Dana Carvey left Saturday Night Live more than 20 years ago, but it seems like it was only yesterday that he was creating a repertoire of impersonations that included the Church Lady and Austrian bodybuilder Hans. He found his favorite role when he became a father to sons Dex and Thomas. Carvey, who plays the Orleans Showroom March 13-14, talked to Las Vegas Magazine’s Matt Kelemen about his influences, a hit that might have been and what to expect at his show.

We’re still fresh off the 40th anniversary show of Saturday Night Live. What was it like being a cast member participating in that production?

It was cool just seeing everybody and doing a couple of things, watching the show and seeing Bill Murray sing over there, Martin Short dancing. It was overwhelming, really. So many people that I hadn’t seen in so many years, and then there were so many celebrities there. You’re saying “Bradley Cooper, please just chill for a second. I gotta talk to Edward Norton. DiCaprio, please!”

The impression I got was that it was like 10 high school reunions happening at once. I had a feeling there was this collective, unspoken sentimentality among former cast members that could probably be felt but not described.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely sentimental. I hadn’t seen Nora Dunn in years, running into Marci Klein and the crew people, writers and producers. And you only have a few seconds with them and you haven’t seen them in 10, 15, 20 years.

Did you rehearse much for the Wayne and Garth sketch?

Didn’t have much time. We didn’t actually know if Kanye was going to make it until a few minutes before.

That was lucky how the show came right after the Grammys. It wouldn’t have been the same without brining Kanye into it.

Well, it’s something funny, two nerds acting macho from the stage. “Don’t storm the stage,” yelling at Kanye. He was totally in on it, and just said afterwards, “Man, that was really funny.” We just put a thing on the cards that said, “Dana and Mike ad lib” during some of those sections. We didn’t know how long it would go. We didn’t have much rehearsal, so we didn’t know the camera was going back and forth. Maybe they missed a couple of reaction shots; not their fault. We weren’t sure how long we could go and still be funny. Like, “Stop!”

I think you got the right balance.

Yeah, we kept it going for seven minutes, but we did ad lib a lot.

One thing about this special is that it brought out an appreciation for Lorne Michaels in the media, or at least people doing some retrospect that kind of brought him to the forefront more than in the usual Saturday Night Live overview stories. How was it like for you working with him as a performer? When you were done with Saturday Night Live did you feel like a very separate person from the Dana Carvey who auditioned?

Nobody goes seven years in there who isn’t changed a lot. It’s not just Lorne, it’s what he attracts. He attracts other very smart people because they want to work for a really smart person. So there’s all these Harvard guys in there, and Lorne in there, whip smart, and they really know comedy, and you just learn the different ways to do it, and lowbrow and highbrow at the same time, all these different things. Yeah, it’s a life-changing thing. You’re just under-rehearsed, under-prepared and exhausted—now go. Out you go! But you know, Lorne’s been with SNL for 40 years, and you have to give it up to him at this point. He’s the architect. He’s the CEO. He’s the guy that just puts his heart and soul into it and helps all the pieces get to where they need to get. It was, I think, a tribute to Lorne as much as the show. He’s still there breaking young talent on that thing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that it’s been 40 years.

Watching your audition video, Lorne Michaels is there unseen, and you can kind of see it in your face a little bit, like “I’m trying out for Lorne Michaels.”

Well, you play to silence, see if you can take the pressure. And it’s incredibly nerve-wracking on everybody.

When you did that, you had no idea your audition would be archived on YouTube. Did you ever think that it could be something people could watch in the future?

No, I didn’t see the future, but neither did Star Trek. I didn’t know this would happen. It’s changed show business and everything else so dramatically that I can’t wrap my mind around it. It changed the rules. Everything’s different now.

I just learned about your brother Brad influencing the Garth character.

Yeah, I did it in my stand-up, just didn’t have a name for it. When Mike Myers asked me to do Garth I needed a specific thing. I just didn’t want to do a generic kind of dude, you know? So I wanted to make it specific and it hit me: I could use Brad. He’d kind of melt into the sort of “what’s up?” dude. It became a weird rhythm and it just worked, what can I say? I’ve already booked our next one. When I turn 70 we’re going to do it again.

Wayne’s World 5, on Netflix or something.

We’ll just keep doing these little things, probably.

I think you hinted at the pre-Garth character during your audition for SNL, or you introduced on some show how Brad became Garth. You mentioned fixing a clothes dryer with a butter knife.

Yeah, that was Brad. That was absolutely Brad. Yeah, yeah, and it was just a character … to me it was almost no lying, because if Brad became really famous it would have been my impression, but since he’s not famous its my character. It’s like, where’s the source element and what are they doing? So there’s no lying there, but yeah, my siblings would laugh because they knew Brad (affects quiet Garth-like voice) does kind of talk like that. “Hi Matt, I did some things with a butter knife.” I mean, he literally does talk like that.

