A Prairie Home Companion

Written at the time of the film's release...

 

  Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod*

or

"What'd He Wanna Do That For?"

"A Prairie Home Companion" is one of the best shows on the radio (the best being "This American Life," but we'll save that for later...or better yet, check it out for yourself on the link). Over the course of its 30 year run, this less-than-"Grand Ol' Opry"-wanna-be has presented home-spun music of all genres--from Gospel to Grand Opera (and has seemingly unearthed every folk-artist extant in the country) and combined spiritual optimism (albeit Lutheran, which takes the joy out of it) with a cynical farm-land realism, all reflecting the philosophy and upbringing of its host Garrison Keillor, whose low story-telling voice is as lulling as cattle moaning in the pasture at night. Keillor writes it all, performs in most of it and serves as ringmaster, finally capping it off with his stool-talk reverie, The News from Lake Wobegon, land of low expectations ("Where all the women are strong, all the men, good-looking and all the children are above-average"). Old time radio techniques and phony commercials--for "Powder-Milk Biscuits" ("Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!") or for "The Ketchup Advisory Board" wind their way through everything, with just enough toothsome satire to leaven the bitter with the sweet. It's Community-Theater of the Mind, a staple of Public Radio, and manages to embrace and cherish both red and blue states in it's musty woolen blanket of nostalgia. 

In the long string of Saturdays that I've listened I've heard moments of great beauty that I'll never forget,** while, on the other hand, I've wondered more than once why Keillor needs to sing so damned much. It's been a comforting friend on lonely cross-country drives, and it's been known to make a car load of rowdies quiet in contemplation. 

But anyone going into Robert Altman's A Prarie Home Companion or "PHC" is due for a bit of a shock. Written by Keillor (from a story by him and Ken LeZebnik), it incorporates familiar bits and pieces from the broadcasts throughout. Characters come to life in the form of show-stalwarts cowboys Dusty and Lefty (played in the film by Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly) and private eye Guy Noir (played by Kevin Kline as not hard-boiled, so much as hard-up), as well as the subjects of one of Keillor's Wobegon yarns-the Johnson Sisters (Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep). There's an old country music type named Chuck Akers (played by L. Q. Jones), who stands in for the PHC perennial guest, Chet Atkins. Why, I even remember the episode the Penguin joke came from. But the radio show itself is used as backdrop to the intertwining stories of the participants on the last night of the show, which overwhelms the conceit of using the show in the first place. 

And then...it's about death, primarily.

Which must make every blue-haired old lady in the audience go, "What'd they do that for? It's supposed to be 'A Prairie Home Companion!!"

A little back-story: Keillor had written a screenplay for Altman called "Lake Wobegon Days," about a local boy coming home to bury his father (it sounds alarmingly like Elizabethtown!)

Altman rejected it, saying: 1) "The death of an old man is not a tragedy" and 2) "I want to make a movie of 'A Prairie Home Companion,' instead!" I can just see the sour-lemon look on Keillor's face when Altman said that! "What does he wanna make a movie of that for?" he no doubt grumbled. "I've been doing that for years! And it's RADIO!"

Yup. But it's also live, which means chaos, and Altman always loved chaos. And it has music, which to Altman means community, and PHC ends, as the show usually does, with a group-sing of an old gospel standard--kinda shaky and maybe a little off-key, but still, it's everyone putting aside their differences and pulling together to make something nice, a trope that goes back to the films of Howard Hawks. And it ends with a grace note—an impromptu final bow from the wings.*** Altman's been making that kind of film for years, and death has always been a player, in M*A*S*H (whose so-familiar theme song is entitled "Suicide is Painless"), McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. And The Long Goodbye.

And the reaction is usually "What'd he do that for?"

Amidst the songs by long-time PHC participants, the bits and skits, the players**** hook up and separate and talk over each other in a life-like muddle, Keillor's self-initialed character is constantly correcting the details of the various versions of History that he's concocted, and Death (in the form of Virginia Madsen) wanders the theater. Madsen's a wonderful actress—she deserved her Oscar nomination for Sideways and to win it, as well—but she's not terribly convincing in the part. Not entirely her fault. It's written as clueless and all-knowing, deeply philosophical and naive--Streep would have had difficulty with it. Plus, it's a little unclear just how she operates. Some people who see her, die. Some don't. Some folks who are unaware of her die. It's inconsistent. You'd want Death to have some kind of definite procedure, but I guess that's asking too much of a Grim Reaper. Death doesn't have rules.

But it's significant that before the final song, Death makes one final appearance and she heads our way until she obscures the camera in white.

A Prairie Home Companion was Robert Altman's last film. He died at age 81 on November 20th, 2006.

And as he said, "The death of an old man is no tragedy." Especially one who could still challenge an audience right up to the end.

"Live Every Show Like It's Your Last." The last bow's yours, Bob.

* The German Title of "Once Upon a Time in the West," translated, means "Play me a Song of Death"

** a college chorus group solemnly singing John Lennon's "Julia" will haunt me for the rest of my life, and even a sing-along with a crowd in Buffalo last week, made me dab my eyes and smile at the cleverness with which it was done (It's "Angels Watching Over Me" in Segment 2 of the link)

*** Courtesy of the always-wonderful John C. Reilly. But before that, one of the joys of the film is an impromptu bit by Meryl Streep, where she runs from the stage, grabs Keillor, who's already shambled off, drags him, surprised, back for a short, sweet dance--then turns around and leaves him, his arms holding her memory, as he watches--not sure what to do next. Then he turns and shuffles off-stage again. It feels spontaneous, and it feels perfect for both characters...and for Keillor in real life. 

