Based on Garrison Keillor’s quirky, long-running eponymous
public radio series and set during said fictitious variety group’s last
broadcast, the musical dramedy A Prairie
Home Companion is director Robert Altman’s 25th feature film, but it still
represented a heartening first for John C. Reilly. “I was doing A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway,
and thinking, ‘What’s the next movie I ought to do?’ I literally made a list of directors I wanted to work
with,” recalls Reilly. “Altman was the first one, and four days later he called
me to do the movie. So I was thrilled, obviously, because he’s a pretty special
director. Not every filmmaker has the guts to give people the freedom that Bob
does. He kind of just lets you find your own way into the character and if you
ask him questions about something he’ll give you a straight answer, but if
you’re asking him what you should do he’s gonna say, ‘Well, I don’t know, I
hired you. You tell me what you should do!’”
particularly given his frequent on-screen scene partner — Woody Harrelson, who
Reilly met and befriended on the set of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, another project from a true American auteur. “Me
and Woody are Dusty and Lefty, these old trail hands — archetypal characters
that Garrison has created over the years,” says Reilly. “We do some singing… go
at it a lot. It’s similar to our own friendship — we like to give each other a
hard time, let’s put it that way. But there’s also a lot of funny stuff in
there.” Indeed, set over the course of one rainy evening, the show takes place
against the backdrop of the sale of the radio station, making for much
seriocomic tension.
outstripped even his own inflated expectations. “I found myself many times on Prairie Home Companion having no idea
whether I was on-camera or off-camera,” he says, “and there’s a real,
delightful freedom in that because most of the time in movies you’re all too
aware of where the camera is. There’s a lot of joy in a Robert Altman movie.”