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Guy Noir is a fictional private detective regularly featured on the public radio show A Prairie Home Companion . Voiced by Garrison Keillor, the character parodies the conventions of hardboiled fiction and the film noir genre. Guy Noir works on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building in a city that "knows how to keep its secrets", St. Paul, Minnesota.
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The first Guy Noir segments aired in 1995 and were heavy on tongue-twisters, alliteration and other wordplay. In early episodes of the series, Guy and his "friend" Pete (Walter Bobbie) would often get into fights and end up shooting each other. Both died many times. However, following Bobbie's departure as a show regular, Pete appears to have died off for good.
In later episodes, Noir is a down-on-his-luck detective, who ends up taking odd jobs to get by, such as finding missing poodles. Thrown in with these plots tend to be references to current events. For example, in November 2006, while waiting for a case, Noir contents himself by listening to parts of George W. Bush's post-mid-term election speech. Occasionally, political agents use him for hatchet work.
For the portion of A Prairie Home Companion's season that is performed outside of St. Paul, the setting of Noir's case usually involves the city that the program is visiting that week. In the same skit as the Bush reference, Noir is flown to Hawaii to look for a missing Minnesotan. That week, the show was broadcast from Hawaii.
Recurring characters in the skits include: Sugar (Sue Scott), a romantic interest; Jimmy (Tim Russell), a bartender; and Wendell (Tom Keith), the boy who works at the deli around the corner.
Noir often runs into a beautiful, mysterious woman during the skits, part of the play on film noir movies. Jazzy saxophone music is played as Noir describes the beauty, sometimes to the point of absurdity. For example:
She was tall, blonde, in jeans that looked sprayed on and a T-shirt so tight I could study her bone structure. I could see she wasn't from Duluth. There were no chinstrap marks on her neck, her hair hadn't been deformed by stocking caps, she didn't have that roll of fat around her middle—her midriff was as tight as the cap on a pickle jar. [1]
and
She was tall and long-legged and her blonde hair hung down sort of like what Beethoven had in mind when he wrote the Moonlight Sonata. She wore a knit sweater and jeans so tight it looked as if she'd been poured into them and forgot to say "When". When she moved, she seemed to undulate under her clothes in ways that took a man's mind off supply side economics. [2]
and
She was tall and dark and so beautiful you wanted to just give her all your money right away and skip the preliminaries. [3]
Noir is the protagonist of Keillor's book Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny, where he falls in with Naomi Fallopian and her get-rich-quick diet pill scheme. The story has many of the hallmarks of the radio dramas.
A 2006 Guy Noir skit, in which some characters had a fictitious variation of Tourette syndrome called "Broadway Tourette's", drew criticism from the Tourette Syndrome Association. [4]
Noir is played in the 2006 film A Prairie Home Companion by Kevin Kline. In the film, Guy's detective career is faltering, and he works as a security guard at a radio show to pay the bills. It is strongly implied that he is taken by an angel of death named Asphodel at the end of the movie, though since she is played by Virginia Madsen in a trench coat, this might be considered a relatively upbeat ending by Guy's standards.
The late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was a known fan of Noir; Noir was his favorite segment. Following his untimely 2002 death in a plane crash, the next APHC opened with a Noir segment, skipping even the show's theme song.
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion, which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared in A Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program The Writer's Almanac, which pairs poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.
A Prairie Home Companion is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed Live from Here and ran until 2020. A Prairie Home Companion aired on Saturdays from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota; it was also frequently heard on tours to New York City and other U.S. cities. The show is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Keillor's wry storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon," was the show's best-known feature during his long tenure.
Cherlynne Theresa Thigpen was an American actress of stage and screen. She was known for her role as "The Chief" of ACME Crimenet in the game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and various spinoffs, and for her role as "Luna" in the Playhouse Disney children's series Bear in the Big Blue House. For her varied television work, Thigpen was nominated for six Daytime Emmy Awards. She won a Tony Award in 1997 for portraying Dr. Judith Kaufman in An American Daughter, and also played Ella Farmer on The District (2000–2003).
Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve variety show, sitcom elements, sketches, and various types of comedy found in other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some simple dialogue. Radio comedy began in the United States in 1930, based on the fact that as most United Kingdom music hall comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel progressed to silent films, they moved to Hollywood and fed the radio comedy field. Another British music hall comic, George Formby, stayed in the British movie industry, and in 1940 joined the Entertainments National Service Association to entertain British World War II troops. UK radio comedy therefore started later, in the 1950s.
