Except for people who are on the new-age end of it. "But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn't like himself very much. 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. When tasked with profiling the well-acclaimed Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), Vogel is unwilling to do so as it is a change from his typical exposs. 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." After I watched the walkthroughand was somehow briefly enlisted in fashion-show-planning service as the only idle body in sightwe sat down on a couch in the middle of all the swirling fashion-show-planners, and talked about Fred Rogers, what he left behind, and what we do now. 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. 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. There was nobody home. The cameras stop, and he says, "I don't like the word owner there. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' Exclusive & Unlimited access to Esquire Classic - The Official Esquire Archive. 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. (2018). 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. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?. 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. 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. The tie is next, the scanty black batwing of a bow tie hand-tied at his slender throat, and then the shirt, always white or light blue, whisked from his body button by button. "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is more or less the story of how an Esquire article comes into being. 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. Junod also appeared in the critically acclaimed documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? 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. I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. Matthew Rhys' character, the cynical Lloyd Vogel, is only loosely inspired by real-life journalist Tom Junod, hence the name change. Only it ends up more than 20 times that long, as he . He was with his producer, Margy Whitmer. In 1998, Junod wrote a piece profiling Rogers for Esquire , which . It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. 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.". His editor at Esquire asked him to profile Fred Rogers, the beloved television personality and Presbyterian minister. "Would you like to speak to him?" Im not sure why perhaps as a Valentines 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 night Esquire made one of the best profiles it (or anyone else) has ever published, Tom Junods 1998 profile of Mr. Rogers, available online. 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]. There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. In 2011 Michelle . Mister Rogers recorded 20 episodes of a show aimed at adults titled "Old Friends . Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. As the film starts, journalist Lloyd Vogel has just welcomed the birth of a newborn baby boy with his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson). He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. He is not speaking of the little girl. This article was the basis for the plot of the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. ESQ: Another interesting thing in your piece is how you talk about how theres still a hunger for spreading goodness in the world. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. I would love to remove that but I dont know. Freds favorite saying from all of literature was, That which is essential is invisible to the eye, from The Little Prince. The premise of the moviebased on a profile of Rogers that the journalist Tom Junod wrote in 1998, for Esquireis that an investigative reporter named Lloyd Vogel (played by Matthew Rhys), who . Would you lead us in prayer? Yeah, Mister Rogers is more amazing than you ever knew. Read it all when you have time, especially if youre binging on House of Cards this weekend. And all the people who made this house special to me are not here, anyway. "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" 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. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. But then Esquire, for a special edition on "heroes," asks Lloyd to write a profile piece on Fred "Mister Rogers" Rogers. The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. 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. "Fred, they're not home. We make so many connections here on earth. "Oh, hello, my dear," he said when he picked it up, and then he said that he had a visitor, someone who wanted to learn more about the Neighborhood. TJ: Thats a great question. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too. Junod also inspired Matthew Rhys' character, a fictional Esquire writer named Lloyd Vogel.. Also read: Where That Navy SEALs Rumor Started A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood shows how Fred Rogers used television to reach into the hearts . After a while, Margy just rolled her eyes and gave up, because it's always like this with Mister Rogers, because the thing that people don't understand about him is that he's greedy for thisgreedy for the grace that people offer him. His name was Fred Rogers. Her name was Deb. Youll probably need an infusion of something like this to restore your faith in humanity after an overload of Frank Underwood. "Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had." In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. Everything we can't stop loving . Heres Our Review Of Cocaine Bear: Oh Hell Yes! He put his hand on the knob; he cracked it open, but then, with Bill Isler calling caution from the car, he said, "Maybe we shouldn't go in. The old navy-blue sport jacket comes off first, then the dress shoes, except that now there is not the famous sweater or the famous sneakers to replace them, and so after the shoes he's on to the dark socks, peeling them off and showing the blanched skin of his narrow feet. TJ: You can get into all sorts of weird head-trips about prayer and its purpose. Twelve years in a Catholic school. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (opens Nov. 22) tells the story of one writer's experience profiling Fred Rogers, otherwise known as Mister Rogers, the host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.While the film does look at the burgeoning friendship between Rogers (Tom Hanks) and writer Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), it focuses primarily on Vogel's personal life and how much it has been . ESQ: In both pieces, the original and The Atlantic piece, prayer comes up. Does it mean anything? "It's not a performance. . It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy's brain still nice and fresh, he had no memory of it as "Young Rabbit," or even "Rabbit"; so old that Old Rabbit was barely a rabbit at all but rather a greasy hunk of skin without eyes and ears, with a single red stitch where its tongue used to be. That temptation is really large because its so easy. The two remained close until Rogers's death, in early 2003. ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. She had curls in her hair and stars at the centers of her eyes. