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"A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" is more or less the story of how an Esquire article comes into being. 85+ Years of outstanding fiction from world-renowned authors. 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]. Everything You Need To Know About 'Mean Girls: The Musical', Amanda Seyfried Has Made Her Pick For Sophies Biological Dad In 'Mamma Mia', Shakira & Karol G's "TQG" Music Video Uses A Classic '90s Movie To Make A Point, 'Art Attack' Neil Buchanan's Latest Gig Is A Far Cry From The CITV Show, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. 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. Lloyd Vogel Is Based On A Real Journalist Who Praises The Mr. Rogers Biopic. ", "Old Rabbit. Who Is John Dutton's Grandfather in '1923'? "Oh, heavens no, Tom! At work the next day, Lloyd plays off his shiner as the result of a softball injury and very reluctantly takes a 400-word profile of Mr. Rogers assigned by his editor at Esquire in an effort to . (2021, directed . ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. I sat in an old armchair and looked around. Neighborhood," about the TV star Fred Rogers. Meaning that there should be mistakes, there should be accidents, and if that was filmed, then it should stay filmed. 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. If . And Ive tried to do it so that Im not just repeating the same line, trying to kind of live in the moment. He can't define it. 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. 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 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. It's not a good word. Im not gonna be describing anything but my social media experience, but I think that the social media experienceand I dont want to blame everything on social media, eitherbut I do think that social media tricks you into thinking that being unkind can be in itself, moral. You know that they shot it with like the original cameras. "Now, Deb, I'd like to ask you a favor," he said. . he said. I just wanted to let him know that he was strong on the inside, too. Everything we can't stop loving . And yet, here I am. The boy had always been prayed for. It's based on a real-life 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod, but almost everything in the movie is fictional, except for the wisest, kindest, most penetrating and insightful things Mr. Rogers says in the movie. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' 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. Or do you take elements of what you see of the best men in your life, and try and put it together into one person? If they can hate something like that, you wonder how easy it would be for them to hate something more important." But Junod says he recognizes Vogel's . Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?, Did your special friend have a name, Tom?, Yes, Mister Rogers. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. 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 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. At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. I'm glad I know that. Id like to take your picture. 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. Today marks the 10th anniversary of his death. 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. 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. TJ: Well, I think its always changed, just like yours that way. esquire article. The film is based on a true story, though Rhys plays fictional journalist Lloyd Vogel, who was created to help tell Rogers' story. 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. The first time I met Mister Rogers, he told me a story of how deeply his simple gestures had been felt, and received. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. 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 . 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. It beautifully illustrates the story of the hard-edged investigative journalist - Lloyd Vogel - who believes everything in life has an ugly side. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." But that is rather missing the point. 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. Tick, Tick . 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. It was late in the day, and the train was crowded with children who were going home from school. 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. The revolution he starteda half hour a day, five days a weekit wasn't enough, it didn't spread, and so, forced to fight his battles alone, Mister Rogers is losing, as we all are losing. It means that you can think but sometimes can't walk, or even talk. I just try to ask for some sort of affirmation, you know? He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. I wanted to be him." And I dont know which take they use, but it was hard for Tom to do that. LloydRead More Lloyd is married, has . And what did Fred want from me? Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), an Esquire journalist known for his jarring exposs but is secretive about his childhood, is the film's protagonist. It was a television. He knowing what only Fred could do. Cerebral palsy is something that happens to the brain. He is on one knee in front of a little girl who is hoarding, in her arms, a small stuffed animal, sky-blue, a bunny. It depicts Lloyd Vogel (Rhys), a troubled journalist for Esquire who is assigned to profile television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). 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 . "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. ", The next afternoon, I went to his office in Pittsburgh. It's his natural instinct to try and take Mister . But in answer to your question, I mean there are all sorts of ways to be helpful and be of service. However, he also said in the Atlantic piece that his father was a flawed man, "a fetishist of his own fragrant masculinity." He clearly wanted me to pray. 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. Bill had driven us there, and now, sitting behind the wheel of his red Grand Cherokee, he was full of remonstrance. In your eyes, whats the reason for the lack of action? Fred Rogers isn't even the central figure. Except that Mister Rogers wasn't going anywhere. The hard-hitting journalist reluctantly takes an assignment to write a profile story about the cherished TV icon for a special 1998 "Heroes" issue of Esquire . 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 . TJ: I think you try to put it together in one person. [Junod gets up, alerts others to the now-smoking lightbulb, and returns with potato chips to share.]. The character of the writer in the movie, Lloyd Vogel, is not amused. Appearance, presentation, looks. 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." That's a true thing the real-life Rogers adopted a vegetarian lifestyle back in the 1970s, when eschewing meat was a radical, "hippie" kind of thing to do. Im just wondering on your end, where has your relationship with prayer landed now, and do you think it will continue to change? New Friends.". "Can I take your picture, Tom?" Junod's on-screen identity, Lloyd Vogel, is also a major player in connecting the audience to Mister Rogers and the film. Three died, and they were still children, almost. We were heading there all along, because Mister Rogers loves graveyards, and so as we took the long, straight road out of sad, fading Latrobe, you could still feel the speed in him, the hurry, as he mustered up a sad anticipation, and when we passed through the cemetery gates, he smiled as he said to Bill Isler, "The plot's at the end of the yellow-brick road." That was a challenge. 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.". The day of the show, he called and asked if I could take the subway down to Bryant Park. And thats how I became Lloyd Vogel." 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. And so, once upon a time, Fred Rogers took off his jacket and put on a sweater his mother had made him, a cardigan with a zipper. Every issue Esquire has ever published, since 1933. He was a reformer in terms of method. But its the unintentional stuff that I think is really true to life. Its name was Old Rabbit. The little girl eyes me suspiciously, and then Mister Rogers. He writes all his own scripts, but on this day, when he receives a visit from Mrs. McFeely and a springer spaniel, she says that she has to bring the dog "back to his owner," and Mister Rogers makes a face. In the film, Junod is represented by the character Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. Im not sure about it. I bring up the Pam Bondi thing in the The Atlantic piecewhere they actually use Fred to hound somebody. ", "Maybe a puppet, or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. No, he had to show it, he had to demonstrate it, and that's how Mister Rogers and the people who work for him eventually got the idea of coming to New York City to visit a woman named Maya Lin. His personal story is changed too. 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 . He got out of the car, and, moving as quickly as he had moved to the door of his house, he stepped up a small hill to the door of a large gray mausoleum, a huge structure built for six, with a slightly peaked roof, and bronze doors, and angels living in the stained glass. "It's not a performance. 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. ", Deb stiffened for a second, and she let out a breath, and her color got deeper. The news was confirmed by Fred Rogers Productions . 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. Then the car stopped on Thirty-fourth Street, in front of the escalators leading down to the station, and when the doors opened"Holy shit! "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. "I'm done. His name was Fred Rogers. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. TJ: I dont know. They just sang. The movie is loosely based on Tom Junod's life around 1998 when he wrote an article on Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine. Children are so easily influenced I have grown into a middle aged man and I wish I had a better influencer in time of Mr.Rogers. he asked her, and when she said yes, he said, "Oh, thank you, my dear." Will you pray for me?" He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. 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