How did that strike him as that character became iconic? Was that hard for him to take?

No, no. It was very cool. At the time he was developing the prototype for [hardware/software system] Video Toaster. In the second movie, which wasn’t as big as the first one, I had a Video Toaster T-shirt on because Garth could interchange T-shirts. So cross promotion pre-media, pre-social web.

He must have gotten so much juice out of that.

He won an Emmy around the same time that I did. He was doing fine, you know? He’s done very well. Trippy, huh?

He won an Emmy for Video Toaster?

Yeah, technical thing. Something technical. I could have him call you (laughs).

No, that’s ok. It’s probably on IMDB then.

Yeah, yeah. It’s somewhere.

What were you working on? You said you were doing some video and sound editing?

Just a short film. A short film I was working on, character that I’m doing. More of a filmic thing than a YouTube video thing, with a very nice Canon camera and some close miking. Just playing around with it, really fun. It’s infinite television, you know? Louie’s on Amazon. … And then have you ever heard of the Yours and Mine network?

No.

I just made it up. It’s getting to that point. Eugene Levy is on Pop Network, him and Catherine O’Hara’s new show [Schitt’s Creek].

So do you see space for you on television, on a niche network? Is that what you’re saying?

I’d say it’s safe for anyone, really. You too. Well, obviously you could make a YouTube channel and put feature films on it that you made, but you’re right. It’s extraordinary. Things are getting made that would have never gotten made. There wasn’t the technology at that stage. Have you seen Bosch? That’s a new series from Amazon.

No, I have not.

It’s going faster every day, where it doesn’t really matter. Except for professional football. … There’s still 30, 40 million people who watch that stuff. Amazing.

It’s hard to keep up. And yeah, that’s funny because I think the last Super Bowl was the highest-rated program ever. More people watched that than any other show in history, from what I understand. I also saw something from a Louis C.K. interview. It’s just become so apparent that if you had done The Dana Carvey Show [Carvey’s 1996 primetime sketch comedy series that launched the careers of Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert] on FX 10 years later, it probably would have had the same cult effect at Wilfred or Louie.

Well, yeah. It was a tough fit for ABC. They really wanted us on ABC, but they didn’t really dig into who I was. They thought it’d be more cute. But it was fine. I mean, and people liked it. It belonged on HBO or Showtime at the time, or Comedy Central if it had been really up and running. Or FX, but you know, sketch is really expensive. Fully produced sketch is really expensive. It doesn’t exist anywhere else except SNL, essentially. Essentially it does not exist except on SNL.

It’s funny, watching clips from that show—and this isn’t entirely an accurate description—but it reminded me of how people say all 100 people that initially bought the first Velvet Underground album started their own bands. It’s pretty wild to see the coalescence of talent at that time, and to look in hindsight at what came later.

Yeah, it’s been Louie in the last few years, but first it was Carell, then it was Colbert. Well, first it was [Academy Award-winning screenwriter] Charlie Kaufman, then it was Carell and then it was Colbert. Now it’s Louie. Based on the present trajectory I guess Bill Chott will be next, and Heather Morgan. They were two other cast members, very talented. It wouldn’t surprise me. All my children do well. I think of Louie, Carell, Colbert, as sons of mine (laughs).

I think Robert Smigel [Carvey Show writer-performer, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog creator] said something like, “My whole career came out of the impulse to do cartoons on The Dana Carvey Show.”

Well yeah, Robert is brilliant and he’s my partner. He is the most brilliant sketch writer I’ve ever worked with. When he showed me the schematics of The Ambiguously Gay Duo, I said, “Let’s make a hundred of them,” because I saw it was so funny. That’s how Carell and Colbert, they were just around that day doing a shoot, so they did the voices on it. And then on SNL, they did the voices when Ambiguously Gay Duo moved over there. Yeah, little bits of history that no one cares about, thanks for asking.

It’s pretty well known that you really preferred to be a father and devote most of your time to your family. Do you look at people that kept feeling like they always had to take their career to the next level and go, “I’m glad I didn’t take that path”?

No, I really never thought of it that way. I did take about 15 years where I just did stand-up. I could take Christmas off, and summers off. But other people could do movies back to back and have a perfectly great family. I think it’s just an individual choice, and it just sort of happens spontaneously. I could make more in stand-up that I could in anything else, and that’s where it became really pleasant for a father to be able to … Jon Stewart, I assume—I don’t know Jon, I haven’t spoken to him—I assume now his kids are at that formative age, and he will probably do stand-up and probably do very well, do a special or two. When you do that you can completely control your schedule around your children, so it’s a nice thing to do.

