His name was Old Rabbit. She worked very hard at writing the chapter, until one day she showed what she had written to Mister Rogers, who read it and crossed it all out and wrote a sentence addressed directly to the doctors who would be reading it: "You were a child once, too.". Lloyd has daddy issues, which Junod did not (at least not in the same way) something he outlines in a recent piece about Rogers for The Atlantic Monthly. It has all 865 programs, in both color and black and white, and for two months this past spring, Joybubbles went to the library every day for ten hours and watched the Neighborhood's every episode, plus specialsor, since he is blind, listened to every episode, imagined every episode. I took it and then put my hand around her free hand. But how could Mister Rogers show little becoming big, and vice versa? I mean, he was in favor of thatmedia should be human. Per his piece in The Atlantic, Junod asked the writers for some changes after reading an early draft of the script in April 2016. Where is Fred?" That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. Hero?" is about Mr. Rogers as much as it is . 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. Im just wondering on your end, where has your relationship with prayer landed now, and do you think it will continue to change? TJ: I mean, the tents great, but the tents intentional. His personal story is changed too. 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? 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. Im not sure about it. Junod also appeared in the critically acclaimed documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? I sat in an old armchair and looked around. Tom Hanks plays Fred Rogers, the minister who became a children's TV host then beacon of hope for a struggling society, and also the person who saves Lloyd. I'm glad I know that. "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. ESQ: Have the past two months been fulfilling for you? "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. He was a kind man who made it a point to practice kindness to a vast audience, person by person. Isn't that wonderful?". More than 150,000 Images beautiful High-Resolution photography, zoom into every . 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 is losing to it, to our twenty-four-hour-a-day pie fight, to the dizzying cut and the disorienting edit, to the message of fragmentation, to the flicker and pulse and shudder and strobe, to the constant, hivey drone of the electrocultureand yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence. They're all in heaven.". By Rachel E. Greenspan. He moved his hand from her wrist to her palm and extended his other hand to me. 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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. This article was originally published in the November 1998 issue. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. Fred was all person by person. Appearance, presentation, looks. The event is the premise of the 2019 feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good. T he movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is structured like an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Only it ends up more than 20 times that long, as he . 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 . (2018). "Can I take your picture, Tom?" One hundred and forty-three. TJ: Thats a great question. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. "But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. 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 . A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (opens Nov. 22) tells the story of one writer's experience profiling Fred Rogers . 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. 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.". A clock is a machine that tells people what time it is, but as Mister Rogers sat in the backseat of an old station wagon hired to take him from his apartment to Penn Station, he worried that Maya Lin's clock might be too fancy and that the children who watch the Neighborhood might not understand it. "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" "Oh, heavens no, Tom! TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. "I'd like to take your picture. 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. You know that they shot it with like the original cameras. Would you like to speak to him? he asked, and then handed me the phone. She was 92. 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. 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. Thats what I actually pray for. And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. 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. It would take a couple Mister Rogers episodes and . I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. This boy had a very bad case of cerebral palsy, and when he was still a little boy, some of the people entrusted to take care of him took advantage of him instead and did things to him that made him think that he was a very bad little boy, because only a bad little boy would have to live with the things he had to live with. 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." She weighed 280 pounds, and Mister Rogers weighed 143. When tasked with profiling the well-acclaimed Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks), Vogel is unwilling to do so as it is a change from his typical exposs. We were heading back to his apartment in a taxi when I asked him what he had said. The spirit of Mister Rogers counseled her to forgive the insults, and after she told me her story in the morning, I called Fred. 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. 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. ESQ: Another interesting thing in your piece is how you talk about how theres still a hunger for spreading goodness in the world. He wrote, "I wrote Micah [Fitzerman-Blue] and Noah [Harpster] back, along with Peter Saraf, the producer at Big Beach, the company that had optioned my Esquire story, and asked them to change my name and the names of my family members. 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.". 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. Notes. 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 . Explore the full November 1998 issue of Esquire. "Rephrase in a positive manner," as in It is good to play where it is safe. Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. His name was 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. 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. Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . He was a child, once, too, and so one day I asked him if I could go with him back to Latrobe. 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. Lloyd Vogel (based loosely on the real life journalist Tom Junod) is the anti-heroic protagonist of the 2019 drama film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.An embittered, self-absorbed, antisocial Esquire journalist who holds a grudge towards his philanderous father Jerry for abandoning his family, Lloyd is assigned to profile children's television host Fred Rogers for a magazine issue about . Did you have a special friend like that, Tom? 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. Theres a moment in .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Can You Say Hero?Tom Junods Esquire profile on Fred Rogers, one of the all-time great magazine storieswhen the writer is searching for the childrens TV icon at the stuffed, panic-attack-palace of Penn Station. Ive had people take issue with that. I mean, if that was Tom Junod with bunny ears, I dont know how I would have responded. His name was Fred Rogers. It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' A woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?". As Joanne Rogers tells Lloyd Vogel in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, he was loathe to hurt even animals. 