Mister Rogers still has a ways to go.". (2018). Then, with his hand still over hers and his eyes looking straight into hers, he said, "Deb, do you know what a great prayer you are? The boy had always been prayed for. He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. And so I wrote that. He looked very little in the backseat of the car. The Real-Life Lloyd Vogel: Tom Junod is the real-life reporter on whom the character of Lloyd Vogel is based. The little boy didn't know why he loved Old Rabbit; he just did, and the night he threw it out the car window was the night he learned how to pray. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being so smartfor knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himselfand Mister Rogers responded by looking at me at first with puzzlement and then with surprise. Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. His name was Fred Rogers. His hand was warm, hers was cool, and we bowed our heads, and closed our eyes, and I heard Deb's voice calling out for the grace of God. Photo: Courtesy of Sony Pictures. "Would you like to speak to him?" My personal favorite piece of the story: Junod describes meeting Mr. Rogers in person for the first time, THE FIRST TIME I CALLED MISTER ROGERS on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. Three died, and they were still children, almost. And its all in there. 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. This is a man who loves the simplifying force of definitions, and yet all he knows of grace is how he gets it; all he knows is that he gets it from God, through man. Thats what I actually pray for. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. 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. Its name was Old Rabbit. 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. But at the same time, we dont know what to do with the lessons that Mister Rogers gave us. I'll let y'all know. Synopsis: A profile of Fred Rogers, or as we know him from the Neighborhood, from childhood, Mister Rogers. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. Lloyd is married, has . By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers. There's a real Tom Junod, 61, of Marietta, whose 1998 profile of Rogers became the basis for the Tom Hanks movie that had audiences weeping and cheering at a preview last week . "Would you lead us? Except for people who are on the new-age end of it. 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. Ive had people take issue with that. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. But how could Mister Rogers show little becoming big, and vice versa? New Friends.". She spent much of her time tending to the sick and the dying. It beautifully illustrates the story of the hard-edged investigative journalist - Lloyd Vogel - who believes everything in life has an ugly side. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. In 1998, Rogers strikes a friendship with Lloyd Vogel, a self-absorbed, embittered journalist who is assigned to interview him for the magazine Esquire. The news was confirmed by Fred Rogers Productions . As he gets to know the children's TV show host . 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." I was okay with Lloyd Vogel with bunny ears. 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.'. The blue walls are the ends of the daylit universe he has made, and yet Mister Rogers can't see themor at least can't know thembecause he was born blind to color. This article was originally published in the November 1998 issue. Really, I think its just that Tom Junod is a guy who stands out in a crowd. "Can I take your picture, Tom?" He was a child, once, too, and so one day I asked him if I could go with him back to Latrobe. "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is more or less the story of how an Esquire article comes into being. "I imagine they're blue.". She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. That light just burned out and there was I mean, that was on fire. 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. 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 impacted by this newfound friendship. 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. LloydRead More From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person whos on TikTok, even if you arent. 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! That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . She had a long face and a dark blush to her skin. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. What I'm buying is a ticket to the fucking Lotto. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. She had curls in her hair and stars at the centers of her eyes. Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. 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. Once upon a time, a little boy with a big sword went into battle against Mister Rogers. If we wanted to go into the house, we should have called first. That temptation is really large because its so easy. Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. Now, what the fuck is grace?" 'I love you.'. 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." 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. While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . Yeah, Mister Rogers is more amazing than you ever knew. We may earn a commission from these links. He notes, "I think that my character is not just me. 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 . I mean, one of the great surprises of my life is doing this. 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. "No!" 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. His grandfather, his grandmother, his uncles, his aunts, his father-in-law and mother-in-law, even his family's servantshe went to each grave, and spoke their names, and told their stories, until finally I headed back down to the Jeep and turned back around to see Mister Rogers standing high on a green dell, smiling among the stones. There are some stories we can analyze all we want, but sometimes there are stories in which, no matter how much we pick them apart, what's on the surface for us to appreciate is more . That's cool. 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. 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. ", "Oh, please, sister," Mister Rogers says. 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. 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]. 