BEFORE: OK, so I had the problem of adding one more doc, somehow, either from my list or from elsewhere, to bring this year's total back up to 50, after my bad link forced me to drop "Overnight", at least until next time. Oh, I have back-ups, and back-up back-ups, I would rather just not have to use them - but I will if I have to. But I scanned the week's programming for something that would fit into my chain and also might represent a U.S. state that I haven't profiled. Now, there's no shortage on AXS and Fuse of those stock-umentaries about bands, they're running one about Prince this week and a couple about Queen, the Eagles (who I already covered) and even Cher. Umm, I'll think about it. There's also one about the cast of "The Love Boat" and like, thematically I don't even know what to do with that.
I landed on this doc, which started running again on PBS last night (Thursday) as my last-minute replacement, so that meant adding another skip day, because it's not streaming somewhere else, of course. PBS uses it once Pledge Week starts, which seems to be every other month these days, I get it, times are tough and funding has been cut again and again. I picked this one to add because of course it represents Pennsylvania, I had something in mind for that state but that is easily re-assigned. I know from watching the two OTHER films made about Fred Rogers over the last few years that the show was produced out of the PBS station in Pittsburgh, and boom, there's the tie-in.
So let's cross PENNSYLVANIA off the list - my apologies in advance to Reggie Jackson and Billy Joel (since I covered New York already, I was going to use his song "Allentown" as a tie-in, but I'll just have to use something else...)
Date admitted to the U.S.: December 12, 1787 (2nd state)
Claim to fame: Jeez, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall and the Continental Congress and I think Philadelphia was the U.S. capital for a while, really if it was important back in 1776 it probably happened in Pennsylvania.
Nickname: The Keystone State
State Motto: Virtue, Liberty and Independence.
State Flower: Mountain laurel
State Dog: Great Dane
State Fish: Brook trout
State Bird: Ruffed grouse, somehow
State Insect: Firefly (Photuris pensylvanica)
State Tree: Eastern hemlock
State Beverage: Milk. (NERDS!)
State Dance: Polka (GERMAN NERDS!)
State Dance: Polka (GERMAN NERDS!)
Notable Sports Teams: Umm, two baseball teams, the Phillies and Pirates, also two NFL teams, the Eagles and the Steelers, and two NHL teams, the Flyers and the Penguins. Basically there's always a Philly team and a Pittsburgh team, but somehow there's just 1 NHL team, the Flyers.
Fun Facts: It's a state full of "firsts", starting with the oldest civilization known in America, there's evidence of an agricultural settlement there that is estimated to be over 10,000 years old, formed by nomadic people who may have been descended from people who crossed the land bridge into Alaska, it seemed they kept walking until they got to Pennsylvania and said, "This'll do." First currency, first use of credit in America, thanks to Ben Franklin, who also founded the first college in Pennsylvania, U Penn. First Continental Congress, first capital, how did they end up the SECOND state to ratify the Constitution? Philadelphia hosted a Sesquicentennial Exposition back in 1926, that was 100 years ago, to celebrate 150 years since the founding of America. Very ironically, they still have Amish families living there, and they seem to still mine coal and drill for oil depend on making steel. So they seem a bit backwards and set in their ways. Just me? Where's that pioneering "firsties" spirit when it comes to solar and wind power, huh?
Of course, I've been to Pennsylvania, when I was a kid my family took a trip to HersheyPark, then visited the Gettysburg Battlefield and had a fantastic meal in Amish Country. I think I went there once after college to shoot some promo piece for Nintendo or something - but later visited several times after getting married again, we went to HersheyPark and had a fantastic meal in Amish Country. Then there was a place in the Poconos that we'd go to every once in a while, they had a pretty mean Italian buffet, as I recall. The state has casinos now, so I wonder if I could wrangle another visit there sometime soon. Anyway I'm now up to 18 states visited out of 22.
Judd Apatow carries over from "When We Went MAD!"
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (Movie #3,275) and "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" (Movie #3,656)
THE PLOT: Cast members from the groundbreaking PBS series and several guest celebrities share their personal perspectives and insights that pay tribute to television's longest-running series, "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood".
AFTER: Sorry for the abrupt u-turn, if anything counts as the "anti-MAD magazine", it's probably the show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood". MAD was sarcastic and non-serious and told people to not trust the government, while "Mr. Rogers" was sincere and genuine and led kids to believe that all's right with the world, provided they had an outlet for their negative thoughts. And they do happen, those sad and mad feelings, let's not pretend that they don't, because sometimes your dog dies or your parents break up or you get polio or cancer and you have to find a way to deal with all that. Fred Rogers was the support system for kids who didn't even know they needed one, and he made it OK to "make-believe" if you just manage to keep that separate from reality.
You can even do that now, just imagine that you can visit another land which is run by a powerful but benevolent ruler, one who's not fleecing citizens out of money by selling crypto-currency and NFTs, or disassembling the parts of the government responsible for controlling disease outbreaks and auditing billionaires' tax returns while making false claims about election interference (only the one he lost) and fixing soccer games. It would be nice, right? Just picture that and keep hope alive, and that's the first step toward maybe making better choices in the future.
We all know this is where Michael Keaton started his career, behind the scenes on Fred Rogers' PBS show, and he came back to host this documentary and talk about his first showbiz job, making the trolley enter the set at the right time and dressing up like a circus performer to be one of the "Flying Zookini Brothers" to show kids how to pretend like they're acrobats, jumping off of platforms that were several inches off the ground. Hey, everyone has to start somewhere.
