My Prairie Home Movie

Wednesday, July 13
Garrison and Lindsay have a scene that has been moved to stage left, which means Maya will do a couple of my lines. It also means creating a new space on stage around the Fitzgerald’s wonderful theater organ, which can be raised from below. It seems only right that it make a guest appearance. The scene is very sweet, with Garrison describing his relationship with Lola’s father. When I see this scene later in the week, I notice two things: Garrison looks great on camera, and there are way too many people milling about backstage. Things are considerably more stable on the real Prairie Home show. After the scene, Bob announces that it’s Lindsay’s last day, and there’s a big round of applause and hugs. Then we set up for another performance by the Singing Cowboys.

After dinner, the extras are brought in for the Cowboys’ second song, “Bad Jokes,” a song Garrison wrote that strings together some semiraunchy jokes with a real toe-tapping melody. It’s a big hit, and on the final take the boys do an extended-play version with even raunchier jokes (“Why do they call it PMS? Cuz mad cow disease was already taken”). This is the song that in a later scene will cause me, as the stage manager ever worried about those FCC decency fines, to blow my top.

Thursday, July 14
As part of my job as entertainment editor at WCCO Radio, I scour the papers for information every morning. That’s how I found out yesterday that Lily’s mother, Lily Mae, passed away. Lily left the set last Saturday, after the shoot at Mickey’s Diner, to visit her. Her final scene is with me today and, trooper that she is, she shows up on time, subdued but ready to work.

We start blocking the scene of me getting apoplectic about the Cowboys’ “Bad Jokes” song. Bob decides it would be fun to have Tom Keith, who has been the real sound effects man for the radio show for the last thirty years, provide some sounds reacting to the raunchy song and to what Lily and I say to each other. It’s tricky, because it involves a playback of the soundtrack filmed yesterday. They rig Tom and me up with a wireless earpiece so Tom can react and I can talk to Lily in real time. It’s called an “ear prompter” in the voice-over business, and I’ve used it many times to do long monologues on camera in industrial films.

We all extend our sympathies to Lily and begin the shot. It takes awhile to get the timing right. Things come together, and Bob says it will either be very funny or very weird. In the scene, Lily also tells me Chuck Akers has died in his dressing room. It precedes the backstage shot we did last Friday with Garrison, Meryl, Lily, Sue, and Lindsay. Bob’s wife, Kathryn Altman, who has been very sweet and complimentary to those of us from the radio show, tells me the scene worked very well. We’ll see. Bob announces Lily’s departure, and there are lots of hugs, applause, and tears, and she leaves to attend to her mother’s funeral. The adage, “The show must go on,” gets another workout.

We then do a scene with Woody, Kevin, and me. Kevin comes with more inspired physical shtick regarding a phone call to me with news that the Axeman has arrived.

The next scene is between Virginia and Mary Louise Burke, who plays the “Lunch Lady.” Mary Louise made a huge impact as Paul Giamatti’s mother in Sideways and has made an art of portraying dotty mothers and aunts. Mary Louise tells me about her good friend T. R. Knight, a young actor who went from the Guthrie to Broadway to the new hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy. I used to do radio commercials with him when he was about eight years old.