What is grace? Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. "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 sat in an old armchair and looked around. I said sure, hung up, and realized I didnt exactly catch where in Bryant Parkanother New York capital of constant, nightmarish pedestrian overflow. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. He doesn't even know. And I think that audience is sort of self-selecting and limited by definition, almost. I took it and then put my hand around her free hand. I closed the door and sat back down. ", "What prayer is that, Mister Rogers? Lloyd decides to treat the profile as an investigation to find out if Mr. Rogers is just a character for the . 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.". "Bunny Wunny," she says. And now the boy didn't know how to respond. What I'm buying is a ticket to the fucking Lotto. 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. In 1998, Junod wrote a piece profiling Rogers for Esquire , which . 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 . No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. If somebody had said five years ago, that I was going to be spending the months in October and November 2019 sort of speaking for Fred Rogersyeah, right. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?, Did your special friend have a name, Tom?, Yes, Mister Rogers. he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. 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And so it was that the puppets he employed on The Children's Corner would be the puppets he employed forty-four years later, and so it was that once he took off his jacket and his shoeswell, he was Mister Rogers for good. TJ: I mean, I never had that nightmare, but very interesting. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.". Well, not exactly. Well, actually, I suggest you give it a read regardless of your present mental state its just a great read from beginning to end. Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. His name was Fred Rogers. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." "Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had." Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, "there were people throwing pies at one another." Twelve years in a Catholic school. "Thanks, my dear," he said to me, then turned back to Deb. "Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?" I had always been a great prayer, a powerful one, but only fitfully, only out of guilt, only when fear and desperation drove me to itand it hit me, right then, with my eyes closed, that this was the moment Fred RogersMister Rogershad been leading me to from the moment he answered the door of his apartment in his bathrobe and asked me about Old Rabbit. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?". A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (opens Nov. 22) tells the story of one writer's experience profiling Fred Rogers . By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers.The two remained close until Rogers's death, in early 2003. Did you have any special friends growing up? Thats as far as I want to go, you know? If . Fred never stopped looking at her or let go of her hand. Im not sure about it. Junod has stated that his encounter with Rogers changed his perspective on life. 'I love you.' Fred Rogers isn't even the central figure. If You Loved The New Mr. Rogers Movie, Wait Until You Read What It's Based On. 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. The quintessence of the man was not his nationality but his faith. 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. And my essay from 1998 is the intro for that. 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." This article was originally published in the November 1998 issue. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" 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 . And its all in there. And so that's what I told him. A minute ago we were stand-ins for children watching the show; now we seem to be somehow inside the brain of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a cynical Esquire reporter tasked with profiling Rogers for . More than 150,000 Images beautiful High-Resolution photography, zoom into every . Will you pray for me?" Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. 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. It beautifully illustrates the story of the hard-edged investigative journalist - Lloyd Vogel - who believes everything in life has an ugly side. ESQ: In both pieces, the original and The Atlantic piece, prayer comes up. What kind of prayer has only three words? He was leading me to that moment of prayer that whole time that I was with him. I grew up Roman Catholic. The cameras stop, and he says, "I don't like the word owner there. 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. It gradually dawns on Tom/Lloyd, that the Mr. Rogers in front of the camera is the . 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. 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. The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. "But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. I was sitting in a small chair by the door, and he said, "Tom, would you close the door, please?" 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. She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. I was okay with Lloyd Vogel with bunny ears. The character of the writer in the movie, Lloyd Vogel, is not amused. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. He wanted to tell children that what starts out little can sometimes become big, and so that could devote themselves to little dreams without feeling bad about them. And a lot of times conversations go to places that I dont expect them to go. Then he looked at me and smiled. ESQ: And the tent scene [where Mister Rogers struggles to put together a camping tent for a Mister Rogers' Neighborhood segment], was kind of. 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? Thats what I actually pray for. . And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight changehe neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches televisionand every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him that he weighs 143 pounds. . He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children's Corner. With the film adaptation of Junod's legendary Esquire story out today, we talked to the writer about the man who changed his life. 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. ", The next afternoon, I went to his office in Pittsburgh. (2021, directed . Your prayers are just wonderful." He wanted us to pray. The doctors were ophthalmologists. Junod and Rogers exchanged dozens of emails that would . ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. 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. I mean, Fred wasnt just a reformer when it comes in terms of message. 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 . 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. His name was Old Rabbit., Old Rabbit. Youll probably need an infusion of something like this to restore your faith in humanity after an overload of Frank Underwood. But, in that same way, do you think he could have became what he did with social media instead of TV? 