Three of the doors are opened to reveal the familiar faces of Lady Aberlin, King Friday, and Mr. McFeely.The fourth door is opened to reveal the face of Mr. Rogers' troubled new friend, Lloyd Vogel, who has a cut near his nose. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. I like to take pictures of all my new friends, so that I can show them to Joanne." And then, in the dark room, there was a wallop of white light, and Mister Rogers disappeared behind it. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learnedor who has been taughtAmerican Sign Language. He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. The day of the show, he called and asked if I could take the subway down to Bryant Park. 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. 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?" cynical writer Lloyd Vogel (based on Junod, but with a fictional estranged dad figure, played by Chris Cooper, so that Rogers can . First mook: "He says it's the Greek word for grace." TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. Fred Rogers, whose gentle . In 2011 Michelle . T he movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is structured like an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He rested his head on a small pillow and kept his eyes closed while he explained that he had bought the apartment thirty years before for $11,000 and kept it for whenever he came to New York on business for the Neighborhood. And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good. Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks), tells us the story of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who is a cynical reporter assigned to do a piece on Mr. Rogers. The editor isn't looking for a cynical unpacking or a scathing expose, like Lloyd's used to writing; just 400 words that give a wee bit of insight to the man behind that (in Lloyd's words) "hokey kids' show." I would love to remove that but I dont know. Junod is personally present . We were heading back to his apartment in a taxi when I asked him what he had said. And now the boy didn't know how to respond. No, Mister Rogers was not a saint. One hundred and forty-three. Lloyd has been tasked with profiling Fred Rogers for Esquire, an unusual assignment that he approaches with great reluctance and even resentment. "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" Look at usI've just met you, but I'm investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can't help it. TJ: Okay, so theres that scene in the beginning of the movie where hes zipping up his sweater. Notes. As of November 2019, he is a writer . "This man's name is Tom. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. And so that's what I told him. But that is rather missing the point. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom? 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? It's more about the impact of Mister Rogers on others, particularly a jaded and cynical journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) and how his interactions with the TV host chill his sometimes . He writes all his own scripts, but on this day, when he receives a visit from Mrs. McFeely and a springer spaniel, she says that she has to bring the dog "back to his owner," and Mister Rogers makes a face. 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. ESQ: So my relationship with prayer has ebbed and flowed my entire life. He peeked in the window, and in the same voice he uses on television, that voice, at once so patient and so eager, he pointed out each crypt, saying "There's my father, and there's my mother, and there, on the left, is my place, and right across will be Joanne." The window was of darkened glass, though, and so to see through it, we had to press our faces close against it, and where the glass had warped away from the frame of the doorwhere there was a finger-wide crackMister Rogers's voice leaked into his grave, and came back to us as a soft, hollow echo. '", In fact, Junod's current project is a book about his relationship to his father, Lou Junod. 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! In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. Theyre polar opposites. Tom Junod's "Can You Say . Ive had people take issue with that. If they can hate something like that, you wonder how easy it would be for them to hate something more important." Second mook: "Fuck that. "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. "Roy Rogers is done. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Exclusive & Unlimited access to Esquire Classic - The Official Esquire Archive. Fred Rogers loved her very much, and so, out of nowhere, he smiled and put his hand over hers. Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Lloyd Vogel in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." (Courtesy Lacey Terrell/Sony Pictures) This article is more than 3 years old. ESQ: Another interesting thing in your piece is how you talk about how theres still a hunger for spreading goodness in the world. We may earn a commission from these links. He was a kind man who made it a point to practice kindness to a vast audience, person by person. A clock is a machine that tells people what time it is, but as Mister Rogers sat in the backseat of an old station wagon hired to take him from his apartment to Penn Station, he worried that Maya Lin's clock might be too fancy and that the children who watch the Neighborhood might not understand it. His name was Fred Rogers. Based on the 1998 Esquire article, "Can You SayHero?" by award-winning journalist Tom Junod, the movie illustrates how, during the process of interviewing Mr. Rogers for a "puff piece," the writer (re-named in the movie as Lloyd Vogel, and played by Matthew Rhys) undergoes a personal transformation. As the film starts, journalist Lloyd Vogel has just welcomed the birth of a newborn baby boy with his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson). 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. (2021, directed . Once upon a time, Mister Rogers went to New York City and got caught in the rain. 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. ESQ: You wrote in the original piece that he didnt even watch TV. Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. "Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?" Every timeless feature, profile, interview, novella - even the ads! 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. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." He would grow up to become a great prayer, this little boy, but only intermittently, only fitfully, praying only when fear and desperation drove him to it, and the night he threw Old Rabbit into the darkness was the night that set the pattern, the night that taught him how. There was nobody home. 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." he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He was sitting on a couch, under a framed rendering of the Greek word for grace and a biblical phrase written in Hebrew that means "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." It is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . Or maybe, if the truth be told, Mister Rogers went into battle against a little boy with a big sword, for Mister Rogers didn't like the big sword. I just met Mister Rogersthis is definitely my lucky day." ", The walls of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds. "Thank you for calling, my dear," he said, in a voice whose . By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers. He said, "I would like you to do something for me. Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. Ive had people say, I know a lot of people who are really kind, but theyre just not media people, so no one knows about their kindness. I mean, the point is that Fred was a media person, and he did have a platform, and he spoke to an extremely large audience that he made into an even larger audience. . As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. 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). Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. 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. He was not a dogmatic person, but he was dogmatic about thatthat media should not be used as a distraction. It was not his fault. Junod had hoped the changes would bring protection, as he wrote, "I had counted on the plots many departures from my life to insulate me from the emotional effect of seeing some version of myself up there." He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. But, in that same way, do you think he could have became what he did with social media instead of TV? "But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. Koko was much bigger than Mister Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a . "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. "I'm done. When I handed him back the phone, he said, Bye, my dear, and hung up and curled on the couch like a cat, with his bare calves swirled underneath him and one of his hands gripping his ankle, so that he looked as languorous as an odalisque. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. 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