Actor Dana Carvey, starring in his first major film since his botched heart surgery in 1998, poses in a sound room at the Guitar Center in Los Angeles. His surgeon operated on the wrong artery when Carvey underwent a double-bypass operation to treat a blockage. His new film, "The Master of Disguise," has him portraying anything from Abe Lincoln to a giant cherry pie.
KEVORK DJANSEZIAN / Associated Press
Carvey taps talent for mimicry for new film
LOS ANGELES -- A grinning fan approaches Dana Carvey amid the cacophonous guitar, drum and keyboard noise of a Sunset Boulevard music store.
"Hey Dana, can I get your autograph?" the young man says, pen and paper extended. "And maybe an impression?"
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Carvey, who frequents the store, dutifully signs the young man's scrap of paper while shaking his head.
"You can have an autograph, but I don't do impressions," he says. "No . . . Not gahnnah daah it," and the comic's voice rises into the nasally, stifled twang of the first President Bush.
Recognizing that mimicry and bizarre characters are what his fans expect, Carvey has returned after nearly six years of semiretirement to co-write and star in the children's comedy "The Master of Disguise" as a man who can assume any identity.
During an interview in the store, he confesses that he doesn't think his impression sounds much like Bush the elder, even though the character was a fan favorite during his 1986-1993 stint on NBC's "Saturday Night Live."
"It's just an abstraction, a caricature," said Carvey, 47. "You trick people into thinking that that's what he really sounds like."
"A lot of what I do there is no direct joke," he added. "I like stuff that there's no reason for it to be funny. It's the musicality of it and not the (words). I try to find the musical notes that evoke laughter."
Most of the comic bits in "The Master of Disguise" consist of non sequiturs, general clownishness and funny voices.
Carvey plays an impish, timid Italian waiter named Pistachio Disguisey who learns that his family possesses the magical ability to mimic. When a villain kidnaps his parents, he uses the newfound ability to stage a rescue.
Among his plethora of peculiar personalities are impressions of Robert Shaw's grizzled sea captain from "Jaws," Al Pacino as the Latin American "Scarface" gangster and a new President Bush -- George W.
Carvey also dresses up as an enormous cherry pie, a schoolgirl, a pile of grass, a gabby old lady and a baldheaded man in a bulbous green suit who thinks he's a turtle.
Apart from occasional standup comedy engagements, Carvey said he has been enjoying time away from show business during the past six years. Much of his time is spent at home in Marin County outside San Francisco, where he lives with his wife and their two sons, ages 9 and 11.
"I was doing standup and talk shows and mostly I was just raising my kids and loving hanging out with them," he said.
After a number of film roles that included co-starring in the two "Wayne's World" movies with fellow "SNL" alum Mike Myers, Carvey returned to television in 1996 with a prime-time variety program. But its bizarre sketches -- including one in which he played President Clinton with udders -- rankled sponsors and brought "The Dana Carvey Show" to a quick end.
Then came a life-threatening health scare. After years of high cholesterol, he underwent open-heart surgery in 1998 to remove a blockage -- only to learn later that the doctor had botched the double-bypass procedure by operating on the wrong artery.
I remember just lying in my bed just sobbing," Carvey testified in his $7.5 million lawsuit against the doctor. The case was settled for an unspecified sum, and the comedian said he donated the money to cardiac research charities.
"It was five years ago, and I'm fine now," Carvey said. "But it just makes you kind of live in the moment and not take yourself so seriously. All your narcissism and vanity and ego -- all those things recede into the background."
His two sons were the ones who urged his return to show business.
Carvey, who won an Emmy for his work on "Saturday Night Live," said he never told his boys about the extent of his career because he wanted them to have a normal childhood.
"They kinda knew I was in show business but they sort of thought I was retired," he said. "Then I was away doing standup and they found a box of all my stuff in the basement, like some magazine covers and some awards and stuff. And they said, `Dad, we didn't know you were that big!' "
When he returned home, he found they had taken all those materials and built a "big shrine" to their father.
"They're the ones who said, `You should do a movie, Dad!' " Carvey said. So he decided to write "The Master of Disguise" for kids their age and parents looking for a wholesome comedy.
Carvey's sons supplied not only the inspiration but the criticism throughout the creative process.
"I tried out all the characters on them and whatever ones they laughed at stayed in the movie," Carvey said.