"Looks a bit likeOld Rabbit, doesn't it, Tom? If . It means that you can think but sometimes can't walk, or even talk. 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 says when I approach the two of them. '", In fact, Junod's current project is a book about his relationship to his father, Lou 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 . He was thunderstruck. They're all in heaven.". A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (opens Nov. 22) tells the story of one writer's experience profiling Fred Rogers . I mean, Fred wasnt just a reformer when it comes in terms of message. Cerebral palsy is something that happens to the brain. Junod is personally present . He was not a dogmatic person, but he was dogmatic about thatthat media should not be used as a distraction. Except for people who are on the new-age end of it. If You Loved The New Mr. Rogers Movie, Wait Until You Read What It's Based On. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a . His name was Fred Rogers. First mook: "He says it's the Greek word for grace." At first, I chalked this up to some Neighborhood of Make-Believe voodoo energy, but now I have a legit answer. It's Lloyd Vogel, a fictionalized character based on Atlanta writer Tom Junod. . "I'm done. Junod has stated that his encounter with Rogers changed his perspective on life. ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. It was a television. Her name was Deb. As he gets to know the children's TV show host . Thats what I actually pray for. But theres a lot of different ways to do it. 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]. 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. And so we went to the graveyard. 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 is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . "Thank you for calling, my dear," he said, in a voice whose . What is grace? "Can I take your picture, Tom?" Meaning that there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and if that was filmed, then it should stay filmed. "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. 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.' I do think that if you transported Fred through time from then til now, would he try? 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. 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. The movie is about Lloyd Vogel, (Matthew Rhys), an investigative journalist who receives an assignment to profile noted children's television host Fred Rogers, . 85+ Years of outstanding fiction from world-renowned authors. That bad people dont deserve kindness, and that you, when you you literally call them a piece of shit on Twitter, that you are somehow striking a moral blow, that you are somehow being part of the resistance. 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. He wears an undershirt, of course, but no mattersoon that's gone, too, as is the belt, as are the beige trousers, until his undershorts stand as the last impediment to his nakedness. 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. 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. Its like if you dont do it, maybe it wont happen. Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. 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. He was in college. He wanted us to pray. But then Esquire, for a special edition on "heroes," asks Lloyd to write a profile piece on Fred "Mister Rogers" Rogers. Is Lloyd Vogel a real person? I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. He was sitting on a couch, under a framed rendering of the Greek word for grace and a biblical phrase written in Hebrew that means "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . 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 yet, here I am. "I don't know if I want to put on a performance.". Do you know that about yourself? In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. They are tallas tall as the cinder-block walls they are designed to hideand they encompass the Neighborhood's entire stage set, from the flimsy yellow house where Mister Rogers comes to visit, to the closet where he finds his sweaters, to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where he goes to dream. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. Junod is also noted for his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. 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). he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. 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. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. That temptation is really large because its so easy. That was on fire, right? Hate is such a strong word to use so lightly. 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. He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. The movie was so well done and like a lot of people, I had no idea what a loving man Fred Rogers was. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist known for his jarring exposs but is secretive about his childhood, is the film's protagonist. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. TJ: I mean, I never . 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. "Hmmm," Mister Rogers said, "that's a strange ad. 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. Once upon a time, a little boy with a big sword went into battle against Mister Rogers. 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." New Friends.". He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. You know that they shot it with like the original cameras. 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. 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. She had curls in her hair and stars at the centers of her eyes. He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those wallsthe walls that have both penned him in and set him free. "Roy Rogers is done. There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. He knowing what only Fred could do. "Oh, I don't know, Fred," she said. 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. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Id like to take your picture. "Would you like to speak to him?" 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. The two remained close until Rogers's death, in early 2003. "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, 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. 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. 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]. 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. Second mook: "Fuck that. Mister Rogers still has a ways to go.". Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. ESQ: In both pieces, the original and The Atlantic piece, prayer comes up. Fred Rogers loved her very much, and so, out of nowhere, he smiled and put his hand over hers. It's Mister Fucking Rogers! The answer to: What did Fred want? Nearly every morning of his life, Mister Rogers has gone swimming, and now, here he is, standing in a locker room, seventy years old and as white as the Easter Bunny, rimed with frost wherever he has hair, gnawed pink in the spots where his dry skin has gone to flaking, slightly wattled at the neck, slightly stooped at the shoulder, slightly sunken in the chest, slightly curvy at the hips, slightly pigeoned at the toes, slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself and yet when he speaks, it is in that voice, his voice, the famous one, the unmistakable one, the televised one, the voice dressed in sweater and sneakers, the soft one, the reassuring one, the curious and expository one, the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults, and what he says, in the midst of all his bobbing nudity, is as understated as it is obvious: "Well, Tom, I guess you've already gotten a deeper glimpse into my daily routine than most people have.". He was a reformer in terms of method. 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. As of November 2019, he is a writer . Will you pray for me?" Browse featured articles, preview selected issue contents, and more. The shootings took place in West Paducah, Kentucky, and when Mister Rogers heard about them, he said, "Oh, wouldn't the world be a different place if he had said, 'I'm going to do something really little tomorrow,'" and he decided to dedicate a week of the Neighborhood to the theme "Little and Big." 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. 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