BEFORE: It's still Emmy Week, and wouldn't you know it, tonight's film is about a TV show on PBS that won multiple Emmys over the years. My luck holds out!
Two actresses carry over from "Tallulah", one is Tammy Blanchard who played the mother of the kidnapped baby yesterday, and the other is Maddie Corman, who had a smaller role as a friend that Margo bumped into on the street, and hadn't seen since her divorce. I only really need one link between films, two isn't better but hey, it's more. Always good to have a back-up. I already used Maddie Corman as a link earlier this year, she was in both "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Private Life" back in February. But that's OK, these are my rules so using somebody twice in the same calendar year is fine - someone could be in two romance films in February and also be a link between two horror films in October, it's allowed. This film shares two actors with "Little Women", too - I think maybe that was briefly part of the plan, but it didn't happen that way, and that's a good thing, because I'm closing in on my second Perfect Year in a row, and if I'd linked between those two films, maybe my chain would have fallen apart at some point after that. Who's to say?
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (Movie #3,275)
THE PLOT: Based on the true story of the real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and a magazine journalist.
AFTER: So there's this thing called the "Mandela Effect", which is a phenomenon that occurs when a large number of people remember things incorrectly - many people seem to recall, for example, that Nelson Mandela died in prison during the years of apartheid in South Africa. He did not, he was released from prison in 1990, and then served as President of South Africa from 1991 to 1997 - when you show people the exact timeline dates, then they quickly realize that he did not die in prison. Or maybe they just thought he died earlier than he did, so when he did pass away in 2013, apparently some people's reaction was, "Wait, Nelson Mandela was still alive?"
I saw one of those clickbait-type articles the other day, and it had a list of 40 or so instances of the Mandela Effect - but some were really bogus, like the fact that some people swear that the cleaning product "Febreze" used to be spelled "Febreeze", or "Froot Loops" were spelled "Fruit Loops" when they were a kid. That's not really the Mandela Effect, that's just bad spelling - on behalf of the consumer in the first case, and by Kellogg's in the second. (Legally, they probably contain no actual fruit, so by spelling the name with the word "Froot", they're safe from prosecution.) But there was one Mandela Effect example that concerned Mr. Rogers, and it had to do with his opening theme song, which actually begins "It's a beautiful day in THIS neighborhood" instead of "THE neighborhood". This is also not a good example of the Mandela Effect, because it just means that people are singing the song incorrectly, not suffering from a mass delusion.
There's also the rumor that won't die, which pertains to Fred Rogers' secret past as a sharpshooter in Vietnam, or maybe Korea. This isn't the Mandela Effect either, just a pesky urban legend that won't go away, possibly because there's no proof that he WASN'T a decorated sniper. Well, guess what, there's also no evidence that he WAS - you can't prove a negative in that backwards way. This rumor was probably started by someone who refused to believe that anybody could be so sane in an insane world, so straight-laced and gosh-darn NICE, so illogically there must be a dark side to him. Except there wasn't, Fred Rogers was born before irony, and for the most part, what you saw was what you got. (I understand this is a bit like thinking the world was in black and white before color film was invented - turns out the 18th century wasn't all sepia-toned like we tend to think of it. But though we had irony in O. Henry short stories and such, we didn't have PERSONAL cultural irony back then, like a evangelical preacher who's got a boyfriend on the side, or a black studies professor who turns out to be Caucasian. I think this trend started in the 1990's with the preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart and kind of ballooned from there.)
Not that this Esquire reporter (Lloyd Vogel in today's fiction film, but Tom Junod IRL) didn't try - he went to Pittsburgh to do a profile on Fred Rogers for the magazine's "heroes" issue, and he did his best to uncover what was wrong with Mr. Rogers. What's he hiding, with his puppets and his Land of Make-Believe and his ability to connect with children? (OK, maybe that concept of personal cultural irony really took off when Michael Jackson got more money than God.). Mr. Rogers didn't have a monkey named Bubbles, or an amusement park in his backyard, and very few skeletons in his closet. So it turns out that he had a tough time with his sons when they were teenagers - so does every parent, so that just makes him even more normal!
It turned out that Lloyd Vogel had some personal problems, and was probably projecting those on to his interview subjects - he was notoriously tough in his articles, partially because his own father who abandoned his family had recently come back into his life, and this led to a fist-fight at his sister's wedding. Plus his marriage was going through some difficulties, plus he'd recently become a father for the first time, and he was still carrying around the emotional baggage from his mother's death, which was only compounded by his father's departure, and recently triggered by his return. Whew! It's like the perfect storm of dysfunction - and you're going to send this guy out to do a profile on the absolutely nicest, squarest person on public television? That editor should have HER head examined.
