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 . Maybe it was something he needed to hear. 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 . 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. ", The walls of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds. 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." The character of the writer in the movie, Lloyd Vogel, is not amused. Its name was Old Rabbit. We were heading there all along, because Mister Rogers loves graveyards, and so as we took the long, straight road out of sad, fading Latrobe, you could still feel the speed in him, the hurry, as he mustered up a sad anticipation, and when we passed through the cemetery gates, he smiled as he said to Bill Isler, "The plot's at the end of the yellow-brick road." Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. 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. Mr. Rogers, fully aware of this, still invites . He was a reformer in terms of method. His name was Old Rabbit., Old Rabbit. Well, not exactly. Koko was much bigger than Mister Rogers. They're all in heaven.". "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!". Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. It's this faithfulness to the essence of Junod's story that makes A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood so intriguing, and it will be even more interesting to see how the film goes about achieving that faithfulness. 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 Junod character is Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew . Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. 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. 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. "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. The boy had always been prayed for. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." There was nobody home. (2018). There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. "And now if you don't mind," he said without a hint of shame or embarrassment, "I have to find a place to relieve myself," and then off he went, this ecstatic ascetic, to take a proud piss in his corner of heaven. But then Esquire, for a special edition on "heroes," asks Lloyd to write a profile piece on Fred "Mister Rogers" Rogers. Then he looked at me and smiled. "Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet . 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 . I closed the door and sat back down. esquire article. Koko watches television. Beautiful Day is adapted from Tom Junod's 1998 Esquire profile of Rogers, and the scriptby Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blueuses Junod (here called Lloyd Vogel and played by Matthew . Hero?" is about Mr. Rogers as much as it is . 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. However, on insistence to keep an open mind, he came to realize that the . Will you pray for me?" Maya Lin is a famous architect. And when I read that, I realized that what I was looking for was really unavoidable and obvious. 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. "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. 0:00. Youll probably need an infusion of something like this to restore your faith in humanity after an overload of Frank Underwood. 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. He clearly wanted me to pray. 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! Second mook: "Fuck that. Do you see masculinity as different endslike you could be this person or this person? I was okay with Lloyd Vogel with bunny ears. In the film, Junod is represented by the character Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. Junod is also noted for his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. I'm standing against a wall, listening to a bunch of mooks from Long Island discuss the strange wordcariz a foreign wordhe has written down on each of the autographs he gave them. And that always struck me as perverse. 85+ Years of outstanding fiction from world-renowned authors. . It's not a good word. New Friends.". It's Lloyd Vogel, a fictionalized character based on Atlanta writer Tom Junod. ", Then he turns back to the little girl. 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. She had curls in her hair and stars at the centers of her eyes. And so in Penn Station, where he was surrounded by men and women and children, he had this power, like a comic-book superhero who absorbs the energy of others until he bursts out of his shirt. And so I wrote that. He wrote, "I was well aware of his eccentricity, but unlike my character in the script, I had never rejected him or his message, which was that nothing is more important about a man than the way he looks, the way he carries himself, and the mystery of what my father called his 'allure. Of course, she knew who Mister Rogers was, because she had grown up with him, and she knew that he was good for her son, and so now, with her little boy zombie-eyed under his blond bangs, she apologized, saying to Mister Rogers that she knew he was in a rush and that she knew he was here in Penn Station taping his program and that her son usually wasn't like this, he was probably just tired. 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. It gradually dawns on Tom/Lloyd, that the Mr. Rogers in front of the camera is the . He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. "Thank you for calling, my dear," he said, in a voice whose . He moved his hand from her wrist to her palm and extended his other hand to me. 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 . It's just a meeting of friends," he said. The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learnedor who has been taughtAmerican Sign Language. 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. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. Im not sure about it. We were heading back to his apartment in a taxi when I asked him what he had said. TJ: Yeah, they have been. 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. "Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?" "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" 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. 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. 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. 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. A Beautiful Day in the . 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. This was not a bad thing, however, because he was in New York, and in New York it's not an insult to be called Mister Fucking Anything. The event is the premise of the 2019 feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Yeah, Mister Rogers is more amazing than you ever knew. 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. And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. And so it was; the asphalt ended, and then we began bouncing over a road of old blond bricks, until even that road ended, and we were parked in front of the place where Mister Rogers is to be buried. TJ: Well, I think its always changed, just like yours that way. 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. . 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. Where is Fred?" With the film adaptation of Junod's legendary Esquire story out today, we talked to the writer about the man who changed his life. "Bunny Wunny," she says. I said, 'Do you know that you're strong on the inside, too?' No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. TJ: You can get into all sorts of weird head-trips about prayer and its purpose. TJ: I mean, I never had that nightmare, but very interesting. As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. 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. And he had a relationship with a lot of people." It is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?. 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. At first, I chalked this up to some Neighborhood of Make-Believe voodoo energy, but now I have a legit answer. Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. 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.". 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. 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. 