Garrison Keillor'sA Prairie Home Companion, the live broadcast variety show that introduced America to the fictitious town of Lake Wobegon, Minn., will originate its next broadcast from the Wortham Theater Center's Brown Theater stage on Saturday evening.
And it's become something of a hot ticket for Keillor's devoted fans. The event is sold out and there are tickets being advertised on Craigslist for $125 each.
Prairie Home Companion began as a somewhat different animal in 1974, and has over the last 30 years built up a weekly audience of more than four million listeners on almost 600 public radio stations.
Known for its folksy and bluegrass musical guests, Keillor's tongue-in-cheek radio dramas and its most loved segment, "News From Lake Wobegon," the show has become a staple of Americana. (In 2006 it was made into a Robert Altman film starring Keillor, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Virginia Madsen, Maya Rudolph, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline and a then-with-it Lindsay Lohan.)
Saturday's live broadcast will include musical guests The Quebe Sisters, Texas-born mandolinist and violinist Richard Kriehn, and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham. Also performing live will be The Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott and Fred Newman), Rich Dworsky and The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and, of course, the latest News from Lake Wobegon.
If you don't get in, you can tune in to KUHF at 5 p.m. or listen online here. The show will rebroadcast online Sunday at noon.
Houston is becoming something of a regular stop for Keillor. He performed with the Houston Symphony last December.
As the rights and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community have expanded over the past 50 or so years, one part of that group, transgender people, has found it more difficult to be considered a normal part of society. Every new instance of putting the story of a transgender person on screen, whether fictional or real, increases their exposure to those who might never have encountered them before.
That makes a documentary like Will & Harper (a title which seems to take inspiration from the groundbreaking TV series Will & Grace) valuable. The fact that the “Will” in the title is comedian/actor Will Ferrell helps, as he and longtime friend, Harper Steele, embark on a road trip across the United States soon after Harper reveals her transition from a man to a woman.
Harper, who met Will while they were both at Saturday Night Live in the late '90s/early 2000s, decided at the relatively older age of 59 that she could no longer pretend to be someone she wasn’t. The idea of the road trip – and of filming it – came about so that the friends could reconnect, learn more about each other given the momentous change, and do a lot of the things that Harper enjoyed doing by herself prior to her transition.
Director Josh Greenbaum and his crew attach a camera to the hood of Harper’s old Jeep Wagoneer to record her and Will's conversations as they traverse many states, starting in New York and heading west. Their connection to SNL means that many of the show’s current and former stars show up in one form or another along the way, including Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Tim Meadows, Lorne Michaels, Molly Shannon, Kristen Wiig, and Will Forte, among others.
While their love and respect for Harper is obvious, Harper has trepidation over how strangers in middle America will react to her. The presence of Will (and the cameras) gives her perhaps easier acceptance than someone not traveling with a famous person, but there are still more than a few uncomfortable stops, particularly when they get to the South (Texas does not come off well, but surprisingly Oklahoma does).
Those scenes with everyday Americans are interesting (if occasionally a bit contrived), but the heart of the film is the friendship between Will and Harper. Their conversations range from silly to heartfelt, but there is a genuineness to them that can’t be faked. Harper invites Will to ask her any questions he has about her transition, resulting in insightful – and, often, funny – answers. Their friendship was clearly already strong, but it gets palpably stronger during the 17-day journey.
There are a lot of messages one could get from a film like this, but it’s notable for how apolitical it is. Will and Harper have encounters with Eric Holcomb, the Republican governor of Indiana, as well as a few people wearing MAGA hats, but their positions on transgender people goes unremarked upon. The friends gently correct people who mis-gender Harper, but they never express any animosity towards them. It’s a movie about exploration, with education as a side benefit.
While it might be too strong to say that Will & Harper is a world-changing film, it adds another layer to the story of transgender people as a whole. It also shows the unconditional love between two friends, a lesson that is heartening in divided times.
---
Will & Harper is now playing in select theaters; it will debut on Netflix on September 27.
