(upbeat music)
- [Filmmaker] I hate nostalgia.
(laughter)
- [Filmmaker] It's the fast food of emotions.
I mean-because the thing about nostalgia
is-I mean nostalgia literally means going home.
It's inherently a regressive idea that
doesn't ask much from an audience,
and I felt like this film was inherently
a progressive idea.
Not how do we go back,
but how do I get Fred Rogers into 2018?
Who's a better advocate for these kinds of crucial issues
we have in our culture right now about civility
and neighborliness and kindness?
Fred Rogers was kind of the closest thing
I could come up with, and I was just trying to
amplify that message.
- [Interviewer] I wonder are there aspects of the film that
came out differently because of the moment
we're living in right now?
- [Filmmaker] Sure, I mean without a doubt.
It changes the perspective on everything.
- [Interviewer] Mr. Rogers talks about
bullying in your film.
- [Filmmaker] Sure, and building a wall you know,
the land of make believe, all of these things.
The issues that we are dealing with right now in our culture
have existed for a long time.
I did a film called The Best of Enemies about these debates
between Gore Vidal and William Buckley
which actually deals with all the same issues
of TV as a place to either make conversation
and civility better or worse.
They're issues I care about so I keep coming back to them
in different films and different ways,
and that was a cautionary tale.
Won't You Be My Neighbor is, you know a hopeful tale.
We have these conversations as filmmakers about
are we preaching to the converted,
are we just talking to each other,
and I felt like it was this rare opportunity
to make a film that would play for people
who I didn't agree with.
And it's done that, and that's the thing
that's actually given me the most optimism.
There are people who I don't agree with politically
who have left the film and maybe in that way
we can have some common ground we can build upon.
(upbeat music)
- [Interviewer] I mean you were born a couple of years
before the show started.
Did you grow up watching him?
- [Filmmaker] I was born six months before the show started,
and I was like Gen One Mr. Rogers Fanatic.
And my relationship with him predates my memory.
Making the film it really took me back
to revisit part of myself that I haven't thought about
in a really really long time.
Making the film is like ten years worth of therapy
rolled into one production, you know.
It's very cost efficient in that way,
and I honestly had no idea if anybody else cared.
I mean I had a number of people tell me,
when I was making the film, that like "Mr.Rogers really",
you know "good luck with that" you know.
It turns out a lot of people were touched in a similar way.
Mrs. Rogers, Joann who is an amazing woman.
When I explained to her the film I wanted to make,
I said I want to make a film
about his ideas not about his biography.
She said, well that sounds like a good thing
because Fred always said if anybody made a film
out of his life it would be the most boring film ever.
His wife-I don't necessarily agree with that,
but when she gave me her blessing
because she had to give me complete control over the film
she said don't make him into a saint,
and I can't think of anything
a filmmaker wants to hear more from the guardian.
And I think part of that is to understand that he was human
because everybody in the world had treated him
as a two dimensional character and to treat him as saintly
means that you don't appreciate the hard work
he had to do to do these things, and that also
doesn't ask us as an audience to have to live up to it.
I felt like with that blessing, you know
it was this chance to really get into the
human struggle that he dealt with.
(upbeat music)
- [Filmmaker] When I started making documentaries
there was nothing cool about documentaries.
I mean the only reason to make them
was because you loved them,
and I did-and I remember five years ago
doing this round table and there was debate at the table
of people wanting to get rid of the word "documentary"
because it wasn't cool enough.
I mean what a difference five years make,
and I think part of it is the film making
is getting better and better,
but also we are making films
that other people aren't making,
kind of adult films that are asking real questions
that are engaging with the real world
and it's just scratching something
that I think an audience is dying for in this day and age.
- [Interviewer] What was the biggest influence growing up
that may have shaped your point of view as a filmmaker?
- [Filmmaker] I started my career as a journalist,
and I was definitely under the sway of new journalism.
Some of my heroes were really like John Dillon
was a major hero for me,
but people who were talking about nonfiction issues
but with kind of a fiction way of storytelling
and articulation and that's something
that I was trying to do as a young man,
and that I'm still doing in documentary
and I think we are all doing.
- [Interviewer] What's the first thing you do
when you wrap a film?
- [Filmmaker] You know documentary doesn't feel wrapped
in the same way it's like on a scripted film, you know
that it feels like it's not really wrapped until
you screen it for an audience,
and at that moment it's not
your film anymore it's their film.
So that's the experience that I had on this film,
and that I think we all have.
That's the moment you can celebrate,
til then you are just holding your breath.
(upbeat music)