Mister Rogers recorded 20 episodes of a show aimed at adults titled "Old Friends . "Thanks, my dear," he said to me, then turned back to Deb. 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." And now the boy didn't know how to respond. It had more to do with his relationship to his own father, which was a focal point for the film. She worked very hard at writing the chapter, until one day she showed what she had written to Mister Rogers, who read it and crossed it all out and wrote a sentence addressed directly to the doctors who would be reading it: "You were a child once, too.". As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. 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 . I just try to ask for some sort of affirmation, you know? The movie is loosely based on Tom Junod's life around 1998 when he wrote an article on Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine. "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is loosely based on the 1998 Esquire profile of the beloved TV host. When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. But A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is just not that movie.This isn't "The Mister Rogers Story," or a biopic like the surreal Elton John biography Rocketman or the rise-of-Dick-Cheney story Vice. And it was just about then, when I was spilling the beans about my special friend, that Mister Rogers rose from his corner of the couch and stood suddenly in front of me with a small black camera in hand. The event is the premise of the 2019 feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It was not his fault. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist known for his jarring exposs but is secretive about his childhood, is the film's protagonist. TJ: Yeah, they have been. Im just wondering on your end, where has your relationship with prayer landed now, and do you think it will continue to change? As of November 2019, he is a writer . I took the phone and spoke to a womanhis wife, the mother of his two sonswhose voice was hearty and almost whooping in its forthrightness and who spoke to me as though she had known me for a long time and was making the effort to keep up the acquaintance. 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, Im in my bathrobe, if you dont mind. I told him I didnt mind, and when, five minutes later, I took the elevator to his floor, well, sure enough, there was Mister Rogers, silver-haired, standing in the golden door at the end of the hallway and wearing eyeglasses and suede moccasins with rawhide laces and a flimsy old blue-and-yellow bathrobe that revealed whatever part of his skinny white calves his dark-blue dress socks didnt hide. 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. The movie is about Lloyd Vogel, (Matthew Rhys), an investigative journalist who receives an assignment to profile noted children's television host Fred Rogers, . And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, "I'll watch the time," and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he askedand so they did. TJ: I mean, the tents great, but the tents intentional. He doesn't even know. Everything You Need To Know About 'Mean Girls: The Musical', Amanda Seyfried Has Made Her Pick For Sophies Biological Dad In 'Mamma Mia', Shakira & Karol G's "TQG" Music Video Uses A Classic '90s Movie To Make A Point, 'Art Attack' Neil Buchanan's Latest Gig Is A Far Cry From The CITV Show, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a . And when I read that, I realized that what I was looking for was really unavoidable and obvious. Lloyd goes to interview Mr. Rogers and is shocked by his kindness, and the two form a bond. Koko watches Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and when Mister Rogers, in his sweater and sneakers, entered the place where she lives, Koko immediately folded him in her long, black arms, as though he were a child, and then "She took my shoes off, Tom," Mister Rogers said. and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir. "If Mister Fucking Rogers can tell me how to read that fucking clock, I'll watch his show every day for a fucking 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 his waist and opened his mouth wide with astonishment, like someone trying to catch a peanut he had tossed into the air, until it became clear that Mister Rogers could show that he was astonished all day if he had to, or even forever, because Mister Rogers lives in a state of astonishment, and the astonishment he showed when he looked at the clock was the same astonishment he showed when peopleabsolute strangerswalked up to him and fed his hungry ear with their whispers, and he turned to me, with an open, abashed mouth, and said, "Oh, Tom, if you could only hear the stories I hear!". Junod is also noted for his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. 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. Do you see masculinity as different endslike you could be this person or this person? "Can I take your picture, Tom?" He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. ", He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. Once upon a time, Mister Rogers went to New York City and got caught in the rain. The film is based on a true story, though Rhys plays fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel, who was created to help tell Rogers' story. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. And thats how I became Lloyd Vogel." That light just burned out and there was I mean, that was on fire. Would you lead us in prayer? "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. He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those wallsthe walls that have both penned him in and set him free. She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. The shootings took place in West Paducah, Kentucky, and when Mister Rogers heard about them, he said, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if he had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow,'" and he decided to dedicate a week of the Neighborhood to the theme "Little and Big." An honorific is what people call you when they respect you, and the moment Mister Rogers got out of the car, people wouldn't stay the fuck away from him, they respected him so much. 