mr rogers esquire article lloyd vogel

Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Lloyd Vogel in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." (Courtesy Lacey Terrell/Sony Pictures) This article is more than 3 years old. I n early 1998, Tom Junod received an assignment that was outside his wheelhouse. "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. Then he looked at me and smiled. And that always struck me as perverse. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. He was not a dogmatic person, but he was dogmatic about thatthat media should not be used as a distraction. Freds favorite saying from all of literature was, That which is essential is invisible to the eye, from The Little Prince. Tom Junod's "Can You Say . During his early conversations with Mr. Rogers, Lloyd is visibly disconcerted, even disturbed . That was a challenge. he said. But that is rather missing the point. In the film, Junod is represented by the character Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. On this afternoon, the end of a hot, yellow day in New York City, he was very tired, and when I asked if I could go to his apartment and see him, he paused for a moment and said shyly, "Well, Tom, I'm in my bathrobe, if you don't mind." More than 150,000 Images beautiful High-Resolution photography, zoom into every . Neighborhood," about the TV star Fred Rogers. ", "Old Rabbit. "No!" Koko watches television. ; A reprinted copy of this article was included in one variation of promotional packages supporting A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. 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. She goes a little knock-kneed, directs a thumb toward her mouth. In your eyes, whats the reason for the lack of action? I sat in an old armchair and looked around. The first time I called Mister Rogers on the telephone, I woke him up from his nap. 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. Sometimes, ophthalmologists have to take care of the eyes of children, and some children get very scared, because children know that their world disappears when their eyes close, and they can be afraid that the ophthalmologists will make their eyes close forever. Boom! February 14, 2014. He can't define it. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella. First mook: "Looks like you're gonna have to break down and buy a dictionary." Tick, Tick . 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. "I'd like to take your picture. For my father, everything that was important was visible to the eye. Notes. ESQ: Another interesting thing in your piece is how you talk about how theres still a hunger for spreading goodness in the world. 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. He had makeup on his face and a dollop of black dye combed into his silver hair. 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. One second, two seconds, three secondsand now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children. His name was Fred Rogers. "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. "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. 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.'. 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 . "Bunny Wunny," she says. Where is Fred?" 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. Once upon a time, there was a boy who didn't like himself very much. Mr. Rogers explains that Lloyd has . 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." "Remind you of anyone, Tom?" It was a television. 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. 85+ Years of outstanding fiction from world-renowned authors. The movie, which opens November 22, casts Rogers as an agent of change . Who wrote the Esquire article about Mr Rogers? 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. ESQ: Thats where Im at right now. 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. 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. 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. A distraction itself was dangerous. He doesn't know the color of his walls, and one day, when I caught him looking toward his painted skies, I asked him to tell me what color they are, and he said, "I imagine they're blue, Tom." Lloyd's father Jerry (Chris Cooper) abandoned him as a child and keeps trying to reconnect, by Lloyd rejects him. 'Ted Lasso' Season 3 Dropped Its First Trailer, 'Outer Banks' Season 4 Is Already In the Works. He was starting a television program, aimed at children, called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Read it all when you have time, especially if youre binging on House of Cards this weekend. Last week, Junod was in New York to walk in a charity fashion show for his alma mater, SUNY Albany, so I tried to get a hold of him for an interview about his Esquire story and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The Real-Life Lloyd Vogel: Tom Junod is the real-life reporter on whom the character of Lloyd Vogel is based. He was a kind man who made it a point to practice kindness to a vast audience, person by person. "he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. I'm not sure why perhaps as a Valentine's gift to all of us or to make up for the guy who yesterday wrote that men who play with LEGOs are not real men but last . The boy had always been prayed for. At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. Isn't that wonderful?". But at the same time, we dont know what to do with the lessons that Mister Rogers gave us. A minute ago we were stand-ins for children watching the show; now we seem to be somehow inside the brain of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a cynical Esquire reporter tasked with profiling Rogers for . ", The next afternoon, I went to his office in Pittsburgh. What is yours named?". ESQ: Have the past two months been fulfilling for you? "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. 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. .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;}}Facts You Didn't Know About That '70s Show, The Cast of 'The Mandalorian' in Real Life, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3, Episode 1 Recap, 'The Mandalorian' Season 3 is About to Commence, The Underworld Crossover of the Century Is Coming. It wasnt like Fred was just a kind man who worked at the local food bank. Id like to take your picture. 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. Here are 20 of my favorites. This article was the basis for the plot of the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. 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 . That's cool. 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. In 2011 Michelle . We make so many connections here on earth. If Mister Rogers can tell me how to read that clock, I'll watch his show every day for a 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 . 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 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." A kind man who worked at the local food bank the Little Prince Tom Junod received an that. First mook: `` Looks like you 're gon na have to break down and buy dictionary! Article was the basis for the lack of action a hunger for spreading goodness in Neighborhood! 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