Mister Rogers & Me: Behind-The-Scenes

Most documentary films are an artfully arranged combination of the following elements: interviews and footage. Until yesterday, we lacked a fair amount of the latter. Thanks to our pal Amy Hollingsworth, today finds us in better shape on both.

You'll recall that Amy was a Researcher for "The 700 Club" when she snagged the enviable assignment of interviewing Mister Rogers. She and her crew spent an entire day capturing the making of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" at WQED in Pittsburgh.

While we're negotiating rights to utilize actual episodes, Amy's footage is behind-the-scenes: Mister Rogers singing to camera, talking with Johnny Costa, looking at a monitor. It's priceless stuff. As I just emailed to Amy moments ago, I stood outside WQED a few weeks ago, and really wished to be inside with Fred. Amy's footage is the closest I'll get. It's really a wonderful gift which Amy secured from CBN on our behalf.

Hopefully, we'll be that lucky in other instances. I've submitted the following requests to Family Communications:

1) "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" Ep. 29 3/28/68
2) "Mister Rogers Talks With Parents About Divorce" Ep. 605 2/15/81
3) Photos: 1928, 1937, 1952, 1969

And I've initiated a fair amount of outreach from some of our interviewees. Davy Rothbart, for example, FedExed me three dozen snapshots from his family vacation in Nantucket. We hope to receive similar supporting material from Tim Russert (who seemed to think his son still had his possession a clock that Mister Roger fashioned from a paper plate) and Marc Brown.

Finally, we've tapped our friend and esteemed documentary filmmaker Katia Maguire to do some research on our behalf. She'll be scouring photo and footage agencies, as well as reaching out to organizations like the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Mister Rogers was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997. His acceptance speech is a key component to our story. In it he says:

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take with me ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Those who have cared about you, and wanted what was best for you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I'll watch the time.

Piece by piece, we'll put this puzzle together.

Mister Rogers, Ira Glass & Me

Now that his Production Manager has officially said no thanks on his behalf ("Between his super tight schedule and his feeling like he doesn't have a whole heckuvalot to say about Mister Rogers, he'd like to politely decline your invitation."), I can finally tell you that -- for a minute there -- I thought one of my contemporary heroes, Ira Glass, was going to appear in the film.

My pal, Jen Snow, suggested I contact him (having heard me talk about him 24/7). "This American Life" is the highlight of my week, to be sure. It is a superior example of deep, substantive storytelling. Accordingly, it stands to reason that it's creator and host would be both deep and simple. Which I'm sure he is. I just couldn't wrangle the interview.

Anyway, we did have a lovely email exchange, one in which he told me the following story about meeting Mister Rogers.

When I was 20, a young production assistant, I worked on a radio adaptation that NPR did of his show, a call in kid's show with him and his characters. Just a pilot. Mainly I remember that the moment I met him in NPR's lobby, he was eating one of those little bags of peanuts you get from a vending machine and he offered me some. I hesitated and he encouraged me to take some. Which I did. He poured the nuts directly in my hand, which complete strangers you've seen on TV don't do too often. This is a dorky thing to say but it seemed like a symbolic act, a deliberate gesture he was making, though I'm sure he didn't think about it for more than a half-second. This was his way of setting a tone for working together, like here, let's share a snack, that's what this is going to be like.

It's a beautiful story, one that might find its way into the film yet. It speaks directly to what I was saying a few days ago about small gestures. As this story evolves, and a resolution to the film's inherent conflict becomes increasingly requisite, there's something about the idea of small gestures -- little things: a smile, a held door, a shared snack -- that feels like at least part of the solution.

It's disappointing, but we soldier on.

And we still love Ira!

Believe In The Great Sound

I haven't been listening to music lately. As someone who is defined by a love of both making his own and listening to other's, this is a somewhat disconcerting development.

Years ago I lost my voice for no reason whatsoever. I wasn't neither sick, not had I been talking too much. It just disappeared.

Now, I was puzzled by this phenomenon, but chose to view it as an opportunity. Apparently, I thought, I'm supposed to be listening more. So I did.

I'm approaching the loss of my musical appetite similarly, though this one is a dual loss.

