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Although best-known as the creator, writer, and host of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, Garrison Keillor is also the author of more than a dozen books, a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, and now a screenwriter. Keillor wrote the screenplay and was part of the star-studded cast for the late Robert Altman's movie adaptation of the beloved radio show, which was released in June 2006. The Minnesota native, born in Anoka in 1942, currently resides in St. Paul, where many of the live weekly broadcasts of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, heard on public radio stations throughout the country, originate.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: In July of this year, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION marked 32 years of live broadcasts. You were nearly 32 when you began the show. How does it feel to have been doing it for half your life?
Garrison Keillor: It was one of those lucky haphazard choices. I was covering the GRAND OLE OPRY for THE NEW YORKER, sitting in the balcony of the Ryman Auditorium watching the show on stage, and thought, "Hey, a person could do this." Luckily I wasn't covering the trial of a thief or the press conference of a politician. Minnesota Public Radio backed the show and has stuck by it through thick and thin, and it's not a bad way to spend your time. You meet lovely people. You get outside your own head. And it's hard work, which is good for a person. I've been doing other things too, though -- raising children, writing books, going to movies, sleeping, driving around looking for someplace to eat -- it's not as if half my life was devoted to this. I'm not that dedicated.
GP: What keeps the show fresh for you?
GK: Imagining people listening to the radio. A convict in a prison in Pennsylvania, a wheat farmer in Montana, a Somali cabdriver in Minneapolis, a 10-year-old kid in Dallas -- anybody I've heard from recently. It's an odd act of dedication to sit and listen to something on the radio. I listened faithfully as a kid, but back then radio was all there was. You need to get a keen sense of real listeners in order to keep up your interest, and angry letters can help. Someone writes in to say how you disgust her utterly and she can never forgive you, and it's a challenge. How can you make the old witch laugh? There is a way.
GP: What radio humor did you enjoy, growing up?
GK: I loved Jack Benny for his great elegance. He stayed true to his character and his story -- the vain and slightly pompous skinflint who was saved from his own folly by the affection of his friends. I thought FIBBER MCGEE & MOLLY was awfully well written. It occurred to me even then. Fred Allen was thought of as a snappy writer because his show originated from New York, but I thought Don Quinn [writer of the FIBBER MCGEE & MOLLY series] was better. FM&M was Midwestern to the core. I loved Bob & Ray, who I also thought of as Midwestern, though they weren't.
GP: What contemporary humor do you enjoy?
GK: I think Ian Frazier is very funny, as is Roy Blount: he gets his teeth into something and he just sails. Paul Rudnick. David Sedaris, of course.
GP: Where do politics (and political humor) fit into your vision for the show?
GK: They don't. I have no vision. I just go to work and make the best show I can and if we can use the president, we do, and if not, it isn't a problem. I sort of dread a Hillary [Clinton] presidency because I can't see the humor in it. Bill was great, both Georges were good, Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Nixon -- all good -- but it's hard to see what Hillary gives us, comedically. We'll all be back in the sixth grade and she'll have a pointer and a map.
GP: Which political segments on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION have especially pleased you? Why? Why are you much more open about politics in writing, such as HOME GROWN DEMOCRAT and your newspaper columns, than on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION?
GK: I don't go back and listen to the show, so I can't really comment on things we've done. I don't do political opinion on PHC anymore. It's an entertainment show and meant to amuse a broad audience. I do opinion in writing because it's easier to skip if you don't care for it. A listener to a radio show is more like a guest in my home, and I don't care to lecture my guests, though of course sometimes I do, under stress, but usually with regret.
GP: You've called your Lake Wobegon monologue "sit-down comedy." How does it differ from stand-up comedy?
GK: Stand-up tends to have a faster beat, and part of its comedy is simply rhythmic: you hear the cadence of the jokes and when you come to where the punch line is, you tend to laugh, even if it ain't funny. A stand-up guy can get an audience rolling and they become almost hysterical. It's partly rhythmic. I listen to Scots and Geordie [dialect of England's Northeast] comics in Edinburgh and even though I don't get all of the dialects, I laugh along with the crowd because it's rhythmic. I've done stand-up now and then and it's beautiful, but it takes a long time to polish those lines so they work like a clock. And I prefer to aim at storytelling, which brings in elements of compassion and happiness and delight that are awfully rare in stand-up. Stand-up more or less demands a high level of irritability that I don't really feel.
Text of an e-mail interview with Garrison Keillor for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online. (Photo credits: Garrison Keillor [top banner], photo by Brian Velenchenko, courtesy A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, and A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION movie poster [left], courtesy Picturehouse.)
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