A ‘BEAUTIFUL’ DVD RELEASE
The Tom-Hanks-as-Mister-Rogers movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” arrives on home video Feb. 18 and with it a treasure trove of extras sure to appeal to devotees of Hanks and Western Pennsylvania native Fred Rogers.
The 10-minute feature “Everybody’s Neighbor: Fred & Tom” even addresses the casting perfection of Hanks as Rogers.
As producer Peter Saraf notes, “Tom, over the course of his career, has built up an empathy with the audience, has built up a trust with the audience, has built up adoration from the audience and that is built upon the same kind of sincerity and authenticity that Fred had. Fred was disarmingly sincere.”
The ability to pause and rewind a movie on home video is particularly helpful when watching the best scene in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” It’s when Fred and Lloyd (Matthew Rhys) eat at a Chinese restaurant and Fred asks Lloyd to take one minute to think of all the people “who loved us into being.” The camera pans over the faces of their fellow diners who all happen to be important people in Fred Rogers’ orbit: his widow Joanne; former Fred Rogers Productions CEO Bill Isler and his wife, Mardi; David Newell, who played Mister McFeely; and “Neighborhood” producer Margy Whitmer, who are all interviewed in assorted special features in the set.
“It was really important to have some of the people who loved Fred into being there in the scene where we talk about the people who helped you become who you are,” director Marielle Heller says in the DVD’s commentary track on the film. “It was a meaningful scene and day.” (She also notes that, in a tribute to Rogers’ vegetarianism, no one in the film is shown eating meat.)
The best special feature, the 15minute “The People Who Make a Neighborhood,” also addresses the making of that Chinese restaurant scene (“I think Fred would like this very much,” Joanne Rogers says) after an opening with Hanks, as Rogers, asking viewers if they want to see how a movie is made before walking over to stare into Picture Picture on the Mister Rogers’ house set.
“The People Who Make a Neighborhood” also includes interviews with the film’s cast and explores the meta nature of the real people portrayed in the film meeting the actors who play them during production in Pittsburgh in 2018.
Heller says Mardi Isler nicknamed actor Enrico Colantoni, who plays Bill Isler in the movie, “the better Bill.”
“She says, ‘You know, he’s nicer than you and he’s more handsome than you, so, you know, this is what happens,” Bill Isler says good-naturedly.
The home video release includes about 15 minutes of deleted and/or extended scenes and two minutes of bloopers as Hanks appears to snag the zipper on his red sweater repeatedly. Those bloopers also get repurposed in a Daniel Striped Tiger-starring short, “Everyone Makes Mistakes,” that would fit neatly in a “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” episode.
“Dreaming Big, Building Small: The Puppets & Miniatures” offers an eight-minute look at how they rebuilt the Neighborhood of MakeBelieve puppets for the film and how Hanks had to learn how to puppeteer as Rogers had. The short also explores the construction of miniature landscapes — of New York and Pittsburgh — that are used to transition between scenes in the movie.
Multiple editions of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” are being released — digital ($29.99), DVD ($19.99), Blu-ray/DVD/digital combo ($22.99) and Ultra 4K ($28.69) — and all carry the same bonus materials.