The director of a new documentary
about Fred Rogers says the children’s TV icon is unlike anyone else.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” — a loving documentary about children’s TV host Fred Rogers — has gained a reputation for making people cry. You’ll weep if you knew the man. What does director Morgan Neville have to say for himself?
“I’d say it’s a good kind of cry,” he replied in a phone interview, adding that the outpouring is a testament to Rogers, the Rollins College grad who became a TV superstar on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” from 1968 to 2001.
“Fred Rogers’ superpower was a penetrating emotional honesty,” Neville said. “There’s no way as an adult that your defenses will hold out against his ability to find your emotional bull’s-eye.”
Neville never met Rogers, who died in 2003. But Neville, 50, said he grew up loving “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” In the series Rogers used conversation, song and puppets to reach viewers and explore imagination, feelings and the world around them.
Neville is known for his music documentaries, especially the Oscar-winning “20 Feet From Stardom,” a 2013 salute to backup singers. Rogers fits into that genre.
“He was a composition major at Rollins College,” Neville said. “He understood the world through music. It’s something I identify with very much — the idea music is a way of expressing one’s self in a very deep way, even deeper than words.”
Rogers did that on his own terms, which set him apart from other adults and TV stars.
“I feel like Fred always told you exactly what he thought. It’s like a child does,” the director said. “He didn’t dance around things. He said them plainly and directly. I really think the core idea of his entire philosophy is a line that’s used in trailer: ‘Love is the root of everything — love or the lack of it.’”
Rogers found a way to connect despite his medium.
“At its root, Fred didn’t like television,” Neville said. “He didn’t like being famous. But he knew that was the tool that would best fulfill his mission in life, which was to help children as best he could.”
François Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons on the series, helped Rogers expand the show. “Fred drafted François into the neighborhood in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination,” Neville said. “As François told me, ‘I had to teach Fred about poor people and what it meant to be African-American in America.’ François told me, ‘Fred was good at listening, and I was good at talking.’”
Joanne Rogers, the star’s widow and fellow Rollins alum, says in the film that the puppet Daniel Striped Tiger was the real Fred. The character was born while the star improvised on a live show.
“Fred didn’t have to work hard to channel Daniel. He had to think about his own childhood,” Neville said.
Rogers grew up sickly and overweight in a rich family, which kept close watch over him after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. He was an only child until he was 12 and his parents adopted a baby sister.
“He witnessed firsthand a toddler growing up from a perspective he could remember it,” Neville said. “All those things shaped him.”
When Neville finished the film he screened it for Joanne Rogers in Pittsburgh, where she lives and her husband died.
“She had two comments afterward. ‘It was so wonderful, I didn’t even cry’ — she may have been the only person who had that reaction to the film,” Neville said. “It just made her happy being able to see Fred in that context. The other thing she said was ‘Fred would have loved this film.’ That’s the best review I could ever get.”
In an email to me, Joanne Rogers said: “It was a memorable and magic hour and thirty-four minutes in my lifetime! I know that sounds dramatic but it’s true. Nostalgia was part of it. Gratitude is the biggest part: that this work of art exists as a warm and wonderful tribute to Fred Rogers and that I had the gift of getting to know and admire Morgan Neville and the artists who work with him to create this documentary.”
The film gets at a fundamental question: Was Fred Rogers for real?
“He’s unlike anybody else, he’s singular,” Neville said. “I think people have always tried to put him in a box. That says more about us than Fred, because Fred was one who celebrated our uniqueness in every possible way.”
He was a rare celebrity who answered every letter and took time in talking with child fans. He awed adults with his authentic style. The tears come easily if you met this remarkable figure.
“He might be the only TV star who was actually more impressive in real life than his character,” Neville said. “Fred Rogers is even a better person than Mister Rogers. He was a deep guy. He created something very simple and deep. For many people, they see the simple. They don’t see the deep. Hopefully this film can help that.”