A Roundup Of The Best Writing On Fred Rogers And 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?'

"Won't You Be My Neighbor," the new documentary on the life of Fred Rogers from director Morgan Neville ("20 Feet from Stardom," "Johnny Cash's America") just hit theaters. Rather than present a roundup of just the best reviews the internet has to offer, it seemed appropriate to point readers in the direction of some interviews with Neville and to some of the best (re)appraisals of Mister Rogers the kinder souls of the internet have to offer.

Can You Say… Hero? — Tom Junod, Esquire

Esquire's profile of Rogers from 1998 is an absolutely critical read. Granted close, ever-friendly access and relayed with impeccable prose, Tom Junod creates an image of the man we all knew from TV in a way that only well-picked words could render.

Nearly every morning of his life, Mister Rogers has gone swimming, and now, here he is, standing in a locker room, seventy years old and as white as the Easter Bunny, rimed with frost wherever he has hair, gnawed pink in the spots where his dry skin has gone to flaking, slightly wattled at the neck, slightly stooped at the shoulder, slightly sunken in the chest, slightly curvy at the hips, slightly pigeoned at the toes, slightly aswing at the fine bobbing nest of himself… and yet when he speaks, it is in that voice, his voice, the famous one, the unmistakable one, the televised one, the voice dressed in sweater and sneakers, the soft one, the reassuring one, the curious and expository one, the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults, and what he says, in the midst of all his bobbing nudity, is as understated as it is obvious: "Well, Tom, I guess you've already gotten a deeper glimpse into my daily routine than most people have."

Rogers and Me — Brendan Vaughn, The New York Times

This review of Tim Madigan's "I'm Proud of You," a memoir centered on the friendship Madigan struck up with Rogers late in Rogers' life, both touches on the main takeaways from Madigan's experience while intelligently addressing its rougher edges.

In the second half of "I'm Proud of You," Mister Rogers fades into the background as the story turns to the inoperable lung cancer of Tim's younger brother Steve. The brothers had been best friends as children, but had drifted apart as adults, and Steve had become a bitter man with a drinking problem. It's here that Madigan writes most powerfully, with raw, universal emotion. He regrets not having visited Steve earlier, out of worry that "because of the old hurts, my presence might actually be a detriment." It would be a stretch to say Mister Rogers guided the Madigan family through Steve's illness and eventual death, but he certainly helped, as in this conversation, where Madigan tells Steve that Mister Rogers names him in his daily prayers:

"'Mister Rogers prays for me?'

"'Every morning,' I said. 'I know he does.'

"'God,' Steve said, and his eyes misted over. 'That's so awesome.'"

Mister Rogers Changed My Life — Angela C. Santomero, The New York Times

Santomero, a co-creator of Nickelodeon's "Blue's Clues," shares her account of how Rogers influenced and encouraged the course of her career.

In eighth grade, while writing an essay on "My Hero, Fred Rogers," I learned that he had a child development background with a goal of teaching through television. I knew then that what I wanted to do when I grew up was what Mister Rogers had done for me — let kids know that their voice matters and that if they use their mind and take a step at a time they can do anything that they want to do.

'Won't You Be My Neighbor's' Big Secret: Mister Rogers Really Was That Wonderful — K. Austin Collins, Vanity Fair

Collins — who I'd say is my favorite film critic working today — looks beyond what Neville's documentary covers to address what it carefully elides.

What's clear, by the end of the film, is that Rogers lived a life too big for any one movie. There are almost too many stories  — from his wife and adult children, close friends, and regulars on his show, as well as people working behind the scenes. Complicating traits that ought to be delved into — they're too juicy to just let hang there — are indeed left hanging, such as when it's very briefly mentioned that Rogers was a lifelong Republican — despite fighting the Nixon administration over its push to cancel funding for public television (resulting in a bravura, oft-cited speech before Senator John Pastore), and despite the show's extremely progressive treatment of race, among other things. That inconsistency is fascinating — how did he make sense of it? The answer is worth investigating.

'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Is A Tear-Stained Trolley Ride Back To Your Childhood — Sean Nelson, The Stranger

Instead of including an aside about how much Neville's documentary will make you cry, Nelson's review uses the question as a way to frame the content of the documentary, pushing the reader to consider the different ways and reasons we might have for crying about Rogers' life and the influence of it.

As years passed, his chosen medium and the world that surrounded it got faster, nastier, and more ruthlessly commercial, but Rogers remained steadfast in his principles: the slow pace, the candor about tough subjects, the appreciation of silence. This commitment opened him up to ridicule (footage of Westboro Baptist Church orcs protesting his funeral and Fox News carrion condemning his influence fills you with indescribable rage) and parody (he seems hurt and angered by Eddie Murphy's "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood" sketch). But millions of children were nourished by his work, however distant the memory of it has become.

The Quietly Radical 'Mister Rogers Neighborhood' — David Sims, The Atlantic

Sims's review of the documentary touches on how Neville interprets Rogers' rarefied and revolutionary approach to education with compassion — that, as an idea, it's been twisted into an insult tossed off by our generation's dullest monsters.

Neville demonstrates just how much Rogers's philosophies were rooted in protection, in safety, in letting children be children and allowing them to develop an understanding of themselves before they had to wrestle with the wider world. It's a concept, Neville argues, that got warped into the sneering idea of a generation of "snowflakes," entitled children who think themselves special and are thus unequipped for the pressures of adulthood.

Mr. Rogers and Why Kind Men Freak Us Out — Tim Grierson, MEL Magazine

In this interview, Morgan Neville brings up an interesting fact about Rogers' commitment to the integrity of the "Neighborhood" canon that you won't find in the documentary.

There's one detail that I really liked that's not in the film, which is he felt like the shows should be evergreen. As he often said, the outside world of the child changes, but the inside of the child never changes. So he thought his shows should play the same to two-year-olds now or 20 years ago. But as the years would go on, he would find things that had happened in old episodes that didn't feel current, where maybe he used a pronoun "he" instead of "they"  —  or he met a woman and presumed that she was a housewife. So he would put on the same clothes and go back and shoot inserts and fix old episodes so that they felt as current as possible, so that he could stand by them 100 percent. I've never heard of that happening  —  it's kind of amazing.

'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Director On Finding Drama In The Man With No Dark Side — Scott Tobias, Vulture

Another interview, where Neville delves deeper into his reason for putting the documentary together when he did.

Where are the adult voices in our culture? I've been talking about that for years, because I just feel like the rampant self-interest of everybody in our public sphere has just… we've lost this sense of like, "Who's looking out for where we're all heading? Who's worrying about the long-term health and wellness of our culture?" When I started thinking about Won't You Be My Neighbor… I mean, yes, there's the clear parallel to Love Thy Neighbor and Fred's religious underpinnings, but really, to me, it was, "What kind of community do we want to have? What kind of society do we want to have?" Being a neighbor is being a citizen, and those kind of issues are so urgently needed right now.

Watch The Trailer