Dean
Pollack puts a dizzying new spin on talk show culture in Show & Tell,
a sobering portrait of the lengths a pair of aspiring L.A. actors go to get exposure. Pollack,
a 1988 graduate of the NYU undergraduate Film School, came to fiction features
after ten years of cutting documentaries and reality t.v. shows in Hollywood.
(Previously, he was second assistant cameraman on Spike Lee's She's
Gotta Have It.) He says he wrote Show & Tell specifically for a
six-figure budget after aborting an earlier effort to finance another script at
$1.2 million. Pollack opted to shoot as a SAG signatory, a move that paid
off in casting Joyce Van Patten as well as Susan Sullivan (Knot's
Landing) as a t.v. show host. The
filmmakers got half of their 35mm stock for free when Show & Tell was
accepted to Kodak's Champagne Celebration matching program. Show & Tell
shot 24 days in L.A. late last fall, about half on a soundstage at Lacy Street
Studios where sets for the pivotal live t.v. scenes were constructed. The biggest
technical challenge, Pollack says, was orchestrating talk show set-ups
that had to be shot simultaneously on film and three video cameras for playback
five days later in control room scenes crucial to the film's denouement. Pollack
expects to have a completed film this fall; all rights remained available at press
time. --Mary
Glucksman
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