A Prairie Home Companion is a live radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor. The show runs on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. Central Time, and usually originates from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although it is frequently taken on the road. A Prairie Home Companion is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and Keillor's storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon". In 2015, Keillor announced that he expected to stop hosting the program during the 2016-17 season, to be replaced by Chris Thile.
It is produced by Prairie Home Productions and distributed by American Public Media, and is most often heard on public radio stations in the United States. The show has a long history; it has existed in a similar form since as far back as 1974 and borrows its name from a radio program in existence in 1969 that was named after the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota, next to Concordia College.
A Prairie Home Companion is a 2006 American comedy film directed by Robert Altman and is his final film. The film is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box office success on its small budget.
The film features an ensemble cast including Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, Garrison Keillor, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, and Lindsay Lohan.
A long-running live radio show is in danger of being canceled by new owners of the company that holds both radio station "WLT" and the theater where the show is broadcast. The film takes place on the night of the show's last performance. The show has two visitors: an angel calling herself Asphodel (Virginia Madsen) comes to comfort the people who work on the show and to escort one of them to the afterlife, while "the Axeman" (Tommy Lee Jones), a representative of the new owners, arrives to judge whether the show should be canceled. He makes it clear that the show is not what he considers modern popular programming, and though he too is escorted by the angel, the show is shut down anyway. In an epilogue at the end of the film the former cast members are reunited at Mickey's Diner. Their conversation pauses as they are joined by Asphodel.
I mistook the warnings for wisdom
From so called friends quick to advise
Though your touch was telling me otherwise
Somehow I saw you as a weakness
I thought I had to be strong
Oh but I was just young, I was scared, I was wrong
Not a night goes by
I don't dream of wandering
Through the home that might have been
And I listened to my pride
When my heart cried out for you
Now every day I wake again
In a house that might have been
A home
Guess I did what I did believing
That love is a dangerous thing
Oh but that couldn't hurt anymore than never knowing
Not a night goes by
I don't dream of wandering
Through the home that might have been
And I listened to my pride
When my heart cried out for you
Now every day I wake again
In a house that might have been
A home
A home
Four walls, a roof, a door, some windows
Just a place to run when my working day is through
They say home is where the heart is
If the exception proves the rule I guess that's true
Not a night goes by
I don't dream of wandering
Through the home that might have been
And I listened to my pride
When my heart cried out for you
Now every day I wake again
In a house that might have been
A home