Garrison Keillor Dips Into Mysteries of Human Behavior in The Adventures of Guy Noir

“A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions: Guy Noir, Private Eye.” This intro, accompanied by the distinctive piano melody composed by Richard Dworsky, is instantly recognizable to fans of A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show that Garrison Keillor has hosted for more than 35 years. The show has featured hundreds of installments of the adventures of this hard-boiled detective voiced by Keillor; the two-disc album The Adventures of Guy Noir, Radio Private Eye collects 11 of them, with a final track dedicated just to the theme.

Guy Noir is a rather acerbic man, and he often spends time ruminating on his displeasure with Minnesota’s weather or the ignorance of today’s youth or the tendency of clients to underpay him for his services. This collection is particularly pensive. Indeed, we sometimes spend more time in Guy’s head than we do actually doing anything. Some stories don’t involve a mystery at all; others put Guy on the case but spend most of the time sidetracked. I really don’t mind; I’m used to rambling tangents from Garrison Keillor, and I often find that the more random he gets, the more I crack up. Then again, my all-time favorite Guy Noir sketch, in which Poet Laureate Billy Collins had a guest role and imitations of William Carlos Williams poems flowed freely, retained a narrow focus and kept a mystery in the forefront. Those looking for that type of story might be disappointed here.

While Guy Noir, like A Prairie Home Companion, is based in Minnesota, he often travels for business, usually in conjunction with the show being on the road in a particular city. Hence, in this collection, he heads to New York, Los Angeles and a couple of other places, always commenting on the differences between them and his hometown. He’s an equal opportunity spoofer, making fun of the habits of Minnesotans as well as visitors from other states and those he visits elsewhere. There’s also plenty of political talk, again poking fun at both sides but seeming to give Republicans a slightly harder time. He also makes a number of pointed observations about Lutherans, particularly in the two stories about New Yorkers coming to Minnesota in search of love. While I’ve never been to Minnesota, I’d say his comments about Lutherans there apply pretty well to Lutherans in other parts of the country, particularly Erie, PA.

It always amuses me to hear him go on about casseroles and mild-mannered ministers and Norwegian bachelor farmers. I especially chuckled over Guy’s warning in one tale that “When it comes to finding single men in Minnesota, the odds are good but the goods are odd.” I guess Guy would know; most of these stories involve him pining over some gorgeous woman or another. He never seems to be romantically involved with anyone for long; most of them seem to just use him for his surveillance services and then move on.

This collection does include some puzzling cases, but it’s much more comedy than mystery. Sue Scott, Tim Russell and soundman Tom Keith, who also adds zany effects to each episode, provide their voice talents playing multiple characters, and guest stars turn up here as well, though I confess that Renee Fleming and Al Franken are the only ones I’ve heard of. The tales also frequently mention famous figures. For instance, in one story set mostly in New York, we get to hear New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and singers Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan – all imitations, naturally.

My favorite track has Guy Noir stopping in on the taping of a movie based on a Minnesota radio show in what seems likely to be a commentary on the experience of filming his own movie, though this album was released before the movie so I’m not sure how much work was done on the film by that point. In any case, it’s a hilarious peek at the trials of making a movie, and it’s hard to say whether the Minnesota yokels who can’t seem to hit a cue or the breathless Hollywood starlet incapable of pronouncing “young’un” take first prize in the cluelessness department. This is also one of a few sketches that include music, and while it’s funnier if you know what they’re spoofing, the lyrics should be goofy enough to elicit a laugh on their own, and I love the harmonies even if the song’s primary intent is silliness.

I’d never heard any of the tales on this album before. While I was a little surprised at how little actual mystery was involved most of the time, I got a good laugh over the discussion of the tedium of calling a company for repair assistance or an order of clothing, the headaches that holidays like Halloween and Christmas can bring, the degradation of the English language and the blandness of Minnesota Lutherans in general. Meanwhile, I confess a couple of the tracks inspired my sympathy, particularly one in which a high-class New Yorker falls hard for an unassuming Minnesota dairy farmer, only to conclude that there is no way to bring their worlds together.

These are stories to make you think. Mostly, though, they’re tales to tickle your funny bone, something that Garrison Keillor does very well indeed. While I’m not sure these 11 tracks are necessarily the best possible representatives of the series, they are definitely entertaining.

There's Nothing Plastic About Lars and the Real Girl

I joined my friends for a late-night showing of Lars and the Real Girl armed only with the knowledge that it starred Ryan Gosling, who won me over in The Notebook (though not as much as James Garner in the same role), and that it involved a "love doll" who Lars introduces as his girlfriend. All I could think was of Jude Law in A.I.; I assumed this was some sort of crude futuristic comedy about a man's extended relationship with what amounts to a mechanical prostitute. I expected her to walk and talk and betray only the slightest indications that she was not biologically based. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

We see from the film's opening scenes that Lars Lindstrom (Gosling) is severely socially stunted. He lives in a large garage on the property of the house where Gus (Paul Schneider), his distant older brother, lives with his compassionate, pregnant wife Karin (Emily Mortimer), and though she tries valiantly to coax him out of his isolation, Lars merely smiles blandly, blinks rapidly and retreats into his own private world from which he emerges only for church on Sundays and work during the week. It's on the job that he learns about a company from which he can purchase a life-size, anatomically correct doll. Ignoring the timid advances of Margo (Kelli Garner), a sweet, broad-grinned co-worker, he investigates further...