**** How's Lindsey Lohan, you gossip-mongers ask? Good, actually! How're you?

Joy (2015)

Cleaning Up in America
or
Breaking the Glass Slipper

What does the term "based on a true story" mean? It, by its very words, seems to be an oxymoron—true, but fabricated and embroidered, not The Truth, but merely "based." It is extremely rare when a film follows a transcript (and even then, words can be changed in intent by performance and intonation). In most cases, "true" stories imagine conversations never heard, futz with the timeline to drive home a comparison, or combine many characters into one to simplify and amplify. But, what does it do to that true story?

Take The Revenant: Alejandro Iñárritu's film takes the wilderness travails of Hugh Glass and turns them into nothing like how the story played out. The main characters have different fates than the true-life counterparts; in fact, Glass was the first to die of the four main characters, rather than the lone survivor. The Revenant is only "inspired by true events," but only some true events, the rest is fabrication or, more kindly, "inspiration." In the case of The Revenant, it turns the true events and turns them not into a story of survival, but of revenge at all costs, the survival being wrapped up in the need to seek vengeance. In doing so, it subverts the story into something quite unrelated to the spirit of the story. 

Is there a word that means the opposite of "inspired?"

Now, take Joy. Joy is a remarkably chilly film about mops. And opportunism. And capitalism. And being your own person and taking control of your life.

That it's based (partially and refracted through writer-director David O. Russell's sensibilities) on a real person, Joy Mangano, and her quite visible success—if you watch HSN—only makes it that much more interesting. And it makes a case for not being faithful to the story, thus making it a better film for what it does say about that person. Russell makes no bones that Joy is only partially based on Mangano's life...and, as he says, other strong women he has known. But, he has also delved into folklore, managing to disguise his intent while leaving bread-crumbs to its source, masking it with a very real person, and creating what is essentially a modern fairy-tale. One that actually happened.

The film starts in a soap opera with invented characters and invented drama, where the stakes are high and exaggerated. Watching the soap is Joy's mom (Virginia Madsen, so de-glammed she looks like she's auditioning for "The Terri Garr Story"). She sits in her bedroom all day escaping drama by watching drama. Daughter Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) is trying to get ready for work as an airline counter-person, but is searching for something in the disorganized closet, and instead finds a breakaway dog collar she invented in her teens, after she nearly choked her dog taking it for a walk. Now, somebody else is selling such an item because nobody in the family wanted to spend the money on a patent for it. Anyway, she's late for work. But before she can get out the door, her father Rudy (Robert De Niro) shows up. His current girlfriend has kicked him out, so he's coming back there to live. Seems to be the place for it, as Joy's own ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez) is living in the basement until he can get on his feet, which doesn't appear to be anytime soon.

Joy's step-sister stops by to take care of her kids—she's also the book-keeper for her Dad's auto-shop—and also run her down to her kids. The only one who seems to be Joy's sole joy and comfort is her grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd) who encourages Joy and keeps reminding her that she is destined for greatness.

But, not at that job. The customers (as they can be) are jerks and management has decided that they're going to move Joy to the night-shift, which is impossible given her family. Rudy starts dating another woman, Trudy (Isabella Rossellini), a widow with loads of money, which is a plus. She's also something of a bull-dog, with a flighty disposition, turning on a dime, except to Joy, who she treats with contempt, probably because she sees her as the weakest link in a pack of voracious wolves.

This is a bad life. Joy's an enabler, the responsible one in a family of the irresponsible. And for her to get out of this cycle, she must go deeper into her persona and become an enabler of the world. With the inspiration of her grandmother, and her own need to improve her life, she creates a home invention for the downtrodden of the world—those who pick up after others. Necessity is, after all, a mother.

A lot of this is true. A lot of it is complete fabrication. Joy Mangano did become a huge success, as the movie has it, despite the attempts by all sides to bring her down, the competent one in a family of incompetents who see the short term and have no vision of the big picture. It makes you wonder what Russell is doing steering so far from the truth. I did wonder...until I found out one simple fact—the real Joy didn't have a step-sister.

Step-sister? Why would you put in a step-sister if one didn't exist? Why would you stack the odds so far in Joy's detriment in order to make her triumph that much sweeter? Why would you make her life so bad?

Because it is, in fact, Grimm. The Brothers Grimm, that is. Well, not in fact, but in metaphor. Russell has taken the true story of Joy Mangano and turned it into a literal modern-day Cinderella story by combining it with the "persecuted heroine" story of Cinderella, with its oppressive relations (save for a mentor once removed), but taking the Prince Charming aspect of it and showing how that could become a nightmare. Instead, this Cinderella doesn't find her joy in dependency (been there, surrounded by that), but independence and the handsome prince of industry (Bradley Cooper) is not a romantic interest, but a good contact, and where she finds her bliss (and her heart's desire) is in an opulent ballroom of television technology at QVC that does its own circular dancing. 

This is really clever stuff (if annoying to Mangano's relatives), taking a classic fairy tale, turning it on its ear, and showing that fairy tales can come true even in the so-called modern age and Russell's cleverness is matched by an ensemble cast that really knows how to sell it and get the phones ringing. There are some amazing scenes of back-and-forth (and around and through) dialog between Lawrence and De Niro that frankly amaze for the naturalness with which they spark off each other. Everybody does a good job, including the smattering of soap opera veterans thrown in for compare and contrast, but a particular shout-out should go to Melissa Rivers, who does such a remarkable performance as her mother, Joan, that it is scary.

Based on a true story? Not so much. True, but told through the fairy-tale consciousness in order to prove a larger point, and maybe make a more inspirational story than getting ahead by throwing a shoe. Joy has something running through its veins that a lot of movies don't have and could use: moxie.

Joy Mangano...in action