See, other people's music provides me with inspiration. The Hold Steady's "Stuck between Stations" inspires me to run faster. Paloalto's "Breath In" inspires me to look around appreciatively. "Rhinemaidens" inspires me to persist.

My own music -- or the creation thereof, anyway -- inspires understanding. Songwriting is like lucid dreaming. At its most beautiful, it's like opening a tap on all of the things just below the surface of every day, pouring them out on the floor, ordering them by color and shape and texture, and making sense from the mess.

The absence of those two things, then, is major. Moreover, the silence is deafening.

Of course, this lack of inspiration and understanding comes at a precipitous time. I am surrounded by uncertainty: a new marriage, a new job, a half-finished film and dubious singer/songwriter career.

Sunday afternoon, then, found me at my desk. The blinds were thrown wide, revealing a broad swath of troubled sky. I was doing some "Mister Rogers & Me" research while listening to assorted podcasts: All Things Considered, This American Life, Bob Edwards' Weekend, and Bill Moyers' Journal.

One of Moyers' guests was American poet Robert Bly. A Fulbright scholar and Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate, Bly was an outspoken detractor of the Vietnam war, and staunch advocate for what came to be known as "The Men's Movement" in the 1980s. He's long been a hero of mine. To me he represents a full spectrum of values: he is strong but not silent, articulate but not unapproachable, philosophical but not abstract.

Moyers began by reading one of Bly's poems.

I live my life in growing orbits which move out over the things of the world. I have wandered into space for hours, passing through dark fires. And I have gone to the deserts of the hottest places, to the landscape of zeroes. And I can't tell if this joy is from the body or the soul or a third place.

"When you say, 'What is the divine?'" Bly said, "It's much simpler to say, 'There is the body, there is the soul, and there is a third space.' It's a place where the geniuses and the lovely people and the brilliant women -- they all go there and they watch over us a little bit. But we don't there very often. I suppose it's because we think too much about houses, and our places."

Bly then began reading a poem by the 13th Century Indian mystic, Kabir.

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive.
Think... and think... while you are alive.

If you don't break your ropes while you’re alive,
Do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
Just because the body is rotten
That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,
You will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now,
In the next life, you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the teacher is
Believe in the great sound.

Kabir says this, When the Guest is being searched for,
It is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
That does all the work.

The final passage, in particular, has offered great solace in these few intervening days.

In this time of great, gray uncertainty, the intensity with which I seek answers will have to be answer enough.

Mrs. Rogers & Me

I emailed Mrs. Rogers today to be sure I had my facts straight about The Crooked House.

She wrote back almost immediately:

Fred's parents gave us The Crooked House and surrounding land back in about 1961, and I believe the entire purchase was about $10,000... What well-spent money! There have been many happy times there, and continue to be as our sons and their families keep it well-occupied all summer!

I have retired from Nantucket, but am so glad our boys are able to make good use of it. Hope this info helps get the work done.

Good luck!

Joanne Rogers

Thus far, Family Communications wishes not to participate directly in our film. The quality, enthusiasm and almost-palpable joy behind this exchange only makes their decision more painful.

Nonetheless, it's a pleasure to hear from her.

Found vs. Post Secret: The Future Tenant Podcast

The cold and rainy November day that Chris and I spent with Davy Rothbart felt was nearly endless.

We left New York City at 8:00, made it to Pittsburgh around 4:00, and then met Davy at Future Tenant, a student-run creative space downtown, around 6:00.

We helped Davy, his sidekick Andym, brother Peter and a gaggle of Future Tenant volunteers set up folding chairs in the narrow, drafty gallery, that sat through (in my case) and shot (in Chris') two Found vs. Post Secret performances.

Afterwards, Chris and I helped volunteers clean up as Davy entertained fans, and then conducted an interview with Future Tenant producer, Adam Murray.

It wasn't until somewhere around three o'clock in the morning that we set up lights in our hotel room, and began interviewing Davy for a fairly breif, oddly erratic conversation. (One, Chris assures me, he can cut into a cohesive narrative.)

Anyway, Adam recently sent me the link to his Future Tenant Podcast featuring Davy, plus a cameo from your truly. Enjoy.

