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Friday, Sep. 25, 2009

Dana Carvey bringing out old favorites, new riffs for Gallo Center show

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Dana Carvey hasn't been on "Saturday Night Live" in 17 years, but there's no way he'll stop performing his popular characters.

Not gonna do it.

He knows fans still love his riffs on the first President Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with characters he created for "SNL," like the Church Lady and Garth from "Wayne's World." He'll probably do at least one during his sold-out performance next weekend at the Gallo Center for the Arts.

"I'm going to do everything — anything you can imagine," he joked in a phone interview from his Marin County residence. "I'm going to attempt to do the greatest comedy show in history."

Upbeat, friendly and down-to-earth, Carvey, 54, said he plans to poke fun at Barack Obama's health care reforms, men's and women's issues, and being a parent. "I will do 37 voices or characters and 26 impressions and I will play music," he offered.

Onstage, Carvey doesn't take any strong stands on political issues, preferring to poke fun at both parties. He has eclectic beliefs himself.

"I'm a radical moderate," he said. "I'm a fiscal conservative, social liberal with a dollop of Karl Marx and a spoonful of Ron Paul."

He laughs at how rigid some people's beliefs are in the Bay Area. "Up here in Leftyville, I tease them because it's so emotional. Bush equals Hitler, and Barack Obama equals Jesus Part Two. Hold on, it's more complex than that."

Carvey has been doing impressions of Schwarzenegger since he started doing the "Hans and Franz" comic sketches on "SNL."

"If it wasn't for the constitutional ban, he would be running for president in 2012," Carvey said of the California governor. "He's hilarious. He's someone you have to do."

Born in Missoula, Mont., Carvey landed in the Bay Area when he attended San Francisco State University. He won the San Francisco Standup Comedy Competition and played numerous Bay Area comedy clubs before joining "Saturday Night Live" in the 1986-87 season.

After leaving "SNL" in 1992, he appeared in the blockbuster movies "Wayne's World" (1992) and "Wayne's World 2" (1993) with co-"SNL" alum Mike Myers. In 1996, he hosted the short-lived sketch-comedy "Dana Carvey Show," which featured then-unknown talents Stephen Colbert ("The Colbert Report") and Steve Carell ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "The Office").

He said he picked the two out of 300 people who auditioned and is thrilled that they achieved so much success.

While Carvey has worked steadily throughout the years, it hasn't been all laughs in the funnyman's life. In 2000, he was in the news for settling a $7.5 million lawsuit against a surgeon who operated on the wrong artery during Carvey's double bypass heart surgery a couple of years earlier.

Carvey said the doctor didn't hurt him, he just made a mistake. He said rumors of his failing health are false. "That happened 12 years ago," he said. "If it was dire, wouldn't I be pale or pasty? How could I be doing this 12 years later?"

Carvey said he wasn't as much in the public eye in part because his two sons were young. Now they're both teens, with one heading off to college and one still in high school.

On Conan O'Brien's late-night talk show a couple of months ago, Carvey joked about taking the youngest to Italy. While Carvey and his wife were moved to tears while visiting the Colosseum in Rome, his son was nonplussed. "Is this all we're going to do?" he said in a bored voice. "Is this pretty much it?"

When asked if his son minded that he joked about him on TV, Carvey said he probably didn't know about it. Neither of his sons follow his career that closely.

"Television doesn't exist for them anymore," he said, adding that they usually watch little more than video on the Internet. Though the O'Brien video is on the Web, "it's a pebble in the ocean," Carvey said.

Carvey is working on a movie for Paramount that he wrote about baby boomer "concierge parenting." It's about parents who are overly attentive to their children. Picture a teen saying, "Could I get a cup of tea in my room?" and the father responding, "Right away, sir ... I mean son." Carvey said he would star and would work with old "SNL" friends including Norm McDonald and Jon Lovitz.

Carvey does at least 30 stand-up dates a year and is looking forward to performing in Modesto and playing the 1,200-seat Rogers Theater. After asking questions about the venue and the type of audience, Carvey said he thought he'd suggest that fellow Bay Area resident Robin Williams come to the Gallo Center, too.

"We're always looking for a good theater that size to play," Carvey said.

For more valley arts news, read thehive.modbee.com/artsbeat or www.twitter.com/lisamillegan.