Fires and heat waves have returned to California, Snow has returned to Colorado and the Dakotas, Covid-19 has returned to Detroit, and movies (and movie-goers) have returned to theaters! Dean and Phil cover it all, as well as Queen Elizabeth turning one of her homes into a drive-in theater, and Prince Harry and Megan Markle signing a production deal with Netflix. Never before have your friends in podcasting discussed as many musical acts as they do in this week’s “Celebrity Deaths” where members of Malo, Fleetwood Mac, Molly Hatchet, Primal Scream, New Order, and The Roots get remembered. The life of a Mexican comedy legend gets celebrated as well before Dean and Phil turn their attention to television and movies. The latest installment of “The Trip” series gets reviewed. Netflix’s “Dead to Me” gets analyzed. Two animated series are foremost on Dean’s mind: “Star Trek: Lower Decks” and “X-Files: Albuquerque”. Finally, Phil wraps things up with some hopeful, helpful advice in “What We’re Reading”.

After a week away, Phil is back in Turlock, and reports on the air quality. Meanwhile, Dean Haglund is in Detroit where his power went out. Fires? Power outages? These things can’t stop your friends in podcasting from bringing you their latest installment of free weekly entertainment! On this week’s show, Chadwick Boseman, a groundbreaking jazz trombonist, a screen star of the 1950s and 1960s, a World War II hero and computer pioneer who fathered a legendary filmmaker, and a beloved figure from TV animation all get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Then, Phil runs Dean through the eight shows nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series, and Dean shares his thoughts.

Phil’s unexpected need to spend summer away from Los Angeles took another turn on Friday when his father died. On this week’s show, he shares memories of his dad. He and Dean also celebrate the lives of the director of numerous box office blockbusters, a giant in animated filmmaking, a legendary comic book artist, and an influential novelist. They will discuss a couple great television series that may be worth your time. Finally, they champion the absurdist cinema of Roy Andersson. From the heartfelt to the absurd, we trust there will be something for everyone on this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour!

After a cold open in which Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness celebrate the fact that YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour becomes a teen-ager this week, they launch into what they do best, trying to make sense of a (Covid-19) world gone wild with humor, insight, irreverence and inspiration. In the return of “Wingnut of the Week”, Dean and Phil offer a wag of the finger at Covid-19 conspiracy theorists and a doff of the cap to UFO “truthers”. In “Celebrity Deaths”, they pay tribute to a true titan of comedy publishing and filmmaking, an international star who broke big in both Bollywood and Hollywood, a character actor-turned-casting director, an influential folk singer, and the musician who turned Hugh Grant into a pop star! Then, your friends in podcasting tackle how Covid-19 will affect the up-coming television season, and how it will affect the Oscars, before turning their attention to what years in cinema might rival 1962 as the best year ever for movies! 

Sure, Covid-19 may be no laughing matter, but Phil Leirness gets things started with a quarantine lockdown joke nonetheless before he and Dean Haglund dig down into the protests surrounding stay-at-home orders, the hopes they have for how society might change in the long-term, and about the dangers of placing your faith in “distrust”. Ageism in Hollywood gets discussed, and then “Star Trek: Picard” and season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery” get compared and get praised before the commercial break. In the back half of the show, Phil regales Dean with “Star Trek”-related tales involving the likes of JJ Abrams and … Toshiro Mifune?! In “Celebrity Deaths”, two of the all-time great character actors, three legendary jazz musicians, a ground-breaking sculptor, a pop-culture influencing illustrator, an award-winning cinematographer, and a glass-ceiling breaking animator get remembered. Keep calm, stay safe, and enjoy YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour!

We hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season. This week, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness make merry by discussing the very best in episodic television as they count down their Top Ten Television Series of the Decade! And trust us, it’s a truly globe-trotting adventure!

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”. 

Your friends in podcasting have a lot to discuss, including the full, disturbing, spine-tingling story of exactly what happened to their site and Phil’s internet. They will discuss the death of an important Film Production company, the emergence of a truly intriguing Film Distribution company. They will tackle this year’s Oscar Winners for Best Documentary and Best Animated Film, as well as a nominee for Best Actress. All that, plus they share some awesome pet stories and preview at least one upcoming LIVE CHH appearance! It’s a great episode. Just don’t tell Phil that Mercury is in Retrograde!ali

In the second of two face-to-face episodes recorded this past week while Dean was in Los Angeles, your friends in podcasting discuss two “Celebrity Deaths” and three current cinematic releases. The creator of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and the woman who co-wrote “American Graffiti” and who gave Princess Leia her fighting, courageous spirit are the celebrities remembered by Dean and Phil. The documentary “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” (about Orson Welles’ 15 year-long effort to make the unparalleled “The Other Side of the Wind”), the heist thriller “Widows” from director Steve McQueen (“Shame”, “12 Years a Slave”) and “If Beale Street Could Talk” from director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) are the movies Dean and Phil go into great depth discussing. on YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour.