A Prairie Home Companion

Book excerpt: The screenplay of iconic radio host Garrison Keillor’s Robert Altman-directed major motion picture, A Prairie Home Companion, starring Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. The day of reckoning has come to the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, home of A Prairie Home Companion. The show is closing, the theater is going dark. Station WLT has been sold to a broadcast conglomerate in Texas. The wrecking ball is poised to swing as the regulars—the Johnson Girls, Yolanda and Rhonda, and the singing cowboys, Dusty and Lefty, crooner Chuck Akers, and announcer Garrison Keillor—arrive for the last broadcast in a state of disbelief. But when the Dangerous Woman appears with her Botticellian hair and dazzling white trench coat, the final curtain catches them all by surprise. • Features a foreword by director Robert Altman and an introduction by Garrison Keillor • Contains an eight-page insert of photos from the movie set