From the ridiculous to the sublime, from the heartfelt to the hilarious, prepare to point the compass of your brain to a journey on the map of the entire infinite during this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! Phil shares heartfelt thoughts about “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Discovery” and then, he and Dean have a ball unpacking the desire on the part of an Oklahoma Lawmaker to declare a “Bigfoot hunting season” in his state! Two of the greatest actresses of all time get celebrated, as Phil shares touching remembrances of Cicely Tyson and hilarious first-hand accounts of Cloris Leachman. Dean has championed filmmaker Christopher Nolan for conveying different perceptions of time before, and longtime listeners of this show will remember that the very first time Dean and Phil welcomed a guest, it was the late, great Philip Newby who wanted to discuss how time gets depicted in movies. So be warned, as Dean and Phil discuss 2020’s Tenet, it gets mind-blowing! And when they get into celebrating one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most underrated masterpieces, the show becomes a master class on the subjects of suspense and tension!

No broken finger can keep Dean Haglund from joining Phil Leirness for another brand new installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour! This week, your friends in podcasting talk about what they miss because of Covid-19 (and are certain to be missing for the rest of this year at least). Dean and Phil then explain why there might not be many new movies or television shows for a long while. They will, however, discuss several recent titles like Cats, Alita: Battle Angel and It Chapter Two as well as several under-appreciated, vintage gems like John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono and the jazz adaptation of “Othello” All Night Long. Plus, Phil has harsh criticism for a couple beloved musicals from the 1950s! In “Lawsuit of the Week”, Dean and Phil discuss a courtroom victory for Jerry Seinfeld. Then, following a mea culpa from Dean about an error made on last week’s show, the Chillpak Morgue opens for “Celebrity Deaths” where a glass ceiling-shattering broadcaster and a world-class independent filmmaker and director of top television are remembered. Finally, Phil shares a story about perhaps the greatest phrase ever uttered before death. 

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! 

From the inner space of quiet, self-quarantine lockdowns, to the outer space of “Star Trek: Picard”, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness take you on quite the journey this week! It starts with their latest observations about themselves and others in the wake of another week of isolation. Sadness, quiet and dehumanization are on the thematic menu! They then compare notes on their respective Easter celebrations, which leads to a discussion of a couple of classic musicals: 1934’s Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle The Gay Divorcee and 1948’s seasonal staple Easter Parade, starring Astaire and Judy Garland. The recent, modern classic, Uncut Gems gets championed by Phil, who tries to get Dean to overcome his trepidation surrounding Adam Sandler performances (and yet, Dean once championed You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, so go figure!). The second half of the show consists of Dean and Phil comparing the years in cinema 1973 and 1974, discussing all the notable films from those two halcyon years, in hopes of determining which year might challenge 1962 as the greatest year in cinema. Finally, your friends in podcasting beam up to the La Sirena to discuss and debate what went right and what went wrong in season one of “Star Trek: Picard”, a show so successful that a big-screen movie version is already in the planning stages.

Wherever you are listening to this week’s show, we hope it finds you feeling healthy and safe. Your friends in podcasting briefly share their latest “lockdown” adventures, before sharing a tribute sent to them by a friend of the show about the SF Bay Area radio performer they discussed on last week’s episode. Then, Dean and Phil celebrate the lives and legacies of one of the biggest country music-pop music crossover artists of all time, of an an award-winning playwright, of an African soul icon, of a Swam Pop music legend, of a brilliant researcher, of a true showman on the basketball court, of a popular character actor of the 1980’s, of an influential horror director, and of one of the most prolific and influential drummers in rock. They discuss the joys of the Elton John musical biopic Rocketman, paying particular attention to the terrific performances by Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell and the inspiring friendship of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. They discuss a new book that argues 1962 was the greatest year for movies. They discuss a great way for you in the USA to stream 15 classic movies and documentaries a month for free in the comfort of your own home. They begin to discuss the horrible battle between Goldie Hawn and Jonathan Demme over 1984’s Swing Shift, a movie that has been compared to The Magnificent Ambersons as lost cinematic classics, forever destroyed by those who didn’t know better. YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, Covid-19 free since May of 2007!

Tucker Smallwood is immediately recognizable to fans of science fiction for playing Commodore Ross on “Space: Above and Beyond”, for playing Sheriff Andy Taylor in “Home”, the most notorious of all episodes of “The X-Files”, for playing the flight commander in Contact, for playing the Xindi Humanoid in “Star Trek: Enterprise”, for playing Admiral Bullock in “Star Trek: Voyager” and those are just his highest profile sci-fi roles. An actor, an author, a musician and a decorated military veteran, Tucker Smallwood joins your friends in podcasting to discuss two classic Francis Coppola movies in which he was involved.

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”. 

On this week’s episode, Phil discusses the reason behind his sudden trip to the nation’s capital and Dean reveals details of his two forthcoming comedy X-Files conventions. Then, your friends in podcasting episode celebrate the lives of a whole lot of show business folk who have departed in recent weeks: Monkee Peter Tork, tough guy actor Jan-Michael Vincent, Prodigy front-man Keith Flint body-positive model and advocate Elly Mayday, actress Liza Sheridan, Talk Talk lead singer Mark Hollis, “Love Boat” creator Jeraldine Saunders, character actor Morgan Woodward, pioneering transgendered singer Jackie Shane, wrestling legend King Kong Bundy, bluegrass giant Mac Wiseman, former teen heartthrob Luke Perry, and the last great director from Hollywood’s golden era, Stanley Donen.

Dean starts off this week’s show with a full report of his Detroit adventures. Then Phil weighs in on all of this weekend’s sad happenings in his beloved City of Angels. Then, your friends in podcasting roll up their sleeves to remember one of the most famous disc jockeys of all time, and to weigh in on the ever-evolving controversy surround Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. Then it’s back to the big screen as Dean and Phil discuss a silent masterpiece, a black and white musical, another comedy from India, the poster for and the CGI on display in Ant-Man and the Wasp and another sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

All in all, this week’s episode is 70 minutes of big, globetrotting fun, so buckle up.

In many ways, this week’s show is a sequel to last week’s episode #534, with the promised celebration of Jeanne Moreau’s life and career, an email from a listener about Tom Jones’ “The Young New Mexican Puppeteer” and more from the British Film Institute List of “the 50 films you should see by the age of 14”.

Unlike most sequels, however, this show is even more irreverent, insightful and informative than last week’s!

The festivities commence with a clip of Dean on Australian television telling a (bestiality?) joke, and then after a special opening (a tribute to Glen Campbell), Dean comes out guns blazing, ranting about the internet speeds of his adopted land. After Phil calms him down, they discuss the news of David Letterman’s new show, they urge people to save the Salem Cinema (a jewel of the Pacific Northwest), they talk about an interview they did with the late Jim Marrs and they continue their discussion about the “death of discernment”, this time focusing on an appalling memo crafted by a then member of the National Security Council.

 

From there, it’s onto “Celebrity Deaths”, where, in addition to the Femme Fatale of the French New Wave and Glen Campbell, your friends in podcasting remember a Tony-winning star of Broadway’s “The Music Man”, the star of an early television western series turned right-wing anti-government activist, and the man inside the Godzilla costume.

Finally, Dean and Phil discuss a 1982 Australian western, a 1954 western that influenced the likes of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, the original King Kong, and the Will Rogers comedy Life Begins at 40.