MELLOW TIM MEADOWS HE'S LEFT N.Y. FOR L.A., GAINED STARDOM AND WILL SOON BECOME A DAD - BUT COMEDIAN TAKES IT ALL IN STRIDE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

It's a time of big changes for Tim Meadows.

The nine-season ``Saturday Night Live'' veteran's first movie-starring effort, based on his ``SNL'' character ``The Ladies Man,'' opened Friday.

He's left both New York and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players for L.A. and, well, prime time, where he's a regular on NBC's new ``The Michael Richards Show,'' premiering Oct. 24.

And that's just the initial round of adjustments. Meadows and his wife, Michelle, are expecting their first child around Christmastime.

Known for his unusually easygoing and sweet nature in a field - professional comedy - that is often a hotbed of anger and competitiveness, Detroit native Meadows is naturally a little uncomfortable with all the big changes in his life. But even his recent transplant complaints about L.A. - they boil down to the weather's being disorientingly good, and if you've got to be here, may as well live close to the beach, which he does - are about as softball as an Easterner's can possibly get.

Meadows' engaging pleasantness is, at least partially, the result of a life and career that have developed at an agreeable, satisfying pace. And it's also what makes his potentially offensive ``Ladies Man'' caricature more charmer than alarmer.

``I went from studying improv in Detroit to Second City in Chicago to 'SNL' and, now, this sitcom some writers I'd known in New York offered me,'' notes Meadows, sporting well-coifed dreadlocks in place of his ``Ladies'' afro (a wig, he explains). ``Basically, I've been really lucky. I was a fan of this kind of humor growing up, so it's been like a dream come true. I literally have gone with the flow of my career all my life.''

An appropriately '70s turn of phrase, that, for a conversation about Leon Phelps, the radio love adviser who's stuck in a disco-era time warp of bell bottoms, wide lapels and freaky, multiple-partner sex.

The embarrassingly upfront Leon the Ladies Man, a fairly recent addition to Meadows' ``SNL'' repertoire, actually began as a private thing.

``I'd make crank phone calls using this voice,'' Meadows, 39, says of Leon's distinctive, unaccountably seductive lisp. ``I'd call radio stations and order food with it, mainly to entertain my wife. She suggested that I do it on the show, but I didn't want to because it was this one little, private, secret character that I had.

``But I told some of the writers (Andrew Steele and Dennis McNicholas, who also co-wrote the movie's screenplay with Meadows) about the voice, and they came up with the idea of the Ladies Man, this guy who gives out sex advice to people with love questions. And as we developed the character more, I realized that I could draw on these guys who I knew in Detroit in the late '70s; they weren't rich dudes, worked in meatpacking plants and the like, but they bought custom-made clothes, drove nice cars and women liked 'em. We figured that Leon's best year was 1979; his hair, his clothes, everything worked perfect then, and he just decided to keep it going that way.''

Of course, in our more conservative times, a serial lover like Leon could be considered offensive, if not downright buffoonish. And in the wake of ``Bamboozled,'' Spike Lee's cinematic assault on media stereotypes of African-Americans, the idea of an oversexed black man (especially one being chased, as Leon is in the movie, by a mob of angry, mostly white husbands) could be considered regressive.

Meadows, not surprisingly, sees things differently.

``Leon's not a negative caricature of black people,'' he says. ``He doesn't kowtow to anybody, he's not afraid of anybody, he says what he thinks, he's very independent. And besides, I didn't invent the afro; it was invented by my family and the Jackson Five, and it's an image that's always going to be here. As a writer, all I can say is that artists can't be limited by what Spike Lee or anyone says they should or shouldn't do.''

Karyn Parsons, the ``Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'' alumna who plays Leon's partner in broadcast bad taste in the film, adds that the fundamental decency Meadows exudes undercuts any basis for animosity.

``Tim is really sweet and gentle - and he doesn't walk around being the Ladies Man all the time, which is nice,'' she says with a chuckle. ``He's just a very easygoing guy, very nice.''

Not that Meadows doesn't appreciate a little creative tension. He compares working on the sitcom to the fast-paced, live-broadcast ``SNL'' as, essentially, the difference between the L.A. and New York way of doing things.

``I went back to do Weekend Update on 'SNL' a week ago, and the thing I noticed is that the performance energy level is different,'' he explains. ``On 'Saturday Night Live,' you know America is seeing it right now, so you are so focused and energized, it's like a heightened performance. You're still performing in front of a studio audience in a sitcom, but you can do multiple takes, so it's a more relaxed atmosphere. It's like, 'We're gonna put on a show for you, but it's no pressure. Enjoy it, leave if you want, come back; we're gonna do it a whole bunch of times, so it'll be cool.'

``I think that's just like New York and L.A. New York is really heightened and vibrant and everything is going on, and L.A. is like, 'Yeah, we have a good time here, do what you want, go to the water or go to the mountains or lay out in the Valley. We'll be here, we're not going anywhere.' ''

This despite working on a new show that you'd expect to have one of the tenser sets of the season. Set in a downscale private detective agency, ``Richards'' has been quite extensively rethought and revamped through the preseason development period. The fact that its star is a veteran of the smash ``Seinfeld'' partially accounts for the intense media scrutiny that the show's attracted, but Meadows - who admits being unfamiliar with the sitcom-making process - says that, from his viewpoint, it all seems like a natural enough effort to make things as good as they can be.

``I am not privy to all of the inside information,'' Meadows confesses. ``I think that there's so much pressure on this show to be successful and funny that people might be prone to second-guessing themselves. We've shot four episodes and I haven't noticed any major changes; they've just been trying to make the story lines track more, present it clearly. But I think Michael is doing a good job, trying to make a good show that he thinks is funny.''

And, as anyone who's spent as many years as Meadows has on ``SNL'' knows well, keeping things good and funny is no easy task. He doesn't regret leaving his longtime TV home - in fact, he knew at the beginning of last season that he had done everything with the sketch format that he could or wanted to do. But Meadows does get nostalgia pangs that even the warm, casual California atmosphere can't obliterate.

``I will miss my friends, and I miss New York. Believe it or not, I'll even miss Lorne Michaels,'' he says, referring to ``SNL's'' (and ``Ladies Man's'') tough critic producer. ``I'll just miss the familiarity of being there so long, the studio and everything. And I think I'll miss the rewriting sessions the most; that's when it really got funny, and I loved being able to give away jokes.''

No wonder Meadows has such a nice-guy reputation. When was the last time you heard a comedian say anything as generous as that?

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``Ladies Man'' star Tim Meadows doesn't take himself too seriously: ``Leon's not a negative caricature of black people. He doesn't kowtow to anybody ... And besides, I didn't invent the afro; it was invented by my family and the Jackson Five ...''