Chillpak Hollywood Hour

Chillpak Hollywood Hour – Year 20 Episode 22   Original Release Date: Monday 5 October 2026 Despite being recorded later than we like, and despite one of your friends in podcasting definitely “playing hurt”, this installment certainly proves to be a delight. Much hilarity starts the show, in no small part thanks to an email from a loyal listener like you (yes, YOU!), before Dean and Phil get into...

Original Release Date: Monday 28 September 2026       Description:   If we know anything after almost 20 years of podcasting, it’s that people love hearing “production meetings on the air”! If that’s true, then what a show we have for you, with not one, but THREE production meetings – two of genuinely hilarious varieties and the third pertaining to movies like Backrooms, Exit 8, Universal Language...

Original Release Date: Monday 21 September 2026       Description:   Hindsight, like this episode, is 20/20 (Year 20 Episode 20, get it?) and so Dean and Phil begin this week’s show with a clip from the long-running ABC news magazine show “20/20” from the mid-1980s remarking at just how contemporary those clips sound! From there, the upcoming “Blade Runner 2099” television series gets previewed an...

Original Release Date: Monday 14 September 2026       Description:   Dean Haglund is back from Stockholm and he has brought tales of family mysteries with him! Because Dean is also jet-lagged, Phil Leirness figured this show was the perfect time to ask him about the science of combatting jet lag, about Melbourne, and about wildlife in Australia. Wildlife in Los Angeles, from bears to coyotes to on...

Original Release Date: Monday 7 September 2026       Description:   Dean Haglund is in Stockholm, so for the bulk of the show, this week’s guest co-host, music, arts and culture journalist Yoshi Kato joins Phil Leirness to discuss the death of an all-time jazz great, the implosion of more than one jazz festival and live celebrations of the musical (and movie) legacy of composer John Williams. This...

Original Release Date: Monday 31 August 2026       Description:   From free sex bungalows to Phil’s new monthly stage show, from two popular Netflix series to two Palme d’Or winning movies, from whisper quiet roller coasters to the proper pronunciation of the word “behemoth”, from a sci-fi cult film about a walking television from another dimension to appalling online attitudes expressed about the...

Original Release Date: Monday 24 August 2026 Description:   In a cold open, Phil tells of the “Live Event of the Week”. Then, in the return of “Lawsuit of the Week”, the ongoing saga of Paramount’s desired merger with Warners gets updated, and the recent UK privacy lawsuit involving such notables as Prince Harry, Elton John and Liz Hurley gets analyzed. Two listener emails pertaining to the recent...

Original Release Date: Monday 17 August 2026       Description:   In a cold open, Dean and Phil share how impressed they are with an animated short made by the college student son of one of Phil’s high school classmates. In the return of “Lawsuit of the Week”, the most recent threats and developments surrounding Paramount’s desired merger with Warners get fully explained and analyzed. Phil shares...

Original Release Date: Monday 10 August 2026       Description:   In some ways, Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness pick up where last week’s show (the one thousandth episode of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour) left off, by reminiscing about a couple of their early years spent “changing the way people listen to the internet” and by examining more in the shifting release strategies for television and the v...

Original Release Date: Monday 3 August 2026       Description:   Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness commemorate this, the one thousandth episode of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour (originally called “From the Heart of Hollywood”), by reminiscing about their first few years of “changing the way people listen to the internet” by examining how the media landscape has changed since they started podcasting, a...

Original Release Date: Monday 27 July 2026       Description:   One episode shy of their 1,000 installment of this show, Dean and Phil jokingly compare notes on the tolls reaching such a milestone have taken. Phil hints at some of his weekend 40th high school reunion adventures, Dean updates the prognosis of his beloved Doberman, Leloo, and previews his own birthday celebrations. Of course, Dean a...

Original Release Date: Monday 20 July 2026     Description:   In a truly confusing, but nevertheless hilarious, cold open, Phil offers a correction about “Malt Air”. Thanks to emails from loyal listener and frequent contributor Maurice Terenzio, Dean and Phil have a ball talking about three great actors of Hollywood’s golden age: Joe E. Brown, George Raft and Edward G. Robinson. The big show biz n...

