By Paul Freeman [Jan. 2011 Interview]

Impressions of such stars as William Shatner and Christopher Walken helped make Kevin Pollak a popular comedian. Now Pollak is making a strong impression using his own creative voice, in such areas as talk show and game show hosting, plus writing and directing original web content, as well as continuing his high profile stand-up and acting careers.

His hit podcast “Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show” is an intimate session, with conversation at a living room-like comfort level. With one guest each week, the in-depth interviews last as long as two hours. Guests have included Dana Carvey, Seth MacFarlane, Lisa Kudrow and Paul Rudd.

Pollak was born in San Francisco, October 30, 1957, and raised in San Jose. Inspired by the storytelling on Bill Cosby’s albums, Pollak began doing stand-up while he was in junior high. He moved back to San Francisco when he was 21.

Once he had established himself, he headed for the klieg lights of Los Angeles. Pollak soon was giving convincing performances in such films as “A Few Good Men,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Grumpy Old Men” and “Casino.”

Now Pollak is entertaining game show audiences, as host of Fox’s “Million Dollar Money Drop.”

Pollak has several movies coming out, including Kevin Smith’s controversial “Red State” and the comedy “The Big Year” with Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Rashida Jones. Directing a feature film appears to be in Pollak’s future. He made his directorial debut with the horror-comedy web series “Vamped Out.”

He took time from his busy schedule to chat with Pop Culture Classics.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Why do you think the chat show format works so well for you? Is it your natural curiosity? Your gift for listening?

KEVIN POLLAK:
You know, I wiish I had an answer... or maybe I’m glad I don’t, because maybe it is one of those things that may be better left not too understood as to what the secret or the magic is, if that is appplicable.

I had done all the talk shows as a guest over the years, every single kind of talk show. And what seemed, to me, to be lost was the long form, one-on-one converation. I did a little bit of it on ‘Charlie Rose,’ as a guest. I did a little bit of it with Bob Costas as a guest. But those are only in half-hour increments. In the case of Bob Costas, there were commercial interruptions. Tom Snyder to a certain degree was a great one-on-one conversation, but again, with commercial breaks.

So I felt there was something missing. I had You-Tubed old episodes of Dick Cavett, where he would sit with Woody Allen for the whole 90-minute show, again with commercial breaks, but one guest, 90 minutes. That was the only time you were allowed to really find out what makes these people tick. And that, ultimately, was my drive and my interest and curiosity. I’ve been a great, great fan of autobiographies over the years. I’m just fascinated with people’s journeys, how you got from there to here. So I guess it is genuine fascination that makes me good, or what have you, at the job.

I purposely dsigned it to not be in front of an audience, so I would lose the performer’s ego and just have an actual conversation.

PCC:
Of course, it helps to have great guests. And from what I’ve seen yours seem to have intriguing backgrounds and quick wits. Is the selection process part of the magic?

POLLAK:
Without question. You have to get interesting people... or at least people from an interesting life, who become more or less interesting in the one-on-one conversation setting. You don’t really know, in some cases, what you’re going to get, beyond your research. And some are considerably more forthcoming than others.

But for the most part, I have known ahead of time what I was in for, but there have been a small percentage where I had no clue how it would go.

PCC:
Do you like that sense of risk, not knowing?

POLLAK:
Without question. It’s the fun part of it. But I’m a bit of a control person, so I’d at least like to know that this a person who enjoys telling stories of their life.

I just had lunch with an old, old friend, who’s brilliant and a hero of mine, Christoper Guest. We hadn’t really sat down to have a meal in eons. He had been listening to the podcast and was a fan of it. And I said, ‘I know this isn’t your cup of tea,’ because he’s horribly shy and has avoided talk shows, through his whole career. He’s done an occasional Letterman, but I could see he was very uncomfortable. So I sheepishly asked. I said, ‘I just want you to know you’re welcome. I don’t really expect you to want to do this sort of thing, as it isn’t something you enjoy.’ And he said, ‘Oh, l I don’t have anything to say, but I’ll come on. I enjoy listening to the show. I’ll be good for about 10 minutes.’

PCC:
That’ll be a coup.

POLLAK:
Yes, without question.

PCC:
I guess it’s partly the show’s relaxed atmosphere that allows people to open up to you, that and the fact that they don’t have to score in like a five-minute segment. They have time to reveal themselves.

