I have a couple of projects that call for node content to be published outside of the normal center-of-the-page boundary. But the default template override system accounts for individual nodes, or even overriding the node display area for a given content type, but not the whole page. A Google search turned up some possibilities, but based on this page, I was able to find the right answer for Drupal 5.x, in templates.php:

    1 <?php

    2 function phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars = array())

    3 {

    4 

    5     switch ($hook)

    6     {

    7         case 'page':

    8 

    9             if ('node' == arg(0))

   10             {

   11                 $vars['template_files'] = 'page' . $vars['node']->type;

   12             }

   13 

   14          break;

   15      }

   16   

   17      return $vars;

   18 }

   19 

   20 ?>

This means if you have a content type called event and you want it to have a custom page layout, just copy page.tpl.php to page_event.tpl.php. Dunno why this isn't part of the default theme system, but maybe it's an un-Drupal thing to want to do.

EDIT:Floyd in the comments points to a nice improvement he made on this technique.