Original Release Date: Monday 13 July 2026     Description:   It was a rough weekend for Dean Haglund, whose beloved Doberman, Leeloo, is undergoing emergency spinal surgery as we publish this show. It has also been a rough week for the media business where fear over job loss is concerned. In the UK, ITV has been taken over by Sky and several more television mergers, and downsizings, seem to be in...

Original Release Date: Monday 6 July 2026     Description:   It was a big weekend, and your friends in podcasting have a lot of big topics to discuss, from the World Cup to the art of Caravaggio, from a masterpiece of German literature to the creation of synthetic life that demonstrates most of the hallmarks of actual life, from the ten films that best define America to a couple of the all-time gr...

Original Release Date: Monday 30 June 2026     Description:   Tomorrow is Canada Day and the end of the week is Independence Day in the USA. Your friends in podcasting have thoughts about celebrating. They have thoughts about Team Canada’s big win in the World Cup. They have thoughts about why very few of the listeners to this podcast are in Canada! Phil got back from the Carolinas and has stories...

Original Release Date: Monday 22 June 2026     Description:   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 conti...

Original Release Date: Monday 15 June 2026     Description:   In a rather shocking cold open, Phil reveals not only that he has World Cup Fever, but also that he is genuinely thrilled about the early tournament achievement accomplished by Team Canada! Brief remembrances of artist David Hockney and journalist Gene Shalit (both of whom died during the past few days) are offered. Then, things turn da...

Original Release Date: Monday 8 June 2026     Description:   Phil was actually worried he and Dean wouldn’t have enough to discuss to fill this week’s show and wow was his worry unfounded! The gentlemen get the conversational ball rolling with the return of “What We’re Reading” wherein four quite fascinating and quite disparate works get covered, leading to in-depth discussion about such topics as...

Original Release Date: Monday 1 June 2026     Description:   Even we are impressed at the ground covered in only 74 minutes this week by your friends in podcasting! They start by going deep into the improvisational jazz of Sun Ra and dissecting comments Sonny Rollins made in a podcast about jazz being “ a music of freedom”.  The Coen Brothers’ 1991 masterpiece Barton Fink gets revisited at 35 and...

Original Release Date: Monday 25 May 2026     Description:   Great theaters and great comedy are on the minds of your friends in podcasting. First, Dean and Phil pat themselves on the backs for taking the time at the beginning of the year to preview the film that ended up winning the Palme d’Or at the just-completed Cannes Film Festival. Then, they finally, after a break of months, return to the T...

Original Release Date: Monday 18 May 2026     Description:   On this second episode of Year 20 (“the year we get it right!”), Dean and Phil have crime on their minds! They start with an appreciation of director Jules Dassin’s classic film noir Night and the City . Then a Hitchcockian thriller, Mirage , by Edward Dmytryk, the man largely responsible for Jules Dassin getting blacklisted gets analyze...

Original Release Date: Monday 11 May 2026     Description:   Welcome to Year 20 (“the year we get it right!”). On this, their overall 988th installment, Dean and Phil really put the “Hollywood” into “Chillpak Hollywood Hour” with showbiz news, analysis, previews and reviews. It starts with a discussion of the long-running series “Supernatural”. Then in the “Lawsuit of the Week” the supposed end of...

Original Release Date: Monday 4 May 2026     Description:   Welcome to a show 19 years in the making! Special guest co-host Jon Lawlor, and special guests Erynn Petrulis, Yoshi Kato, Lily Holleman, and Marc Hershon join the festivities and help Dean and Phil celebrate this milestone event! Topics include movie-going here and in Japan, improvisation in jazz and in deejaying, performance art, laserd...

Original Release Date: Monday 27 April 2026     Description:   We are one week away from Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness celebrating 19 years of “changing the way people listen to the internet” through YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour (now the flagship of the “Chillpak Hollywood Presents” expanded universe of podcasts on Substack). On this week’s show, Dean and Phil come to humorous grips with just how...

Original Release Date: Monday 20 April 2026     Description:   After a cold open wherein Phil gives everyone the lay of the land, outtakes from last week’s show are picked up off the floor, dusted off and used, revealing an obviously drunken Dean and (a perhaps tipsy) Phil continuing their discussion of commuter trains before delving into Project Hail Mary and a couple of vintage James Bond films....