July 05, 2009

INTERNETS: Kevin Pollack's Chat Show

I stumbled on to this internet talk show while reading the blog section on the Mad Men website. (Season 3 starting in August!) Kevin Pollack is a character actor who's been around for a long time, and while I'm certain I've seen dozens of movies starring him, I fail to name any off the top of my head. He's sort of a cross between Kevin Spacey and Paul Giamatti, and I bet I used to confuse him with Giamatti all the time, before Sideways came out and made Giamatti a household name.


(Can you tell which one he is?)


Anyhow, Pollack as a host is pretty decent. The pace of the show could use a little speeding up, but overall he's very assured, and is good about providing an enviroment where guests candidly discuss insidery media biz things. He interviews some cool people like John Hamm, HGOTD recipient Dan Finnerty, Kevin Smith, Paget Brewste, etc. It reminds me of Jon Favreau's IFC show from a while back called Dinner for Five, where each episode was Favreau eating dinner with various actor/director/screen writer types, and they would freely discuss the bizarre machine that is Hollywood.

I would love to see a web based talk show like this go and find a sizable audience, especially when the alternatives on TV are pretty stale in format. I know that Kevin Pollack is hardly the first celebrity to do a web chat show, but he seems to be the first one to take it seriously and put out a polished show with a clear mission statement.

Oh yeah, he was in Usual Suspects. And many other movies. That I can't remember.

http://kevinpollakschatshow.com/