A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

"Oh, God, Lloyd! Don't Ruin My Childhood!"
or
"This is More About YOU Than It Is About Mr. Rogers!"

Tom Hanks plays Fred Rogers and it's just wrong.

Oh, Hanks does a fair imitation, but it's an imitation and Rogers was an original.

The cadence is there and the carefulness, but when Hanks smiles there's a crinkly creepiness that borders on mild irritation and that was something you never saw in Rogers, whether on his long-running "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" program on PBS ("THANK you!") or in his public appearances, or in the very well-crafted 2018 Morgan Neville documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? or the many Rogers tribute compilations trotted out by PBS during their fund-raisers.* Rogers smile was genuine, never calculated, and always seemed to be ready to dawn, even when he was talking seriously.

That's missing in the "Neighborhood" recreations done in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (although every other recreation of the set is meticulous). There was a lack of artfulness to the Rogers persona, which seemed pure, whereas Hanks is pure calculation.

The film starts out preciously, with the standard "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" open: Rogers walks through the set-door, singing "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," his signature song, takes off his sports coat, hangs it carefully, puts on and zips up a sweater, and sits down, taking off his loafers and putting on a pair of boat-shoes. Then presents a picture-board with little doors that reveal members of the cast. Then, he opens a door that reveal a man who looks stunned and a little beat-up: "I want you to meet my new friend, Lloyd Vogle. Somebody has hurt him and not just his face." 

Cut to Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) in New York—recreated in toy dimensions as if part of Rogers' "Land of Make-Believe"—where he's receiving an award for his writing. Now, you need to know something about Lloyd Vogle. He doesn't exist. The movie is based around a Fred Rogers profile done for Esquire magazine by Tom Junod, who is a fine writer (he wrote the stunning "The Falling Man" article after 9-11) and, if you read that article (which I highly recommend), you'll find a lot of the incidences that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood dramatizes. But, a lot of it, certainly the personal stuff about Vogle (as Junod writes in a piece for The Atlantic) is entirely the invention of writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, whose screenplay made it to The Black List in 2013 (where it was called "I'm Proud of You"—curiously, also on that year's list was a Rogers biography script entitled "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" by Alexis Jolly).

Now, the film warns us about this with a title that says "Inspired By a True Story" which means it's a couple of steps of separation removed from the usual "Based on a True Story" which, in itself, is no guarantee of veracity. So, there's some futzing going on here, though the general arc of the film is based on the Rogers-Junod story—a cynical reporter finds his "Obi-Wan Kenobi" in Fred Rogers and becomes a better person for it. Close enough for The Movies.

Back to the movie: Lloyd comes home to his gorgeous wife, Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) and his new baby boy and is greeted by the news that his father (Chris Cooper) is coming to his sister's wedding. Vogel darkens at the mention of his fathe, so there's history there. His wife asks if this means he's not going to attend? "No, I look forward to Sis' wedding every year..."

Well, it doesn't go well. Not at all. Dad, "Jerry," gets a little drunk, a little egotistical, a little pushy. At the reception, "Jerry" takes Lloyd aside and wants to have "a conversation," which, of course, is the last thing Vogel wants to do. Things are already a little bit antagonistic, and then Jerry's leaving Vogel's mother when she was sick leaving the kids comes up, so do fists. Lloyd socks Dad and a security guard socks Lloyd...but I'm sure the prime rib was delicious. Lloyd can put some on that on the shiner he gets from the incident.

Lloyd goes back to work sporting a black eye that he explains away from a wayward accident playing baseball over the weekend. People politely buy it. That's when he gets assigned the Rogers story by his editor (Christine Lahti), the idea of which Lloyd loathes. But, he does his due diligence, watching hours and hours of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" in preparation for an interview, which after some delay, he gets. Rogers' producer Bill Isler (Enrico Colantoni) doesn't want Fred to do it and has given him some of Vogel's past articles. Despite this, Rogers says yes and quite enthusiastically.

At public television station WQED, he visits the "Neighborhood" studio where Rogers is being visited by an autistic fan-child. The studio crew is getting nervous—Fred is taking too long with the kid and the shooting schedule is tight. The director, crew—everybody—are rolling their collective eyes, but Rogers persists, focusing his attention on the child above all else. Then, he whispers something in the kid's ear, and the kid starts to focus on Rogers and gives him a big bear hug. They leave and Lloyd gets to meet Rogers. His subject is gracious, welcoming, giving him a greeting before starting a scene. When a take is completed and Rogers takes a look at it for his approval, Rogers takes a seat and the interview process begins.

But, it's an interview that Vogle has never experienced before and is, frankly, for him, a little counter-productive. He starts to ask Rogers questions and he answers deferentially, humbly, but then turns it around and starts to ask Vogle questions, asking him what his childhood was like, if he had a "special friend" when he was a kid, and, sure, Vogel had a plush toy that he called "Old Rabbit" and Rogers takes an interest in "Old Rabbit" and asks him about "him" and Vogel is a little freaked out about these questions about a ratty old toy that was tossed long ago, and, hey, he's the one doing the interview here. And Rogers is called away for another segment-taping, but, the conversation will continue soon.

This is where Hanks' interpretation gets a little off-target. Hanks' Rogers listens, but there's an appraising look in his eyes that is less open, more searching, scrutinizing, and there's enough footage of Rogers in interviews and interactions extant that the Hanks seemingly judgmental squint doesn't convey the man he's portraying. It's a small point, but it bugs me. Because I like Mr. Rogers and consider him to be a person that one should aspire to be. But—damn it—get it right, especially in a medium like the movies that could overshadow reality—and especially this movie where the reality is already suspect. "Inspired by...?" Sure. But, not in the way the actual Mr. Rogers inspires.

In the film, Rogers helps Vogel deal with his father when it reaches a crisis point, and, under Rogers' tutelage, there is a resolution and a reckoning and something that feels like closure. Those events in the film didn't happen, but the effect on Vogel is much the same as on Junod, and the two stayed friends and colleagues until Rogers' death in 2003.

And Rogers loved the article, both in the film and in real life.

Where the movie is successful is when it takes something specific that Junod related in the article and just lets it be—Rogers' openness, his taking on of burdens, his one-on-one personableness, his ability to make something good out of tragedy, his inclusiveness and his giving of self.

Where it fails is in the fabrications it imposes in its framework, falling back on inspiring tropes of religious-themed "true stories," those "very special episodes" of TV sit-coms in the 1980's, and of the current crop of dog movies—you know the ones...where a dog presents important life-lessons to his human companions who are struggling through life, when all we care to see is "the dog." And "Mr. Rogers," in this, is "the dog." When I saw the previews for this, that was the impression I was getting. And, unfortunately, the movie bears out those fears.

But, there may be something to that. Rogers represents something that is missing in a cynical age. I worked for a producer ages ago, who was telling me about the wonders the show instilled in her own child, and when she asked him why he was riveted by "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood," the child said simply "He likes me!"

Rogers through the TV-tube was never afraid to look a kid in the eye and tell them they had value, no matter what circumstances they lived in, what afflictions they had, what difficulties they faced in their lives. He did not present barriers to children, only possibilities. He was, and in re-runs is, an adult who could relate to kids, an authority figure who did not flaunt that authority but shared it and gave that singular kid he was looking at through the cathode-ray tube something that they also ascribe to dogs—unconditional love.

The "real" (and very nervous) Fred Rogers charms $20 million from the clenched fists of Sen. John Pastore.

* Those would be "Mr. Rogers and Me" and "PBS Presents: It's You I Like" (hosted by one of Fred Rogers' former employees, Michael Douglas, who would change his name professionally to Michael Keaton.