He's now a character in the folksy, funny universe he created

NEW YORK -- It's almost never a nice thing to say that someone has a face made for radio. But you can say it about Garrison Keillor, because if you don't, he will.

Born with the bug-eyed, flat-nosed features of a pug puppy , Keillor has carved out a career as an icon in no-frills entertainment. He isn't hampered by expectations of glamour or sophistication in this endeavor. He's the kind of guy who accents his natural down-home dweebiness by showing up for a New York City interview in his trademark red socks and sneakers, which make him look like a 63-year-old, laptop-packing rodeo clown.

He wants you to know he's not just a storyteller; he's also a character.

For anyone who has never listened to National Public Radio , Keillor is the creator and humorously philosophical host of ``A Prairie Home Companion," a weekly live variety show about life in the fictional Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon. The folksy broadcast has been going on now for most of the last three decades, earning a loyal fan base that spans the globe and is especially fertile in Manhattan, of all places.

This Friday ``A Prairie Home Companion" will hit theaters as a fictional, parallel universe of a movie directed by Robert Altman, with a cast led by Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Kevin Kline. Keillor wrote the screenplay and pretty much plays himself in the film -- not bad for a guy whose teenage alter ego is compared to a tree toad in Keillor's 2001 book, ``Lake Wobegon Summer 1956."

``Unfortunately, I'm in the movie myself, so I have to look at myself with other people, and of course that's, uh, misery," the author says with predictable humility. But he admits to enjoying the community of moviemaking more than one might expect: ``The theater is so sociable, and the line of work that I'm in -- I'm not sure what it is, but it's not sociable. . . . For a writer to look at his own words spoken on the screen is in some part irritating, because you still want to do some more work on it, but the project itself was really a great deal of fun."

Altman gets credit for much of that pleasure because he gave the screenwriter full autonomy and on-the-spot rewriting privileges throughout their five-week shoot at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, where the real show regularly goes on. But the tradeoff was that Keillor had to surrender his baby to the arms, mikes, mirrors, and other quirks of the veteran director: ``I was not asked to come look at the monitor screen and tell him if I liked something or not," explains the author. ``Mr. Altman is 81 years old . He does not need reinforcement from me."

At least Keillor had Altman in mind from the beginning and had the comfort of knowing the director viewed his work as a country cousin of the great ``Nashville." It was Altman who convinced Keillor to scrap his original idea of a drama set in Lake Wobegon, urging him to instead write a faux documentary behind-the-scenes look at his own largely extemporaneous radio show. What emerged -- with help from former ``Prairie Home" staff writer Ken LaZebnik -- is the effortlessly layered and bittersweet tale of a close-knit group staging a final live local broadcast before being silenced by a corporate ax man (Tommy Lee Jones).

That seemingly symbolic narrative, complete with a blond angel of death played by Virginia Madsen, has been labeled elegiac by people who are in a rush to reflect on Altman in his twilight. But Keillor says no such squishiness is intended, and Altman waves off suggestions that the film is an ode to anything (old-time radio) or anyone (him).

``Que sera sera," remarks the director, in Boston along with ``Prairie Home" cast members assembled to honor Streep's recent Coolidge Award. ``It all goes."

In a nutshell, that's the disarming charm of this movie. Keillor notes that where he comes from, ``people talk about their deaths with a certain degree of detached amusement. If we were told we had six months [to live]," he speculates, ``we would all take up smoking again and go back to learning to appreciate the martini."

Altman, a former radio writer himself, is from Kansas City, Mo.; Keillor hails from Anoka, Minn. Together they've crafted a stripped-down, unsentimental Midwestern vision of acceptance and grace that eludes most Hollywood vehicles. And maybe that's always been the attraction of ``A Prairie Home Companion": It lets you indulge in nostalgia without a bucket of syrup.

On film as on radio, the show presents quaint but subversive anecdotes, its sponsorship parodies pitch Powdermilk Biscuits and Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie with a straight face, and its house band gamely tackles everything from bluegrass to Norwegian folk songs in the span of a single program. It's a world that seems neither gussied up nor dumbed down -- a nice place to visit even if you didn't want to live there. Ever.

``It really feels like entering into a different kind of reality when you listen to that show," marvels John C. Reilly, who plays singing cowboy Lefty in the movie. ``[Keillor has] created this universe with all these creative people, and there's this benign anarchy going on when they actually do that show, and it matched up really well with the way Robert Altman works."

Reilly's cowboy is just one beloved figure that loyal listeners of ``Prairie Home" will see brought to the big screen. Woody Harrelson is Lefty's trail pardner, Dusty, and Kevin Kline brings slapstick dashes of Buster Keaton and Peter Sellers to the role of Guy Noir, demoted from unflinching private eye to bumbling theater security director for the purposes of this story.

Streep and Tomlin play a singing sister act invented for the film, and Lindsay Lohan steps out of her teen-queen prison to take a more mature turn as the sullen daughter of Streep's character.

The movie also features many regular ``Prairie Home" musical contributors (Linda and Robin Williams, Jearlyn Steele) and bad jokes (``Why do they call it PMS? 'Cause Mad Cow was already taken."). But the glue, as always, is Keillor -- the measured son of blue-collar Christian fundamentalists; a twice-divorced, currently married family man who is prone to tweaking conservatives and spreading his own illuminating gospel.

In his early days as a broadcaster, Keillor ditched his native accent to be more like his idol, Edward R. Murrow. He even tried on a vaguely British manner to sound more public-radio legit. But by the time ``A Prairie Home Companion" was born in 1974, inspired by Keillor's experiences as a New Yorker scribe reporting on the Grand Ole Opry, Keillor had settled into the soothing announcer voice you hear today.

``A nice slow legato," Kline calls it. ``That tempo of delivery allows him to be honest and considered and to ad-lib more liberally because it's not rapid-fire in-your-face."

Whatever it is, it's understandably prized in this age of plastic Ryan Seacrests. Keillor, who also hosts public radio's ``The Writer's Almanac" when he isn't working on best-selling novels, children's books, magazine pieces, poems, and musical compositions, is the caretaker of a storytelling tradition that counts Streep among its devotees.

``[He represents] an idea of ourselves that lingers deep inside about who we are, and who we Americans see ourselves as: hard-working, decent, and funny," comments the actress during an interview in a Boston hotel. She's impressed enough that she'll make a cameo appearance when Keillor does his broadcast from Tanglewood on July 1.

In the meantime, we'll get to see whether ``A Prairie Home Companion" connects as well via film as it does live (``The Rhubarb Tour" hits South Shore Music Circus on June 28 and the Cape Cod Melody Tent on June 29) and on the air.

``There aren't many movies about radio," Keillor observes with his casual brand of fatalism. ``Maybe there's a reason."

Janice Page can be reached at jpage@globe.com.