On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Kevin M.<[email protected]> wrote: > If it is Sunday, it is Kevin Pollak's Chat Show. Live at 5pm PST, to > be exact. The voice of many and creator of "Family Guy," "American > Dad," and the new Cleveland spinoff. > > I am rapidly becoming a fan of this show. Typically two hour > interviews with a wide variety of guests. Last week's installment with > Hank Azaria was terrific. His card games are legendary in the > industry, so just to hear some of the stories of some of the games was > fun enough. I didn't know Richard Kind was so, um, interesting. > > http://kevinpollakschatshow.com/
I have been meaning to second Kevin's recommendation of this show. I watch (mostly listen) to it as a podcast (I actually have worked out a lot to it this summer) and it is very interesting, and often amusing. I have not gotten to the McFarlane episode yet, but I am looking forward to it, since my sister works for him on Family Guy. Pollak admits to being inspired by Charlie Rose, which (though he does not seem to realize this) is not all good. He has the same kind of pandering, ingratiating style that Rose has (to be fair, most of the guests have been friends or at least co-workers) and he has trouble going 5 minutes without turning the focus back to himself. I have seen about three quarters of the shows so far, and if you did a shot every time he mentions Unusual Suspects, and A Few Good Men, being an experienced and successful stand-up comedian from the Bay Area, having gone to the school of hard knocks, and being friends with Hank Azaria, you would need a liver transplant by now. I don't want to see him become too polished or self-censoring, because the nice thing about the show is that unexpected things can happen (there is no pre-interview). But he does need to develop a better sense of how many times he can tell the same story (I think I have heard the one about him auditioning for a show with Nathan Lane being done by Rob Reiner (leading to his role in A Few Good Men) at least 4 times now. One of the funniest things to me was that when Azaria was finally on the show, it seemed that they were not really as close as he had led us to believe; I mean, they obviously knew and liked each other, but Azaria seemed to be much better friends with people like Craig Bierko and Matt Perry (both of whom have already been on the show). Another problem is that Pollak, while amusing and sometimes funny, is not nearly as funny as he seems to think he is. Aside from this talk show appearances I have never seen his stand up act, and did not realize that a lot of it must be based on attitude, because he really relies on that a lot. He is way too self-conscious about the role of twitter and the website and such on the show - it really does not make it much different from a call in radio show, except it keeps the questions shorter, and allows them to edit out the haters and the crazies. His Larry King bit is pretty good. But for all that the show is still good - mostly because it really is a conversation, and not one of those artificial real conversations written by Woody Allen or David Mammett or Tarentino, but an actual conversation between real people, with real cul de sacs, and narcissism and insecurity, but also with time and space for the (mostly) semi-famous to talk about themselves, and not do 7 minute bits, or bitch about the problems of having their multi-million dollar mansions re-modeled, or about their summer vacation in Italy at George Cloony's house. I don't think I have seen one interview yet where there was not at least one segment (and often more than one) where I thought "wow, that was a real interesting conversation". --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
