I have been meaning for a while now to watch Kevin Pollak's Showtime Comedy Special. I have followed his Podcast Chatshow pretty closely (where he pumps the special relentlessly - and yes, it is out on DVD) and wanted to see him do a full stand up routine. For some reason I never got around to actually recording it, and then last night I accidentally noticed it was airing over night, so I tagged it for recording and watched it tonight after the Sunday Night Football game.
Even though it feels like I have been familiar with Pollak's comedy for a long time, when it comes down to it I realize I have only ever seen him do the short form 5 minutes or so on late night television - never an entire act. He actually sounds different when he is doing the real act - his voice is less distinctive and ethnic sounding (yes, I used that phrase) - I am wondering if he intentionally makes his baseline voice more bland so his impressions will stand out more? He is obviously a professional comedian. On his podcast he often refers to a stand-up set as "taking the audience on a journey of *my* choosing", and one can tell that he enjoys doing that. Even the bits that he often repeats on his podcast more informally and conversationally (the Larry King game, the anecdotes about his movies) come out smoother, more polished and, I guess, more funny in his act, where he does not have to fight with the person he is interviewing for space and pacing, and where he is in total control. I like his impressions - first many of them are actually pretty good, but more importantly he gets most of his laughs from playing with the underlying attitude and stance of the people he impersonates, and from telling anecdotes about doing impressions of famous people in front of famous people. He didn't use it in his Showtime special, but in his chatshow he has a couple of times told a story about doing Columbo when he walked in on some famous person in a dressing room that is really funny. And I always laugh when he does Shatner and Walkin. He is also smart enough to do somewhat unusual impressions - his best one in the show is of Jason Statham. First he announces he is going to do it, then he slips it in just as you are wondering if you would recognize the voice, and you realize that you will, and that he has nailed it, and the whole thing makes you smile. However, while competent and funny, I realized that as a comedian Pollak is only just a journeyman. He often says that he rose to the top of the comedy circles in San Francisco, and then moved to L.A. and found he was back in the middle of the pack. It seems to me that if stand up was all he had, he would still be in the middle of the pack of professional stand up comedians, no doubt with a nice following and career, but not different from any of a dozen other competent stand-ups, many of whom he has had on his show. His decision to get into acting, and along the way nab roles in some attention grabbing big films, has greatly enhanced the perceived level of his stand-up career. He is not one of the top rank stand up comedians that just grab you and make you laugh till it hurts with their silliness or outrageousness or subversiveness or anger or intelligence. Whoever you might put in that top rank (Pryor, Cosby, Carlin, Martin, Seinfeld, Rock, whoever) KP is not one of them, even though his name is better known than a lot of his peers at the next rank down. I also realize that "Showtime Comedy Special" does not seem to have the same cache as "HBO Comedy Special". I did a quick google but could not find a list of either "Showtime" or "HBO" Comedy Specials to confirm what seems to me the common impression that HBO is a more elite cable gig. Still, Showtime must be better than the Comedy channel (though Pollak used fewer bad words than he does on his podcast, and probably could have done it on basic cable). -- 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 tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
