DOWN `HOME' IT'S ABOUT DEATH, BUT IT'S THE MUSIC THAT GIVES IT LIFE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Forget for a moment that the new Robert Altman movie, ``A Prairie Home Companion,'' was written by Garrison Keillor and features the famously hangdog storyteller in his feature film debut.

Forget that there are a couple of singing cowboys named Dusty and Lefty who praise the wonders of dirty humor in a song called ``Bad Jokes.''(Sample line: ``I'll give you the moonshine if you show me your jugs.'')

Forget Meryl Streep's gorgeous singing and Kevin Kline's inspired silliness. Forget for a moment how the whole genial enterprise is bathed in such a warm, amber glow that it practically makes your soul lift out of your body. And especially forget the relentless cheerfulness of the whole thing.

Because, for Altman, ``A Prairie Home Companion'' is all about death.

Maybe not the Grim Reaper of a Bergman film, but death all the same.

The problem is, no one else sees it that way, even with Virginia Madsen playing an angel from the Great Beyond, slinking around the periphery of the action, looking for a soul or two ready to keep an appointment with its Maker.

``Bob kept saying, `I thought people would get it, that death is the point of the whole thing,' '' Madsen says. ``And I said, `Yeah, but it's your fault. You made the movie too fun to watch.' ''

Adds Streep: ``It's a tough-minded little movie. You can watch it on one level and it's just entertainment. But Bob's not afraid of death.

``He has been through a lot.''

Altman, now 81, came to ``Prairie Home Companion'' after his attorney called him, mentioning that Keillor wanted to make a movie with him.

Keillor, a prolific author and host of the long-running public radio program that shares the same name as the film, wanted the film to focus on the characters of his Lake Wobegon stories, set in the mythical Minnesota town where the majority of his fiction is based.

Altman, though, had other ideas. His wife of 47 years, Kathryn, loved Keillor's radio show, and Altman figured that he could make his kind of movie -- large cast, dialogue driven, roving camera -- out of the backstage drama surrounding a radio show. So Keillor relented and followed orders, calling it, disingenuously, ``an assignment from Mr. Altman.''

``I volunteered in order to keep somebody else from doing it,'' Keillor says, completely deadpan. ``I can think of people I would not want to write a screenplay about `Prairie Home Companion.' So it's a dog-in-a-manger sort of act on my part.''

Keillor's screenplay went through several revisions before coming to focus on the last performance of a popular radio show -- very much like his own -- hosted by a shy, somewhat aloof storyteller -- very much like himself -- that's being booted off the air because the radio station has been sold to a Texas conglomerate. (That part hasn't happened -- ``yet,'' Keillor says.)

``It's a strange thing, writing this kind of thing about yourself,''

Keillor, 63, says. ``I stayed well within the boundaries of what I could do, writing a small, supporting role for a tall, sort of clumsy, dour person. And I was adequate at doing that.

``When you're with a cast of terrific actors,'' Keillor adds, ``people think this would be intimidating, but actually, it's much less so.

``When you're with a group of rank amateurs, people as rank as yourself, there's no one you can absolutely count on. But when you're with Meryl and Lily (Tomlin) and Kevin, you just follow along in their wake. Really, you're just drawn on. You just react. Be appropriate. That's all you need to do.''

For ``Prairie Home'' cast members, the biggest question surrounding Keillor didn't concern his acting (``Listen to his program,'' Streep says, ``the man is a showman''), but whether he could cede control over a personal project like this to another strong-willed man -- Altman.

``They're really like two Old Men of the Sea,'' says John C. Reilly, who joins Woody Harrelson in playing the singing cowboys. ``And with age comes a certain amount of ego. You're used to being the center of the universe. But it worked out beautifully. There's a shared appreciation and acceptance of humanity in their work despite all of its flaws and eccentricities.''

Adds Streep: ``They're both depressed optimists.''

Keillor, for his part, says it was a pleasure to relinquish authority and defer to Altman. Altman, sadly, couldn't comment for this story, having to cancel an interview because of a bout with the flu. But Tomlin, who has worked with Altman now on four films -- ``Nashville,'' ``The Player'' and ``Short Cuts'' preceding ``Prairie Home'' -- says it's easy to yield to someone who doesn't come out and ask for control.

``He's so unflappable,'' Tomlin says. ``He just so accepts whatever is presented to him. He allows you to be.

``People ask me how he has changed in the 30 years since we made `Nashville,' '' Tomlin continues, ``and the only difference is that he doesn't ride the crane anymore. That's it. He has the same intellectual interest and the same energy. Death might be a subject close to his heart, but you won't find a more beautiful, fully alive man anywhere in the world.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

Meryl 'n' Lily in tune with each other

Maybe you caught Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin at this year's Academy Awards, presenting Robert Altman his lifetime achievement Oscar with a perfectly honed stand-up routine that featured overlapping dialogue, unfinished sentences, strange non-sequiturs and a shaggy, shambling humanity that captured the director's cinematic legacy.

Turns out it was just a warm-up to their work in Altman's ``Prairie Home Companion.'' Playing the proud survivors of a singing sister quintet, Tomlin and Streep stand as the year's most memorable on-screen pairing. And in person, together, they're no less lively. A sampling:

On the lack of a familial resemblance:

TOMLIN: I thought, ``We look so different, no one's gonna believe us as sisters.'' I tried to make your nose like mine.

STREEP: Is that what was happening at night? I felt that.

On singing in the movie:

STREEP: I didn't prepare too much. We just had three days to get ready. I like to sing and it's just really fun to sing and I don't get to too much. At my house, I'm not allowed to sing because my children can't stand when I sing.

TOMLIN: Or show any kind of happiness or joy.

STREEP: Or anything really. So it has been hard to wait till everybody's out of the house -- there's a lot of them -- to sing.

So I was glad to be able to do it in the movie. It was pure joy.

On the unflappable Altman:

STREEP: There has to be something good about growing old. And one of the things is that you just don't stress about some stuff that used to make you worried and nervous. You're BA -- Beyond Anxiety.

TOMLIN: I don't know about that. I'm not there yet. But Bob is.

I called him and I told him I practiced for two months singing, singing almost every day. But I told him, ``I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this when I get there.'' And he said, ``Oh. If you don't sing well, you just don't sing well.'' And it's just that easy. However I would have sung, that's how my character would have sung.

Intuitively, he just goes with it.

On their different approaches to Lindsay Lohan:

STREEP: It's very easy to feel motherly toward her. It's so hard for these young actors. It's a different world that they're coming up in.

There's so much money to be made off their personal lives. And I felt protective of her and felt bad for the world that we've given this generation of kids.

TOMLIN: Meryl was maternal. I wanted to go to a rave club with Lindsay. And I couldn't believe she didn't relate to me as a contemporary.

-- G.W.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

Director Robert Altman brings radio show to life

(2) Woody Harrison, left, is Dusty, and John C. Reilly is his cowboy pal, Lefty, in the new film ``A Prairie Home Companion.''

(3) Robert Altman, 81, directs the fictional saga about the much-loved radio show.

(4) Meryl Streep, left, and Lily Tomlin are the signing Johnson sisters.

Box:

Meryl 'n' Lily in tune with each other (see text)