Radio for the Eyes

Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor, Unlikely 'Prairie' Film Companions

ST. PAUL, Minn.

Preparing to rehearse a scene on the set of his latest project, Robert Altman, the dean of American film directors, says: "I don't even know what's in the script."

He's not a bit concerned about that, either. He is, in fact, describing his customary way of working.

Waiting for technicians to solve some problem, he leans back in a director's chair -- exactly like the ones you have in your rec room, except that yours don't say ROBERT ALTMAN on the back.

"I'll go to set a scene up," Altman continues, "and I'll ask the actors what it is, or I'll ask the script supervisor: 'What is this scene, what is this about, what do they say in it?' But at the end of the scene, I don't know whether they've said the dialogue or not."

This unorthodox method has worked out pretty well for Altman. In his 1970 breakthrough, "M*A*S*H," and in "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "The Player," "Short Cuts" and the Best Picture nominees "Nashville" (1975) and "Gosford Park" (2001), one of Altman's hallmarks is the spontaneity, the naturalness, of the scenes. The speech on the page is merely the springboard.

Still, it's a little surprising to see him take that approach on the current movie: an adaptation of "A Prairie Home Companion," the venerable weekend variety show on public radio. The screenplay was written by "Prairie" creator and host Garrison Keillor, who is also a novelist and essayist. Words matter to him. He selects them painstakingly.

Moreover, Keillor is on the set nearly every day, because in the film he is playing himself -- or at least he's playing the host of a radio broadcast. He is there watching as the actors and director, again and again, futz with his lines, moosh separate scenes together into one, add morsels of their own.

"It's very difficult for him," Altman observes. "It's the first time he's had anybody that can override him. . . . I have the editing control. But he's smart enough -- he knows that."

Somewhat wistfully, Altman adds: "I don't know if he's having any fun ."

* * *

He is, though. During an hour-long conversation in a spacious dressing room upstairs at the Fitzgerald Theater here, Keillor marvels at the notion that Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline and Lily Tomlin, among others, are bringing to life characters he invented.