ALTMAN ALOFT.(The Talk of the Town)(Interview)

In his eighty-second year, Robert Altman is managing to do what he's always done: making films that he wants to make, ignoring anyone else's market-tested notion of what will or won't fly at the box office, and remaining utterly cool. His manner puts one in mind of a laconic jazz musician--equal faith in art and in technique, and never an iota of attitude. He also appears, as always, to be having a pretty good time.

One breezy recent evening, in downtown St. Paul, a parade of ten horse-drawn carriages, led by a high-school marching band, departed from the circular drive in front of the swanky enough St. Paul Hotel. Altman and his wife, Kathryn Reed Altman, rode in the lead carriage, along with St. Paul's most celebrated citizen, Garrison Keillor, and his eight-year-old daughter, Maia. Six blocks away, the procession halted at the Fitzgerald Theatre, since 1978 the home venue of Keillor's radio variety program, "A Prairie Home Companion." For five weeks last summer, the Fitz was also the set of Altman's latest film, a.k.a. "A Prairie Home Companion." The parade kicked off the Midwest premiere of the movie, which officially opens next month. The film's conceit is that it documents the final broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion." Which meant that the occasion at the Fitz had a distinctly hall-of-mirrors quality: an audience that included several "Prairie Home Companion" regulars (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, Tom Keith) watched a fictionalized rendering of that mythical-real radio program, along with several actors who, onscreen, were impersonating radio performers (Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan). Though this is Altman and Keillor's first collaboration, it reflects what their work has in common: unsentimental romance, adroitly precise satire, and an uncorny love of American music.

Accepting an Academy Award this year--his first, for lifetime achievement--Altman alluded to transplant surgery he had in 1995, when he received a heart from a donor in her thirties, a circumstance that he calculates will keep him working for several more decades. He walks slowly (he claims to have the world's worst feet) but otherwise hasn't altered his pace.