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Photo courtesy Picturehouse Films
Garrison Keillor with Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan in “A Prairie Home Companion.” Keillor, host of the real radio show of the same name and screenwriter of the movie version, will make two appearances at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in June.
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Banner file photo
Garrison Keillor, the man who brings tales from Lake Wobegon to our radio each week. |
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Garrison Keillor — from ‘Prairie Home’ to the silver screen and back
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
Fans of National Public Radio would have no trouble identifying Garrison Keillor after only hearing a handful of words. His rolling, rumbling cadence and tone are the backbone and the heart of his radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion” (PHC), which is heard from 5 to 7 p.m. each Saturday on NPR.
Most shows are broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn., but the cast takes to the road for part of the year, spreading the fine PHC feelings around the country. (On Thursday, June 29, Keillor will perform at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. See info below.) The Banner talked with him by phone in Tampa, Fla.
For those who are not among the four million listeners, PHC is a folksy, laid-back show broadcasting since 1974 that harks back to the earlier days of radio. There’s music (folky-country), made-up characters like Guy Noir, a private eye whose bit opens with “A dark night in a city that knows how to keep secrets,” and Keillor’s monologue that brings folks up to date on the goings-on in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon.
Its success is largely due to Keillor’s ability to tell a story in a gentle way that pokes fun at but never makes fun of anyone.
When asked about the kind way he treats his characters — who are all based on people he knew growing up in Anoka, Minn., — he says, “Maybe I just never discovered the hard cold truth about storytelling which is that storytelling most often involves cruelty and disaster. I’m just always trying to figure what they are up to. I think comedy is closer to the truth of daily life as I see it than whatever the other stuff is — you know, horror, tragedy or melodrama. So to have a stone cornice fall off a building and crush three small children would seem to me to be willful and nothing that really says anything.”
In addition to being a radio host he is the author of eight books and three books for children. And now he’s penned a screenplay based on PHC which was directed by Robert Altman and is being released nationally this weekend. The movie has an all-star cast including Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep (see interview this week’s Banner), Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson.
He jokes about coming to terms with Altman and says his co-stars, especially Streep and Lohan, were a joy.
“Meryl was great fun, she was nothing but fun,” he says. “She has a sort of girlish buoyancy about her that just never fades.”
“I was really fond of Lindsay Lohan. I thought that she did such a superb job. She brought this sort of teen attitude to the movie which really stood out.”
An Evening with Garrison Keillor of “A Prairie Home Companion” at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, 21 West Main St., Hyannis, 8 pm June 29. Tickets $46.75/$59.25 availabe at www.ticketmaster.com or www.melodytent.org or by phone at (800) 347-0808. Keillor also performs at South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset on June 28.
See the entire text of this story in this week’s Banner.
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In the Arts
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Jun 8th, 2006