Now, I live back in L.A., and I’m doing all kinds of stuff and it’s really fun. I’m doing a couple of features and some animation, doing some short films. There’s just a lot of show business to do that’s really exciting. I find myself on the web, on Amazon or Netflix more than anything else now, and I’m watching shows that I never would have thought existed. Everybody’s different. Everybody’s different about the way they sort of try to balance their lives. My kids are grown up and they’re doing stand-up now. They’re doing acting and Groundlings. One of them’s in this film I’m editing. Now I’m just full-bore doing stuff with them again.

I read that sometimes you bring them on stage. Would you possibly be doing that in Vegas?

Oh yeah, they’re potentially opening in Vegas. Vegas is a tough place to do stand-up. Like Jay Leno said, “Ten minutes at a club in L.A. is like three minutes in Vegas.” It can be tough. It’s not always tough, but you know, if they’ve been by the pool that day, or they’ve had a few cocktails and they’re ready to go play blackjack … but the room that I play there is kind of the best current room, I think, to do stand-up in. That’s why I’ve kept playing there, because I couldn’t find another room. I like The Mirage, but I was going on after other shows, so I just can’t … I don’t like starting the set at 11. I’m pretty much a morning person.

I’ve never had feedback about performing at the Orleans [Showroom] before. This is the first time I’ve heard from a comedian how it works as a stand-up room.

It’s a little wide, but it’s not too deep. The ultimate was the old Desert Inn room, which was 650 seats, low ceilings, I don’t know how far you go back, Matt, but that went away when the Wynn came in. That was really … you could shoot a special in there, and I was at the Paris for a while, The Mirage. They’re all perfectly fine, a little more cave-like. At least the Orleans—which I saw the Smothers Brothers in there—it’s kind of a shallow room, and it seats 850 instead of trying to do 1,600. Different sport.

I saw a couple of specials from the past, one was from mid-’90s and one was from 2008. How much do you evolve your stand-up material? Do you do a gradual turnover, or do you get to a certain point and conceive of a whole different kind of show?

If I’m playing in Vegas it’s kind of a different show—or if I’m playing a corporate date—than what I’m doing now. I’ll shoot a new special by the end of the year and then I’ll just sort of play smaller theaters probably. It’s completely evolved, completely different, but you can’t … the stuff that I’m doing now with the brand that I have and what people expect, I can’t do too much of it except in a showcase room in L.A. But I’ve never done that much stand-up. I’ve never been a 300-night-a-year dude. It takes too much out of me, but I’m into it now, it’s really fun. If I can do what I want, it’s really, really fun.

When you bring up the old characters, is it fairly effortless for you, or do you sometimes feel like the big band that has to play their hits from 1991 or something? Do you make a correlation between the two or is it always enjoyable?

No, not at all. It’s flattering to have those hits. People go crazy. Musicians can do a love song from the 1960s when they’re in their seventies. My stuff, I try to make it current. I could update political stuff. How would Reagan deal with ISIS? It’s funny to me, because Reagan would never foreshadow what he did. He’d bomb the shit out of something and then he’d come on and say, (affects Ronald Reagan voice) “Guess what I did? Don’t tell Mommy!” I just toss those things off.

Do your kids help you contemporize the characters a little bit? Will they give you feedback? “I don’t relate to this, Dad.”

We don’t really talk about it or think about those things very much. I’m doing stuff about pharmaceutical companies or social modality of a pharmacy, or stuff about global geopolitics, stuff about sort of the infiltration of American culture into certain Southeast Asian countries. The stuff I’m doing is so different, but I don’t mind doing Wayne’s World if they want me to do it. It’s fine, it’s just a character I do.

I think you’re the first comedian I’ve interviewed that makes impressions part of your act, outside of ventriloquists. Do you see yourself as the last of the great impressionists, or do you see people coming up in clubs that I don’t see?

No, no. Eddie Murphy, he didn’t do Cosby [on SNL’s 40th anniversary show], but he does a great Cosby and a great Stevie Wonder. Jim Carrey does so many great impressions. Billy Crystal, remember his Muhammad Ali? For me, I’m just all like … people go, “Wow, you’re an impressionist!” and I go, “Well, mostly on SNL I was known for characters, Garth or Church Lady. It’s a fun tool to have, but I don’t consider myself at the level or Rich Little or Frank Caliendo, who’s a friend of mine.