POLLAK:
Right. Yes. This isn’t about auditioning anecdotes on the phone the night before, during a pre-interview, certainly. It’s about coming on and sharing your journey.

PCC:
You have so much going on these days. Yet the stand-up remains exciting to you?

POLLAK:
Yeah, you know, there’s realy nothing like it, in terms of creativity and immediacy and intimacy and a conversation with the audience. I really feel like the hour is mine of the choosing. And that’s a pretty rare opportunity in one’s life in show business, that you could take an audience on a ride of your choosing for an hour. And it could be different every night.... or the same.

That sort of freedom and control is ultimately what drove me to original content on the internet, honestly, because I hadn’t experienced that in other aspects of my career and life, other than doing stand-up. So I think that’s the main reason I have continued doing the stand-up live. It’s such a rare opportunity, quite frankly, to be a creative person.

PCC:
Do you continue to work up new impressions?

POLLAK:
You know, I never really worked them up or studied or what have you. They just sort of come up. Someone will just sort of seep into my consciousness and I can’t shake them and I ended up walking and talking like them in life and I think, ‘Oh, I should probably put them in the act now.’ It’s like a mini-possession that takes place in my private life and ultimately becomes fun to do on stage.

PCC:
It seems to be something of a lost art, compared to the days of Frank Gorshin and Rich Little.

POLLAK:
We just lost one of the greats from back then, a couple of days ago, David Frye. When I was very, very young, he put out a Nixon album that reinvented the wheel for people like me and Dana Carvey. Guys of my generation talk about that album.

PCC:
You mentioned the internet. Will ‘Vamped Out’ lead to other sorts of projects in a similar vein?

POLLAK:
Yeah, my writing partner, creative partner in that, Jason Antoon, who’s also the lead character in the series, we have been approached by AOL, who’s revamping their creative content on their home page. In fact the ‘Chat Show’ is now in a heavy rotation with Kevin Smith and Adam Corolla, what they’re calling a ‘late night block,’ on the home page of AOL. Seven o’clock West Coast, 10 o’clock East Coast, our three podcasts are being offered up in three-to-five-miinute pieces, five nights a week. They license, basically, past episodes, which we then cut up into these three-to-five-minute previews. AOL is interested in new content, as well as libraries. So we’re in talks now for them to fund season two of ‘Vamped Out.’ They would start by airing, re-airing season one on AOL some time in the summer and then launching season two, ‘Vamped Out 2.0,’ in the fall.

PCC:
And will this eventually lead to your writing and directing in longer forms?

POLLAK:
I think so. I’ve been asked a few times in the past to direct and I just wasn’t that passionate about the material and so, when ‘Vamped Out’ came along as an idea between Jason and I, the idea was so interesting and clever to me, just as a premise, that I thought, ‘I’d rather not take this to a network and let them add water to it. Let’s do it as a web series.’ And then I thought, ‘Maybe this is the time to jump in and direct it and find out what that experience is like, if I’m any good at it, if I enjoy it.’ And of course, I’m hooked for life. Of course, one of the reasons I was so hooked was that I was doing the short forn, I think. We shot the whole series in a week. I think that might have had something to do with it, as oppposed to longer form, which is a year of your life, for a feature, between pre-production, principle and post. Itr’s often at least a year.

I have a feature film that I’ve written, for me to direct. Billy Bob Thornton is attached as one of the leads. We’re out to female leads right now. So I’m working towards that for sure, in an independent way. Independent budget and financing. That’s on such a big scale in terms of realities, until I’m on the set yelling, ‘Action,’ I can’t quite grasp that it’s real.’

PCC:
Since you came out of stand-up, rather than formal dramatic training, did the acting career seem surreal at the beginning?

POLLAK:
I was pretty taken by actors and comedians when I was very, very young, 10, 11 years old, would collect them like baseball cards, in terms of having favorites and knowing everything about them. And, while I avoided acting school, I certainly was studying, as an audience member, sitting in the theater.

And with the impressions, it really started with me walking out of a movie theater, when I was six, seven, eight years old, almost possessed by a particular character. And then would walk around as that particular character for a couple of days, which, to one’s mother, is extremely charming.... at least for the first 36 hours and then it starts to wane and become quite a nuisance. The impressions allowed me, I think, to become sort of self-taught and to learn delivery and timing and cadence and the reality of a character in a scene. I think I learned more from coming at it from that level, as a comedian, as a person who did impersonation, that I felt akin to what that so-called craft is, as opposed to coming up through an acting class or theater.

