Photo: Rounder Records, River Road Entertainment, Prairie
Home Productions
Keillor's players, bowing above, could become
one of Robert Altman's deeply intertwined ensembles.
Altman to direct Prairie Home Companion movie with an above-average cast
Guy Noir and cowboys Dusty and Lefty are coming to the big screen with looks that might not meet your expectations.
Unless, of course, you've been imagining Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion characters played by the likes of Lyle Lovett and Tom Waits. Those actors and others with big names — Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are two examples — will star in a film version of the radio show, slated to begin shooting early next year with famed director Robert Altman behind the camera.
Keillor will write the script for the movie and appear on screen as the singing master of ceremonies familiar to Prairie Home listeners. It's uncertain whether he'll unspool the customary Lake Wobegon yarn, however.
Streep and Tomlin will play the Johnson Sisters, the surviving members of a large musical combo, while musicians Lovett and Waits step into Dusty and Lefty's boots. Altman has said that George Clooney will play private eye Guy Noir if available, though Tony Judge, a producer of the film, cautions that the director might be overly optimistic on that point.
Altman's films frequently zero in on the contrasts between appearance and reality, and Prairie Home will mine similar territory. Rather than create a simulacrum of Lake Wobegon, the script will depict a fictional performance of the radio show, mingling onstage skits with offstage drama.
"The trick is the wonderful, funny stuff that's taking place backstage, with plots and subplots and romance and intrigue," Judge says.
"This is going to be great," says Judge, a longtime friend and collaborator of Keillor's. "Altman is such a terrific creative and artistic force. He's changed the ways movies are made. And Garrison has created this rich radio institution."
The film has been in the works since Keillor and Altman met a year ago. Keillor had admired Altman and his films, and while Altman knew of Keillor's show, his wife was a bigger fan. Altman has since caught up, Judge says. "It connects to his childhood love of radio as a dramatic form."
Much about the film is still prospective, with financing coming together and negotiations under way for a distributor. If filming at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn., begins on schedule, A Prairie Home Companion could reach theaters by next Christmas, Judge says.
Judge expects Prairie Home's film version will find an eager audience among its 4.5 million weekly listeners in the United States and the thousands more around the world. The name-brand recognition might also free Altman to pursue an unconventional distribution strategy, with less pressure to make a big opening weekend in cultural centers such as New York and Los Angeles.
"I'd like to think that public radio stations that carry the program would profit, too, by being able to tie their activities to a Prairie Home Companion film," Judge adds.
Judge hopes the film will be just one of Prairie Home's forays into visual media, including a 30th-anniversary DVD released last week. Produced by River Road Entertainment and distributed by Rounder Records, the high-definition disc combines two shows recorded at the Fitzgerald Theater in May.
Web page posted Nov. 30, 2004
Copyright 2004 by Current Publishing Committee