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. We may earn a commission from these links. The boy had always been prayed for. But do you think there will be one? As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. So the first thing he did was rechristen himself "Joybubbles"; the second thing he did was declare himself five years old forever; and the third thing he did was make a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh, where the University of Pittsburgh's Information Sciences Library keeps a Mister Rogers archive. He had makeup on his face and a dollop of black dye combed into his silver hair. Boom! "Oh, Mister Rogers, thank you for my childhood." Junod's on-screen identity, Lloyd Vogel, is also a major player in connecting the audience to Mister Rogers and the film. Notes. She and the boy lived together in a city in California, and although she wanted very much for her son to meet Mister Rogers, she knew that he was far too disabled to travel all the way to Pittsburgh, so she figured he would never meet his hero, until one day she learned through a special foundation designed to help children like her son that Mister Rogers was coming to California and that after he visited the gorilla named Koko, he was coming to meet her son. 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 two remained close until Rogers's death, in early 2003. ", Deb stiffened for a second, and she let out a breath, and her color got deeper. By Rachel E. Greenspan. ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. "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. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood fact check reveals that Lloyd's wife Andrea is mostly fictional as well. Everything we can't stop loving . 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Tom Junod / Lloyd Vogel experiences this first hand as he tries to get Mr. Rogers to come "out of character". 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. The movie is loosely based on Tom Junod's life around 1998 when he wrote an article on Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine. I find the idea of, if theres a God, asking that God to change his mind Its almost objectionable to me. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. If we wanted to go into the house, we should have called first. 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. There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. It was not his fault. Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. Margy couldn't stop them, and she couldn't stop him. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a . Freds favorite saying from all of literature was, That which is essential is invisible to the eye, from The Little Prince. Would you lead us in prayer? He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. New Friends.". 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. "Would you like to speak to him?" I dont know if Im ever going to be as good at the active devotion whereas Fred would like me or us to be. Meaning that there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and if that was filmed, then it should stay filmed. "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. And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. 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. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The movie was so well done and like a lot of people, I had no idea what a loving man Fred Rogers was. 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. I do think that if you transported Fred through time from then til now, would he try? 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. 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. In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. 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. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." ESQ: And then by Mister Rogers. But how could Mister Rogers show little becoming big, and vice versa? "This man's name is Tom. But I mean, Fred and my dad could not have been more different. He clearly wanted me to pray. But it might mean something to me, so thats why Ive been doing it. 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. 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 hard-hitting journalist reluctantly takes an assignment to write a profile story about the cherished TV icon for a special 1998 "Heroes" issue of Esquire . 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. 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." "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. It's his natural instinct to try and take Mister . 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. It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.'. TJ: Yeah, they have been. I'm glad I know that. Every issue Esquire has ever published, since 1933. Isn't that wonderful?". It was the first time I had read the story in a really long time. 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 . I had never prayed like that before, ever. Yeah, Mister Rogers is more amazing than you ever knew. Yeah. The boy had never spoken, until one day he said, "X the Owl," which is the name of one of Mister Rogers's puppets, and he had never looked his father in the eye until one day his father had said, "Let's go to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe," and now the boy is speaking and reading, and the father has come to thank Mister Rogers for saving his son's life.And by this time, well, it's nine-thirty in the morning, time for Mister Rogers to take off his jacket and his shoes and put on his sweater and his sneakers and start taping another visit to the Neighborhood. The new film is inspired by the story of Rogers' relationship with journalist Tom Junod, who was assigned to profile Rogers in 1998 for a special issue of Esquire on American heroes. And yet, here I am. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. 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. TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. he says when I approach the two of them. I mean, to be honest with you, Ive been going and going in front of a crowd [suddenly, a lightbulb in Junods eyeview explodes in flames] Woah! TJ: Thats a great question. TJ: Yes. 'Most people think of us as a great domestic airline. Lloyd goes to interview Mr. Rogers and is shocked by his kindness, and the two form a bond. He looked very little in the backseat of the car. 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. 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. What is grace? Rogers as a peasant to explaining the world to remove son. TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. I mean, he was in favor of thatmedia should be human. 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. . A Beautiful Day in the . Scenes where Lloyd Vogel passes out on the set of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Fred Rogers visits Jerry Vogel with a pie are created for the dramatic purposes of The film's protagonist is journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a cynic who is assigned by his . "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" TJ: I dont know. 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. 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 . 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.
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