Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990 TAG: 9003300070
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GLENN COLLINS THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Goin' do it? Not goin' do it? Don't know. Too early to tell. Not enough informa-tion. Bar and I, we think he's likable. Does a pretty weak impression of me, though - in that movie kinda thing."
So OK, it wasn't President Bush. It was Dana Carvey, sitting in his Manhattan apartment and It was the least terrible of the scripts I've been offered, and after a while you have to say yes to something. Dana Carvey mimicking the way the president might talk about the "movie kinda thing."
"Opportunity Knocks," a film that opens today (in Roanoke at the Towers and Valley View Mall theaters) and features Carvey in his first starring role, as a confidence man whose ever-escalating scams include an impersonation of the president.
Carvey - elfin of smile, angelic of expression and improbably malleable of face - is best known on television for his portrayals of James Stewart, George Burns, Casey Kasem, The Church Lady, the Grumpy Old Man and the muscle-pumping Hans of Hans and Franz, as well as his mannered, disjointed imitation of George Bush.
This presidential portrayal, which often leads the show, is said to be popular viewing for White House officials.
Carvey is following a long line of "Saturday Night" stars who have attempted to transfer a high television profile to huge grosses at movie-theater 4 1 CARVEY Carvey box offices.
"It is a transition that can be fraught with danger," said Carvey cheerfully, pronouncing "danger" with bathetic emphasis.
"People are constantly comparing you to Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, John Belushi. You say you're doing a movie, and the expectation is that you'll be another Bill Murray."
"I'd never compare myself with them," Carvey added.
He slipped into his Carvey-as-president mode again. " `Opportunity Knocks' might be Carvey's `48 Hours,' " he said in perfect Bush-speak. "But then, it might be his `Three Fugitives.' "
The references were to the 1982 big-screen debut that made the movie career of Eddie Murphy, and the decidedly less auspicious 1989 farce that starred another "Saturday Night" alumnus, Martin Short.
Of "Opportunity Knocks," he said contentedly that "It was the least terrible of the scripts I've been offered, and after a while you have to say yes to something."
Carvey plays a character from the South Side of Chicago named Eddie Farrell who talks his way into a corporate boardroom and into an engagement with the boss's daughter.
The film features Milo O'Shea as Eddie's con-man mentor, Todd Graff as his sidekick, Robert Loggia as a wealthy businessman and Julia Campbell as his daughter.
Carvey seems to have a serene attitude about the quest for film stardom.
"For a first attempt, I'm happy with it," he said of his film. "Most of the scripts I was getting had this cocky, '80s-comedian persona - macho one-liners - and that's not me. I do attitude stuff, characters and non-verbal. I don't tell jokes per se."
Is he daunted by comparisons with the likes of "Saturday Night" mega-successes like Billy Crystal?
"Look," he said, "just the very fact that we are here discussing how I'm doing on `Saturday Night' - and you're asking me questions about a new movie I'm in - well, it's just like winning the lottery! I didn't grow up in a show-biz family, I started a career while busing tables and going to night school at San Francisco State. I did stand-up for 10 years, then I was the straight man on bad TV shows - all before I got `Saturday Night.' So to me, all of this is really a dream come true."
Carvey said he's 34 years old ("but I read at a 36-year-old level") but doesn't look it.
"When I first got to Hollywood, I looked so young and naive, I was completely dismissed. They said, `No way can this man be funny.' I don't look like a classic comedian. I have a boring, nondescript look."
Carvey has one more full season to perform in his five-year contract with "Saturday Night," and during the interview he kept slipping easily into the roles of the one-man repertory company he plays on the television show: in addition to Bush, he answered questions as the Church Lady, Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" doing Batman ("I definitely have to get the Joker," he intoned. "Definitely. Definitely have to get the Joker.")
"Doing characters does get spooky sometimes," Carvey said. "They take on a life of their own. One time I was doing Jimmy Stewart on `Sprockets,"' he said of the "Saturday Night" sendup of West German television, "and I got into a Jimmy Stewart zone - well, it's frightening how deeply into it you can get."
This summer Carvey will be starring in another movie, "a very high-concept film," he said. "The working title is `Beverly Hills Ninja.' See, I'm a white boy raised by ninjas in Japan, until the shrine is stolen from the dojo, and then I have to come to Beverly Hills. . . ."
by CNB