At home on the prairie · Issue 832, by Nicola Menage

This November, aged 81, world renowned director Robert Altman died. His last film A Prairie Home Companion, a take on Garrison Keillro’s hit U.S radio show, brings his career full circle, reuniting him with the medium which sparked his initial passion for

My first interest in dramatics was radio,” said Altman. “I recall listening to the radio a lot as a kid in the 1930s, like many kids would I’d never miss it. My hero when I was a young man was Norman Corwin, who practically created the radio drama.

“And the first professional dramatic thing I ever did, outside of a little theatre, was writing for radio drama, so radio is very dear and near to me.”

The fact that Keillor stages his programme live every week also appealed to Altman, who has directed theatre and opera as well as film and television adaptations of various plays, including Streamers, Fool for Love, and Come back to the five and dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. As Altman points out, “While Garrison’s programme happens to be a radio show, it’s also a performance in front of a live, large audience. It’s a mix of radio and theatre, which made it a perfect call for me. I wanted to do A Prairie Home Companion: to do Garrison’s kind of humour, using Garrison and the other people that are on his show.”

The radio show on which the film is based is a throwback to the 1930s, a live variety show recorded on stage in the Fitzgerald Theatre in St Paul, Minnesota, and regularly tours the country today. Its creator is Garrison Keillor, who launched his retro broadcast in 1974.

“Garrison Keillor was inspired to start the show after reporting on the Grand Ole Opry, with its array of country stars, for the New Yorker,” explained Altman.

“My wife’s a huge fan – she listens to it religiously, and I listen sometimes. I am a fan. And then, by chance, my lawyer knows a friend of Garrison’s and, when I was shooting The Company, he told me that Garrison had an idea and wanted to make a film, with me directing. I said I’d be happy to talk to him.”

The film comprises an all-star cast. Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, Virginia Madsen and John C. Reiley all took minimal salaries in order to work on the surprisingly low-budget film.

Altman noted that he secured Streep’s services by playing on one of her private passions.

“Meryl did this movie because she got to sing,” he said. “In her secret mental life she’s a singer. I knew that I could seduce her by saying that she had to sing in the movie.

“That was worth at least $500,000. Singing was the bait. Actually, all the cast worked for diddlysquat. I on the other hand filled my coffers!” he joked.

The radio show itself is a peculiar blend of music, storytelling, sketches and spoofs, all recorded live on stage as a near-theatrical show performed in front of an audience.

“We shot it like a documentary, I guess that’s the word that most people are familiar with. Basically, we’re not trying to disguise the cameras, there aren’t lots of close-ups; it’s the stuff that’s caught by camera, rather than things that are staged. Everyone is milked up all the time and I’m using always two, sometimes three, cameras.”

Meryl Streep comments on the unusual way in which Altman decided to shoot the film.

“On the first day of shooting Bob shot about ten pages of the script, which is very unusual,” she said.

“Normally you’d shoot like a page and a half! And Lily and me did some very long takes – that scene backstage went on for 17 minutes.

“They were long takes but that’s what he’s looking for. Bob wants to see everything, including what’s between – the inadvertent things are like gold to him.”

Altman explained his reasoning behind these long takes. “It’s making the actors play their characters for more than just 35 seconds of their day,” he said. “I’d rather they played 20 minutes of that day and let themselves feel the character. Then we’ll extract what proves the point I know what I’m looking for, and I’m editing myself by deciding which monitors to watch, although half the time I can’t tell you what’s scripted and what’s improvised!

“With this, I barely read the script – I just knew I could watch it. I really try not to prepare. I remember years ago in TV I’d work my finger down each line to make sure the actor was saying the right thing. But then I thought, ‘What do I care if they say exactly the right thing?’ So I learned to be quite loose with that kind of thing, and sometimes it got me in trouble. I got fired from a lot of TV jobs!”

Yet this seems not to have hindered his career in any way, putting together successes including M*A*S*H and Nashville. And it was in these films too that through the details Altman portrays the true essence and beauty of life. Yet, despite his success, Altman remained modest.

“Basically, this film is the Garrison Keillor show. It’s his show and it’s his movie. He is the conductor and I am just the recorder. My mandate was to take this verbal material, a radio show, and make it into something visual.”

A Prairie Home Companion is indeed predicted to be another classic Altman film. In a word, good. It is unfortunately his last. Yet critics reassure us it will mean he will certainly not be forgotten.