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.

Cast: Ellen Goldwasser, Neill Barry, Susan Sullivan, Joyce Van Patten, Kristoffer Ryan Winters, Kevin Scannell, Harriet Harris, Victor Raider-Wexler, Martin Hinkle, Sybil Temchen, John Milford, Robert Michaels. Crew: Producer/Screenwriter/Director, Dean Pollack; Line Producer, Franny Baldwin; Director of Photography, Shawn Maurer; Casting, Karen Church; Editors, Jessica Landaw, Tom Lewis; Composer, Albert Lloyd Olson; Casting, Karen Church; Production Designer, Nya Patrinos; Wardrobe, Gini Krammer-Goldman. Contact: Dean Pollack, Show & Tell, 6182 Glen Oak Street, Los Angeles, CA 90068. Tel: (213) 856-7092, Fax: (213) 856-0221.

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