I can understand Garrison Keillor deciding to retire, it must have been an enormous amount of work to produce that many shows a year not to mention the touring. I don't have any problem with the show changing with a new host, every job ends, every career ends and even popular art needs to constantly hear from new minds and voices to be worth anything. It's wrong to want it to stay the same thing that it was, it should reflect the new host. I wish Chris Thile and the rest of the staff years of success and think they'll probably make the adjustment.
"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it." Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010 LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Prairie Home Companion After Two Weeks of Chris Thile
Chris Thile is very talented, very energetic, very versatile and charismatic, not to mention extremely good looking, but if Prairie Home Companion is going to turn into The Chris Thile Concert-Show it's a big mistake. Maybe it's the difference between a writer turned performer and a performer turned writer but he could put himself in the background a bit more of the time. He's just starting and maybe he'll get the hang of it but if it's going to be all about him it doesn't need two hours every week. He needs to remove himself from some of the segments, many of the skits. He's established his talent he doesn't need to prove it. Some of his friends are also very talented but in the context of this weeks show it kind of grated at times.
Hi. I read your blog and the one thing I’m confused about was what happened with Erica Rhodes taking over the show? I remember they did a few skits about it in the past. She’s a talented comedian. Why didn’t she become the new host?
ReplyDeleteI don't have the answer to that. It would seem that Erica Rhodes might have been a better fit in that her profession is closer to that of Garrison Keillor's. Chris Thile is a very talented musician but I find him rather annoying in skits, which seem to focus on him whenever he's in one. I don't know who's writing him into them like that but the adjustment for him, the writers and the audience is going to be hard. The show won't be the same without Keillor, in any case, but it was never really The Garrison Keillor Show, it shouldn't turn into The Chris Thile Show. I don't know if he'll be involved with writing for it but someone with as distinctive a style with some of the same sensibilities as Keillor's should probably replace him.
Delete