Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is based on the real-life story of journalist Tom Junod and an article he wrote for Esquire magazine profiling Fred Rogers. While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . Because Mister Rogers is such a busy man, however, he could not write the chapter himself, and he asked a woman who worked for him to write it instead. 'I love you.' 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 . . The movie is based on a true story, and is about the unexpected friendship between Mr. Rogers and a journalist who was assigned to profile Mr. Rogers for an Esquire article. Rogers as a peasant to explaining the world to remove son. In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. The character of the writer in the movie, Lloyd Vogel, is not amused. 2:27. In trying to strip away Mr. Rogers . He is losing to it, to our twenty-four-hour-a-day pie fight, to the dizzying cut and the disorienting edit, to the message of fragmentation, to the flicker and pulse and shudder and strobe, to the constant, hivey drone of the electrocultureand yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence. "Will you be with me when I die?" 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. 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. When Junod first read the script for the movie, he believed that the writers had made him out to be a jerk, though he had a much more colorful term for that. He knowing what only Fred could do. Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. And so I wrote that. In actuality, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood's Vogel is journalist Tom Junod, who profiled Rogers for Esquire in his 1998 piece "Can You SayHero?" It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). It was the first time I had read the story in a really long time. "Looks a bit likeOld Rabbit, doesn't it, Tom? TJ: I mean, I never . Exclusive & Unlimited access to Esquire Classic - The Official Esquire Archive. Your prayers are just wonderful." We may earn a commission from these links. Theyre polar opposites. He allowed me to choose between two visions of manhood, a choice I suspect Ill have to continue making for the rest of my life, which is why Im writing my book and which is why I asked the producers of the movie to change the names.". The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. 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. ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. But how could Mister Rogers show little becoming big, and vice versa? Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn't like himself very much. He doesn't even know. Really, I think its just that Tom Junod is a guy who stands out in a crowd. He wanted us to pray. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I mean, one of the great surprises of my life is doing this. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. If . 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? Junod and Rogers exchanged dozens of emails that would . There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. ESQ: I mean, you said that if he grew up in the age of Twitter, you can expect what he would have done. He thought about it for a second, then said, by way of agreement, "Okay, thentomorrow, Tom, I'll show you childhood." That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. "Roy Rogers is done. 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. Until one night, Mister Rogers came to him, in what he calls a visitation"I was dreaming, but I was awake"and offered to teach him how to pray. His name was Old Rabbit., Old Rabbit. And in a lot of ways, things that couldnt happen on a person by person level could happen on media, because its mob versus invisible person. Yeah. That was on fire, right? Tom Junod / Lloyd Vogel experiences this first hand as he tries to get Mr. Rogers to come "out of character". Yes, it should be easy being Mister Rogers, but when four o'clock rolls around, well, Mister Rogers is tired, and so he sneaks over to the piano and starts playing, with dexterous, pale fingers, the music that used to end a 1940s newsreel and that has now become the music he plays to signal to the cast and crew that a day's taping has wrapped. A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD - Official Trailer (HD), What Mr Rogers Was Leading Tom Junod to All Along, Read Tom Junod's Iconic Mr. Rogers Profile, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. The answer to: What did Fred want? Mister Rogers recorded 20 episodes of a show aimed at adults titled "Old Friends . I'm not sure why perhaps as a Valentine's gift to all of us or to make up for the guy who yesterday wrote that men who play with LEGOs are not real men but last . ", Deb stiffened for a second, and she let out a breath, and her color got deeper. It has all 865 programs, in both color and black and white, and for two months this past spring, Joybubbles went to the library every day for ten hours and watched the Neighborhood's every episode, plus specialsor, since he is blind, listened to every episode, imagined every episode. Id like to take your picture. You would think it would be easy by now, being Mister Rogers; you would think that one morning he would wake up and think, Okay, all I have to do is be nice for my allotted half hour today, and then I'll just take the rest of the day off.But no, Mister Rogers is a stubborn man, and so on the day I ask about the color of his sky, he has already gotten up at five-thirty, already prayed for those who have asked for his prayers, already read, already written, already swum, already weighed himself, already sent out cards for the birthdays he never forgets, already called any number of people who depend on him for comfort, already cried when he read the letter of a mother whose child was buried with a picture of Mister Rogers in his casket, already played for twenty minutes with an autistic boy who has come, with his father, all the way from Boise, Idaho, to meet him. 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 film's protagonist is journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a cynic who is assigned by his . Every timeless feature, profile, interview, novella - even the ads! "It's Joanne," he said. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. 