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. It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). And it just goes on and on in much the same way from there. And what did Fred want from me? 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. What is yours named?". And thats how I became Lloyd Vogel." And when I read that, I realized that what I was looking for was really unavoidable and obvious. 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. Not his childhood, mind you, or even a childhoodno, just "childhood." Read it all when you have time, especially if youre binging on House of Cards this weekend. Over the course of two hours, we see Fred Rogers movingly model a type of humanity for Vogel, who seems mired in anger, disconnected from his own feelings. At first, I chalked this up to some Neighborhood of Make-Believe voodoo energy, but now I have a legit answer. Would you lead us in prayer? Well, not exactly. Do you see masculinity as different endslike you could be this person or this person? 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. Mr. Rogers, fully aware of this, still invites . Thats as far as I want to go, you know? While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . 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. [Junod gets up, alerts others to the now-smoking lightbulb, and returns with potato chips to share.]. 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. 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. 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. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. "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. For example, much of Mister Rogers' investment in Lloyd rests upon his tumultuous relationship with his father (Chris Cooper). 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. He is losing, of course. And I think that audience is sort of self-selecting and limited by definition, almost. Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. 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. 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. TJ: You can get into all sorts of weird head-trips about prayer and its purpose. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. The boy had always been prayed for. What's more, it's based on a true story, with a few of the names changed. 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. Oh, and I'll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. Exclusive & Unlimited access to Esquire Classic - The Official Esquire Archive. Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn't like himself very much. 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. 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. "Oh, Mister Rogers, would you please just hug me?" 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. After I watched the walkthroughand was somehow briefly enlisted in fashion-show-planning service as the only idle body in sightwe sat down on a couch in the middle of all the swirling fashion-show-planners, and talked about Fred Rogers, what he left behind, and what we do now. 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. 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. 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. 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. They sang, all at once, all together, the song he sings at the start of his program, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" 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. It's just a meeting of friends," he said. It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy's brain still nice and fresh, he had no memory of it as "Young Rabbit," or even "Rabbit"; so old that Old Rabbit was barely a rabbit at all but rather a greasy hunk of skin without eyes and ears, with a single red stitch where its tongue used to be. February 14, 2014. And for me going out and talking about it has been a great experience for me. He clearly believed in prayer as a way of life. ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. If You Loved The New Mr. Rogers Movie, Wait Until You Read What It's Based On. 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. I mean, I find prayer somewhat problematic. He wanted us to pray. Cerebral palsy is something that happens to the brain. But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. Your prayers are just wonderful." I just try to ask for some sort of affirmation, you know? he asked her, and when she said yes, he said, "Oh, thank you, my dear." ESQ: So its like we dont knowwith the popular mediums we have nowhow to show kindness or come up to each other. 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. Lloyd has been tasked with profiling Fred Rogers for Esquire, an unusual assignment that he approaches with great reluctance and even resentment. The movie, which opens November 22, casts Rogers as an agent of change . 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. Boom! I just wanted to let him know that he was strong on the inside, too. I have actually tried, since that moment, Ive tried to pray. TJ: I dont know. 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. 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. 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." 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." The quintessence of the man was not his nationality but his faith. 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. Yes, at seventy years old and 143 pounds, Mister Rogers still fights, and indeed, early this year, when television handed him its highest honor, he responded by telling televisiongently, of courseto just shut up for once, and television listened. ", 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. I wanted to be him." Yes, it should be easy being Mister Rogers, but when four o'clock rolls around, well, Mister Rogers is tired, and so he sneaks over to the piano and starts playing, with dexterous, pale fingers, the music that used to end a 1940s newsreel and that has now become the music he plays to signal to the cast and crew that a day's taping has wrapped. ", "I know that," Mister Rogers said, "and that's why the prayer I'm going to teach you has only three words. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. It's Mister Fucking Rogers! ", Then he turns back to the little girl. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. Once upon a time, a man named Fred Rogers decided that he wanted to live in heaven. 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 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. "Oh, I don't know, Fred," she said. Junod had hoped the changes would bring protection, as he wrote, "I had counted on the plots many departures from my life to insulate me from the emotional effect of seeing some version of myself up there." And so I wrote that. She was a minister at Fred Rogers's church. Fred never stopped looking at her or let go of her hand. There was nobody home. 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." Oh, honey, Mommy knew you could do it.And so now, encouraged, Mommy said, "Do you want to give Mister Rogers a hug, honey?" Tom Junod's "Can You Say . When he reaches the street, he looks right at the lens, as he always does, and says, speaking of the Neighborhood, "Let's go back to my place," and then makes a right turn toward Seventh Avenue, except that this time he just keeps going, and suddenly Margy Whitmer is saying, "Where is Fred? Browse featured articles, preview selected issue contents, and more. Now he was stepping in front of the camera as Mister Rogers, and he wanted to do things right, and whatever he did right, he wanted to repeat. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. It's his natural instinct to try and take Mister . Junod has stated that his encounter with Rogers changed his perspective on 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. 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