ESQUIRE: In your Atlantic piece, you talk about how theres no true successor to Mister Rogers. There are many people who follow the legacy of kindness, but I dont know of anybody who follows his legacy of kindness in media. And so I wrote that. "Would you like to speak to him?" 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. "Thanks, my dear," he said to me, then turned back to Deb. The boy had never spoken, until one day he said, "X the Owl," which is the name of one of Mister Rogers's puppets, and he had never looked his father in the eye until one day his father had said, "Let's go to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe," and now the boy is speaking and reading, and the father has come to thank Mister Rogers for saving his son's life.And by this time, well, it's nine-thirty in the morning, time for Mister Rogers to take off his jacket and his shoes and put on his sweater and his sneakers and start taping another visit to the Neighborhood. This content is imported from youTube. 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." Then he took off his shoes and put on a pair of navy-blue canvas boating sneakers. 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. ESQ: So its like we dont knowwith the popular mediums we have nowhow to show kindness or come up to each other. 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. Junod also inspired Matthew Rhys' character, a fictional Esquire writer named Lloyd Vogel.. Also read: Where That Navy SEALs Rumor Started A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood shows how Fred Rogers used television to reach into the hearts . Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . Where is Fred?" TJ: I grew up Roman Catholic too. Once upon a time, a long time ago, a man took off his jacket and put on a sweater. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I dont know if Im ever going to be as good at the active devotion whereas Fred would like me or us to be. Once upon a time, there was a little boy born blind, and so, defenseless in the world, he suffered the abuses of the defenseless, and when he grew up and became a man, he looked back and realized that he'd had no childhood at all, and that if he were ever to have a childhood, he would have to start having it now, in his forties. Oh, Margy Whitmer tried to keep people away from him, tried to tell people that if they gave her their names and addresses, Mister Rogers would send them an autographed picture, but every time she turned around, there was Mister Rogers putting his arms around someone, or wiping the tears off someone's cheek, or passing around the picture of someone's child, or getting on his knees to talk to a child. He had just come back from visiting Koko, the gorilla who has learnedor who has been taughtAmerican Sign Language. T he movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is structured like an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. 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. Yeah, he would. 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. What I'm buying is a ticket to the fucking Lotto. But theres a lot of different ways to do it. 'Most people think of us as a great domestic airline. 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. 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. 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. Junod is also noted for his Esquire profile of Fred Rogers. "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!". The spirit of Mister Rogers counseled her to forgive the insults, and after she told me her story in the morning, I called Fred. It was the first time I had read the story in a really long time. ESQ: I mean, you said that if he grew up in the age of Twitter, you can expect what he would have done. . He finds me, of course, at Penn Station. The character of the writer in the movie, Lloyd Vogel, is not amused. 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.". 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. 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." 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. By the time Junod was done writing the story, he had become friends with Rogers. His editor at Esquire asked him to profile Fred Rogers, the beloved television personality and Presbyterian minister. The film is based on a true story, though Rhys plays fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel, who was created to help tell Rogers' story. The little boy with the big sword did not watch Mister Rogers. When he was your age, he had a rabbit, too, and he loved it very much. 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. Considering his popularity, those episodes cannot be that difficult to find. I just try to ask for some sort of affirmation, you know? 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. ESQ: In both pieces, the original and The Atlantic piece, prayer comes up. Koko watches television. Neighborhood," about the TV star Fred Rogers. "I imagine they're blue.". In the film, Lloyd is searching for something, anything to unveil about Rogers' true character (the closest he gets is a discussion about his relationship with . Who wrote the article about Mr Rogers in Esquire magazine? 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. Do you see masculinity as different endslike you could be this person or this person? 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. Mister Rogers spots him first, naturally, amidst the swarm of New Yorkers, about the five-hundredth happy coincidence in a life full of them. He clearly wanted me to pray. That was on fire, right? He finds me, because that's what Mister Rogers doeshe looks, and then he finds. TJ: I think you try to put it together in one person. The tie is next, the scanty black batwing of a bow tie hand-tied at his slender throat, and then the shirt, always white or light blue, whisked from his body button by button. She was a minister at Fred Rogers's church. 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. The little girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." It is inspired by a 1998 Esquire article about Rogers by Tom . "Will you be with me when I die?" Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. cynical writer Lloyd Vogel (based on Junod, but with a fictional estranged dad figure, played by Chris Cooper, so that Rogers can . I wanted to be him." 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. 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