SAN JOSE, Calif. — SAN JOSE, Calif. - For more than a decade, Dana Carvey, the man who saved Saturday Night Live, the guy who was tagged to become the next great talk-show host, has cruised like a stealth bomber.
The man responsible for the Church Lady, Garth Algar and skewed impersonations that come off like a frantic Rich Little on peyote moved away from Hollywood to Marin County, Calif., to manifest what is often dismissed as the entertainment industry's most disingenuous excuse: He wanted to spend time with his family.
Children grow up, as Carvey, 53, has witnessed. Now that his two sons are teenagers establishing their very teenage independence, Carvey's time has been freed up for him to tape an acclaimed HBO special (Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies).
Shot in Santa Rosa, and shaped in a Mill Valley theater, the special is out on DVD, he says.
Carvey fans can't help but wonder what happened to the comic who was regarded as one of the funniest men in America in the 1990s. Just as he seemed poised to follow the likes of SNL alums Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy to film stardom, it was Mike Myers, his Wayne's World co-star, whose career skyrocketed. Carvey's movies misfired both critically and commercially. After the failure of 1996's sketch comedy-centric The Dana Carvey Show - which featured the likes of Steve Carell and Steve Colbert - Carvey and wife, Paula, moved the family from Los Angeles to Marin County to adopt a more suburban life.
"Once the kids came, I kind of semi-retired," Carvey says by phone from a hotel room in Los Angeles where he is working on the early stages of a coming movie comedy for Paramount. "That was really the choice that I made."
Carvey described the oft-repeated scenario of the Hollywood dad who, in the autumn of his career, writes the reflective autobiography laden with regret over how he never spent time with his children.
"They always apologize later," Carvey says. "I really didn't want to be one of those guys."
The San Carlos native's track record is notable for a show-salvaging role on Saturday Night Live that in 1986 made him a star and revived the then-foundering program. He scored a monster hit, the Wayne's World movie in 1992. After David Letterman left NBC's Late Night for CBS, Carvey turned down the offer to fill a vacancy that his friend Conan O'Brien eventually filled.
