This boy had a very bad case of cerebral palsy, and when he was still a little boy, some of the people entrusted to take care of him took advantage of him instead and did things to him that made him think that he was a very bad little boy, because only a bad little boy would have to live with the things he had to live with. he says when I approach the two of them. Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. The little girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. That bad people dont deserve kindness, and that you, when you you literally call them a piece of shit on Twitter, that you are somehow striking a moral blow, that you are somehow being part of the resistance. And Ive tried to do it so that Im not just repeating the same line, trying to kind of live in the moment. An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. A distraction itself was dangerous. Mister Rogers still has a ways to go.". (2021, directed . Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. This was not a bad thing, however, because he was in New York, and in New York it's not an insult to be called Mister Fucking Anything. Scenes where Lloyd Vogel passes out on the set of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Fred Rogers visits Jerry Vogel with a pie are created for the dramatic purposes of the story and have no baring on . The place was drab and dim, with the smell of stalled air and a stain of daguerreotype sunlight on its closed, slatted blinds, and Mister Rogers looked so at home in its gloomy familiarity that I thought he was going to fall back asleep when suddenly the phone rang, startling him. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn't want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said, "The connections we make in the course of a lifemaybe that's what heaven is, Tom. Then he looked at me and smiled. And my essay from 1998 is the intro for that. the Junod character is Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew . ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. Only it ends up more than 20 times that long, as he . By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers. He was a reformer in terms of method. I just try to ask for some sort of affirmation, you know? During his early conversations with Mr. Rogers, Lloyd is visibly disconcerted, even disturbed . He explained how his friendship with Rogers contrasted that image, writing, "Fred gave me what I needed then and still need now: a choice. Advertisement His editor at Esquire asked him to profile Fred Rogers, the beloved television personality and Presbyterian minister. In the film, Junod is represented by the character Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. and Fred, he's a hundred yards away, in his sneakers and his purple sweater, and the only thing anyone sees of him is his gray head bobbing up and down amid all the other heads, the hundreds of them, the thousands, the millions, disappearing into the city and its swelter. I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I mean, Fred wasnt just a reformer when it comes in terms of message. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. TJ: I mean, I never . But the boy was shaking his head no, and Mister Rogers was sneaking his face past the big sword and the armor of the little boy's eyes and whispering something in his earsomething that, while not changing his mind about the hug, made the little boy look at Mister Rogers in a new way, with the eyes of a child at last, and nod his head yes. TJ: Thats a great question. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist known for his jarring exposs but is secretive about his childhood, is the film's protagonist. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. And he had a relationship with a lot of people." Once upon a time, there was a little boy born blind, and so, defenseless in the world, he suffered the abuses of the defenseless, and when he grew up and became a man, he looked back and realized that he'd had no childhood at all, and that if he were ever to have a childhood, he would have to start having it now, in his forties. If this brutal, extended winter has you feeling down and cranky I suggest you give it a read. It gradually dawns on Tom/Lloyd, that the Mr. Rogers in front of the camera is the . And I think that audience is sort of self-selecting and limited by definition, almost. The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. His editor at Esquire asked him to profile Fred Rogers, the beloved television personality and Presbyterian minister. Yes, sure, he was taping, and right there, in Penn Station in New York City, were rings of other children wiggling in wait for him, but right now his patient gray eyes were fixed on the little boy with the big sword, and so he stayed there, on one knee, until the little boy's eyes finally focused on Mister Rogers, and he said, "It's not a sword; it's a death ray." "Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had." Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. "Oh, I just knew that whenever you see a little boy carrying something like that, it means that he wants to show people that he's strong on the outside. 