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Things can go wrong. Dana Carvey knows this as surely as he feels the permanent ache in his shoulder, the never-healed separation from that time on Saturday Night Live when he was pretending to be Rob Petrie, tripped over the ottoman, and landed more painfully than he'd planned. And then, in 1990, there was that other crash landing, the one that dented his ego so badly he wondered if he could ever again present himself to the public without a wig, an accent, or a cute little signature phrase. Opportunity Knocks was the name of the film. ''Doors slamming shut'' was the result.

''I've learned a lot about the movie business in the last few years,'' says Carvey, now reinstated as potential box office hot stuff by the success of the Wayne's World franchise. ''For one thing, I've learned how easy it is to get into a really bad movie. I also know that I'm better than I was in Opportunity Knocks, but I guess that wouldn't be too hard. And I'm certainly more cautious about the things that I do.''

So Carvey, older (39), wiser, and in the midst of production on four films with various studios, is being especially careful today, on the set of his new film Clean Slate, wondering aloud about the possible dangers of having a souped-up Chevy truck chase him down a Venice Beach alleyway. The pickup is supposed to career into a row of trash cans, narrowly missing him as he ducks around a corner.

''When do I start running?'' Carvey is asking director Mick Jackson, who staged all manner of chase scenes in The Bodyguard and should know about these things. ''Should I go when he's 15 feet away from me? Ten feet? I mean, he's just gonna come blasting through, right? What if I don't make it to the corner in time? I'm dead.''

''At these speeds,'' Jackson says dryly, ''yeah.''

''I tell you what,'' says Carvey. ''How about if I start running when I get afraid?''

''That should work.''

Carvey leans over to a visitor on the set. ''What you're about to see isn't really acting,'' he says, speaking softly, the way he almost always does when he isn't pretending to be a President or a Church Lady. ''What you're about to see is fear.''

As if, for Carvey, there's any discernible difference. Despite seven seasons on Saturday Night Live (he left the show in 1993), the sleep-overs at the Bush White House, the big-money talk-show offers, and the parade of upcoming high-profile pictures (including The Road to Wellville with Anthony Hopkins, It Happened in Paradise with Nicolas Cage, and Tucson with old SNL bud Jon Lovitz), he still acts like a guy who isn't quite sure how he got invited to this great party.

''I tell my brother (Brad, a software designer whose abashed demeanor provided Carvey with some inspiration for Garth) sometimes that it feels like I jumped on a tiger and I don't know how to get off without being bitten,'' says Carvey, obviously delighted to have emerged unscathed from his recent truck chase. ''You start in the clubs and then things happen, the dominos start falling and now I'm here. It all seems kind of surreal.''

In that way, at least, Carvey has something in common with the character he plays in Clean Slate, a detective with a rare disease called Korsakoff's syndrome that causes him to lose his memory every night when he falls asleep. He doesn't know who his friends are or who he is supposed to be. He changes his mannerisms to fit the moment. He bluffs, trying to be what he thinks people want him to be.


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