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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The Mister Rogers Doc You’ve Been Waiting For

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6 Responses to “The Mister Rogers Doc You’ve Been Waiting For”

  1. Yancy Skancy says:

    Waiting for since “Summer 2010,” apparently.

    MisterRogers was awesome. I would occasionally watch even as an adult with no kids. I won’t say I never watched it “ironically,” but for the most part I simply respected what he did and appreciated his approach to television.

    The trailer doesn’t make this look like the most compelling documentary in the world, and I’m especially worried about the “& Me” part. (And doesn’t the title sound like an SNL parody of “Roger and Me,” with Michael Moore doing some sort of expose of MisterRogers?)

    And I bet we won’t get to see “Lady Aberlin” toting firearms, like she does in RED STATE.

  2. J says:

    Ditto to what Yancy said: The “and Me” may be trying to capture the personal nature of the project, but really fouls the atmosphere with the sort of self-promotion that’s become so relentless and tiresome. Which goes against the spirit I associate with the man.

    I’d be seven times as likely to see something simply called “Mister Rogers.”

  3. Don Lewis says:

    This clip of Mr. Rogers in the senate fighting for public television to continue to get support is pretty amazing. He was quite a guy:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q

  4. hoopersx says:

    X3

    Not a very thoughtful or interesting title. Be that as it may, if it’s not more about the guy making the documentary and mostly about Mr Rogers, I’m in. So many great childhood memories. I would be fascinated to learn more about the man behind the scenes.

  5. hcat says:

    This seems like some NPR segment expanded to a doc’s length.

  6. Paul D/Stella says:

    Mister Rogers was the speaker at my commencement ceremony. I can’t really remember what he talked about. My mom loved it.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon