Sherry Chandler

I am ambivalent about Garrison Keillor.

Take Writer’s Almanac, his daily NPR broadcast of poems and literary trivia that caused such a controversy here in Lexington a while back. Often I think he reads schmaltz and I am not over fond of his sonorous baritone stylings. But I have sent him copies of my books and I’d be thrilled if he were to choose one of my poems to read. And he has read poems by Cathryn Essinger, Diane Lockward, and others I consider excellent poets. Not to mention featuring poets published by Kentucky’s small presses: Sarabande, Wind, Steel Toe, and Finishing Line.

I have the same problem with A Prairie Home Companion. I admire Keillor for taking on political windbags like Jesse Ventura and George W. Bush but most of the time I find the “News from Lake Woebegon” painful.

And then there’s this new movie, which is showing at the Kentucky Theater here in Lexington on a double bill with, of all things, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Who wants to watch a movie about Garrison Keillor, written by Garrison Keillor, and starring Garrison Keillor as some radio m.c. named—wait for it—G.K.?

And yet, it’s Robert Altman.

And it has Kevin Kline. And Tommy Lee Jones. And Lily Tomlin.

So I was pleased enough to come across this snarky Rex Reed review in the New York Observer:

…the chronicles of a fictional Minnesota hamlet called Lake Wobegon have now been cloned into a rambling screen fable that is not only corny, lumbering and dull, but also pretentious, because it pretends that a lug-load of tasteless cracker-barrel baloney can pass for 105 minutes of heirloom charm. A Prairie Home Companion is about as charming as waking up with a dead animal in your bed.

Mr. Keillor, a myopic doughboy who wrote the script and stars in the film as the radio host, wears red socks—an affectation that was more becoming on Van Johnson. Instead of a local Minnesota version of Jean Shepherd or Herb Shriner, he’s a multimillionaire wheeler-dealer in Manhattan real estate with as much folksy down-home charm as Donald Trump. Instead of interesting Dogpatch characters, he pieces together gingham Lum and Abners in doll costumes. Instead of a plot, A Prairie Home Companion features the kind of all-star cast only Robert Altman could recruit in these budget-conscious days of independent production and deferred profit-sharing.

Still, I’ll probably go see it anyway. Or at least order it from Netflix when it comes out on DVD. After all, it is Robert Altman. And Kevin Kline.

And Rex Reed may have some poseur problems of his own.

I found the link on Sour Duck’s Link Blog, which presents us with a sort of Blogsday compilation every day.