PCC:
Who were some of these performers who made such an impression on you early on?

POLLAK:
For comedians, the first one was Bill Cosby, in the sense that he was a great storyteller and would paint, even in a comedy album, these vivid visuals. His stories were so specific and complete that it really helped craft my interest in being a storyteller, being that guy who stood there and painted these pictures with stories.

And then, as a kid in the movie theater, it was the character actors who caught my eye. And some of the character actors who were allowed to be lead actors. Early in Dustin Hoffman’s career, he was playing a great range of characters. And a lot of barely known character actors, on the fringe, as it were, Henry Jones, Jack Warden, Harry Guardino and Alan Arkin, who to some degree was a character actor, but also a leading man. And even two of the greats I got to work with a couple of times, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon were both character actors who got to be leading men. So it was those guys who I was studying and was mesmerized by. And I think I probably learned more from watching them than anything else.

And then, just going on hundreds of auditions, you learn, I learned, anyway, what it meant to break down a scene on my own and prepare it.

PCC:
Once you’ve had success as an actor, does that learning process continue when you’re working with so many top-notch directors and performers?

POLLAK:
Yeah, no question, if you’re smart, anyways, it’s an education that never stops. Some of the greats that I’ve met and worked with, have stressed that to me. The education shouldn’t actually end. There’s no graduating ceremony... other than death.

PCC:
You were born in San Francisco, then moved to San Jose?

POLLAK:
The family moved to San Jose when I was very young, too young to have a say. San Jose, of course, was very young itself, compared to the small metropolis it is now... or thinks it is. Which is good.

When I grew up there, there were literally orchards at the end of the street. A lot of farms. That it became a part of Silicon Valley and beyond is pretty great and wonderful and has been a real sense of pride for me, having been raised there. But I moved back to San Francisco when I was 21.

I started performing stand-up through junior high and high school. By the time I was 17, 18, I was opening up for music acts in some of the smaller venues, bars and clubs.

It was incredibly though at times. But what a great survive-if-you-can education, in terms of learning a great deal very, very quickly - how to think on your feet, how to feel the energy of the audience, how to know when to make a turn and pick up the pace. Some very rudimentary, basic skills that have served me and will forever. Before I got to San Francisco, where you’re coddled instantly by the most nurturing city of comedy I’ve ever experienced. There’s a few that rival it - Boston, Denver come to mind, in terms of a town really embracing an art form and coddling the locals, to nurture them to a level of sustenance, before they move to New York or L.A. for the dog-eat-dog existence of show business.

PCC:
It sounds like the Bay Area stand-up scene fostered more of a sense of cameraderie than competition.

POLLAK:
Oh, yes, indescribably great, a fraternal order of comics, a like-minded, struggling group of people. I started out in San Jose, where there were no comedy clubs, so I didn’t know what it meant to have a comedy scene, let alone a group of comedians you could hang out with, let alone a number of venues you could play on a weekly basis, where people paid money just to see comedy. All those things were so spectacular when I got to San Francisco. When I was 20, I was the youngest competitor that year in the San Francisco International Comedfy Competition. So I got a real taste of it for the first time when I was 20 and moved there shortly thereafter, realizing that this whole world existed there.

San Jose still had a very small town sense to it. The idea of going up to the big city was very intimidating. And boy, once I made that move, it was coming to Nirvana.

PCC:
It was more of a sense of adventure than a pressure?

POLLAK:
Oh, very much an adventure. There was vitrually no pressure, really.

PCC:
Hosting a game show, is that pressure-packed? Or does that come easily, coming out of the spontaneity of stand-up?

POLLAK:
I wasn’t sitting at home, wondering why no one was calling me to host a game show. But my agent called and said, ‘This is a different kind of game. It was a big hit in Britain. And it’s a chance to exercise a few muscles that you have in yourself already and why don’t you go let them tell you what the show is and see if they can interest you?’ So I went and they pitched me the show and, the truth is, the game itself was so fun, that I really was hooked. I’ve loved games all of my life, competitiveness and trivia, all of these thing it taps into. And, being a gambler, I love being able to hedge a bet. You have to risk your money on every question, but you don’t have to risk it on just one answer, like previous trivia-based game shows. You can spread your money around over several answers. So I like that aspect of it. It’s a big, big part of the game, surviving to the end with as much as possible.

