Live. . . From Irvine. . . : For Nealon, Stand-Up Beats Sitting Around Till ‘Saturday Night’ Resumes

Late in 1977, after graduating from Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, Kevin Nealon packed up his belongings and headed West. “I used to say I moved to California to pursue a career in part-time jobs,� Nealon recalled in a recent interview.

Actually, the main reason for the relocation was his desire to try stand-up comedy, even though he had never told a joke on stage. Of course, someone with a blank comedy resume doesn’t instantly line up a full slate of lucrative--or even paying--stand-up gigs.

So to pay the bills, Nealon took a string of part-time jobs. The first was working as a department-store Santa Claus; others included delivering cars for an auto leasing company and tending bar at the L.A. Improv, where he sometimes got to jump on stage when a comic didn’t show up for a performance.

Nealon no longer struggles with underemployment. Working mainly as a writer-performer on “Saturday Night Live,� he has also appeared in movies, including “Roxanne,� and occasionally moonlights at comedy clubs, such as the Irvine Improvisation Comedy Club, where he headlines tonight through Sunday.

But the stand-up act is clearly a second priority right now.

“The main thing on my mind is ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I’m just mentally preparing for that onslaught,� Nealon explained, sitting in a conference room at his manager’s West Hollywood office. “I really enjoy the intensity and challenge of it, but there are times when it can be difficult, just like anybody’s job, I guess, if you are really under the gun. But I enjoy that pressure; I think it really puts you through the test.�

Nealon said the most stressful part of an “SNL� workweek--the time that the staff’s creative energies are most severely tested--is Tuesday, when everyone feverishly writes sketches for possible inclusion on that Saturday’s show. Not just a few hours Tuesday afternoon, when the writing session typically starts, but through Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.

“You’ll walk into an office at 6 or 7 in the morning and see one person slumped over the couch and another one’s writing,� said Nealon, 34. The reason for this nutty regimen, he explained, is that it extends the tradition established in the show’s earliest days and that “it seems like a lot of writers love deadlines; that’s the way they get work done.�

Nealon sees the merit in operating that way but also tries to write one sketch before each week starts “just so that when you’re up at 3 in the morning on Tuesday night, trying to work on a sketch, you know you have at least one in the bag.�

During the past two years, Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady� has probably had the highest profile of anything on “Saturday Night Live,� but a few of Nealon’s contributions have been among the recent seasons’ most memorable sketches.

Probably his single most memorable effort was the very first Nealon-penned sketch (actually co-written with Al Franken) that aired. It featured Nealon as an ad man who used subliminal-advertising techniques to get a promotion, a vacation and other perks from his boss and what promised to be a pretty hot date from the boss’s secretary.

Not a bad way to make a writing debut on “Saturday Night Live.� That ran on the first show of the 1986-87 season, but surprisingly, given the richness of the premise, Nealon’s subliminal guy hasn’t been heard from since. It is not for lack of trying; he has written other sketches around the character. “I’ve submitted maybe three or four other ones--and maybe three I submitted subliminally,� he said with a smile, adding that none received the go-ahead for airing.

He has gotten more mileage out of another bit that has become a recurring piece: The continuing adventures of “Hans & Franz,� the edgy Schwarzenegger-esque duo played by Nealon and Carvey. The idea for the characters came not during one of those Tuesday night writing marathons, but while Nealon and Carvey (along with “SNL� colleague Dennis Miller) were touring together last summer.

In his hotel room one afternoon, Nealon saw Arnold Schwarzenegger on TV. “He was just talking about his day,� Nealon recalled, “and what he does when he’s on the road and he says (Nealon starts doing Arnold’s voice): ‘Well, I come into the hotel and ya know I find a gym to train in and I come back to the hotel and I put on a nice light cotton shirt and then I go out for the night and come back.’ �

Nealon immediately rang Carvey’s room “and just started talking like that to Dana on the phone. And for the next three days of the tour that’s how we talked.�

They decided these exchanges might be sketch material. So before last season began, they met “and just threw ideas around. We thought it would be great if these two guys had a weightlifting (TV) program and were just real defensive muscle guys; they were just so suspicious of the audience and so demeaning that they never actually showed you how to do anything.

“They just loved to scold people,� he said, then broke into Franz: “ ‘You’d better not be laughing at us because ya know we’re not jokers up here.’ And when we were writing it, we got laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. That’s when you know something really has it.�

Just when Nealon and Carvey had gotten a few chances to prove they had something with Hans & Franz, the writers strike brought “Saturday Night Live� to a screeching halt. (He said the program resumes Oct. 8.)

Nealon found the season’s abrupt end frustrating because only 13 shows of the planned 20 were produced, and--perhaps--because it was hard to fill that gap with part-time jobs. Spring is a tough time to find work as a department store Santa.

The Improvisation Comedy Club is at 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Show times: Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, 8 p.m.; Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Tickets: $8-$12. Information: (714) 854-5455.