After a rocky start, Lloyd eventually gives in to the magic of children's television and Fred Rogers, part minister and part therapist and all-around good listener, in addition to puppeteer and children's TV host. My own personal "Mandela Effect" might be remembering Mr. Rogers interacting with his puppets, which is impossible, because he WAS the puppeteer on his show, that's why he didn't appear in the Land of Make-Believe himself - clearly I'm mis-remembering. After watching the documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor" last year I had that "AHA!" moment, that all of the puppets sound a bit like him. And in a way, he is the puppets and they are him and we are all together, goo goo ga joob. Aren't all puppetteers just a little bit crazy, and some of them even more so? If Fred Rogers had any issues, I bet he worked them out through the personalities Daniel Tiger and King Friday XIII.
By all means, go seek out that documentary about Fred Rogers, because it put the focus squarely where it belongs, on the puppet master and TV show host and the man that the soul of America needs very badly right now, only it's too late, he's not coming back. There were moments in that doc that brought me to tears, especially Mr. Rogers testifying before Congress about how kids needed to be told what to do with their feelings, therefore PBS needed more federal funding. You can't debate Mr. Rogers, and if you think you can, then you've already lost. Fred Rogers doesn't mind his show being recorded on a VCR? He doesn't give a crap about copyright protection, he just wants more kids to be able to watch his show and learn things? That's a heck of an argument, motion passes and we're adjourned.
The focus in this semi-fictional film is on the reporter, who's only Mr. Rogers-adjacent. The entire use of Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers is essentially just a framing device for another man's personal growth, and with all respect to Mr. Vogel (Junod), I can't help but think that somebody missed the main story here. For all that this film does tell us about Fred Rogers - he played the piano, he spent too much time shaking his fans' hands, he was a bit of a perfectionist on the set - he still remains something of a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Or else, like the urban legend, there's just no THERE there. Again, watch the documentary if you want to learn about the man himself. Just keep some tissues handy.
Still, I'm glad that Mr. Vogel made some form of peace with his father, that he kept his marriage together and came up with the brilliant idea of writing at home so he could take care of his son and his wife could go back to work. (There, was that so difficult? Now in 2020, that's what EVERYBODY was doing, so congratulations, you were a trendsetter.). But where, oh where, is the modern-day Fred Rogers that we need? Our kids are in the hands of Paw Patrol and Rick & Morty, with no successor in sight. Even "Sesame Street" has moved from PBS to HBO, where I assume the plotlines are now more adult, the puppets can swear, Bert and Ernie have gotten married at last and Cookie Monster's finally getting help for his addiction issues. (I don't watch the show, I'll admit, but this all seems more in line with premium cable.)
The worst thing anyone can say about Fred Rogers is that he was tough to interview - because he often cared more about the interviewer than in answering questions about himself. Fred Rogers the character does this consistently in the film, and even pauses during a conversation with the journalist in a restaurant for them to think about all the people who loved them over the years. As they pan over the other diners, I spotted Mr. Rogers' real-life wife, Joanne. I figured the other people had to be important, too - one was the actor who played Mr. McFeeley ("Speedy Delivery!") another was a producer from the original show, and the head of Family Communications - all people who were integral to the success of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". That actor, David Newell, played Mr. McFeeley for 33 years - that's what an actor calls "a good gig".
The weirdest parts of this film are probably the dream sequences - as Lloyd Vogel deals with all of his personal problems as he is interviewing Fred Rogers, he has a couple of bizarre dreams, as one might when they have new experiences and there are big changes in their life, and his brain decides to jumble them all together and mess with him. So in his dream he finds himself inside the castle in the Land of Make-Believe, he's small and puppet-sized and his wife is normal human-sized, but in the role and costume of Lady Aberlin. Then, weirdest of all, Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers appears in the Land of Make-Believe, but that's impossible! He was never there, remember, he needed to be working the puppets! This scene really freaked me out, it reminded me of parts of "Eraserhead" where that little singing lady was living in the man's apartment radiator. If David Lynch ever directed a children's show, God help us, it would probably look a bit like this. Not cool.
Also starring Tom Hanks (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Matthew Rhys (last seen in "The Report"), Susan Kelechi Watson, Chris Cooper (last seen in "The Company Men"), Maryann Plunkett (ditto), Enrico Colantoni (last seen in "Contagion"), Christine Lahti (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Wendy Makkena (last seen in "State of Play"), Noah Harpster, Carmen Cusack, Jessica Hecht (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), Daniel Krell, Bill Isler, Margy Whitmer, with archive footage of Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Whitney"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Fred Rogers (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and cameos from Joanne Rogers, David Newell (both also last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cardigans in the closet (and zero skeletons!)
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