Dana Carvey is no stranger to meeting the men he has lampooned on “SNL” and in his stand-up act, but so far, he’s just missed running into Joe Biden. It turns out the 46th president is a frequent visitor to Carvey’s hometown in the Santa Ynez Valley.
“Hunter Biden lives around the corner, so he’s up here all the time,” Carvey says. “There’s this little market up here, and they said you just missed Joe Biden. He opened the freezer door and he went, ‘Where’s the pay phone?’ which was shocking to me. I’m joking, I’m joking.”
Carvey has made a living zeroing in on the tics and quirks of famous men like Biden and George H.W. Bush, a staid Washington insider who he turned into a WASP-y bebop artist (“not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent”) during his time on “SNL.” The late president took it in stride.
“We became friends for a long time and he would call me at home out of the blue,” Carvey says, before slipping into his familiar impression. “George Bush here. What’s going on? I’m on with Bar.’”
When he was playing Biden, Carvey’s voice was reedier than Bush, but the verbal detours were just as jarring and non-sequitur fueled (“I’m being serious. Folks, you know. By the way. The fact of the matter is”).
“I try to foster a sense that I kind of like the guy I’m doing,” Carvey says. “For Biden, I had to thread the needle and find the way to have it not be cruel, but funny.”
That wasn’t a concern for Alec Baldwin, who memorably played Donald Trump as a prune-faced, preening bully on “SNL” and who has joined Carvey on Zoom to discuss “Playing POTUS,” a new documentary about how comedians parody our nation’s leaders that debuted at the Tribeca Festival.
“Trump was somebody who I just thought we’re going to make him as two-dimensional as he deserves,” Baldwin says. “He’s not that interesting. Someone was reviewing people’s Trump impersonations, past and present, and they said that Alec Baldwin was a mean and nasty Trump, and I’m like, great, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to play Trump as just a horrible person.”
Like Carvey, Baldwin knew the man he was sending up, though their paths crossed before Trump entered politics.
“I’ve lived in New York my whole adult life and Trump was the guy with a tuxedo in the glove compartment,” Baldwin says. “He’d be on the red carpet. He’d take the photos. Then he’d leave. At events, he’d never go and sit at a table so you could talk and get to know him. He was never one of the five families of Manhattan real estate developers. They didn’t want him to hang with him, but they did business with him, because his money was green.”
“Playing POTUS” argues that making fun of presidents is a linchpin of a free society. But it’s a freedom that director Josh Greenbaum notes is under attack, citing the recent cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late night show and the efforts to push Jimmy Kimmel off the air.
“Mocking the most powerful person in the world is a sign of a healthy democracy,” Greenbaum says. “It’s like sharks in the ocean. If the sharks are swimming around, the ecosystem is probably okay. If the sharks start disappearing, something’s wrong. Regardless of what side of the political aisle you fall on, we should all agree that impressions are one of our most important ways of speaking truth to power.”
To make his film, Greenbaum interviewed some of the greatest impressionists in the business, a group that includes Chevy Chase, who portrayed Gerald Ford as a bumbling gaffe machine; Maya Rudolph, who captured Kamala Harris’ cool aunt energy; and Will Ferrell, who thinks his portrayal of George W. Bush as a fun-loving bro may have helped tip the 2000 presidential election. In many cases, they not only channelled the core of these political figures, they helped shape popular perceptions.
“Their portrayals of them wound up taking a hold in the culture in a way that overpowered the politicians themselves,” Greenbaum says. “If I’m being honest, if I close my eyes and I picture George H.W. Bush, it’s Dana Carvey that I see. I have a blurrier picture of the first Bush president than I do of that ‘SNL’ impression.”
But figuring out the picture you want to paint requires time and study. Carvey admits it took 20 times on “SNL” to nail Bush, while Baldwin says he studied footage of Trump with the sound off to figure out how to capture his hand gestures and heavy gait.
“For me the person who came to mind was Lee J. Cobb in ‘On the Waterfront,’” Baldwin says. “Just this bully, this horrible, horrible, horrible thug.”
“He reminds me of Brando and Regis Philbin,” Carvey says, before sliding into his Trump impression. “He never runs out of the words. He’ll just keep going. He always sounds like he’s pitching a family vacation. ‘We’re going to go places like he wouldn’t believe. Many people say we can’t go, but we’re going to go anyway, because we know how to do it, and we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna go.’”
“He’s like Judy Garland — a master of breath control,” Baldwin interjects.
Trump clearly was not amused by Baldwin’s take, getting into Twitter spats with the actor and calling his impression “agony” to watch while slamming his career as “mediocre.” The blowback could be intense, but Baldwin says that comedians will also satirize the people in charge whether they’re in on the joke or not.
“In America, we’re going to mock the powers that be,” Baldwin says. “What I’ve found in show business is the only person you can’t mock is the head of the studio. It’s like with Letterman when he was taunting [former CBS chief] Les Moonves, eventually somebody made a call, and said okay, enough of that. If you make fun of the head of the studio, your career is over.”
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