Q 13

PLAYBOY: A manufacturer gave you athletic shoes. Are you considering a product endorsement?

Dana Carvey: They sent me some shoes to pump it up. But Hans and Franz wear Austrian-army-issue boots from 1954. Those are the only shoes they'll wear, and they weigh seventeen pounds apiece. They think that Air Jordans and all those other shoes are for [in accent] looser girly men. A looser girly man is like a man, but he's a little looser. His buttocks are like marshmallows. He should thank his lucky stars there's not a campfire around, because I'll roast his marshmallows as sure as I am Hans.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: Was it tough growing up as a boy named Dana?

Dana Carvey: Everyone said, "I know a girl named Dana." And I used to say, "What about Dana Andrews?" But no one had ever heard of him. That was when I was eight years old. So for about two weeks, I went by the name Tom. Tom Carvey. Then I got a telegram from the nine-year-old Tom Hanks that said he was going to be a movie star and that I might want to switch back to Dana. So I switched back. I like it now. But Dana Delany bugs me, because for a while, I was the only working Dana I knew of. She's a lot more famous than I am, so I'm a kind of secondary Dana. Maybe we'll star in a movie someday It could be called The Two Danas.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: You've admitted to never dating in high school. Are you now living the revenge of the nerd?

Dana Carvey: I didn't feel like one, but looking back, I surely was one. If you're a nerd, you don't know it. I hope I still am a nerd in a way, or a geek. There's nothing more uncool than someone trying hard to be cool, so it's probably good to keep some nerdiness about you. Wear it on your sleeve proudly. I have a weirder side to me than what I present. It will come out someday. When Steve Martin saw me doing Church Lady, he commented to Lorne Michaels, "What kind of a mind comes up with something like that?"

Q 16

PLAYBOY: Did little Dana Carvey have an attitude problem in school?

Dana Carvey: I never had an attitude. But my characters do have heavy attitudes. I use the term attitude because I have to call what I do something. I don't really tell jokes. I don't sit down with a yellow pad and think, Hmmm, a woman in a dress. Isn't that special? You plug into any source: another person, a picture or a movie. It gels in your mind and then comes out later. I was on stage in a comedy club and just started talking about those teachers in grade school who were very condescending. The first time I did the Church Lady, it was about making a paper sailboat in class and about how hers always looked perfect and she'd say, "Looks like mine is just a little bit superior to yours. Now, isn't that special?" The superior dance is a product of my sense of humor. It's an "I'm better than you" strut. Church ladies are real competitive. My mom would always be made to feel bad, because she'd go to the church potluck dinner and take a bowl of Fritos and a church lady would take a sixty-quart turkey casserole and be real self-righteous: "I brought a sixty-quart turkey casserole that could feed the Lord's congregation."

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Do you think you'll perform at the White House during the Bush Administration?

Dana Carvey: Bush really makes me laugh. With him, the line between character and impression is blurred. When I do him, it's both. I like to abstract things and really get down to the essence. That's the fun and interesting part. There's a shortness of breath in the Bush character. Whether he laughs the way I make him laugh isn't important to me; it's an abstraction of his attitude. Even if he doesn't laugh like that, he wants to laugh like that. He's gloating. He loves to be President so much and he loves politics and he's just the guy at the barbecue flipping the hamburgers, talking in that offhanded kind of way. Geez. I'd like to be President right now. The Cold War has ended. The whole Communist bloc is falling apart. It's not as if Bush is instigating these things. Historical events have conspired and it's right in George's lap. And he's really great at summation: "Before Bush, Berlin Wall; with Bush, no wall. Not trying to take credit. Not saying I'm an Abe Lincoln up here." I don't know what's going to happen, but it's a great time to be President.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: If Jimmy Stewart didn't exist, would you have invented him?

Dana Carvey: Jimmy Stewart is such a wonderful attitude to play. His rhythm. His gentleness. One of the favorite things I've done is appear as Stewart reading his poems on Mike Myers' Sprockets sketch. The writers came up with the basic idea of taking this all-American guy and giving him this sordid past: "I woke up in a puddle of my own sick after I'd been drinking some cheap crap called cho cho." I laughed so hard when I heard the idea. I thought it was a great way to use the character and there was a lot of detail in the sketch. The character was imbued that night; I was Jimmy Stewart. It didn't get huge laughs in the studio and I wasn't sure after I finished it. Maybe people were thrown by it and enjoyed it later. I've gotten letters. I have it on tape and play it for friends when I really want to laugh.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: You starred in Opportunity Knocks and you're currently filming Beverly Hills Ninja. How disappointed will you be if your films appear in video stores before completing a decent theatrical run?

Dana Carvey: I was hoping my first film would open on video tape. Or, better yet, as a video game. Opportunity Knocks would make a great video game. I'm just an entry-level movie star. Seeing myself on a movie poster was creepy. There's a certain glossiness, a surreal, Stepford-wife quality. Where are the pores? Where are the blemishes? I think it's neat when the they get defaced in a crude way I like that.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: A thousand points of light are shining out there. What cause have you adopted?

Dana Carvey: The only thing I would have gotten out on the streets about was the Moral Majority. They were starting to really piss me off. But I had the Church Lady to counter them. Be nice to your neighbors, try to recycle products and don't wear fur and you're pretty good with me. And don't talk when you're near me in a movie theater, because when I'm at the movies, I'm in church.