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Director Robert Altman and writer Garrison Keillor join forces with an all-star
cast to create a comic backstage fable, A Prairie Home Companion, about a
fictitious radio variety show that has managed to survive in the age of
television.
Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin star as the Johnson Sisters, Yolanda
and Rhonda, a country duet act that has survived the county-fair circuit, and
Lindsay Lohan plays Meryl’s daughter, Lola, who gets her big chance to sing on
the show and then forgets the words.
Kevin Kline is Guy Noir, a private eye down
on his luck who works as a backstage doorkeeper, and Woody Harrelson and John C.
Reilly and Dusty and Lefty, the Old Trailhands, a singing cowboy act.
Add
Virginia Madsen as an angel, Tommy Lee Jones as the Axeman, Maya Rudolph as a
pregnant stagehand and Keillor in the role of hangdog emcee, and you have a
playful story set on a rainy Saturday night in St. Paul, Minnesota, where fans
file into the Fitzgerald Theater to see A Prairie Home Companion, a
staple of radio station WLT, not knowing that WLT has been sold to Texas
conglomerate and that tonight’s show will be the last.
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