H eadlines
Pollak Continued from Page 13
engrossed in the world repre-
sented on the screen, and when
I left the theater, I would play
act as though I was living in
the movie. It had a deep effect
on my psyche because I carry
that with me to this day.

Your first podcast, “Kevin
Pollak’s Chat Show,” lasted
10 years, and you are now
doing another podcast,
“Alchemy This.” Can you tell
us more about the podcast
and the magic you find in
the process?
The chat show was really
about people’s journey —
how did you get from there
to here. So when I started
doing “Alchemy This,” a theme
suggested by fans, we gathered
suggestions from emails, as a
way to prep the show. I wanted
to cast the show with the fastest
improvisers I’ve seen in LA.

We’ve been doing “Alchemy
This” for two and a half years
now. It’s incredibly fun and
completely improvised. It’s
a great creative outlet, like
stand-up comedy, which has
been a ghost town for the last
15 months.

busy, to keep comedy at the
forefront of what you do?
A good 15 years ago I came
up with a mantra, “If you are
not creating, you are waiting.”
So I became more proactive in
my career. I’ve been a writer
for a long time, writing stories.

I love writing, might be my
favorite thing to do, and that
fueled this notion if you are not
creating, you are waiting.

I’ve been reading “How I Slept
My Way to the Middle: Secrets
And Stories From Stage,
Screen, And Interwebs.” You
wrote the book in 2012. If
you were writing the book
today, would you choose a
different title?
It’s a show business term,
not meant to be demeaning to
say about something. But for a
character that has had one love
scene in 80 movies, it seemed
funny. But today … I am
working on a new project, an
audio book, for audible.com,
the ultimate joke book, street
jokes, that start with “Did you
hear the one about … two Jews
walk into a bar, they buy it”
as a punch line. These street
jokes are ultimately offensive to
someone. We can’t worry about
that, and we’ll put a disclaimer
about that, “If you are easily
What drives you to stay offended, good for you, I don’t
want to hear about it. And
please know ahead of time
that none of these jokes are
opinions or even facts, truths
of any kind.”
Tell us about your mom and
her influence in your career.

My mom was my first
audience and remained my
best audience. Thankfully,
her biggest contribution was
how supportive she was from
the very beginning. In 2015,
I did a documentary, “Misery
Loves Comedy,” where I ask,
“Who’s your mommy and or
daddy? Were your parents
supportive?” I just know how
lucky I was that my mom was
so supportive from the very
beginning. I read that you grew up in
Reform Judaism. Can you tell
us more about that?
Yes, I was bar mitzvahed,
and I went to religious school on
Saturdays. We were California
Reform Jews, which means we
were almost Catholic. ... There
was a slow building of a pride
of being Jewish, what it meant
Kevin Pollak
Courtesy of Celebrity Talent International
for family and friends and the
holidays, learning about the
sacrifices, the oppression, the
anti-Semitism. one of the top 100 comedians that you had crossed the goal
of all time. In a 1994 inter- line to getting offers in films.

Comedy Central named you as view with Rich Eisen, you said Once you cross that line, how
do you stay grounded?
I would attribute that to
my mom, and also how one is
raised. Show biz is a bizarre
undertaking. A lot of your
dreams are being fulfilled, and
I didn’t see this coming, I have
succeeded beyond my dreams.

And even though there are a lot
of great actors and comedians
who have succeeded beyond
my plateau, there is a sense
of gratitude, instilled by my
parents, to be grateful for the
fruits of your labor, and also
for your labor, to be able to
work, in any capacity. I don’t
have to beg for this part. That
is a goal or a threshold I am so
PORTION OF TOTAL CONTRACT PRICE WILL BENEFIT
grateful for, and it contributes
JEWISH CHARITY OF CLIENT’S CHOICE
to my disposition immensely.

This story first appeared in
the Baltimore Jewish Times. l
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