"You Are My Friend" - Mister Rogers Biopic Starring Tom Hanks

[sueb1863]

Sorry, I think Tom Hanks is great but no matter what they do to him he doesn't look anything like Fred Rogers.

He didn't look anything like Walt Disney, either.

 

[DarkKnight88]

Still pulled it off though. Less the look, more the soul that matters.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[Aximili86]

Hardly any of these actors in these biopics are dopplegangers of the real people, guys. That's so far down the checklist in terms of what you want to look for when casting anyway, the surface stuff can be mitigated a good deal through movie magic, still better than getting a near-on body double with none of the soul.

Hanks was fine as Disney. I mean, who would you cast? You think "big name actor" and "classic era Walt Disney", Hanks is about as close on the money as you're going to get for that.

He's more than in the ballpark as Rogers too.

 

[Pennywise]

Hanks also posted a sweet tribute to Rogers.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[kaypain]

Very few pull it off in the looks

Jamie Foxx as Ray
Leon as David Ruffin
Denzel as Malcolm X

 

[Pennywise]

Marielle Heller on recreating Mister Rogers' world with Tom Hanks, ties, and vintage cameras

As the box office success of Morgan Neville’s Mister Rogers-themed documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?proved last year, there’s a palpable appetite for a warm, reassuring figure to hold our hand as we trek through the fires of divisive politics and patriarchal anxiety. And director Marielle Heller is here to help with a bit of Hollywood catharsis.

While not a straightforward Fred Rogers biopic (in fact, Heller insists it’s not a biopic at all), the Can You Ever Forgive Me?filmmaker’s upcoming movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood features the TV icon as a supporting moral compass soothing the angst-ridden life of a cynical journalist, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who travels to Pittsburgh to write a magazine profile of the legendary host (Tom Hanks). A new parent juggling his own daddy issues in the wake of his father’s ailing condition, Lloyd — initially skeptical of Rogers’ optimism — slowly softens his hardened heart with help from his new friend. Heller thinks Hanks’ work (married with the enduring legacy of kindness Rogers passed on to his millions of fans) could have the same effect on the film’s audience.


“He’s a guide for how to slow yourself down and connect with what’s true in your heart, your kindness, your patience, and your goodness,” Heller tells EW of Rogers’ charms. “Having his voice in my head for the past two years while I’ve been making this movie has made me a better parent.”

“[He calls for] us to be our best selves, and I think that’s required of parents in order to be patient and see these little people we’re bringing into the world with compassion,” she continues. “Mister Rogers helped break down those things in a way that, as a parent, you can gain a lot of compassion that translates beyond just your relationship with your children; it translates into your relationship with your partner or spouse, or relationships at work. I know it translated into how I wanted to make this movie, and the process by which we work creatively and how we treat the crew. I approached every decision with the movie as: ‘How would Fred approach this? How can we treat everybody with a level of emotional empathy and compassion that shows that we value everyone?’ That was his main message: Everyone is valued.”


For Heller, part of respecting that mantra meant making sure she respectfully recreated Rogers’ late-in-life world, as the film was inspired by real-life writer Tom Junod’s actual experiences in writing about Rogers for a 1998 Esquire piece. So, she consulted with his family — including Rogers’ wife, Joanne — shot the film on-location at Rogers’ old haunts in Pittsburgh, and even hired some of the same crew that worked on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Below, Heller details how she wove together other elements most essential for a neighborly day in beautywood.

LACEY TERRELL/SONY
The Set


Viewers welcomed Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood into their homes for 33 years, and Heller was respectful of the bond, filming at the same Pittsburgh studio where Rogers produced the show. She even hired former Neighborhoodemployees (including camera operator John Burdick and set decorator Barbie Pastorik) and imported vintage Ikegami cameras to capture Hanks’ scenes on the meticulously re-created Neighborhood set. In other words, nearly everything shot on the movie’s version of the show will look as if Heller simply swapped Rogers for Hanks in prints of the original broadcast.


“We filmed it in the actual studio where they filmed the show, we found the original cameras they filmed the show with and imported them from England so we could film on them. We lit it with the actual lights that had lit Mister Rogers. Everything about it feels identical in a way that’s tangible and you feel like you can smell it….You feel like you’ve gone back in time,” says Heller.

That is, until Hanks walks out.

“We’re so used to [seeing] Fred in that world, to see somebody else inhabit it, it takes a moment for your mind to flip,” she continues. “His performance is so powerful that, a few seconds later, you forget, and it’s gone.”

The Vibe
Pleasing his fans was important, but Heller wanted Rogers’ family to approve of her vision, too.

“It was important that the people in Fred’s life felt [the script] accurately portrayed the man they knew,” the director says.

