CARVEY'S BIG LEAP ON SMALL SCREEN.

Byline: PHIL ROSENTHAL 

"In movies, I noticed ... I was really giant on the screen, and on TV, I'm really small," comedian Dana Carvey observed. He may have been joking. He was definitely wrong.

Carvey on film is mostly a footnote, a smudge, an embarrassment. His only remotely successful leading movie role to date has been a reprise of his "Saturday Night Live" character Garth in the "Wayne's World" films, for it has been on television, and specifically "SNL," where Carvey has loomed large.

He's so big on TV, in fact, that apparently he can get a show on the air with just his name and reputation.

That's how Carvey, 40, wound up with a New York-based, prime-time sketch comedy show on ABC this spring, and how he wound up talking to reporters last week in a Pasadena hotel ballroom, claiming to have no clue what his program will be about.

"You want this to be short and cute? Nice and tidy?" Carvey said. "Half-hour of fun, on sometime in March. See you next year. That's all we got, boys."

Carvey said his half-hour show - provisionally called "The Dana Carvey Show" - should be "wacky and silly ... fast-paced, kind of wicked and a little mean sometimes."

"It's hard to talk about sensibility, but that's the only thing that could define this show," Carvey said, as if that explained anything. "I mean, you'll see when it airs. ... It's just going to have a peculiar sort of sensibility."

In a network press release, Carvey suggested it would be "part 'Saturday Night Live,' part 'Monty Python,' part 'Kids in the Hall,' part '60 Minutes,' with just a touch of 'Kirk.' "

Executive producer Robert Smigel, an alumnus of "SNL" and "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," was a little more helpful. "Monty Python obviously was brilliant at taking an idea as far as it needed to go, and then segueing off into another direction," he said. "I'd like to be able to do some of that on this show."

Now, Carvey is funny and likable. He's the kind of guy you want to succeed, even if he did feel it necessary to bail out of Encino and raise his two young sons on the East Coast.

But sketch shows have a spotty prime-time record of late. And if there is a sign of imminent failure in television, it is when the star can't explain what his new show will be about - not that being able to say, "We're just like 'Friends,' " is such a wonderful thing.

So, Carvey, who had a failed sitcom and a failed drama before his 1986-93 run on "SNL," treated his news conference as if it were a studio pitch-meeting, figuring that might convince folks to tune in come March.

He did his Ross Perot, his Casey Kasem, Jimmy Stewart, John F. Kennedy, George Bush, Mickey Rooney, Kirk Douglas, Johnnie Cochran, Burt Lancaster, Mickey Rooney and even his Bill Clinton.

"The truth is, Dana knows what the show will be," ABC Entertainment president Ted Harbert insisted later. "I frankly think that you know what the show will be. It's a sketch show and they're going to do weird little films and weird little bits."

Carvey, meanwhile, contemplated another interview session at some point down the road. " 'Why do you think you were canceled?' " he mused. " 'Well, uh, we didn't define it, and we had no direction and the time slot sucked.' "

He was joking. But he also might be right.