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TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. Photo: Courtesy of Sony Pictures. Thats what I actually pray for. "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. I closed the door and sat back down. On this afternoon, the end of a hot, yellow day in New York City, he was very tired, and when I asked if I could go to his apartment and see him, he paused for a moment and said shyly, "Well, Tom, I'm in my bathrobe, if you don't mind." And, its definitely one of the reasons that changing the name to Lloyd Vogel worked, because I think that things sort of drift towards magical realism at that time. David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" The hard-hitting journalist reluctantly takes an assignment to write a profile story about the cherished TV icon for a special 1998 "Heroes" issue of Esquire . He was not a dogmatic person, but he was dogmatic about thatthat media should not be used as a distraction. I find the idea of, if theres a God, asking that God to change his mind Its almost objectionable to me. TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. As he gets to know the children's TV show host . They are tallas tall as the cinder-block walls they are designed to hideand they encompass the Neighborhood's entire stage set, from the flimsy yellow house where Mister Rogers comes to visit, to the closet where he finds his sweaters, to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where he goes to dream. There was an energy to him, however, a fearlessness, an unashamed insistence on intimacy, and though I tried to ask him questions about himself, he always turned the questions back on me, and when I finally got him to talk about the puppets that were the comfort of his lonely boyhood, he looked at me, his gray-blue eyes at once mild and steady, and asked, "What about you, Tom? TJ: I mean, I never had that nightmare, but very interesting. It had more to do with his relationship to his own father, which was a focal point for the film. Junod has stated that his encounter with Rogers changed his perspective on life. . One second, two seconds, three secondsand now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I am ashamed to say it, but I was too cool at the time for Mr. Rogers. Maya Lin is a famous architect. But at the same time, we dont know what to do with the lessons that Mister Rogers gave us. I dont know if Im ever going to be as good at the active devotion whereas Fred would like me or us to be. Id like to take your picture. It's not a good word. LloydRead More But then Esquire, for a special edition on "heroes," asks Lloyd to write a profile piece on Fred "Mister Rogers" Rogers. TJ: I think you try to put it together in one person. Tom Junod / Lloyd Vogel experiences this first hand as he tries to get Mr. Rogers to come "out of character". Sometimes, ophthalmologists have to take care of the eyes of children, and some children get very scared, because children know that their world disappears when their eyes close, and they can be afraid that the ophthalmologists will make their eyes close forever. Hero?" is about Mr. Rogers as much as it is . Children are so easily influenced I have grown into a middle aged man and I wish I had a better influencer in time of Mr.Rogers. Yes, at seventy years old and 143 pounds, Mister Rogers still fights, and indeed, early this year, when television handed him its highest honor, he responded by telling televisiongently, of courseto just shut up for once, and television listened. Ive gone on the road through this story and Ive become a spokesman not just for the movie, but for Fred, and its one of the great surprises of my life. Reading This 1998 Esquire Profile Of Mr. Rogers Will Feed Your Hungry Soul, GloRilla, Ice Spice, And The Carefree Black Girl Backlash, Karol G Tells Us About Her Most Personal Album Yet, Maana Ser Bonito, And Collaborating With Shakira, The Rundown: Between Cocaine Bears And Maple Syrup Heists, Margo Martindale Is Absolutely Thriving In 2023. In 2011 Michelle . Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didn't, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer I'd been waiting to say a very long time. In the film, Lloyd is searching for something, anything to unveil about Rogers' true character (the closest he gets is a discussion about his relationship with . It is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . February 14, 2014. As of November 2019, he is a writer . ESQUIRE: In your Atlantic piece, you talk about how theres no true successor to Mister Rogers. ", "Yes, Mister Rogers. He was wearing beige pants, a blue dress shirt, a tie, dark socks, a pair of dark-blue boating sneakers, and a purple, zippered cardigan. ", The next afternoon, I went to his office in Pittsburgh. he said. Well, not exactly. We hate that.' The film is centered on a writer for Esquire, a men's magazine with an arch sensibility, who is assigned, against his will, to write a feature story on Mr. Rogers as part of an edition on American heroes. The news was confirmed by Fred Rogers Productions . He was in college. It's this faithfulness to the essence of Junod's story that makes A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood so intriguing, and it will be even more interesting to see how the film goes about achieving that faithfulness. He is not speaking of the little girl. That was on fire, right? He was with his producer, Margy Whitmer. Oh, Margy Whitmer tried to keep people away from him, tried to tell people that if they gave her their names and addresses, Mister Rogers would send them an autographed picture, but every time she turned around, there was Mister Rogers putting his arms around someone, or wiping the tears off someone's cheek, or passing around the picture of someone's child, or getting on his knees to talk to a child. , Fred wasnt just a reformer when it comes in terms of message advertisement his at. Which was a focal point for the film limited by definition, almost to put it together in one.... The same time, we dont know if Im ever going to be visibly,... 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