Dana Carvey

Stand-up comedian and comedy actor.

He started his acting career with a few small movies, including a Halloween film and This Is Spinal Tap.

Dana Carvey was with Saturday Night Live during its second Golden Age (1986-1993) after Lorne Michaels returned and his plans on making celebrities his new "Not Ready For Primetime" cast (the 1985-1986 season) fell through and nearly got the show cancelled, resulting in the cast overhaul that would bring the show back from the dead. Carvey's characters on SNL included the Church Lady ("Isn't that special?"), Garth of Wayne's World, President George H. W. Bush ("Wouldn't be prudent"), and numerous other celebrity impersonations.

After he left SNL, he starred in both Wayne's World films and The Master of Disguise with Jennifer Esposito. In 1996, he hosted The Dana Carvey Show, a Variety Show which was critically liked but proved too out-there for network TV (it aired on ABC in America). It also had among it's writing staff future comedy stars Louis CK, Steve Carell, and Stephen Colbert. He also appeared in the film Little Nicky with SNL castmate Adam Sandler.

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His impersonations and their tropes:

• George H. W. Bush: Carvey was sort of like the Trope Codifier for other impersonators with its Cloudcuckoolander. This also ended up being a big case of the Impersonation Paradox.
  • He's impersonated almost every presidential candidate from the past thirty years. Of the ones in that video, his George HW Bush and Ross Perot were used on SNL.
• "A Grumpy Old Man": A... well.. Grumpy Old Man who reminisced about A Good Old-Fashioned Paint-Watching and When I Was Your Age with the tag line "...and we liked it!"
• Lyle The Effeminate Heterosexual: essentially a highly Justified Mistaken for Gay.
• The Church Lady: a takeoff on fundamentalist Christians -- she runs a talk show -- that was quite successful despite (or because of) invocations of Poe's Law. She also drums.
• Hans of "Hans and Franz" ("Ve vant to pump you up!")

His works include:

• Halloween II (first film, probably)
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Saturday Night Live (from which many of his characters come)
• Wayne's World (a recurring skit on SNL and two movies -- he played Garth)
• The Dana Carvey Show
  • The Eponymous Show
  • Trope Co Trope of the Week: parodied by having a different sponsor each week with their name forced in as an homage to the shows of old e.g. The Taco Bell Dana Carvey Show.
• The Master of Disguise
  • Shockingly enough, Master of Disguise, clearly trying to take advantage of Carvey's loads and loads of impersonations.
• Little Nicky