So, Heller worked with Hanks to rein in the star’s “boisterous” charms in order to portray Rogers’ placidity — a demeanor essential to prompting Lloyd’s.

“He’s got a loud voice; he walks into a room and you know that he’s there! He shakes everyone’s hand, he’s really funny, there’s never an awkward moment when you’re around Tom Hanks; Fred allowed for awkward moments. Fred sat in silence and stillness in a way I don’t think Tom naturally does,” she explains. “Tom Hanks naturally makes everyone comfortable, puts everyone at ease, and makes everyone feel great. Fred disarmed people by asking a question and then sitting and staring at you until you answered. My challenge as a director was to get Tom Hanks to become less Tom Hanks…. to let discomfort and painful things sit; to notmake everything feel okay. This will feel very different from how you’ve seen him before.”

The Clothes
Rogers’ presence warms the soul like a cardigan-covered hug, and Heller wants her film to capture the same feeling: “We’re not doing an imitation,” she says. “[We want you to feel] like you’re really there.”

Thus, she wove authenticity into the film’s tapestry of props — some reimagined, others borrowed from the Neighborhoodarchives or even Rogers’ personal collection of paintings and home decor.

“We recreated Mr. McFeely’s costume, but his bag is the original,” says Heller. “Every tie [Hanks] wears is a real tie of Fred’s. Joanne, his wife, gave us access to his closet and was like, ‘Take this stuff, please! I don’t know what to do with it!’”

Heller didn’t, however, use the actual puppets — like Daniel the Tiger — from the Rogers vault. Instead, she worked with Sesame Street puppeteer Spencer Lott to meticulously redesign the hand-controlled characters who populated the children’s program’s whimsical world.

“People who’d worked on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for 40 years saw the puppets and were like, ‘Did you borrow these from us?’” Heller recalls with a laugh. “They couldn’t believe it!”

Moviegoers can judge for themselves when A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhoodstrolls into theaters Friday, Nov. 22. Check out EW’s exclusive photos above.

 

[Doctor Jones]

If that's not a goddamn ticking time bomb of a man I don't know what is.

 

[Pennywise]

Trailer coming tomorrow!

 

[James.B]

 

[terry78]

haha, the trailer is so weird but cool. At first it plays out like they're making him out to be some creep but then he becomes like this mystical do-gooder.

 

[Schlosser85]

Yea.....all I see and hear is Tom Hanks, not Mr. Rogers.

 

[Sithborg]

Yeah, all I am seeing is a bad impression.

 

[DarkKnight88]

It's inhabiting the spirit, not doing an impression. I'm sure when you watch the actual film, like with Walt Disney, we'll have a fuller sense.

 

[sueb1863]

Yeah, I think Tom Hanks is great but he always just looks like Tom Hanks in a costume when he plays real people. Here he just comes off as Tom Hanks doing a Mister Rogers impression.

 

[Holy Slapper]

Yeah, all I am seeing is a bad impression.

If I want to see an actor doing an impression, I'll watch Bohemian Rhapsody.

 

[Lencho01]

I don’t know... I don’t feel it’s too much of an impression of Mister Rogers. Like not to the point of trying to make people believe they’re seeing him again. Seems he’s trying to give off the same vibes and spirit. One nice guy acting like another nice guy.

 

[kvz5]

Show Matthew Rhys’ name in the trailer, you cowards.

 

[Dr. Evil]

Hard to believe this is the feature film debut of Susan Kelechi Watson from This is Us.

 

[Silvermoth]

Cute. Hope this starts a run of nice films about nice people haha

 

[The Guard]

I don't think he's really doing a direct impression at all. He's using some key mannerisms. If he was doing an impression, he'd be accused of creating some kind of caricature of Fred Rogers. They seem to be steering clear of that.

 

[Farren]

Hmmm, not sure how I feel about Hanks as Mr Rogers after this trailer. I think he's a good choice for the part but his performance is coming off a little like a creepy imitation.

It's like he tried to split the difference between a close imitation vs capturing the spirit and chose the worst qualities of each. He has the mannerisms and facial expressions of Rogers (and he nailed the choreography of the show's opening) but he falls short of the gentleness, especially in his voice (which imo doesn't need to sound just like Fred Rogers but it should sound more gentle and less like Tom Hanks.)

Then again, it doesn't look like an outright bad performance and it probably didn't help that they showed the opening of the show at the beginning of the trailer (which only drew more attention to how much he isn't like the real Fred Rogers). I also don't have a problem with how much he does or doesn't physically look like Rogers. I think he looks quite a lot like him without it being too close. So props to the hair and makeup team who managed to find the right sort of balance.

 

[samsnee]

I think this will play like Julie & Julia. The scenes with Fred will be much more interesting than the scenes with the interviewer.

 

[DarkKnight88]

As it should be.