And also, one of my favorite parts is that the contestants are couples and they bring all their couple baggage and it spills out onto the stage in about 14 seconds. They really hooked me with those main things. And then they said, ‘We want you, because you’re not only recognizable, but you’re the type of comedian that we feel is very, very experienced, but also likable, in terms of your energy onstage. And you get to improvise this show for an hour.

I said, ‘You mean I’m going to be on network, prime time, and improvising?’ Other than ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?,’ I don’t know of an opportunity to do that. So these are all the things that went into the decision, for me.

PCC:
You’ve established such a multifaceted career, it seems like there’s no chance you’ll ever be bored.

POLLAK:
Well, I learned very early to diversify, becoming a member of the Writers Guild in 1985 as a very young comedian-actor, who’d had one course in college, TV, Radio & Film Writing. By the way, that course came in my one year of college, before I graduated... some call it dropping out. But what the hell?

PCC:
Just a matter of perspective.

POLLAK:
Yeah, exactly. But at first the idea was to diversify as a way to test your abilities and broaden your opportunities. And then it became a mantra in the last fews years, which is, ‘If you’re not creating, you’re waiting.’ And I never understood the waiting part of this profession. If you’re fortunate, like myself, to get any kind of credibility as an actor, the offers begin, as they did for me after ‘A Few Good Men.’ ‘A Few Good Men’ was the eighth film I did and now I’ve done 60, 61.

Getting offers is great and it’s a goal line that every actor dreams of crossing. But then once you cross it, one’s career becomes an ebb and flow of opportunities. And there are a great many months when you are literally waiting as an actor, with nothing else to do. So that’s when the writing picked up, that’s where the continuation of the stand-up made sense. Now I’m starting to diversify more and more. You’re right. At some point, you find that you’ve become a little cottage industry unto yourself. You’ve got your fingers in enough pies to be busier than you could ever be as just an actor or just a comedian.

PCC:
You must have to do a lot of juggling.

POLLAK:
Yeah. Everyone now wakes up six to a dozen e-mails behind. It’s all relative.

PCC:
This year, you’ve got “The Big Year” coming out. Quite a cast.

POLLAK:
Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston, Rashida Jones, Joel McHale, Diane Weist, yeah, there’s a few names. The director did ‘Devil Wears Prada.’ I worked with him prior to that, in a little movie he wrote and directed called ‘Miami Rhapsody.’ David Frankel, a tremendous talent. Brilliant, briliant guy. So it’s got a lot of pedigree. Ben Stiller’s company produced it. So there’s some pressure on that one to do well.

And then I’m a part of the now wildly controversial Kevin Smith movie, ‘Red State.’

PCC:
Did yoiu enjoy working with him?

POLLAK:
Yeah, I did, very much. He’s got a pretty intense drama this time around, something he hasn’t done before. He wrote it and has been tinkering with it for almost 10 years. And it’s become politically and socially more current, ripped from the headlines, than it was 10 years ago, when it started. So it should be a fun ride.

PCC:
Showtime continues to air your most recent stand-up special, “The Littlest Suspect.”

POLLAK:
I’ll be touring with that special, the way that a band would put out a CD and tour for that CD.

PCC:
The challenges and rewards of career, have they changed for you over the years?

POLLAK:
They evolve. The ebb and flow has been replaced by diversifying in more creative trime and energy than ever before. Creating original content for the internet has been a rebirth like I hadn’t experienced since the transition from stand-up to films. And even beyond, because I have control of the content and creativity, which doesn’t exist in traditional media. But I’ve experienced it. That part of it has been insanely rewarding. And we’ll see what the future brings.

We’re at a point now where, instead of talking about the internet coming to television, it’s actually happening. So that’s pretty fantastic. First with Apple TV and Roku boxes. And now Samsung has introduced a television with the internet built in. Once the internet channels can be programmed into your remote control, that’s the game changer. Now they’re bringing programmed into the television. And Google TV is certainly exploding onto the scene. I happen to have spent the last couple of years creating original content for the internet. The timing is pretty fantastic. There were some pioneers before me that have been at it for 10 years and they’re just seeing this awakening. So I feel like I’ve come in at the tail end of the pioneer work, arriving just in time to enjoy the benefits of being in this new world.