couple more thoughts related to last week’s discussion of what approach will most likely lead to creating great television get shared. Then, Dean and Phil discuss the controversy surrounding the American Cinematheque and the landmark Egyptian Theatre. Finally, they compare notes on Alfred Hitchcock’s fascinating Rope and the recent releases Us from Jordan Poole and Under the Silver Lake from David Robert Mitchell.