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. Would you like to speak to him? he asked, and then handed me the phone. Though of all races, the schoolchildren were mostly black and Latino, and they didn't even approach Mister Rogers and ask him for his autograph. His name was Fred Rogers. . The doctors were ophthalmologists. Did you have any special friends growing up?, Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. 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. He wears an undershirt, of course, but no mattersoon that's gone, too, as is the belt, as are the beige trousers, until his undershorts stand as the last impediment to his nakedness. 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. "I imagine they're blue.". It gradually dawns on Tom/Lloyd, that the Mr. Rogers in front of the camera is the . Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. 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. In trying to strip away Mr. Rogers . But theres a lot of different ways to do it. "Would you like to speak to him?" Fred was all person by person. "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" As for Mister Rogers himselfwell, he doesn't look at the story in the same way that the boy did or that I did. That was a challenge. Every timeless feature, profile, interview, novella - even the ads! And even now, when he is producing only three weeks' worth of new programs a year, he still winds up agonizingagonizingabout whether to announce his theme as "Little and Big" or "Big and Little" and still makes only two edits per televised minute, because he doesn't want his message to be determined by the cuts and splices in a piece of tapeto become, despite all his fierce coherence, "a message of fragmentation.". "Roy Rogers is done. New Friends.". And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good. "Thank you for calling, my dear," he said, in a voice whose . Oh, honey, Mommy knew you could do it.And so now, encouraged, Mommy said, "Do you want to give Mister Rogers a hug, honey?" 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. Junod is personally present . Tom Hanks-starring Mister Rogers movie 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood' is loosely based off of the 'Esquire' profile Tom Junod, known as Lloyd Vogel in the film, wrote about Fred Rogers, and . Lloyd has been tasked with profiling Fred Rogers for Esquire, an unusual assignment that he approaches with great reluctance and even resentment. 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.". If they can hate something like that, you wonder how easy it would be for them to hate something more important." And all the people who made this house special to me are not here, anyway. She was 92. ESQ: I wanted to ask you about that nightmare scene [where Lloyd Vogel, the character loosely based on Junod, dreams that he's a character in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe]. It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). On December 1, 1997oh, heck, once upon a timea boy, no longer little, told his friends to watch out, that he was going to do something "really big" the next day at school, and the next day at school he took his gun and his ammo and his earplugs and shot eight classmates who had clustered for a prayer meeting. "Oh, that's a nice name," Mister Rogers says, and then goes to the Thirty-fourth Street escalator to climb it one last time for the cameras. I'm listening to these guys when, from thirty feet away, I notice Mister Rogers looking around for someone and know, immediately, that he is looking for me. Koko watches television. It's his natural instinct to try and take Mister . "Welcome, Tom," he said with a slight bow, and bade me follow him inside, where he lay downno, stretched out, as though he had known me all his lifeon a couch upholstered with gold velveteen. 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. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. 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. Lloyd's father Jerry (Chris Cooper) abandoned him as a child and keeps trying to reconnect, by Lloyd rejects him. Except for people who are on the new-age end of it. Lloyd is married, has . 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. That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. 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. "It's not a performance. He was born with cerebral palsy. The boy had always been prayed for. 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. Second mook: "Fuck that. I mean, if that was Tom Junod with bunny ears, I dont know how I would have responded. 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. .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;}}Facts You Didn't Know About That '70s Show, The Cast of 'The Mandalorian' in Real Life, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3 is About to Commence, The Underworld Crossover of the Century Is Coming. 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. And so the next morning, we swam together, and then he put on his boxer shorts and the dark socks, and the T-shirt, and the gray trousers, and the belt, and then the white dress shirt and the black bow tie and the gray suit jacket, and about two hours later we were pulling up to the big brick house on Weldon Street in Latrobe, and Mister Rogers was thinking about going inside. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. "Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet . 'I love you.'. In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. 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