The first half of this week’s show is all about the art and craft and future of podcasting! Storyteller Dave Pickering joins us from his home in Lancaster in the north of England to talk about his brilliant podcasts (“Getting Better Acquainted”, “Down to a Sunless Sea”, “The Family Tree” and more), about college lectures he gives about podcasting, about where he sees the art form at present, and what he thinks the future might hold. Actress Lily Holleman drops by in the second half of the show to reveal her Screen Actors Guild Awards ballot and to discuss what she looks for in performances. A whole bunch of great movies and performers get discussed. Great podcasts and great movies – truly two of our favorite things!

Listeners of this show know that Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness love to read, and that includes poetry. Yet, in all the years YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour has been “changing the way people listen to the internet”, Dean and Phil have never dedicated an entire episode to discussing a particular poet’s work. Until now … All That Remains is a powerful, evocative new book of poetry by Betsy Holleman Burke, and it announces the arrival of an indelible voice onto the scene. Betsy joins Phil to discuss the book, its themes and the “moment” poetry seems to be having now. Dean then takes a deep dive into two of the book’s more “stand-alone” poems. Quite unexpectedly, listeners will learn a few new things about Dean, himself! You can learn more about All That Remains and its author at searchingforhummingbirds.com. Have a happy and safe New Year, everybody!

 

 On this week’s show, a Back to the Future actress, a legendary comic who helped launch the careers of numerous other comics, a game show legend, and a comedic actress who was one of Mel Brooks’ favorites all get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Your friends in podcasting will pick up last week’s conversation comparing Superhero movies to westerns, extending the comparison to television. They will further dig down into the danger of taking anything too seriously, as well as the danger of “fast food”, as they examine the ways we consume information, entertainment, and express our political preferences. Then, after the break, Dean and Phil will discuss two new Sacha Baron Cohen films and two Bill Murray films. Finally, in “What We’re Reading”, Dean will discuss ice cream and Phil will discuss published works by two ladies in his life!

A lot of post-production work went into making this one of our best shows of the year! Dean regales with stories of drinking and jury duty, Phil remembers dear friend and true iconoclast Konrad Monti. Dean and Phil discuss Amazon’s “The Boys” (a show Dean might have actually influenced!) and the dire future of movie-going in the wake of James Bond and “Black Widow” being pushed again, which led to the 2nd largest U.S. theater chain closing, while the first largest still hasn’t fully re-opened! A terrific, and highly musical “Celebrity Deaths” involves celebrations of a great jazz musician (and subject of an awesome Netflix documentary), songwriter-singer-turned-actor Mac Davis, and 70’s-pop-queen-turned-therapist Helen Reddy! Finally, we transport you back to a certain rooftop in the historic L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz for the conclusion of Dean and Phil’s ruminations on what filmmakers might make the list of their all-time favorites.

Another big week here at YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour we welcome our first guest of 2020! Phil interviews the wonderful Annette Andre, a natural born performer who worked as a dancer, singer, and actress in radio, theatre, television and film in Australia, Europe, the UK and Hollywood. She performed opposite the likes of Peter Graves, Bob Hope, Benny Hill, Michael Crawford, Buster Keaton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris. She witnessed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s romance firsthand on the set of Cleopatra. She stood toe to toe with the mercurial Patrick McGoohan on “The Prisoner”. She picknicked with Sammy Davis, Jr. She became not only a fixture on British Television, appearing on such shows as “The Saint” and “The Avengers” and her own “Randall and Hopkirk Deceased”, but was immortalized in photographs as one of the “Birds of Britain” during the height of the swinging 60’s! She is also the author of the spellbinding memoir Where Have I Been All My Life? The bad news is that the heater in the historic Ranger House where Phil interviewed Annette makes a lot of noise during the show! The good news (at least for listeners here in the USA) is a very special offer described during the show (click on Annette’s book title in this episode description to take advantage of the offer)!

For many years, your friends in podcasting, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, would reveal their resolutions for the coming year and hold each other’s feet to the fire as they looked back to see how they had fared on the previous year’s resolutions. They are a bit too old, and wise, and honestly, have had too much milk punch to engage in an exercise in depressing humiliation. Instead, on this week’s show, they set their intentions for 2020 by comparing notes on what they are looking forward to in this brand new year. Adventures in travel, comedy, movies, art, health and self-exploration beckon …

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. 

Dean regales us with details of his trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, and updates us on his teaching of improv. Phil updates us on his recovery from multiple eye surgeries, and regales us with details of a Hollywood Bowl “Live Event of the Week” before previewing an upcoming presentation at The Los Angeles Breakfast Club about silent film great Harold Lloyd and his love of 3-D Photography. Phil also sings the praises of two terrific Asian-American performers – Maya Erskine and Awkwafina – as he recommends their most recent movies, the romantic comedy Plus One and the indie drama The Farewell. Dean and Phil revisit the great Denis Villeneuve sci-fi pic Arrival, answer an email from a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU) about the Manson family murders and provide updates and analysis on the CBS-Paramount merger and Netflix’s efforts to purchase the landmark Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. That a whole lot of entertainment for one hour (plus)! Of course it is YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. 

Your friends in podcasting begin with an update on what is being done to restore Phil’s eyesight, and the advice Phil has for those dealing with medical and insurance bureaucracies. They then dig into more than an hour of 20th century history, celebrating Doris Day, novelist Herman Wouk, comedian Tim Conway, architect I.M. Pei and the Arizona mining town of Bisbee.

If you caught last week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, you know that Dean Haglund was attending a convention in Rhode Island this weekend and that Phil Leirness was NOT attending in order that he could get to the bottom of what has become almost total day and light blindness. Your friends in podcasting will regale you with many tales of these adventures on this week’s show. They will also weigh in on all the news surrounding “Avengers: Endgame”, they will discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s rumination on comic books, “Glass”, and they will play a lightning round of “Celebrity Deaths”, including one that hit very close to home for Dean and Phil. A very personal, funny and touching episode. We hope you enjoy!