I wouldn’t call you an impressionist, singularly—although you bring a lot of impressions—like I wouldn’t consider Robin Williams an impressionist, but that was a major part of his …

But he would do … yeah, yeah. I just figure it’s something in the toolbox that you can throw out when you need it when you want to express something. Like I hadn’t done Jimmy Stewart in 20 years, but young people know him. He’s the last of the old actors that people know because of It’s a Wonderful Life. I brought him out for a while to explain the banking crisis in ’08-’09, because he was the best voice to express what happened.

I think a lot of people know Jimmy Stewart through you. I think that’s a collateral effect of bringing him along: You help him stay remembered. It’s such a great distinctive American voice. Even if Gen-Y kids don’t really know who you’re doing, they know the voice.

I had this young kid come up to me, “Hey, you did the It’s a Wonderful Life guy tonight!”

Yeah, I saw [Carvey’s YouTube comedy clips made with son Dex] Funster.

Which episode?

I saw all four. They’re pretty short. How did that come about?

Well, we just put on teeth and a hat, and Dex’s cousin and he, we just started shooting and playing around with it. This new film I’m editing is more like film production. There, we just had a camera and we just started improvising.

We’re not going to see what you’re working on now on YouTube. It’s going to be a little more …

Well, we’ll just see. The production’s way beyond what those were, yeah. It’s just so much fun. I assume everybody else is making films because we all can. Just get Premiere Pro, get a Canon.

Oh, it’s fun. I’ve made 10-minute art documentaries and it’s a lot of fun, although when you realize the whole world is doing it, it takes something away from it. When you were coming along, to get into show business it took a lot of work, and when you made it you made it. It was a lot harder to bluff your way into a position like that. At the same time it’s very gratifying when you get through editing and you get something done, and you’re like, “Wow, that came off really good.”

Yeah, everyone can do it now, so I know what you mean. You just feel like no one will ever see it, but you have to do it for yourself. When I was doing SNL, cable hadn’t yet blanketed the country. But it just lives on the web and you just sort of go, and you meet people and you don’t have enough time to see all their movies or TV shows. My wife got to meet all these comedians. She hadn’t seen anything they’ve done. She’s just a normal person who watches Downton Abbey, so I just introduce her to Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler and she just thinks they’re nice young women (laughs). “And I know I’ve never seen them do anything.” So the next day I started showing her: “Here’s Amy doing this. Here’s Maya Rudolph doing this. Here’s Fred Armisen.” She didn’t know Bill Hader, never seen him. I show her Stefon. She’s like, “They’re such nice people. Its nice to see what they also do.”

It’s nice that she can see it that way. She’s seeing them as real people.

Yeah, it’s extraordinary.

Does your new work star any citrus characters like Mr. Orange? [Carvey created a photo series on Instagram featuring pieces of fruit with faces drawn on them.] It looked like you got obsessed with that.

Well, I am, and the New York thing kind of threw me but I will be completing the Mr. Orange series. I know exactly how it ends. It’s all kind of embedded in there. I like science fiction. There’s sort of a Twilight Zone/science fiction element to it, so I would predict that final episode will be up before the end of the weekend. I don’t know, it’s infinite creativity. My head’s going to explode. It’s the kind of stuff I’d do in high school with my brother. I had a camcorder, a Betamax with a 10-pound battery, and we were making short crazy sh*t. There was no YouTube, so it’s kind of full circle in a way.

I just interview Bill Maher Tuesday, and he was telling me when he was a kid he would transcribe Robert Klein, and I think his parents let him set up this Rupert Pupkin-type situation in his basement where he could perform for an imaginary audience. Did you follow that kind of route, like doing it with the camera?

Yeah, talent shows with the family. No cameras, we weren’t rich. To get a Super-8 camera meant you were rich, but I did get a little tiny cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder. I got ahold of one of those by the time I was 10, and I would tape Jonathan Winters and Rich Little off the television and practice in my room. Did a lot of talent shows with that big family, five kids. Was really into The Beatles and music too, but I just didn’t have the talent. I would much rather have been a musician.

You know what’s kind of cool, Matt? When I was in New York, Paul McCartney was in the front row, and he’s such a super-friendly guy, and I’m about to do “Chopping Broccoli.” I play the piano from “For No One” off the Revolver album, and Jimmy Fallon stood up and goes “I know what you’re doing!” I looked over and Paul McCartney and he nodded [Liverpudlian accent], “Hey, doobadie doo!” Paul McCartney gave me a neck massage during the goodnight. “You seem a bit tight, Dana!”

Are you serious?

Oh, yeah. I go, “Hmm, who’s giving me a neck massage?” I thought it was maybe Billy Crystal, but nope! Paul.

The Orleans, 8 p.m. March 13-14, starting at $54.95 plus tax and fee. 702.284.7777