There are two Carolinas in the USA. North and South. Phil is exploring both of them. So, this week’s show was pre-recorded quite a few days earlier than usual. In it, Dean and Phil discuss The Actor’s Gang, a well-respected theater company and training ground for talented performers (like their pal, Steve Benaquist). Dean and Phil continue to talk about the late, great artist David Hockney, his love of smoking, and the ways in which he taught the world to think of Los Angeles, namely as it pertains to light. Light and its interplay with shadows is absolutely top of mind for your friends in podcasting and they go deep into film noir, talking about such great actors as George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Edmond O’Brien, and Edward G. Robinson, and such great directors of noir as Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak. The movies They Drive by Night, The Killers and Scarlet Street all get appraised. Finally, Phil holds court about the 1980 neo-noir The First Deadly Sin, which was the final motion picture produced by Frank Sinatra, and the final lead performance for Sinatra as an actor. It was supposed to have been directed by Roman Polanski, which has Phil asking, “What if it had been?” He also suggests another young director (at the time) who would have been a better choice than the film’s eventual director, Brian G. Hutton. Nevertheless, Hutton did director a couple of Dean’s favorite movies, so Phil shares the quite interesting details of Hutton’s career.

Because he’s been driving all over California, Phil tackles the insane, apocalyptic weather racking the Golden State, and Dean updates on the building of his steam room and his graphic novel (both of which are long-awaited) on this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. The madness of America is addressed through the oddly appropriate lens of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and speaking of Scorsese, his mentor, John Cassavetes is very much a subject of discussion, from his directing of the under-seen classic The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to his acting in such crowd-pleasers as the 1964 version of The Killers and The Dirty Dozen. And one of the “Dozen”, the great music star-turned-actor Trini Lopez gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Robert Altman’s penultimate film, The Company, receives some fascinating analysis. And speaking of fascinating analysis, somehow a discussion of TV’s “Columbo” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” allow Dean and Phil to figure out once and for all why the Back to the Future sequels are so bad! At the close, your friends in podcasting preview next week’s show when they will be discussing the series nominated for the Emmy in the “Best Comedy” category and the dire circumstances threatening SAG-Aftra in the wake of the union’s health plan implosion.