The Best Celebrity Talk Show You've Never Heard Of - "Kevin Pollak's Chat Show!"

In March of 2009 a new show debuted on the Internet. It was a long-format talk show featuring celebrity guests, with no commercial breaks, no sponsors and a viewer interaction through Twitter and online chat. The show's host was someone with no talk show hosting experience, but a great deal of talk show guest experience. That host is comedian and actor Kevin Pollak, and the show is Kevin Pollak's Chat Show.

The Show's Format

Kevin Pollak's Chat Show uses an extended conversation format, a la Charlie Rose or Tom Snyder. The interviews are usually more than an hour long and often exceed two hours. Pollak's guests are usually people he knows from his long career in show business, and he goes in depth to explore the path that brought the guest to fame.

And did I mention that the show is hilariously funny?

Imagine Inside The Actor's Studio with continuous laughs and without all the silly blue cards!

Since it's shown on the Internet, there are no restrictions on language or content, so the show is definitely targeted at a mature audience - if you're easily offended this show is probably not for you!

For a program that is only shown on the Internet, Pollak has managed to round up an impressive roster of guests for his chat show. Guests range from superstars like Jon Hamm, Matthew Perry and Dana Carvey to musicians like Lisa Loeb and Academy Award winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of The Swell Season to Internet and TV stars like Felicia Day.

The Production

The show is produced in a Santa Monica studio run by Mahalo.com, which co-owns the show with Pollak. The studio is bare bones - simple black walls with a round wooden table where Pollak and the guests sit and chat - Pollak has admitted on the show that the set is an "homage" to the one used by Charlie Rose's on his PBS talk show. Pollak checks the laptop at his side throughout the show, reading audience-submitted Twitter questions for the guests and occasionally announcing just how few people are actually watching the show's live feed! The studio audience consists of the all-volunteer crew and sometimes a few friends of Pollak's.

Unlike most television talk shows, Pollack doesn't use any pre-interview set-ups with his guests. He sometimes has some research materials prepared, but the lack of prearranged questions results in a genuine conversation between Pollak and his guest. And instead of a cursory chat you might see on a late night talk show, Pollak is able to show genuine interest in his guests - because his guests are people that he is genuinely interested in, not just whatever celebrity happens to be around plugging his new movie or TV show.

Among the regular games played on the show are the Larry King Game, where the guest does a bad Larry King impression where Larry confesses something inappropriate on-air and then takes a call, and "Three Degrees Of Kevin Pollak", wherein Pollak claims he can connect himself to any other person in show business in just three steps, unlike the six steps needed in the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game.

Who Is Kevin Pollak?

Kevin Pollak rose to fame as a stand-up comedian in the 1980s and became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He is well known for his spot-on impressions of William Shatner, Christopher Walken, Peter Falk and many others.

In the 1990s, he transitioned into movie acting and was featured in many films that became both critical and commercial successes, including The Usual Suspects, Avalon, L.A. Story and A Few Good Men.

Kevin Pollak's Chat Show is streamed live online at kevinpollakchatshow.com every Sunday night at 5 PM, Pacific/8 PM Eastern. After the original airing, the show is available to watch on YouTube and Mahalo.com, and it can be downloaded for free from iTunes. If you have an Internet-connected Tivo, you can also find the show buried in the depths of the Tivo "Video On Demand" menu.

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_{Kevin Pollak Photo by Amy Puzia http://www.flickr.com/photos/39736502@N04/ / CC BY-NC 2.0}