A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood

In 1998, Lloyd Vogel, an awardwinning but cynical Esquire journalist, attends his sister Lorraine’s wedding, along with his wife, Andrea, and their newborn son, Gavin. During the reception, Lloyd starts a fistfight with his estranged father, Jerry, over memories of Lloyd’s mother, whom Jerry abandoned. The next day, Lloyd’s editor assigns him to interview Fred Rogers for a 400-word article about heroes, as each of the other potential heroes turned down chances to be interviewed by him. Lloyd travels to the WQED studio in Pittsburgh to interview Rogers. During the interview, Rogers is dismissive of his fame and displays concern for Lloyd’s nose injury, prompting a discussion in which Lloyd relates to Rogers the issue of his relationship with his father, whose apology and attempt at reconciliation Lloyd has rebuffed.

Determined to expose Rogers’ nice persona as an act, Lloyd watches several episodes of Rogers’ show, but is unable to discern anything. Lloyd interviews Rogers again when he visits New York. During the interview, Rogers dodges Lloyd’s questions and reminisces about raising his two sons. Fred takes out his puppets and asks Lloyd about his childhood rabbit stuffed animal and his father, provoking Lloyd into ending the interview. Lloyd arrives home to find Jerry and his girlfriend Dorothy there talking with Andrea. Lloyd berates Jerry for cheating on his mother Lila while she was dying of cancer. He orders him to leave, but Jerry suffers a heart attack and is transported to the hospital. Lloyd refuses to remain overnight at the hospital with the rest of the family and returns to Pittsburgh to see Rogers. Exhausted, Lloyd collapses on the set of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and dreams about his repressed childhood trauma. In his dream, he stumbles into an episode of Rogers’ show about hospitals, finding himself wearing rabbit ears and shrunken to the size of Daniel Striped Tiger and King Friday XIII, while Rogers and Andrea tower over him. He visits Lila, who is dying and urges him to release his anger.

Rogers and his wife, Joanne, bring Lloyd to their home to recuperate. Lloyd and Rogers later go to a restaurant, where Rogers asks Lloyd to spend one minute thinking about the people who “loved him into being,” and encourages him to forgive Jerry. Lloyd apologizes to Andrea for leaving her and Gavin at the hospital, and visits Jerry and Dorothy at their home. He learns that Jerry is dying of a prolonged illness, the reason Jerry attempted to reconnect with Lloyd. Lloyd forgives Jerry, promises to be a better father to Gavin, and writes an article about Rogers’ impact on his life. Lorraine, her husband Todd, and Rogers visit Jerry. Rogers asks Jerry to pray for him before he departs. Jerry dies shortly after Rogers’ visit and Lloyd’s 10,000 word article, titled “Can You Say ... Hero?”, is published as Esquire‘s cover story.

At his studio, Rogers films the final take of an episode of his show before playing the piano to signify the end of another day of production.

Classification: PG