Mister Rogers, Chef Brockett & Me

Moment to moment, day to day, my confidence as to whether we're gonna' finish this documentary in time for the March 15th Nantucket Film Festival deadline changes. At this moment, on this day, confidence is high.

This week's progress has been measured in inches, not feet (let alone miles). I finished Marc Brown's segment over the weekend. He tells a sweet story about first meeting Mister Rogers, then goes on to illustrate just how aggressively advertisers market to kids.

"Each year they see 40,000 commercials about fast food and candy, and there’s over $10B spent each year on making those commercials," he told me last December. "Now that is a stacked deck.

"Right now the Federal Trade Commission has decided that these fast food places should really police themselves. And I don’t think that’s working so well."

Fred Rogers, of course, agreed.

We have to remember to whom the airwaves belong, and we must put as great an emphasis on the nurturing of the human personality as we can. I believe that those of us who are the producers and purveyors of television -- or video games or newspapers or any mass media -- I believe that we are the servants of this nation.

Marc Brown's segment will lead nicely, I hope, into Linda Ellerbee's. Ms. Ellerbee -- who was an absolute firecracker -- speaks of meeting Mister Rogers as well, and of how his values influenced her Nick News.

"One of the leading principles of Nick News is that we are all more alike than we are different. It’s only that our differences are easier to define. The second rule is, wherever in the world you find bad things happening, you always find good people trying to make it better. The third rule is keep it simple. And the fourth rule is that simple is not the same as easy."

Then she goes on to explain the primary reason why television is often so shallow and complex. The program isn't the product; the audience is.

"The product is the audience. The consumer is the advertiser. The program is just the means of acquiring that audience."

Ah yes, the Almighty Dollar.

Remember what Bo said? "The way Jesus puts it in the West is, 'Lay not of your treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break in and steal.”

I've also begun drafting a list of the photos and footage we need to licence, like "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" Episode #29 (the one that takes place in Nantucket), and his 1997 Lifetime Emmy Award acceptence speech.

Meantime, some early bits of media are coming in. Amy Hollingsworth (bless her heart) secured a deal with CBN on our behalf so that we're able to use her intire 1996 interview. And Day Rothbart sent this photo today. I quickly emailed him. "Do you have that other photo? The one without the dude in the leopard-skin Speed?"

"Ha!" he wrote back. "That's Don Brockett, who played Chef Brockett on the show!"

Mister Rogers, The Small Gesture & Me

It's been well over a year since I interviewed NPR's Susan Stamberg.

I just finished scripting her segment of the film, and was struck -- as I have been throughout the scripting process -- by the subtle details of our conversation that I'd since forgotten.

Towards the end of our twenty-minute conversation there in NPR's Studio 5C, Susan pulled a photo of Mister Rogers and her from a frame. The photo, she said, held a sacred place just beside her office door.

"I look at it every time I walk out," she said.

Tonight at dinner, I told Abbi, "I don't want to be an also-ran. I want to be special"

For some reason, I have a tendency to gauge the success or failure of my personal creative projects (recordings, writings, this film) on the scope and scale of their audience. My cover of John Denver's "Leaving On A Jet Plane," then, is the most successful thing I've done based on its 15,000+ iTunes downloads. Everything else? Tough to say.

Despite the rise of the long tail, we remain in the era of the blockbuster. The bar is high. Our cultural attention span is instant, and we are always looking towards what's next. So films are judged on opening night. Books are judged by their New York Times Book Review. Records are over by the time they're released. TV shows "jump the shark" after their pilots.

Throughout my life, though, I've wrestled with the flipside. Mozart never sold out Madison Square Garden. Picasso didn't live in Tribeca loft. Hemingway was never on Oprah. Why, the, should I judge my art by of Multiplex standards?

Our conversation (the one that often includes the phrase, "I just wish I could quit a be creative full-time") concluded with my oft-repeated by not-fully convincing mantra, "I guess it will work out as it should."

This is on the set [of "Mister Rogers Talks With Parents About Divorce"]… Fred and I just sitting there posing for publicity shots. I love looking at it. And I especially love looking at his hands, which were so graceful and delicate.

I said, “How do you do television? How do you do television?”

