It would not be easy, nofor in order to win such a battle, he would have to forbid himself the privilege of stopping, and whatever he did right he would have to repeat, as though he were already living in eternity. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. ESQ: In both pieces, the original and The Atlantic piece, prayer comes up. Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, "there were people throwing pies at one another." It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. He doesn't know the color of his walls, and one day, when I caught him looking toward his painted skies, I asked him to tell me what color they are, and he said, "I imagine they're blue, Tom." 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. he asked Bill Isler, president of Family Communications, the company that produces Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Ive gone on the road through this story and Ive become a spokesman not just for the movie, but for Fred, and its one of the great surprises of my life. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. 'Most people think of us as a great domestic airline. Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Lloyd Vogel in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." (Courtesy Lacey Terrell/Sony Pictures) This article is more than 3 years old. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. TJ: Yes. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. 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"But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. Instead, the plot focuses on the real-life friendship between Rogers and cynical journalist Tom Junod (renamed Lloyd Vogel in the movie and portrayed by Matthew Rhys). In 1998, Junod wrote a piece profiling Rogers for Esquire , which . 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. 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. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. New Friends.". 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. ESQ: Now its landed at a point where I pray for my family, pray for anyone who needs it. ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The film is based on a true story, though Rhys plays fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel, who was created to help tell Rogers' story. And he had a relationship with a lot of people." "Can I take your picture, Tom?" 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. ", He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. "Would you lead us? That light just burned out and there was I mean, that was on fire. He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." He had always loved Mister Rogers, though, and now, even when he was fourteen years old, he watched the Neighborhood whenever it was on, and the boy's mother sometimes thought that Mister Rogers was keeping her son alive. ESQ: You wrote in the original piece that he didnt even watch TV. Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist known for his jarring exposs but is secretive about his childhood, is the film's protagonist. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Heres Our Review Of Cocaine Bear: Oh Hell Yes! Koko was much bigger than Mister Rogers. Im just wondering on your end, where has your relationship with prayer landed now, and do you think it will continue to change? It would take a couple Mister Rogers episodes and . 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. 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. Now, what the fuck is grace?" As the film starts, journalist Lloyd Vogel has just welcomed the birth of a newborn baby boy with his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson). 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. The doctors were ophthalmologists. But when I did my first draft for the The Atlantic, I wrote that I still dont know what Fred wants from me, or wants from us. But it might mean something to me, so thats why Ive been doing it. I was sitting in a small chair by the door, and he said, "Tom, would you close the door, please?" Lloyd decides to treat the profile as an investigation to find out if Mr. Rogers is just a character for the . 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. Hero?" is about Mr. Rogers as much as it is . ", "Did your special friend have a name, Tom? A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. Second mook: "Fuck that. I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. 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. Meaning that there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and if that was filmed, then it should stay filmed. And its all in there. ", "Oh, please, sister," Mister Rogers says. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. His name was Fred Rogers. 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. And thats how I became Lloyd Vogel." 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. "Will you be with me when I die?" TJ: Thats a great question. So far, its worked pretty well. 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." He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. 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. No, Mister Rogers was not a saint. 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. He knowing what only Fred could do. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?". ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. With the film adaptation of Junod's legendary Esquire story out today, we talked to the writer about the man who changed his life. As for Mister Rogers himselfwell, he doesn't look at the story in the same way that the boy did or that I did. 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. I would love to remove that but I dont know. 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. . 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. Greek philosophy called for esquire magazine article about mr rogers? 85+ Years of outstanding fiction from world-renowned authors. He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those wallsthe walls that have both penned him in and set him free. What is yours named?". 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? 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 girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. "Oh, heavens no, Tom! 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. 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? Not his childhood, mind you, or even a childhoodno, just "childhood." I grew up Roman Catholic. Rogers as a peasant to explaining the world to remove son. And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (opens Nov. 22) tells the story of one writer's experience profiling Fred Rogers . 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. You were a child once, too. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. Except for people who are on the new-age end of it. 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. 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. It had more to do with his relationship to his own father, which was a focal point for the film. 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. 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. 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. Here's what readers learned about Mister Rogers when the piece debuted. 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 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. Mister Rogers always worries about things like that, because he always worries about children, and when his station wagon stopped in traffic next to a bus stop, he read aloud the advertisement of an airline trying to push its international service. Second mook: "Huh. It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.'. In the film, Junod is represented by the character Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. The film's protagonist is journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a cynic who is assigned by his editors at Esquire to write a profile on Rogers. 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. Mr. Rogers, fully aware of this, still invites . "No, you're not," she says. The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. The film is adapted from a real life 1998 Esquire feature penned by Tom Junod, long one of the nation's premier magazine writers. A Beautiful Day in the . It's Lloyd Vogel, a fictionalized character based on Atlanta writer Tom Junod. ESQ: One thing I was really interested in how in the The Atlantic piece, you spell out masculinity as defined by your father. While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . Tom Junod / Lloyd Vogel experiences this first hand as he tries to get Mr. Rogers to come "out of character". The quintessence of the man was not his nationality but his faith. and turned the clattering train into a single soft, runaway choir. 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, Im in my bathrobe, if you dont mind. I told him I didnt 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 didnt hide. Once upon a time, a little boy with a big sword went into battle against Mister Rogers. Junod and Rogers exchanged dozens of emails that would . A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is based on the real-life story of journalist Tom Junod and an article he wrote for Esquire magazine profiling Fred Rogers. This article was the basis for the plot of the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. His personal story is changed too. And what did Fred want from me? Koko weighed 280 pounds because she is a gorilla, and Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. 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. He had been on television before, but only as the voices and movements of puppets, on a program called The Children's Corner. We may earn a commission from these links. 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. And even now, when he is producing only three weeks' worth of new programs a year, he still winds up agonizingagonizingabout whether to announce his theme as "Little and Big" or "Big and Little" and still makes only two edits per televised minute, because he doesn't want his message to be determined by the cuts and splices in a piece of tapeto become, despite all his fierce coherence, "a message of fragmentation.". 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