He clearly believed in prayer as a way of life. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.". "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. 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. TJ: Well, I think its always changed, just like yours that way. ", Then he turns back to the little girl. 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. I closed the door and sat back down. 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]. 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. Can I take your picture, Tom? he asked. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. . He clearly wanted me to pray. Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of sneakers. 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). he asked her, and when she said yes, he said, "Oh, thank you, my dear." It's interesting because the journalist, named Lloyd Vogel in the movie, is introduced as a harsh cynic who's notorious for shredding the character of the people he writes about. (2021, directed . He explained how his friendship with Rogers contrasted that image, writing, "Fred gave me what I needed then and still need now: a choice. I just wanted to let him know that he was strong on the inside, too. The Esquire article which brings Lloyd Vogel and Fred Rogers together did actually happen; as did the writer's fruitful transformation off the page. 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. This article was originally published in the November 1998 issue. 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. 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 that is rather missing the point. And that always struck me as perverse. 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. He has spent thirty-one years imagining and reimagining those wallsthe walls that have both penned him in and set him free. If they can hate something like that, you wonder how easy it would be for them to hate something more important." Exclusive & Unlimited access to Esquire Classic - The Official Esquire Archive. 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. 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. As he gets to know the children's TV show host . 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. Three died, and they were still children, almost. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?, Did your special friend have a name, Tom?, Yes, Mister Rogers. 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. 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. "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. And now the boy didn't know how to respond. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?. 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 . When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. As the film starts, journalist Lloyd Vogel has just welcomed the birth of a newborn baby boy with his wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson). 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. Oh, honey, Mommy knew you could do it.And so now, encouraged, Mommy said, "Do you want to give Mister Rogers a hug, honey?" 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. 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." "This man's name is Tom. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. ESQ: One thing I was really interested in how in the The Atlantic piece, you spell out masculinity as defined by your father. There was nobody home. Yes, sure, he was taping, and right there, in Penn Station in New York City, were rings of other children wiggling in wait for him, but right now his patient gray eyes were fixed on the little boy with the big sword, and so he stayed there, on one knee, until the little boy's eyes finally focused on Mister Rogers, and he said, "It's not a sword; it's a death ray." The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. While Junod wrote that he learned the concepts of forgiveness and . I just met Mister Rogersthis is definitely my lucky day." By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." TJ: I mean, I never had that nightmare, but very interesting. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. "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. "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is more or less the story of how an Esquire article comes into being. But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. I'll let y'all know. "But Mister Rogers, I can't pray," Joybubbles said, "because every time I try to pray, I forget the words. The movie, which opens November 22, casts Rogers as an agent of change . The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. ", The walls of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood are light blue and fleeced with clouds. 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 . Hero?" is about Mr. Rogers as much as it is . One hundred and forty-three. Tom Junod's "Can You Say . Its name was Old Rabbit. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom? November 22, 2019 10:24 AM EST. And I called Joanne [Rogers] after that and said, What do you think about that? And she was like, You know, Fred would never represent that. That seems so obvious, but I think to a lot of people its not obvious because I think that the temptation of being able to think that yelling at somebody on the street, youre somehow striking a blow. He was not a dogmatic person, but he was dogmatic about thatthat media should not be used as a distraction. "It's not a performance. But theres a lot of different ways to do it. the Junod character is Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew . .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}Chris Pine Thinks 'Star Trek' is Cursed, The Hilarious Reason Why Chris Pine Cut His Hair, Chris Pine Tells All About Harry Styles SpitGate, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original, 40 Photos That Prove Sly Stallone Was a Style Icon, 32 Photos of Michael B. Jordans Style Evolution. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. 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. Lloyd is married, has . For example, much of Mister Rogers' investment in Lloyd rests upon his tumultuous relationship with his father (Chris Cooper). What I'm buying is a ticket to the fucking Lotto. Twelve years in a Catholic school. 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. 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. Considering his popularity, those episodes cannot be that difficult to find. Though of all races, the schoolchildren were mostly black and Latino, and they didn't even approach Mister Rogers and ask him for his autograph. Lloyd has been tasked with profiling Fred Rogers for Esquire, an unusual assignment that he approaches with great reluctance and even resentment. I grew up Roman Catholic. Koko watches Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and when Mister Rogers, in his sweater and sneakers, entered the place where she lives, Koko immediately folded him in her long, black arms, as though he were a child, and then "She took my shoes off, Tom," Mister Rogers said. In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. He was born with cerebral palsy. Is Lloyd Vogel a real person? 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. That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. Enjoy a year of unlimited access to The Atlanticincluding every story on our site and app, subscriber newsletters, and more. He is not speaking of the little girl. 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