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. Oh, honey, Mommy knew you could do it.And so now, encouraged, Mommy said, "Do you want to give Mister Rogers a hug, honey?" The answer to: What did Fred want? They are boxers, egg-colored, and to rid himself of them he bends at the waist, and stands on one leg, and hops, and lifts one knee toward his chest and then the other and then Mister Rogers has no clothes on. Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. The doors were open, unlocked, because the house was undergoing a renovation of some kind, but the owners were away, and Mister Rogers's boyhood home was empty of everyone but workmen. 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.". A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. 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 . Plot. Second mook: "Huh. He said, "I would like you to do something for me. Theres a moment in .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Can You Say Hero?Tom Junods Esquire profile on Fred Rogers, one of the all-time great magazine storieswhen the writer is searching for the childrens TV icon at the stuffed, panic-attack-palace of Penn Station. He moved his hand from her wrist to her palm and extended his other hand to me. It's Lloyd Vogel, a fictionalized character based on Atlanta writer Tom Junod. He explained how his friendship with Rogers contrasted that image, writing, "Fred gave me what I needed then and still need now: a choice. Now, what the fuck is grace?" Im not sure about it. 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. TJ: Okay, so theres that scene in the beginning of the movie where hes zipping up his sweater. "Would you lead us? Who Is John Dutton's Grandfather in '1923'? I took it and then put my hand around her free hand. 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. Lloyd has daddy issues, which Junod did not (at least not in the same way) something he outlines in a recent piece about Rogers for The Atlantic Monthly. 2:27. On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said, "I would like you to pray for me. I said, 'Do you know that you're strong on the inside, too?' And then my editor, Denise Wills said, Could you try to think of an answer to that question? And I thought about it, then I had to read the story again for the audiobook of this collection of Freds writings and sayings. 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. 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. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. 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. Over 20 years after its publication, Junod, now a senior writer for ESPN, has come forward to share more about the lessons he's learned from Rogers, and how he's reconciled them with his feelings about A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. 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. We may earn a commission from these links. By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers. But Junod says he recognizes Vogel's . He did the same thing the next day, and then the nextuntil he had done the same things, those things, 865 times, at the beginning of 865 television programs, over a span of thirty-one years. 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. The movie is about Lloyd Vogel, (Matthew Rhys), an investigative journalist who receives an assignment to profile noted children's television host Fred Rogers, . Tom Hanks channels Mister Rogers in a movie about how the legendary kids' TV host saves a magazine writer, and could maybe save all of us. The revolution he starteda half hour a day, five days a weekit wasn't enough, it didn't spread, and so, forced to fight his battles alone, Mister Rogers is losing, as we all are losing. We were heading back to his apartment in a taxi when I asked him what he had said. I was sitting in a small chair by the door, and he said, "Tom, would you close the door, please?" He was a reformer in terms of method. ", The walls of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds. An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. . His name was Fred Rogers. Perhaps some of the answers rest in the New Testament's Fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Who wrote the Esquire article about Mr Rogers? Neighborhood," about the TV star Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. he asked her, and when she said yes, he said, "Oh, thank you, my dear." The film is based on a true story, though Rhys plays fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel, who was created to help tell Rogers' story. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. It was the first time I had read the story in a really long time. His name was Old Rabbit. 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. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.". By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. ESQ: I mean, you said that if he grew up in the age of Twitter, you can expect what he would have done. ESQ: Have the past two months been fulfilling for you? 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. "I don't know if I want to put on a performance.". The movie, which opens November 22, casts Rogers as an agent of change . TJ: I dont think he watched a lot of TV, but I think he was also against quick cuts. And I just think that its a trap; I think its false. But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. 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. When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. Last week, Junod was in New York to walk in a charity fashion show for his alma mater, SUNY Albany, so I tried to get a hold of him for an interview about his Esquire story and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Mister Rogers spots him first, naturally, amidst the swarm of New Yorkers, about the five-hundredth happy coincidence in a life full of them. TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. I'll let y'all know. Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. "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. If You Loved The New Mr. Rogers Movie, Wait Until You Read What It's Based On. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." ", Deb stiffened for a second, and she let out a breath, and her color got deeper. The event is the premise of the 2019 feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. He prayed for Old Rabbit's safe return, and when, hours later, his mother and father came home with the filthy, precious strip of rabbity roadkill, he learned not only that prayers are sometimes answered but also the kind of severe effort they entail, the kind of endless frantic summoning. ESQUIRE: In your Atlantic piece, you talk about how theres no true successor to Mister Rogers. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood fact check reveals that Lloyd's wife Andrea is mostly fictional as well. Mr. Rogers, fully aware of this, still invites . He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. Boom! He was the soft son of overprotective parents, but he believed, right then, that he was strong enough to enter into battle with thatthat machine, that mediumand to wrestle with it until it yielded to him, until the ground touched by its blue shadow became hallowed and this thing called television came to be used "for the broadcasting of grace through the land." It's his natural instinct to try and take Mister . ", Then he turns back to the little girl. He notes, "I think that my character is not just me. 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