My memories of watching the show are quite hazy, I must have tuned in many times as a kid, but damn, the show was so square compared to "Sesame Street", which had animation with voices provided by Joan Rivers and Mel Brooks. Meanwhile in Mr. Rogers neighborhood, he was listening to music played by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. But meeting with Perlman was an opportunity to show kids that some people are differently-abled, not disabled, because Perlman walked with crutches most of his life and the side benefit was having really strong arms to help him play the violin. Meeting with Yo-Yo Ma was also an opportunity to preach family togetherness and have Yo-Yo's son play a duet with him. This was repeated 10 years later when Nicholas Ma was 16 instead of 6, but the message stayed the same.
We also see the PBS cross-over that we didn't know we needed, the day that Big Bird came to visit the Land of Make-Believe. He could not appear in the "real-life" segments because Caroll Spinney would not remove his Big Bird costume on TV, Jim Henson would not allow him to. Mr. Rogers believed in full transparency, like he told all the kids in TV Land that he was the puppeteer and the voice for all the puppets, and now of course I realize why you never saw Fred Rogers in the fantasy realm, because he was working ALL the puppets. Watch, there will be a new "Mandela Effect" on Instagram soon, because somewhere out there people are going to SWEAR they saw Mr. Rogers interacting with King Friday and Miss Elaine Fairchild, and so now they think we're in a different timeline. No, you're just remembering it WRONG, you donut. Be an adult and admit it.
Some of the more notable guest stars are seen here, I think in the previous documentary they also pointed out the casting of opera star Francois Clemmons as Officer Clemmons in over 90 episodes of the show, and by pretending it was a hot day and offering him the use of his kiddie pool to cool off his feet, Rogers was weighing in on the ridiculous laws in the American South that prevented black people from using the swimming pools as white people. Mr. Rogers also stood for diversity and championing the rights of the disabled and promoting small businesses and factories by doing remote segments on how everyday products like spoons and musical instruments are made. I think he wanted to know how spoons are made just as much, if not more than kids did, and that takes a certain kind of person.
Yeah, sure, he was a Presbytarian minister, but the show never really got preachy, and he had a degree in music as well as theology, and a graduate degree in Child Development, I think this guy just genuinely loved learning and never wanted to stop. This earned him a Lifetime Achievement Emmy and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, also a spot in the Television Hall of Fame. Much like Jim Henson, he played with a bunch of puppets as a kid, but those two men couldn't have been more different as adults, Jim Henson seems more like a hippie who wanted to entertain adults with puppets, and when that wasn't a thing, he made it a thing. Fred Rogers was more like the shy kid who edited the yearbook in high school and was a member of the National Honor Society, and probably voted "Most Likely to Work in Public Television".
There's also footage here from Mr. Rogers' encounter with Koko, the famous gorilla who could speak in sign language, and they really hit it off - Koko wanted to compare her hands and feet to Fred's, I don't know if she watched the show or not, but maybe she just wanted to see what his sneaker size was. They spent a couple hours staring at each other, Mr. Rogers couldn't believe that a gorilla could be fluent in conversation and be able to express its thoughts, and Koko probably couldn't believe that anyone could be as genuine and sincere as he was. I think maybe he restored Koko's faith in humanity, if that's possible. You know, as a long-time fan of the show I think Koko just already considered him a friend, as you do.
Sure, there's a sick part of me that kind of wishes Koko had just ripped his head right off, because that would have raised quite a few questions about whether teaching a giant ape sign language changes its thinking, or if it retains its wild nature. You can take a gorilla out of the jungle, but can you completely take the jungle out of the gorilla? Seriously, though, it's possible that Fred Rogers acted as an unintentional ambassador between the two species, and that in doing so he somehow prevented the dystopian future seen in the "Planet of the Apes" movies. If not for him, we humans might all be robbed of the power of speech and put into primitive cages, held captive by orangutan wardens and gorilla, umm, guerrillas.
You just could not make a show like this in New York, but that's where Fred Rogers learned about making television, being the floor director for shows like "Your Hit Parade" and "The Kate Smith Hour", then we went up to Canada for a few years to host a kid's program, and then back down to Pittsburgh Public TV to do his own thing. Which was changing into his cardigan, putting on his sneakers and feeding his fish, you know, teaching kids that there is a daily routine to life, and altering that would be very, very BAD. Hopefully you kind something you like, whether it's making music or baking pretzels or running a puppet show, and then you're going to do it again and again every damn day of your life, but we can work on your attitude so you'll feel OK about it.
Directed by John Paulson
Also starring Joyce DiDonato, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "I Am Mother"), Michael Keaton (last seen in "Goodrich"), Chris Kratt, John Lithgow (last seen in "Love Is Strange"), Nicholas Ma, Yo-Yo Ma (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Itzhak Perlman (ditto), Joe Negri (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), David Newell (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Joanne Rogers (ditto), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Esperanza Spalding (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Caroll Spinney (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"),
with archive footage of Chuck Aber, Betty Aberlin (also last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"), Johnny Costa (ditto), Tony Bennett (last seen in "Roberta"), Billie Burke (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Francois Clemmons, Jeff Erlanger, Judy Garland (last seen in "Child Star"), Hilary Hahn, Margaret Hamilton (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Jim Henson (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Niki Hoeller, Ella Jenkins, Wynton Marsalis, Penny Patterson, Bob Rawsthorne, Bob Trow and the Empire Brass Quintet.
RATING: 6 out of 10 fan letters answered BY HAND
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