After a brief cold open about Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Dean and Phil switch gears from the Holiday Season to “Awards Season” as they tackle a handful of this year’s award hopefuls, including Tár, Don’t Worry Darling, The Menu, Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes. There is a brand new “Lawsuit of the Week” AGAIN involving the tragic Alec Baldwin-starring western Rust. An email from a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!) about a celebrity death will be followed by … “Celebrity Deaths”! A versatile actor, a comedy impresario, and a legendary prop comic have their lives and legacies celebrated. All that, PLUS Phil shares a hilarious account of a recent 50th high school reunion.

This week’s show opens with a brief interview with one of the stars of a “Live Event of the Week”. Dean is in Washington, D.C. and he gives a full report on one of the most beautiful road trip sights he has seen and an exhibit at the National Gallery focusing on Joseph Singer Sargent. Phil has just returned from his (penultimate?) trip to Turlock to finalize “family business” and he is in an exhausted, tormented, philosophical mood, opining on family, marriage, and alternate universes. The comedy of the Marx Brothers, Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe and See How They Run gets dissected, and in “What We’re Reading” the art of Edward Hopper, the comedy of Martin Short and the poetry of Betsy Holleman Burke get discussed. Finally, in “Celebrity Deaths”, the lives and legacies of a Canadian voice actor, a Japanese star of an American miniseries, a blues singer, a sitcom producer and a law student-turned-best selling novelist all get explored.

Happy Halloween! Come trick-or-treating with Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness as they take a cinematic tour of “Horrorville USA”, the new nickname Phil has coined for Detroit! Several horror films get discussed, including the current Detroit-set shocker Barbarian as well as non-Detroit-based classics like The Leopard Man and Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Dean has started watching HBO’s “Avenue 5” and he finds that scary! Phil also weighs in on the Jon Hamm vehicle Confess, Fletch and a big-time Oscar front-runner, The Banshees of Inisherin from Martin McDonagh. In “Celebrity Deaths”, the “killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis, the beloved comedic actor Leslie Jordan and the stop-motion animation giant Jules Bass all get remembered. And finally, in a re-visitation to a past “What We’re Reading”, Phil talks about ghostly radio signals! All in all, it’s a spooky good installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour.

During this week’s cold open, Dean and Phil finish up their discussion of Marlon Brando and Jack Lemmon, offering up some final movie recommendations. Phil is back after a lengthy trip to the east coast and he returns with tales of a Shakespeare Theater production about Leonardo Da Vinci and thoughts inspired by Hurricane Ian about how human beings become fixated on the statistically anomalous and he also shares with Dean the exciting way in which their former podcasting home – the Eastern Columbia Building – had a starring role in the new season of Amazon’s fashion competition show “Making the Cut”. Loyal listener Maurice Terenzio checks in with a thought-provoking email that brings the conversation back to Marlon Brando before the return of Lawsuit of the Week focuses Dean and Phil’s attention onto the ill-fated Alec Baldwin western Rust. Celebrity Deaths begins by bringing the conversation once again back to Marlon Brando (!) with a remembrance of activist and artist Sacheen Littlefeather. Many other notables get remembered as well, including an Oscar-winning actress, a comedic “love goddess”, a comic book artist who dazzled live audiences, and a chart-topping rapper-turned-reality star. Finally, two movies get reviewed: the current whodunit theatrical release See How They Run and the 2020 Netflix offering from Charlie Kaufman, I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

A cold open about a … melon festival (?!) … inspires a story about racial hostility in Turlock in the early 20th century. From there, Phil is inspired to pick up on a brilliant observation Dean made last week about Mike Nichols’ Working Girl and apply that observation as a potential thru-line for this celebrated director’s career. Alec Baldwin gets into hot water for tweeting support for Anne Heche and Salman Rushdie gets stabbed on-stage right before hailing the USA as the last bastion of freedom of speech. Dean and Phil try to make sense of both of these events. The return of “What We’re Reading” sees Dean learning how to sketch people’s hands and Phil learning what the next World War will be like! In “Celebrity Deaths”, a good friend and frequent collaborator of Stanley Kubrick, a popular and inspiring painter, a legendary French movie star, and the composer of one of the most indelible theme songs of all time all get remembered. Finally, Dean and Phil discuss the finely-tuned instincts Marlon Brando possessed as a great entertainer, and Phil hails the allegorical storytelling on display in Jordan Peele’s Nope.