The Writer's Almanac is a daily podcast and newsletter of poetry and historical interest pieces, usually of literary significance. Begun as a radio program in 1993, it is hosted by Garrison Keillor and was produced and distributed by American Public Media through November 2017. It is also available as a podcast. Past program sponsors include The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine and The Mosaic Foundation of Rita and Peter Heydon.
Lake Wobegon Days is a novel by Garrison Keillor, first published in hardcover by Viking in 1985. Based on material from his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, the book brought Keillor's work to a much wider audience and achieved international success selling over 1 million copies. Like some of Keillor's other books, it is unusual in that it could be said that the audiobook preceded the publication in written form.
Thomas Alan Keith was a radio personality who worked for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the engineer for Garrison Keillor when the latter began his early morning radio show from the St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota studio. Keillor wanted dialogue during the program and Keith was about the only other person around at that early hour. Keith was one of the primary sound effects performers for the radio show A Prairie Home Companion and was often an actor in sketches written by Keillor. Keillor created the persona of Jim Ed Poole for Keith on the old early morning show. Jim Ed was said to have grown up in West St. Paul, Minnesota and graduated from Henry Sibley High School.
Tim Russell is an American radio announcer and voice actor (AFTRA/SAG) in Minneapolis – Saint Paul. He is most widely known as one of the actors on the long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and continued in that role on the show, re-titled, Live From Here with Chris Thile until September 2018. As a voice-over talent and announcer, Russell also appears in radio and television commercials.
Sue Scott is an American actress and character voice actor (AFTRA/SAG/AEA) in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. She is best known for her work as a radio comedy actor on Garrison Keillor's public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and for her work as a voice-over talent in radio and television commercials. She has also appeared in films and television.
Frederick R. Newman is an American actor, comedian, composer, foley artist, and former talk show host.
A Prairie Home Companion is a 2006 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman and is his final film. It is a fictional representation of behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box-office success on a small budget. The film features an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin.
Sara Ullrika Watkins is an American singer-songwriter and fiddler. Watkins debuted in 1989 as the fiddler of Nickel Creek, the progressive bluegrass group she formed with her brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile. In addition to singing and fiddling, Watkins also plays the ukulele and the guitar, and also played percussion while touring with the Decemberists. In 2012, she and her brother played with Jackson Browne during his "I'll Do Anything" acoustic tour.
Societal and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome include legal advocacy and health insurance issues, awareness of notable individuals with Tourette syndrome, and treatment of TS in the media and popular culture.
Robin and Linda Williams are a husband-and-wife singer-songwriter folk music duo from Virginia. They met in South Carolina in 1971, and began performing in 1973.
Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison Keillor as the setting of the recurring segment "News from Lake Wobegon" for the radio program A Prairie Home Companion broadcast from St Paul, Minnesota. The fictional town serves as the setting for many of Keillor's stories and novels, gaining an international audience with Lake Wobegon Days in 1985. Described as a small rural town in central Minnesota, the events and adventures of the townspeople provided Keillor with a wealth of humorous and often touching stories.
Aoife O'Donovan is an American singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still and she also co-founded the Grammy Award-winning female folk trio I'm with Her. She has released three critically acclaimed studio albums: Fossils (2013), In the Magic Hour (2016), and Age of Apathy, as well as multiple noteworthy live recordings and EPs, including Blue Light (2010), Peachstone (2012), Man in a Neon Coat: Live From Cambridge (2016), In the Magic Hour: Solo Sessions (2019), and Bull Frog's Croon (2020). She also spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live from Here and A Prairie Home Companion. Her first professional engagement was singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers.
The Morning Show, initially called The Morning Program and then for a time A Prairie Home Entertainment and A Prairie Home Morning Show, was a weekday morning drive-time radio program produced in St. Paul, Minnesota and broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio's KCMP and other stations of the MPR network.
Ivy Austin is an American actress, singer, and voice-over artist, known for her performances on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion and her Sesame Street voices. She also starred on Broadway as Raggedy Ann.
Erica Rhodes is an American actress and comedian. She has been performing on A Prairie Home Companion since the age of 13 and appeared in several movies and TV shows, including Plague Town, 1,000 Ways to Die, and The Consultants. She has also guest starred on New Girl, @midnight with Chris Hardwick, and Modern Family. She competed in the reality television comedy competition series Bring the Funny.
Live from Here, formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion with Chris Thile, is an American variety radio show known for its musical guests, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Hosted by Chris Thile, it aired live on Saturday evenings. The show's initial home was the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2019, the show moved to The Town Hall in New York City, where it remained until its cancellation the next year.
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