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Michael J. Pollard
Specialty: Funny-Voiced Man-Children
"GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS!"
While you may know Michael J. Pollard from such roles as 'C.W. Moss' in Bonnie and Clyde, or 'Bug Bailey' in Dick Tracy, or, most recently, 'Mr. Cummings,' the slightly lecherous boss in Tumbleweeds, if you've ever seen Pollard's seminal role as 'Jahn,' the funny-voiced man-child leader of a planet full of renegade, homicidal children, in the Star Trek episode "Miri," in which Kirk and crew land on a planet curiously devoid of grown-ups, and have filthy-faced little urchins chasing them around until they discover that a strange virus has killed off all the adults, leaving the children to fend for themselves, under the leadership of a strange, funny-voiced man-child named 'Jahn,' who curiously insists on leading said ragamuffins in a continual chant of 'Gru'ups! Gru'ups! Gru'ups!" every time Kirk et al. enter the scene, until they (and you) figure out that what the little rapscallions are really saying is a contraction of 'grown-ups! grown-ups! grown-ups!' whom the children have come to fear and loathe, then you can never really look at Michael J. Pollard, even as 'Andy' in Roxanne or 'Owen' in Tango & Cash, or 'Boner' in I Come in Peace, or in any of the subsequent squirmy, funny-voiced man-child roles that became his bread and butter, without thinking of that infernal phrase:
"GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS!"
partly because it poignantly captures Pollard's own strange collision of child and adult, which has allowed him to make a career of squirmy, funny-voiced man child roles, even though he's now over sixty years old, and partly because it was so damned annoying in that episode of Star Trek. Pollard seems like a fine man, so we don't wish on him that the phrase
"GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS! GR'UPS!"
be inscribed on his tombstone to haunt him for all eternity as it does us. But let's just say, if it was inscribed there, we wouldn't be all that sad about it.
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