He was leading me to that moment of prayer that whole time that I was with him. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn't want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said, "The connections we make in the course of a lifemaybe that's what heaven is, Tom. He doesn't even know. 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. That was a challenge. Plot. Id like to take your picture. he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Every issue Esquire has ever published, since 1933. I said, 'Do you know that you're strong on the inside, too?' 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." I mean, if that was Tom Junod with bunny ears, I dont know how I would have responded. And so that's what I told him. 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. As he gets to know the children's TV show host . "Oh, Mister Rogers, you're the father I never had." We may earn a commission from these links. It's Lloyd Vogel, a fictionalized character based on Atlanta writer Tom Junod. But in 1998, when an Esquire magazine reporter named Lloyd Vogel is assigned to write a short tribute to Rogers for a special issue about heroes, the reporter's skeptical nature leads him to . "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. A death ray! Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. he asked, and then handed me the phone. ESQ: Now its landed at a point where I pray for my family, pray for anyone who needs it. 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. But then Esquire, for a special edition on "heroes," asks Lloyd to write a profile piece on Fred "Mister Rogers" Rogers. Her name was Deb. 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? And I think that audience is sort of self-selecting and limited by definition, almost. ESQ: Have the past two months been fulfilling for you? Junod is personally present . In 1998, Junod wrote a piece profiling Rogers for Esquire , which . But the boy was shaking his head no, and Mister Rogers was sneaking his face past the big sword and the armor of the little boy's eyes and whispering something in his earsomething that, while not changing his mind about the hug, made the little boy look at Mister Rogers in a new way, with the eyes of a child at last, and nod his head yes. A distraction itself was dangerous. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. It's just a meeting of friends," he said. ", "I know that," Mister Rogers said, "and that's why the prayer I'm going to teach you has only three words. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." And for me going out and talking about it has been a great experience for me. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.". But, in that same way, do you think he could have became what he did with social media instead of TV? So far, its worked pretty well. '", In fact, Junod's current project is a book about his relationship to his father, Lou Junod. I said sure, hung up, and realized I didnt exactly catch where in Bryant Parkanother New York capital of constant, nightmarish pedestrian overflow. 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 . However, on insistence to keep an open mind, he came to realize that the . ESQ: One thing I was really interested in how in the The Atlantic piece, you spell out masculinity as defined by your father. He is not speaking of the little girl. 'Ted Lasso' Season 3 Dropped Its First Trailer, 'Outer Banks' Season 4 Is Already In the Works. Meaning that there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and if that was filmed, then it should stay filmed. Junod asked the filmmakers to stark his trail name lower the names of urgent family members, which exactly how page became Lloyd Vogel in your movie. If . "I'm done. 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. You were a child once, too. Junod's on-screen identity, Lloyd Vogel, is also a major player in connecting the audience to Mister Rogers and the film. Three died, and they were still children, almost. 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. "Hmmm," Mister Rogers said, "that's a strange ad. He knowing what only Fred could do. The spirit of Mister Rogers counseled her to forgive the insults, and after she told me her story in the morning, I called Fred. And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good. TJ: I dont know. In 1998, Rogers strikes a friendship with Lloyd Vogel, a self-absorbed, embittered journalist who is assigned to interview him for the magazine Esquire. 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. 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. ESQ: So its like we dont knowwith the popular mediums we have nowhow to show kindness or come up to each other. "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is loosely based on the 1998 Esquire profile of the beloved TV host. Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. And when I read that, I realized that what I was looking for was really unavoidable and obvious. and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" In the film, actor Matthew Rhys plays central character Lloyd Vogel, a journalist who's writing a profile on the legendary creator of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Get instant access to 85+ years of Esquire. Twelve years in a Catholic school. Second mook: "Huh. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. TJ: Okay, so theres that scene in the beginning of the movie where hes zipping up his sweater. 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. He was wearing beige pants, a blue dress shirt, a tie, dark socks, a pair of dark-blue boating sneakers, and a purple, zippered cardigan. His name was Fred Rogers. . Greek philosophy called for esquire magazine article about mr rogers? He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. ", "What prayer is that, Mister Rogers? And thats how I became Lloyd Vogel." He moved his hand from her wrist to her palm and extended his other hand to me. But Junod says he recognizes Vogel's . ESQ: I wanted to ask you about that nightmare scene [where Lloyd Vogel, the character loosely based on Junod, dreams that he's a character in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe]. It'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 . Fred Rogers loved her very much, and so, out of nowhere, he smiled and put his hand over hers. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are.Ten seconds of silence." 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. And a lot of times conversations go to places that I dont expect them to go. Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. It gradually dawns on Tom/Lloyd, that the Mr. Rogers in front of the camera is the . Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. 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. TJ: You can get into all sorts of weird head-trips about prayer and its purpose. What's more, it's based on a true story, with a few of the names changed. We may earn a commission from these links. 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. What is grace? 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 . "Thanks, my dear," he said to me, then turned back to Deb. Is Lloyd Vogel a real person? Let's change it to 'bring the dog home.'" 'I love you.'. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. (2018). 2:27. As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) probes the state-of-mind of his interviewer, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) Somehow, the loss of Mr. Rogers, a thoroughly decent man who preached a gospel of kindness to generations of children, aches much more in a social and political landscape awash in anger and pain (and "leadership" that sets that tone). TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. The two remained close until Rogers's death, in early 2003. It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). Boom! Freds favorite saying from all of literature was, That which is essential is invisible to the eye, from The Little Prince. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. 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. He was born with cerebral palsy. Lloyd has been tasked with profiling Fred Rogers for Esquire, an unusual assignment that he approaches with great reluctance and even resentment. 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. 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. While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . TJ: I mean, the tents great, but the tents intentional. He can't define it. The ophthalmologists did not want to scare children, so they asked Mister Rogers for help, and Mister Rogers agreed to write a chapter for a book the ophthalmologists were putting togethera chapter about what other ophthalmologists could do to calm the children who came to their offices. February 14, 2014. He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. 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 . In fact, when the little boy grew up to be a teenager, he would get so mad at himself that he would hit himself, hard, with his own fists and tell his mother, on the computer he used for a mouth, that he didn't want to live anymore, for he was sure that God didn't like what was inside him any more than he did. TJ: Yeah, yeah. It's based on a real-life 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod, but almost everything in the movie is fictional, except for the wisest, kindest, most penetrating and insightful things Mr. Rogers says in the movie. Lloyd is married, has . 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. He wanted us to pray. "Rephrase in a positive manner," as in It is good to play where it is safe. His personal story is changed too. "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. ", "Yes, Mister Rogers. 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. 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