When an enormous package arrives at his door six weeks later, we all have a pretty good idea what it is, but Karin and Gus don't, so they're ecstatic when a giddy Lars rings on their doorbell to announce that he has a visitor and, out of a sense of propriety, he would like permission for her to stay in their guest room rather than in the garage with him. And then they meet Bianca, whose name does not appear on the cast list because there is nothing remotely human about her. She is nothing but a life-size doll with a glazed expression and an inability to stand up. Hence, she must sit in a wheelchair, which Lars must purchase for her because, as he explains in his first real conversation since the start of the movie, it was lost along with the rest of her luggage on the plane from Brazil. To Lars, Bianca is very real, and as he converses with her at the dinner table, Gus and Karin exchange looks of alarm. Lars clearly has lost his mind.

But a small stroke of genius by Karin lands them in the office of Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), a doctor who, under the guise of treating Bianca for a mysterious illness, initiates weekly psychiatric sessions with Lars in which she patiently encourages him to reveal his buried feelings bit by bit. Meanwhile, she advises the reluctant Karin and incredulous Gus to act as though Bianca is real. Rather than keep up this ruse on their own, they alert their friends, their pastor and the most prominent members of their congregation. Soon, the whole town knows about Bianca, and the already close-knit community grows even closer as they rally around her, adopting her as a sort of mascot and almost forgetting themselves that she's nothing but a hunk of plastic.

Gosling is fantastic as Lars, whose insecurities run so deep that physical contact with another person is literally painful for him. In the beginning, he seems to have no concept of how to interact normally with others. He stares blankly when people speak to him, often not acknowledging them at all. But something happens when Bianca arrives. He begins to act like a normal person. Yes, he spends half his time talking to a doll and inventing her end of the conversation, which only he can hear, but he also talks to the people around him, coming out of his shell gradually, to the point where he is attending parties and accepting Margo's invitation to go bowling, which never would have happened before Bianca. Although most people initially regard him as a freak for believing that this doll is alive, through her he is able to finally begin really living. Gosling's transformation from almost robotically awkward, complete with a unique collection of tics, to fully functional within the community at large is dramatic and totally believable.

Everyone in the cast is equally impressive. I loved Mortimer, who brought gentleness coupled with a fierce spirit to this very concerned sister-in-law who in many ways seems to act like the mother Lars never knew. Schneider's expressive face enhances the comedy of the film's strangest moments. Gus is less willing to go along with the charade than just about anyone else in town, and as such he probably echoes the reaction of many watching the movie. He's the voice of reason in an unreasonable series of events, but he slowly comes to discover that if you care enough about a person, you're willing to put aside your dignity for his well-being.

There is a definite Pinocchio-ish strain through this movie as everyone around Lars hopes that his love for Bianca will eventually be replaced with love for a "real girl". The girl in question is Margo, and Garner is absolutely winning as this understanding young woman who is so fond of Lars despite, or perhaps because of, all his oddities. Once she recovers from her initial shock, she treats Bianca warmly and is careful to make only overtures of friendship to Lars, lest it appear she is trying to sabotage his relationship. The blue fairy would be the magnanimous Dagmar, and Clarkson wonderfully conveys her professionalism and quiet willingness to listen and not to judge. She allows Lars to call all the shots in his courtship with Bianca and in his decisions to share the secrets he has long kept submerged.

Each of Lars' neighbors has something to contribute to his development, from the kindly secretary at work to the feisty elderly woman at church who is especially attentive to him. The movie was filmed in Ontario, and Adam Kimmel's cinematography offers lots of sparse, snowy landscapes, which look at once forbidding and inviting. David Tom's simple guitar-based score complements the landscape perfectly. As far as I noticed, the name of the town was never mentioned, nor the location. I assumed it to be somewhere in the northern reaches of Wisconsin or Minnesota, but perhaps it's meant to take place in Canada. I guess it doesn't really matter; the ambiguity lends the film more universality.

Every element of this movie, which was filmed in a month and looks like it didn't cost very much, is perfectly in place, from the excellent cast to Craig Gillespie's direction. They take Nancy Oliver's unconventional but beautiful screenplay and make it seem perfectly plausible. Sure, the community is idealized; it's one thing to accept Lars' fantasy with a wink and a nod, quite another to rush Bianca off by ambulance and admit her into the emergency room. Then again, in such a small town, the hospital probably doesn't have a lot of patients to deal with at any given time and can afford to play along for the sake of a townsperson who, by the end of the film, can have no doubt as to how much he is loved. If everyone grows to care about Bianca, who takes on a fabled philanthropic life of her own like Captain Tuttle, the officer Hawkeye invents in one of my favorite episodes of M*A*S*H, it's because they are willing to go to such great lengths to sustain the happiness of their delusional friend and help him to become an active part of the community.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of Lars and the Real Girl, but I certainly wasn't prepared for something this tender and touching, a movie that made me feel good about being a person and hopeful for our ability to work together for the good of others, even if our first inclination is to scoff and scorn. As I sat in the theater with a sparse sprinkling of other viewers, I don't think the smile ever left my face. Who knew that a movie about a plastic doll would have so much to say about humanity?