Lloyd's father Jerry (Chris Cooper) abandoned him as a child and keeps trying to reconnect, by Lloyd rejects him. In the movie, Tom Junod's name is changed to Lloyd Vogel. Margy couldn't stop them, and she couldn't stop him. ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. '", In fact, Junod's current project is a book about his relationship to his father, Lou Junod. And it just goes on and on in much the same way from there. 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. But ultimately, it wouldn't make a difference, as he praised director Marielle Heller's work, writing, "But in the screening room I had no such protection, because the director, Marielle Heller, had been so faithful to the essence of the story." When Junod first read the script for the movie, he believed that the writers had made him out to be a jerk, though he had a much more colorful term for that. 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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. The movie is about Lloyd Vogel, (Matthew Rhys), an investigative journalist who receives an assignment to profile noted children's television host Fred Rogers, . Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?, Did your special friend have a name, Tom?, Yes, Mister Rogers. 0:00. 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.". 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. If . New Friends.". "It's not a performance. he said. 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? What kind of prayer has only three words? He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a . ESQ: And then by Mister Rogers. TJ: I mean, I never . 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." Where is Fred?" The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. TJ: I mean, I dont know. And Ive tried to do it so that Im not just repeating the same line, trying to kind of live in the moment. 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. Fred Rogers loved her very much, and so, out of nowhere, he smiled and put his hand over hers. He didn't have an umbrella, and he couldn't find a taxi, either, so he ducked with a friend into the subway and got on one of the trains. 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. 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. "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 woman was with him, sitting in a big chair. But do you think there will be one? We hate that.' Junod also appeared in the critically acclaimed documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? Mr. Rogers was around when I was a child. He said, "I would like you to do something for me. "Do you think we can go in?" TJ: Yeah, they have been. "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 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. Who wrote the Esquire article about Mr Rogers? I'll let y'all know. Ive had people take issue with that. And so when he threw Old Rabbit out the car window the next time, it was gone for good. Second mook: "Fuck that. Fred Rogers, he of puppets, toys and perennial optimism, is seen as the best of America. "I imagine they're blue.". It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. 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. Hate is such a strong word to use so lightly. Fred" But Mister Rogers was out of the car, with his camera in his hand and his legs moving so fast that the material of his gray suit pants furled and unfurled around both of his skinny legs, like flags exploding in a breeze. 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. I mean, if that was Tom Junod with bunny ears, I dont know how I would have responded. Fred was all person by person. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Rogers as a peasant to explaining the world to remove son. 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. the Junod character is Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew . I mean, to be honest with you, Ive been going and going in front of a crowd [suddenly, a lightbulb in Junods eyeview explodes in flames] Woah! Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?. 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. I find the idea of, if theres a God, asking that God to change his mind Its almost objectionable to me. If we wanted to go into the house, we should have called first. Three of the doors are opened to reveal the familiar faces of Lady Aberlin, King Friday, and Mr. McFeely.The fourth door is opened to reveal the face of Mr. Rogers' troubled new friend, Lloyd Vogel, who has a cut near his nose. Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didn't, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer I'd been waiting to say a very long time. "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. Directed by 40-year old director Marielle Heller, the movie stars Tom Hanks, already known for his kindness, as Fred Rogers, and Matthew Rhys as Lloyd Vogel. The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. "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. 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. The little girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. That was on fire, right? 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 was with his producer, Margy Whitmer. TJ: I think the mediums themselves sort of make us prejudiced against that. He doesn't even know. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know if he could do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean God likes him, too. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." 'Most people think of us as a great domestic airline. 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. That's what Mister Rogers said, that's what he wrote down, once upon a time, for the doctors. "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. Explaining why he wanted the changes, he wrote that it wasn't because he disliked it or disagreed with its premise. Mr. Rogers, fully aware of this, still invites . 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. 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. It's Mister Fucking Rogers! And so the next morning, we swam together, and then he put on his boxer shorts and the dark socks, and the T-shirt, and the gray trousers, and the belt, and then the white dress shirt and the black bow tie and the gray suit jacket, and about two hours later we were pulling up to the big brick house on Weldon Street in Latrobe, and Mister Rogers was thinking about going inside. "Would you lead us? Every issue Esquire has ever published, since 1933. he asked. 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 had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learnedor who has been taughtAmerican Sign Language. The quintessence of the man was not his nationality but his faith. He looked very little in the backseat of the car. That light just burned out and there was I mean, that was on fire. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. 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. It's not a good word. It would take a couple Mister Rogers episodes and . 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. If this brutal, extended winter has you feeling down and cranky I suggest you give it a read. ", And now Margy comes up behind him and massages his shoulders. Boom! And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. He finds me, because that's what Mister Rogers doeshe looks, and then he finds. Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. In 1998, at the beginning of an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers displays a picture board with five doors. And so in Penn Station, where he was surrounded by men and women and children, he had this power, like a comic-book superhero who absorbs the energy of others until he bursts out of his shirt. The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. And yet, here I am. 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. Explore the full November 1998 issue of Esquire. 'Ted Lasso' Season 3 Dropped Its First Trailer, 'Outer Banks' Season 4 Is Already In the Works. "Oh, heavens no, Tom! 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. The movie is loosely based on Tom Junod's life around 1998 when he wrote an article on Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. She spent much of her time tending to the sick and the dying. TJ: I dont think he watched a lot of TV, but I think he was also against quick cuts. Look at usI've just met you, but I'm investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can't help it. He can't define it. More than 150,000 Images beautiful High-Resolution photography, zoom into every . It is Vogeland, by extension, uswho grows as a result. 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. ESQ: Now its landed at a point where I pray for my family, pray for anyone who needs it. Junod is also noted for his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. I told him I didn't 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 didn't hide. 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