Because Phil is on the road, tending to family matters, this week’s show was pre-recorded last week and much of the episode is dedicated to discussing two icons: The historic landmarked Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles closed its doors for good on September 14, and the great leading man, filmmaker, and supporter of the arts and the environment, Robert Redford, left the stage on September 16. Dean and Phil do a deep dive into Redford’s career and accomplishments and put his 1974 starring vehicle The Great Gatsby under the microscope. This leads to a discussion of lead characters, often seen as heroes, who suffer the delusions caused by their own fantasies. Such characters include Holly Martins in The Third Man and Rick in Casablanca. The dangers of fantasy prove the perfect segue way to Phil’s thoughts upon finally having watched James Gunn’s Superman. Then to wrap up this jumbo installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, the devilishly haunting, and rather delightfully macabre 1964 suspense picture from Japan, Onibaba gets celebrated.

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.

Your friends in podcasting have been teasing episode #568 for weeks! They had really been looking forward to counting down their all-time favorite Mystery films and the final results prove to be a lot of fun. So, get those Netflix queues handy, because Dean and Phil will hit you with more than two dozen movies they discuss at length with four films actually finding a place on both their Top Tens. There are comedy “whodunits” from the 1930’s, foreign language allegories from the 2000’s, independent films that launched careers, classics from international masters that launched entire sub-genres, mysteries based on books, mysteries based on plays, mysteries set in the farthest reaches of space, mysteries full of post-war romance and cold war anxiety. The biggest mystery of all is after almost eleven years, how do Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness keep managing to provide an hour (plus) of free audio entertainment each week?!