Description

Film and TV star Kevin Pollak, whose career includes roles in such hits as "Usual Suspects" and "A Few Good Men," just inked deals with Amazon and Hulu for the entire library of his one-year-old Internet talk show, he told Beet.TV in an exclusive interview we snagged last week at the NATPE LA TV fest. Those twin deals signify the importance that many traditional stars are placing on the Internet as a creative medium.

Transcript

Kevin Pollak Inks Web Talk Show Deal with Hulu and Amazon Daisy Whitney: Hey there! I'm Daisy Whitney reporting for Beet TV at the NAPTE LATV Fest where I just scored an exclusive interview with Kevin Pollak. You probably know him from some of the films he’s done such as Usual Suspects, A Few Good Men and Casino. He is also very active in the internet and started his own show Kevin Pollak Chat Show. He’s here to tell us all about it and stay tuned until the end because he shares some details with Beet.TV about his new deals with Amazon and Hulu. So Kevin, you have had a terrific career in TV and film and you’re focused now on the internet. Is that fair to say? Kevin Pollak: Well, I haven't quit my day job. I mean I just completed doing a giant movie with Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson called The Big Year and I have another giant movie from Paramount coming out August 6th called Middle Men with Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi and some other amazing people. So, I haven't quit my day job. Daisy Whitney: Good. Kevin Pollak: But I have found creative control and freedom by creating original content for the internet that I haven't experienced other than my extent which is a 100% creative control and freedom. Daisy Whitney: Give us some example Kevin Pollak: Well, I started with my Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show. Just go to KevinPollakchatshow.com. All the episodes are archived. You can download them on iTune and watch them at your leisure or audio only if you're working out. So, a year and a half ago, I was visiting a friend. One of these internet mini moguls jerks, Jason Calacanis who has Mahalo.com. I'm looking around his place and he shows me this little tiny studio. I walked in and I said, “What is this?” and he said, “Well, we do this little thing called This Week in YouTube.” And I said, “I think I want to do a Charlie Rose with a sense of humor here.” And he said, “How soon can you start?’ And I said, “Really?” and then a couple of months later, I had some guests booked and that was almost about 16 months ago. It feels like it’s my legacy. It’s bizarre of what it’s become. It streams live every Sunday. I control every single aspect of it and it’s that Charlie Rose vibe where there's no audience. So, it’s a real conversation and because it’s live, I take questions through Twitter and through the chat room from the viewers, a little bit of Larry King. But I'm getting actual conversations. And there are no time restraints, so I'm getting 90 minutes, two hours. Seth MacFarlane found out he’s in the fan of Jack Daniels, had a bottle waiting. We smoked for two hours. I'm not going to say how much he drunk. You just go to KevinPollakchatroom.com and find out for yourself Daisy Whitney: And have you been able to bring your existing TV and film fans to watch your internet shows? Kevin Pollak: Oh, yeah. It’s bizarre. It was one of those ‘If you build it they will come.’ I just had to have faith. So, while I have to back off of the where’s the money question of traditional media and embraced the notion that I have which initially when I started doing like “All right, there's no money and we have to earn viewers instead of getting a publicist in that machine. How about if we go 1950’s TV where this hour brought to you by?” The Texaco Theater. Let’s do, let’s get, let’s build a library, see if I'm any good at this, see if I enjoy it, see if I can get real guests and now I’ve had five Academy Award winners and Grammy winners and great filmmakers and comedians, Jason Reitman two days before the Oscar nominations came up. It’s amazing stuff that’s blowing my mind. So now, sponsors are coming around. Now, they're all interested and it’s fantastic. Amazon has just made us a crazy sweet deal for the whole library, Hulu. I had lunch with the head of acquisitions, same thing, they want the library. So again, let’s see if we’re any good at it. A 100% creative freedom I control and now, we’ve reached critical mass and everybody is interested. Daisy Whitney: Final question, how are you doing in views or listens? Kevin Pollak: Well, that’s the other thing. A live internet show on a Sunday afternoon, we started with like 1500 people watching. We’re now up anywhere between 30, 000 and 80,000 views live and no one really watches live anything. So, our downloads and people watching afterwards are in a million. Daisy Whitney: Wonderful. Kevin Pollak: So yeah it’s extraordinary but again what got me interested, what got me excited was the creative freedom and control that doesn’t exist in TV or film for me. Daisy Whitney: Thank you Kevin. Kevin Pollak: Sure. Daisy Whitney: Great!