Prairie Home Companion, the radio broadcast and the movie, have been in Austin. The Broken Spoke was closed for a private party last night. Has this ever happened within living memory on a Saturday? Was it the Prairie Home people? I don’t listen to the radio show all that often but the audience seemed to be super-enthusiastic, surpassing the ordinary attendees, and could be heard loud and clear singing two songs from the seats. Joe Ely was in acoustic mode, accompanied by Joel Guzman of Los Aztex. Cindy Cashdollar, Red Volkaert, and Elana James, singing and playing as the High-Flyers, were the true hits of the show. Molly Ivins recounted a story or two that probably won’t mean much to the national audience, since the names and situations involved were pretty Austin- and Texas-specific. The movie has no narrative propulsion or cinematic interest to speak of, but that doesn’t mean it’s not view-worthy. Most entertaining were the house band, Tomlin and Streep (in that order), Kevin Kline as Guy Noir, Dusty (Woody Harrelson, and great) and Lefty (John C. Reilly, also great), and Tommy Lee Jones’s cameo. One Streep-Tomlin duet went on too long, but that’s not their fault; it had an excess of verses after the point had been made. I did love to hear them sing together. The audience skewed old.