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Director Robert Altman and writer Garrison Keillor join forces
with an all-star cast to create a comic backstage fable, A
PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, about a fictitious radio variety show
that has managed to survive in the age of television. Meryl
Streep and Lily Tomlin star as the Johnson Sisters, Yolanda
and Rhonda, a country duet act that has survived the
county-fair circuit, and Lindsey Lohan plays Meryl's daughter,
Lola, who gets her big chance to sing on the show and then
forgets the words. Kevin Kline is Guy Noir, a private eye down
on his luck who works as a backstage doorkeeper, and Woody
Harrelson and John C. Reilly are Dusty and Lefty, the Old
Trailhands, a singing cowboy act. Add Virginia Madsen as an
angel and Tommy Lee Jones as the Axeman and Maya Rudolph as a
pregnant stagehand and Keillor in the role of a hangdog emcee,
and you have a playful story set on a rainy Saturday night in
St. Paul, Minnesota, where fans file into the Fitzgerald
Theater to see "A Prairie Home Companion," a staple of radio
station WLT, not knowing that WLT has been sold to a Texas
conglomerate and that tonight's show will be the last.
Shot entirely in the Fitzgerald,
except for the opening and closing scenes which take place in
a nearby diner, the picture combines Altman's cinematic style
and intelligence and love of improvisation and Keillor's songs
and storytelling to create a fictional counterpart to the "A
Prairie Home Companion" radio show. The film uses the
musicians and crew and stage setting of the actual radio show,
heard on public radio stations coast to coast for the past
quarter-century (and which, in real life, continues to
broadcast). The result is a compact tale with a series of
extraordinary acting turns, especially Kevin Kline's elegant
Keaton-esque detective and Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep's
singing ("Goodbye to My Mama") and their beautiful portrayal
of two sisters who talk simultaneously. And Virginia Madsen's
serene angel. And Lindsay Lohan's version of "Frankie and
Johnny".
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