A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold co... Read allA look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court.A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 21 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFor insurance purposes, and in case 80-year-old director Robert Altman was unable to finish shooting the film, Paul Thomas Anderson was employed as a standby director.
- GoofsWhile Guy Noir sits at his desk, an "On Air" sign, common to radio and TV stations, is lit. In a later scene, the show is still on the air, but the sign is switched off. It should be on whenever a microphone is open in the studio.
- Crazy creditsThere is a credit for Sign Painter in the film, although it does not appear on the official site.
- ConnectionsFeatured in HBO First Look: The Making of 'A Prairie Home Companion' (2006)
- SoundtracksBack Country Shuffle
Music by Pat Donohue
Performed by Pat Donohue & Richard A. Dworsky (as Richard Dworsky)
Featured review
Arboreal Fluidity
Have you ever been in a situation where you know a person who moves with grace? He or she may not be a particularly interesting person, nor even a bit of a soulmate. But you like to be near them because they move with such deliberation and beauty that they animate and enlighten the architecture, they bless the space you breath with your eyes. You look forward to your next meeting because you yearn that space.
Altman is like that for me. He isn't about deliberation or noodling around with reality. He's quite simply the most graceful, natural mover I know in cinema. And it isn't just his age, he started this notion as far back as "McCabe," which I recently said was my favorite western when someone insisted on such a recommendation.
Part of his fluidity is a conviction that the art is in arranging the mix, the vortex, before that camera is unpacked. Once it happens, all he has to do is discover it as the actors push the space around. Its shocking what he does because it differs so much from the norm, which usually frames things spatially so the camera can see them.
Part of it has to do with the projects he chooses: meandering stories, folded and separate. Dozens of characters, perhaps. Sometimes, its not obvious, as when he wanders among suspects in "Gosford." Garrison Keillor is a master storyteller, based on one trick, but what a trick! The whole show revolves around his fictional Lake Wobegon which by accretion in our mind is a place with dozens of characters, places and rituals that we know. He'll start a narrative thread for few moments, toying with a certain foible, then as if he lost his focus, he'll take the tail of that morsel as a springboard for a different thread. It may seem to have a similar moral or not. It may have related characters or not. It may even involve a different time. The humor is in the lost threads, the jumps, the lucid fog.
His best rambles may span four of five of these and never return, deliberately never return. Its as if he starts with a treetrunk the town and its collective zeitgeist and follows a branch and then hops among leaves like a story squirrel.
Altman is just the opposite. He starts with the leaves and by circumnavigating the crown of the thing he implies an arboreal being. With his birth and modeling films for example, that being isn't so interesting, instead its the grace of the squirrel's eye that amazes us.
So its no surprise that there is no Wobegon story here. This is Altman's dance imposed on Keillor's. They both know it, and Keillor's role is one he does play in the radio show, as a sort of peg around which the Maydayers swirl.
So see this for the dance, the two master dancers but one dance. Along the way, you'll see Streep as you never have before. She's so effortless here. Its obvious that she created her character (and with the others, this is so). Her character is a swimmer in a sea of emotion. She's wet with stories, and we find that she was one of Keillor's. Its too sweet an idea, knowing what sort of an actor she is and how she applies a sort of iron-willed discipline to what she does which we don't notice because of her absolute commitment. But the world in the long run doesn't love these types.
They love the ones that jump in without a plan, that are broken from the last dive but leap again. Its a new Streep we see here. Leaves, wet with the tears of life, ready to fall as her storyteller lights past.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Altman is like that for me. He isn't about deliberation or noodling around with reality. He's quite simply the most graceful, natural mover I know in cinema. And it isn't just his age, he started this notion as far back as "McCabe," which I recently said was my favorite western when someone insisted on such a recommendation.
Part of his fluidity is a conviction that the art is in arranging the mix, the vortex, before that camera is unpacked. Once it happens, all he has to do is discover it as the actors push the space around. Its shocking what he does because it differs so much from the norm, which usually frames things spatially so the camera can see them.
Part of it has to do with the projects he chooses: meandering stories, folded and separate. Dozens of characters, perhaps. Sometimes, its not obvious, as when he wanders among suspects in "Gosford." Garrison Keillor is a master storyteller, based on one trick, but what a trick! The whole show revolves around his fictional Lake Wobegon which by accretion in our mind is a place with dozens of characters, places and rituals that we know. He'll start a narrative thread for few moments, toying with a certain foible, then as if he lost his focus, he'll take the tail of that morsel as a springboard for a different thread. It may seem to have a similar moral or not. It may have related characters or not. It may even involve a different time. The humor is in the lost threads, the jumps, the lucid fog.
His best rambles may span four of five of these and never return, deliberately never return. Its as if he starts with a treetrunk the town and its collective zeitgeist and follows a branch and then hops among leaves like a story squirrel.
Altman is just the opposite. He starts with the leaves and by circumnavigating the crown of the thing he implies an arboreal being. With his birth and modeling films for example, that being isn't so interesting, instead its the grace of the squirrel's eye that amazes us.
So its no surprise that there is no Wobegon story here. This is Altman's dance imposed on Keillor's. They both know it, and Keillor's role is one he does play in the radio show, as a sort of peg around which the Maydayers swirl.
So see this for the dance, the two master dancers but one dance. Along the way, you'll see Streep as you never have before. She's so effortless here. Its obvious that she created her character (and with the others, this is so). Her character is a swimmer in a sea of emotion. She's wet with stories, and we find that she was one of Keillor's. Its too sweet an idea, knowing what sort of an actor she is and how she applies a sort of iron-willed discipline to what she does which we don't notice because of her absolute commitment. But the world in the long run doesn't love these types.
They love the ones that jump in without a plan, that are broken from the last dive but leap again. Its a new Streep we see here. Leaves, wet with the tears of life, ready to fall as her storyteller lights past.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- Noches mágicas de radio
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $10,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $20,342,852
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $4,566,293
- Jun 11, 2006
- Gross worldwide
- $25,986,497
- Runtime1 hour 45 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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