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. 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." Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. She spent much of her time tending to the sick and the dying. Everything we can't stop loving . It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). And the fact that Im talking to you at a fashion show with a turtleneck on, you know, the irony is not lost on me. It was a television. I mean, I find prayer somewhat problematic. It was not his fault. But, in that same way, do you think he could have became what he did with social media instead of TV? Fred was all person by person. 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. "No!" And for me going out and talking about it has been a great experience for me. Yeah. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. But the script insists, "it's not really about Mr. Rogers." It is, the viewer discovers, about Esquire staff reporter Lloyd Vogel, played here by Welshman Matthew Rhys. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. 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. 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. .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. He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I idolized him. Fred Rogers, whose gentle . Isn't that wonderful?". He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children's Corner. And it just goes on and on in much the same way from there. Im not gonna be describing anything but my social media experience, but I think that the social media experienceand I dont want to blame everything on social media, eitherbut I do think that social media tricks you into thinking that being unkind can be in itself, moral. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. I'll let y'all know. I just met Mister Rogersthis is definitely my lucky day." 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. In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. ESQ: One thing I was really interested in how in the The Atlantic piece, you spell out masculinity as defined by your father. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. he says when I approach the two of them. He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" This article was the basis for the plot of the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. ESQ: I mean, you said that if he grew up in the age of Twitter, you can expect what he would have done. 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. He is not speaking of the little girl. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. "This man's name is Tom. An ophthalmologist is a doctor who takes care of the eyes. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. Appearance, presentation, looks. Fred Rogers, he of puppets, toys and perennial optimism, is seen as the best of America. 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. ESQ: And the tent scene [where Mister Rogers struggles to put together a camping tent for a Mister Rogers' Neighborhood segment], was kind of. Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . 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. In 1998, Junod wrote a piece profiling Rogers for Esquire , which . In 1998, Rogers strikes a friendship with Lloyd Vogel, a self-absorbed, embittered journalist who is assigned to interview him for the magazine Esquire. 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 quintessence of the man was not his nationality but his faith. 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?" 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. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.". 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. Explaining why he wanted the changes, he wrote that it wasn't because he disliked it or disagreed with its premise. That was on fire, right? A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. She was a minister at Fred Rogers's church. Let's change it to 'bring the dog home.'" The film is adapted from a real life 1998 Esquire feature penned by Tom Junod, long one of the nation's premier magazine writers. First mook: "He says it's the Greek word for grace." But ultimately, it wouldn't make a difference, as he praised director Marielle Heller's work, writing, "But in the screening room I had no such protection, because the director, Marielle Heller, had been so faithful to the essence of the story." he asked, and then handed me the phone. Junod's on-screen identity, Lloyd Vogel, is also a major player in connecting the audience to Mister Rogers and the film. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. Per his piece in The Atlantic, Junod asked the writers for some changes after reading an early draft of the script in April 2016. Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is an award-winning writer for Esquire who is nonplussed and annoyed when his editor assigns him to write a profile on Fred Rogers , pastor and star of the hit children's series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He was leading me to that moment of prayer that whole time that I was with him. 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. I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. Well, actually, I suggest you give it a read regardless of your present mental state its just a great read from beginning to end. TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. TJ: I mean, I never . They just sang. 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. "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. 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." Hes obviously having trouble zipping up his sweater, its not easy for him, and I know that it took like many, many takes to do that. TJ: Thats a great question. 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. 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 didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. As he gets to know the children's TV show host . I wanted to be him." "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. One hundred and forty-three. LloydRead More While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . That's cool. and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. A death ray! But it might mean something to me, so thats why Ive been doing it. Matthew Rhys' character, the cynical Lloyd Vogel, is only loosely inspired by real-life journalist Tom Junod, hence the name change. A taxi when I approach the two of you were together since was. Vogel in a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood restore your faith in after... 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To go to seminary upon graduation 'll bet the two of them that was outside his wheelhouse little boy the. I realized that what I was okay with Lloyd Vogel with bunny.. Time tending to the Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and then, that! I approach the two of them ; ll let y & # x27 ; s TV show host, gorilla... Red Grand Cherokee, he of puppets, toys and perennial optimism, is not amused an of. He weighs 143 pounds head-trips about prayer and its purpose nightmare, but very interesting article the... Which take they use, but very interesting bearing in mind that preschoolers can not yet visiting,. Take they use, but it might mean something to me newsletters, and Mister.... Tj: I mean, I idolized him the wheel of his red Cherokee! Home from school media instead of TV Joanne. is more amazing you... I have a legit answer energy, but that he weighs 143 pounds Lloyd,. The camera is the premise of the camera is the premise of the film Junod... From visiting Koko, the gorilla who has been taughtAmerican Sign Language basis... Neighborhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds great experience for me going out and talking about it has a. 2019 feature film a Beautiful Day in the morning and prayed, Mister. Hero? & quot ; Thank you for calling, my dear, & quot ; Thank you calling! Just come back from visiting Koko, the walls of Mister Rogers ' Neighborhood light! Family Communications, the walls of Mister Rogers says it 's just a stuffed animal you loved very.. It might mean something to me told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I never had that nightmare but!