And he said, “It’s a medium of the small gesture.”

Earlier this week, I told Chris that we needed a reality check. "Mister Rogers & Me" is unlikely to be picked up by IFC or Fox Searchlight. It might not air on PBS, or even Ovation. It's likely to be a fully-independent, completely grass roots little film, one that we drive from town to town over the course of the summer. Which, given that I'd like to think that it's Oscar-worthy (at least its subject matter, if not its execution), is a bummer.

But, as he's been doing since I met him, Mister Rogers sent me a message tonight.

Small gestures.

The rest will work out as it should.

Mister Rogers & Me: The Outline

I've been scripting segments all weekend. Bo, Amy and Tim are done. I'm on Susan Stamberg now. After that, I have four to go, plus making sense of the whole Pittsburgh trip and our visit to 826NYC.

Basically, the process entails transcribing each interview, and then pruning the conversation to its most essential elements. Not a huge challenge for a fifteen minute interview like Tim Russert's, but pretty daunting when you spent an afternoon with someone as we did Bo Lozoff.

When I'm done scripting, I send to Chris who's doing rough cuts of each segment. Next we'll identify still images, b-roll and footage we'll need to licence, borrow, or otherwise procure. In some cases this'll be a simple financial transaction, like dropping a few hundred bucks to licence, say, a photo of Mister Rogers receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush. In other cases we're going to need to get in touch with folks we've already interviewed, like Tim Russert who will hopefully share photos of his family on Nantucket. In all, I imagine we're going to need to acquire at least 100 pieces of additional media. Yunno, in our copious free time.

Sometime in the middle of all that, I'm going to write VOs (voice overs) for each which somehow summarizes the last interview while setting up the next.

I expect to confirm another (big!) interview or two, but here's a rough outline of the film as it exists right now. Let me rephrase that: here's a rough outline of the film as it exists in my mind right now, because it doesn't really exist anywhere else.

That said, at the very least, a rough cut of the film needs to exist by March 1, which ought to be just about time for the Nantucket Film Festival submission deadline. I figure it's out best shot at a festival, being that March 20, 2008 would be Mister Rogers' eightieth birthday, and the film's all about Nantucket. Plus, as I said to Chris, we can't be working on this thing forever, and I like deadlines.

Anyway, the film's much more interesting than this, but this is what we've got.

1. Open (NYC)
- Walking to work
- My Bio
2. Backstory (Nantucket)
- How we met
- What we discussed
- Why I decided to make the film
3. Smithsonian (DC)
4. Bo Lozoff MOS (SC)
- Driving VO (1:00)
- How They Met: Book orders, silent support
- Deep & Simple 101
- Walk and Talk
5. Amy Hollingsworth (VA)
- Driving VO (1:00)
- How They Met: CBN Shoot
- What She Learned: silence and song
- Letter: seeking connection
6. Tim Russert DC)
- Driving VO (1:00)
- How They Met: Nantucket
- What He Learned: Respect
- How Manifests: DC
7. Susan Stamberg (DC)
- Driving VO (1:00)
- How They Met: TV show
- What She Learned: Community
- How Manifests: On-air
8. Tim Madigan (NYC)
- How They Met: TX interview
- What He Learned: Death and spirituality
- How Manifests
9. Linda Ellerbee (NYC)
- Driving VO (1:00)
- How They Met: TV
- What She Learned: Four Rules
- How Manifests: Nick News
10. Marc Brown (NYC)
- Walking in (:30)
- How They Met: Arthur
- What He Learned: Advertising
- How Manifests: Arthur
11. Davy Rothbart (Pittsburgh)
- Driving (1:00)
- How They Met: Nantucket, This American Life
- What He Learned
- How Manifests: Found
12. Pittsburgh
- Statue
- WQED
- Children's Museum tour
- Latrobe
13. 826NYC
- Tour
- Volunteering
14. Conclusion (Nantucket)
- Recap
- Now what?
15. Credits
16. Epilogue(s)

With any luck, this ought to constitute some 75 or more minutes of film. I'm sure the rough cut'll come in much longer. Heck, Bo, Amy, Tim and Susan already clock in at twenty minutes, and that's without any set up, b-roll, etc.

