Movies: A Prairie Film Companion

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The actors play what Streep calls "the truth of the scene" rather than Keillor's exact lines. Streep says that Tomlin "wrestled lines to the ground, strangled them to death, then picked up the pieces and made something different." To which Tomlin replies, "Meryl's pretty free-mouthed herself. We fell into a pattern of finishing each other's thoughts. It's like tennis--we were in the game together."

To Lohan, 19, the game was "scary but really cool." She found that Streep was so deeply in character that she treated Lohan maternally even off camera. "Lindsay, my baby!" was her greeting when they met. In Lohan's first scene with Streep and Tomlin, she says, "I just went with it, and soon I was crying and they were crying. You can bring out so many emotions when you're interacting spontaneously."

Whether audiences will go with it when the movie is released early next year, no one knows, least of all Altman. "When I go home at night, I know we've got something, but I don't know what," he says. "It's going to be a very weird movie." Keillor is content, praising the improv-minded actors for raising his script "from the limp pasta that it was." Besides, he's already looking ahead to his next project. He has a great idea for a screenplay about a town called Lake Wobegon.