This week’s show runs the gamut culturally, from a production of “Uncle Vanya” in “Live Event of the Week” and a discussion about whether the play is a comedy, to stories of jury duty prompted by a “Lawsuit of the Week”, from an excellent documentary recommendation by a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!) to a deep dive analysis of the U.S. box office (including a quiz!). The success of Where the Crawdads Sing gets paid particular attention, as does the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. The once-every-ten years Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made leads to a discussion of the Daniels, Edgar Wright and Roy Andersson. Finally, great stories about the making of David Lynch’s Dune, Blue Velvet and The Straight Story get shared.

Dean is back from the UK and reports on his travels. Phil has been availing himself of classic movies and has thoughts on an indie gem from the 1980s, a mind-bending oddity from Joseph Losey, and a 1960 epic about the founding of Israel. The episodic series “Space Force”, “Barry” season 3, “Our Flag Means Death”, “Hacks” season 2, “The Book of Boba Fett”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and season 2 of “The Mandalorian” get discussed. Four giants of the music industry and 3 beloved character actors get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Finally, Dean and Phil explain why Tom Cruise was probably the perfect person to produce and star in a brilliant sequel 36 years after the original, and Phil shares some inspiring words relating to Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Year 16 of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour gets underway with a truly mind-blowing episode! It begins with a celebration of Kane Tanaka, who was, at the time of her death, the world’s oldest-living human! Phil then corrects Dean on an urban legend involving John F. Kennedy and a jelly donut. The Zen artistry of Bill Murray leads to an appreciation of The Man Who Knew Too Little. The inappropriate workplace behavior of Bill Murray leads to a discussion of the firing of Fred Savage from the reboot of “The Wonder Years” and the resignation of director Justin Lin from the 10th “Fast and the Furious” movie over “creative differences”. Meanwhile, movies about multi-verses are EVERYWHERE, not just in comic book movies. Dean and Phil have thoughts, including an analysis of both Everything Everywhere All at Once and Memoria. This discussion also inspires Phil to share with Dean some “otherworldly” thoughts about Will Smith’s violent outburst at the Oscars. These thoughts involve both the curse of The Scottish Play AND the briefcase from Pulp Fiction. The bridging of different universes, different realms, will continue in the return of the “Live Event of the Week”, focusing on a great new play at the Boston Court Pasadena – BOTH AND (a play about laughing while black). There is also a brand new exhibit in the Getty Gallery of the L.A. Public Library’s Central Library called “Something in Common” that all Angelenos should check out. And finally, Dean and Phil answer an email from longtime friend and loyal listener Takako Nagumo about a sitcom on Netflix starring the president of the Ukraine. This will lead to an appreciation of wit as a leadership quality, and to an analysis of what ails Netflix, and where the streaming giant will go from here!

In their last episode before they celebrate their 15th Anniversary of “changing the way people listen to the internet”, Dean and Phil have a lot to discuss in a show biz world that seems to be getting ever more back to “normal”. There are TV shows like “Better Call Saul”, “Barry”, “Julia” and “Our Flag Means Death” to weigh in on, and movies like “The Batman”, “Kimi” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to analyze. A wide array of classic and contemporary performers will get celebrated, including George Chakiris, John Cassavetes, Michelle Yeoh and Zoe Kravitz. In “Celebrity Deaths”, a great French star, hockey’s “The Flower”, and a Broadway icons who became a fixture on both the big and small screens, will all get remembered. Plus, Dean is auditioning again and Phil is hosting more live events.

This weekend, Dean and Phil got together in-person on the “American Riviera” for a fascinating discussion inspired by a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!). The conversation involves the importance of awards not only recognizing and rewarding great work, but also rewarding the great stories surrounding the making of that work! Somehow that inspires Phil to reappraise the entire filmography of James Mason. That great Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, gets more time in the spotlight, as Dean and Phil take a little more time giving both a doff of the cap and a wag of the finger to Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile and Phil, who took the time during the week to unearth the final Peter Ustinov performance as Agatha Christie’s protagonist, has some thoughts about Appointment with Death from the infamous Cannon Film Group. Finally, in a riff on their usual “Celebrity Deaths” section, Dean and Phil discuss three non-celebrity friends who died recently.