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? At work the next day, Lloyd plays off his shiner as the result of a softball injury and very reluctantly takes a 400-word profile of Mr. Rogers assigned by his editor at Esquire in an effort to . The ophthalmologists did not want to scare children, so they asked Mister Rogers for help, and Mister Rogers agreed to write a chapter for a book the ophthalmologists were putting togethera chapter about what other ophthalmologists could do to calm the children who came to their offices. Synopsis: A profile of Fred Rogers, or as we know him from the Neighborhood, from childhood, Mister Rogers. His name was Fred Rogers. Junod is personally present . But when I did my first draft for the The Atlantic, I wrote that I still dont know what Fred wants from me, or wants from us. He got out of the car, and, moving as quickly as he had moved to the door of his house, he stepped up a small hill to the door of a large gray mausoleum, a huge structure built for six, with a slightly peaked roof, and bronze doors, and angels living in the stained glass. "I don't know if I want to put on a performance.". Over the course of two hours, we see Fred Rogers movingly model a type of humanity for Vogel, who seems mired in anger, disconnected from his own feelings. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. If somebody had said five years ago, that I was going to be spending the months in October and November 2019 sort of speaking for Fred Rogersyeah, right. ESQ: One thing I was really interested in how in the The Atlantic piece, you spell out masculinity as defined by your father. Second mook: "Huh. ", "Yes, Mister Rogers. Mister Rogers always worries about things like that, because he always worries about children, and when his station wagon stopped in traffic next to a bus stop, he read aloud the advertisement of an airline trying to push its international service. He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. For my father, everything that was important was visible to the eye. And its all in there. He takes a nap every day in the late afternoonjust as he wakes up every morning at five-thirty to read and study and write and pray for the legions who have requested his prayers; just as he goes to bed at nine-thirty at night and sleeps eight hours without interruption. Harpster and Fitzerman-Blue were joined onstage by Tom Junod, whose beautiful 1998 profile of Mr. Rogers for Esquire provided a main influence on the film. ESQ: Another interesting thing in your piece is how you talk about how theres still a hunger for spreading goodness in the world. In 1998, Rogers strikes a friendship with Lloyd Vogel, a self-absorbed, embittered journalist who is assigned to interview him for the magazine Esquire. In fact, the little boy with the big sword didn't know who Mister Rogers was, and so when Mister Rogers knelt down in front of him, the little boy with the big sword looked past him and through him, and when Mister Rogers said, "Oh, my, that's a big sword you have," the boy didn't answer, and finally his mother got embarrassed and said, "Oh, honey, c'mon, that's Mister Rogers," and felt his head for fever. A distraction itself was dangerous. He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those wallsthe walls that have both penned him in and set him free. And then he was on the move again, happily, quickly, for he would not leave until he showed me all the places of all those who'd loved him into being. Will you pray for me?" What's more, it's based on a true story, with a few of the names changed. Fred" But Mister Rogers was out of the car, with his camera in his hand and his legs moving so fast that the material of his gray suit pants furled and unfurled around both of his skinny legs, like flags exploding in a breeze. And I called Joanne [Rogers] after that and said, What do you think about that? And she was like, You know, Fred would never represent that. That seems so obvious, but I think to a lot of people its not obvious because I think that the temptation of being able to think that yelling at somebody on the street, youre somehow striking a blow. He takes a nap every day in the late afternoonjust as he wakes up every morning at five-thirty to read and study and write and pray for the legions who have requested his prayers; just as he goes to bed at nine-thirty at night and sleeps eight hours without interruption. The new film is inspired by the story of Rogers' relationship with journalist Tom Junod, who was assigned to profile Rogers in 1998 for a special issue of Esquire on American heroes. The day of the show, he called and asked if I could take the subway down to Bryant Park. (2018). They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" Then the car stopped on Thirty-fourth Street, in front of the escalators leading down to the station, and when the doors opened"Holy shit! When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) probes the state-of-mind of his interviewer, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) Somehow, the loss of Mr. Rogers, a thoroughly decent man who preached a gospel of kindness to generations of children, aches much more in a social and political landscape awash in anger and pain (and "leadership" that sets that tone). He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. I mean, I find prayer somewhat problematic. Notes. If Mister Rogers can tell me how to read that clock, I'll watch his show every day for a year"that's what someone in the crowd said while watching Mister Rogers and Maya Lin crane their necks at Maya Lin's big fancy clock, but it didn't even matter whether Mister Rogers could read the clock or not, because every time he looked at it, with the television cameras on him, he leaned back from . It's interesting because the journalist, named Lloyd Vogel in the movie, is introduced as a harsh cynic who's notorious for shredding the character of the people he writes about. "It's not a performance. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. He couldn't just say it, the way he could always just say to the children who watch his program that they are special to him, or even sing it, the way he would always sing "It's You I Like" and "Everybody's Fancy" and "It's Such a Good Feeling" and "Many Ways to Say I Love You" and "Sometimes People Are Good." That temptation is really large because its so easy. And for me going out and talking about it has been a great experience for me. ESQ: Now its landed at a point where I pray for my family, pray for anyone who needs it. In the film, actor Matthew Rhys plays central character Lloyd Vogel, a journalist who's writing a profile on the legendary creator of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Get instant access to 85+ years of Esquire. His name was Fred Rogers. TJ: I mean, the tents great, but the tents intentional. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}Chris Pine Thinks 'Star Trek' is Cursed, The Hilarious Reason Why Chris Pine Cut His Hair, Chris Pine Tells All About Harry Styles SpitGate, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original, 40 Photos That Prove Sly Stallone Was a Style Icon, 32 Photos of Michael B. Jordans Style Evolution. 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