Anyway, it won't be "Mission: Impossible," but it'll be good. Slow, steady, deep and simple.

The Opening Scene

Despite the fact that the first person objective pronoun, "me," in the title of our film, I'm not terribly comfortable on camera.

This was made abundantly apparent to me again just now as Chris and shot the opening scene of the doc.

I've spent more than a few dozen mornings listening to David Byrne's "Glass, Concrete & Stone" while walking to the office or -- more often still -- heading to the airport for business. The song sounds like 5 a.m. in a sterile terminal waiting on a flight feels: spaced-out, disconnected, and kinda' depressing. The lyrics reinforce this urban disconnect.

I'm wakin' at the crack of dawn
To send a little money home
From here to the moon
Is risin' like a discotheque
And now my bags are down and packed for traveling

Lookin' at happiness
Keepin' my flavor fresh
Nobody knows I guess
How far I'll go, I know

So, as I've mentioned, I've asked my colleague, Rich Sancho, to record an instrumental version that I'm going to sing over. That song, partnered images from my walk to work -- the jagged skyline, dirty streets, and clumps of pedestrians -- and intercut with credit slates (yunno, "Wagner Bros. Films Present") will constitute the first two minutes or so of "Mister Rogers & Me."

The idea is to set the tone (slow, steady, visually metaphorical) while demonstrating the disparate nature of Nantucket and New York City, Mister Rogers and me, deep and simple and shallow and complex (though I don't think of myself as shallow and complex, in the film, I am a proxy for culture's predominant shallow and complex tendencies).

I have no idea whether we achieved any of the above in the three uncomfortable hours that just elapsed, but we tried. I stoically (and rather grumpily) walked down the street while Chris raced around me setting up shots. New Yorkers -- incapable of being flummoxed by anything, watched out of the corner of their eyes and wondered, "Do I know him?"

No, you don't.

Mister Rogers On "Deep & Simple"

As I mentioned, I'm in the process of re-launching Benjamin Wagner Dot Com, and in doing so have been re-reading and editing some five years and nearly 1300 posts. I just came across an entry dated February 27, 2003 -- the day Mister Rogers died.

I spent all day at work crafting my remembrance of him, then all night emailing it to The New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nantucket Mirror, etc. The next morning, a half dozen emails thanked me for my efforts, empathized with my loss, but suggested that they had already published secured their reportage. (The Times, for example, tapped my now-pal, Davy Rothbart for a piece entitled "A Friend In The Neighborhood"). I remember wanting to blame my day job at MTV for missing a deadline that didn't actually exist.

None of which is my point.

Re-reading that post just now prompted me to find the The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from which I quoted Mister Roger' on "deep and simple."

After production of the program ceased, Mr. Rogers devoted his time to working on the "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" Web site, writing books and fulfilling long-booked speaking engagements. Even then Mr. Rogers often spent his mornings at his "writing office" away from the hustle and bustle of his Family Communications office. The older he got, the more he cherished silence, he said in spring 2001.

"You're able to be much more mindful of what is deep and simple and how essential that is, in order to keep on growing," he said. "And whatever our expression of care might be, whether it be television or the Internet or all of these books that the people want us to write -- whatever that expression is -- it must come out of the depth of understanding that we continue to nourish.

"Otherwise, you know it could get superficial. That's not going to happen with us."

A lot of things about this short passage interest me.

For starters, I often wonder if I dreampt the whole thing up. I mean, I know I met Mister Rogers; I have the photos and subsequent letters to prove it. But sometimes I wonder if he really said what he said. Or what, exactly, he meant.

The above quote, though, not only confirms that depth and simplicity was on Mister Rogers' mind, but also suggests it was very much in his thoughts at that time. The quote is from Spring 2001. I met him just a few months later.

Moreover, the quote suggestst that he himself was exploring deep and simple in a way that he hadn't before; the "cherished silence" of his retirement allowed it.

It's also worth noting that when I Googled part of his quote ("deep and simple and how essential that is"), I ended up with a page full of results on spirituality, democracy, meditation, breathing -- in short, all of the subjects we've tackled in "Mister Rogers & Me" (including, as it ends up, this very website).