I’m trying to remember the name of an old Kevin Pollak standup routine/special he did, possibly for HBO, in the early 90s. The only two things I can clearly remember was his routine of famous people as members of the Enterprise (the best being his portrayal of Reverend Jim/Christopher Lloyd as Spock I think, and I think De Niro as Kirk), and the other was an intermission where he talks about how practicing in the mirror for imitations isn’t as good as having the real thing, and they show him practicing in the mirror doing Robin Williams and then they pay to Robin Williams standing beside him going “No no, that’s all wrong!” or something like that.
For all I know, this may not even be Kevin Pollak, but I’m pretty sure it was him. I wanna say right before A Few Good Men came out.
I remember the Reverend Jim bit as Pollak as well, but the Williams intermission is unfamiliar. It looks like Pollak had two HBO specials – a One Night Stand routine in '89 (where he is credited as Kevin Pollack), and his own special called Stop With the Kicking in '93. The Rotten Tomatoes listing for “Stop With the Kicking” states:
A stand-up comedy special with Kevin Pollak, who takes on everything from the police force to religion, and performs classic impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, William Shatner and Jack Nicholson.
Strangely, IMDB doesn’t include comedy specials in its listings, so I had to dork around on Rotten Tomatoes and Pollak’s official web site.
IIRC, it was called Star Trek V: In Search of Cash, and it had notables like Peter Falk as McCoy, Robin Williams as either Checkov or Sulu, Reverend Jim as Spock, and Woody Allen in there as well. It was a REALLY funny bit.
It might be Stop with the Kicking – screw it, that’s available on VHS so I might as well just go ahead and get it. I doubt it will ever show up on DVD.
…the title comes from his bit making fun of short-lived action hero wannabe Jeff Speakman (“Kung Fu Jew…Stop with the kicking! Stop with the kicking!!!”)
Unless someone has digitized it from VHS, I doubt it. Ripping from DVD is comparatively easy, but from VHS? You gotta be hardcore. If you DO find it I’d love to get a link =)
Bought it, it arrived, and it wasn’t the one. He did some brief impressions of De Niro, Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman as “Rain Man”, Albert Brooks, Peter Falk, Reverend Jim, etc. but not the Star Trek bit.
It also had the intermission with Robin Williams.
An amusing note is that one of the extras is the guy that plays Bobby on The Sopranos, but a much younger and thinner version.
Unless someone has digitized it from VHS, I doubt it. Ripping from DVD is comparatively easy, but from VHS? You gotta be hardcore. If you DO find it I’d love to get a link =)[/quote]
I started ripping some old Barney Miller videotapes to digital. I’m old enough to have loved that show, back in the mid to late 70’s, as a kid. You have to rip in real-time, to a vid capture card or device, and yeah, it sure is tedious. I only made it through 2 tapes, and haven’t gotten to actually editing it down and laying it out in DVD or individual episode format.
He does great impressions (so does Kevin Spacey, btw). Some of 'em are really cliche (George Bush Sr., De Niro doing ‘You talking to me?’) which is why I like his impressions of Reverend Jim and Robin Williams – you don’t see those very often.
Unfortunately the standup itself was not terribly funny.
Too bad this wasn’t the tape. I guess you could check out the One Night Stand video I mentioned earlier in the thread. The other possibility is that he did the Star Trek bit during his segment on one of the annual Comic Relief series that aired in the late 80s and early 90s. IMDB has Pollak listed for Comic Relief VI (1994).