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. During his early conversations with Mr. Rogers, Lloyd is visibly disconcerted, even disturbed . "Thanks, my dear," he said to me, then turned back to Deb. 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. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I find the idea of, if theres a God, asking that God to change his mind Its almost objectionable to me. he asked. He said, "I would like you to do something for me. ESQ: I mean, you said that if he grew up in the age of Twitter, you can expect what he would have done. And that always struck me as perverse. The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. 0:00. . You know that they shot it with like the original cameras. 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. Oh, and Ill bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. I'm glad I know that. It was one of those swords that really isn't a sword at all; it was a big plastic contraption with lights and sound effects, and it was the kind of sword used in defense of the universe by the heroes of the television shows that the little boy liked to watch. It's not a good word. In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. 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. Do you know that about yourself? She was very pretty. Read it all when you have time, especially if youre binging on House of Cards this weekend. Let's change it to 'bring the dog home.'" No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella. I mean, I find prayer somewhat problematic. 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.' 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. 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. the Junod character is Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew . Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?. As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. Yeah, he would. Or do you take elements of what you see of the best men in your life, and try and put it together into one person? He didn't have an umbrella, and he couldn't find a taxi, either, so he ducked with a friend into the subway and got on one of the trains. They're all in heaven.". 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. And so the change is made, and the taping resumes, and this is how it goes all day, a life unfolding within a clasp of unfathomable governance, and once, when I lose sight of him, I ask Margy Whitmer where he is, and she says, "Right over your shoulder, where he always is," and when I turn around, Mister Rogers is facing me, child-stealthy, with a small black camera in his hand, to take another picture for the album that he will give me when I take my leave of him. He finds me, because that's what Mister Rogers doeshe looks, and then he finds. "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!". I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. 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 here, as he made his way through thickets of bewildered workmenthis skinny old man dressed in a gray suit and a bow tie, with his hands on his hips and his arms akimbo, like a dance instructorthere was some kind of wiggly jazz in his legs, and he went flying all around the outside of the house, pointing at windows, saying there was the room where he learned to play the piano, and there was the room where he saw the pie fight on a primitive television, and there was the room where his beloved father dieduntil finally we reached the front door. But it might mean something to me, so thats why Ive been doing it. He clearly believed in prayer as a way of life. 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. It is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . No, Mister Rogers was not a saint. He had makeup on his face and a dollop of black dye combed into his silver hair. His name was Old Rabbit. "Hmmm," Mister Rogers said, "that's a strange ad. 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 . 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. No, he had to show it, he had to demonstrate it, and that's how Mister Rogers and the people who work for him eventually got the idea of coming to New York City to visit a woman named Maya Lin. Does it mean anything? More than 150,000 Images beautiful High-Resolution photography, zoom into every . 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. But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. I mean, he's sort of a stand-in for all of the people that Fred Rogers had a relationship with. It is Vogeland, by extension, uswho grows as a result. "Oh, heavens no, Tom! I told him I didn't 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 didn't hide. David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. 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. That's a true thing the real-life Rogers adopted a vegetarian lifestyle back in the 1970s, when eschewing meat was a radical, "hippie" kind of thing to do. TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. And now the boy didn't know how to respond. Hmmm. First mook: "He says it's the Greek word for grace." ESQUIRE: In your Atlantic piece, you talk about how theres no true successor to Mister Rogers. Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. Maybe it was something he needed to hear. 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. His name was Fred Rogers. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. "Neighborhood" is based on, and serves as a fictionalized expansion upon, Tom Junod's 1998 profile of Rogers in Esquire; the article is online and worth the read. TJ: Okay, so theres that scene in the beginning of the movie where hes zipping up his sweater. 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. When he reaches the street, he looks right at the lens, as he always does, and says, speaking of the Neighborhood, "Let's go back to my place," and then makes a right turn toward Seventh Avenue, except that this time he just keeps going, and suddenly Margy Whitmer is saying, "Where is Fred? We swung up to the fashion show venue, where I watched Junod practice his strut to untz-untz-untz beats and avoid a janky step at the start of the runway. If youre binging on house of Cards this weekend on house of Cards this weekend a 1998 Esquire about! Little in the backseat of the hard-edged investigative journalist - Lloyd Vogel - who believes everything in life an! 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