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flyonthewall2983 wrote:Tom Hanks to play Fred Rogers

Not sure how I feel about this. Tom Hanks can be charming, obviously, but this is a hell of a tightrope to walk for any actor. I suspect it'll be easy for this performance to get too maudlin or, conversely, if Hanks tries to play it up, too like a game show host.

Absolutely perfect casting. I guess we'll have to wait a few more years to see if Hanks will ever branch out and play someone detestable

Literally who else would you cast as the nicest man who ever lived?

Colin Hanks?

Obviously it's Chet Haze.

Kyle MacLachlan

The Onion: Tom Hanks Vows He Won't Stop Until He Has Portrayed Every Last American

I think it's great casting myself if only because all Tom Hanks needs to do is play himself and sing.

I assume this ends with his speech to congress which is still one of the best things I've witnessed.

That video makes me cry every damn time I watch it

It's a remarkable video for a variety of reasons but what impresses me most is just how quickly he convinces them to give him funding (A thing surely missed in this current political hellscape.). As someone who watched him on the tail end of the nineties I have nothing but fond memories of him.

knives wrote:I assume this ends with his speech to congress which is still one of the best things I've witnessed.

It's likely to be based in the mid/late 90's, as it's based on his relationship with the author of this article.

The release of the new documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, which is getting good buzz out of Sundance, would seem to make this film utterly unnecessary. What purpose does such a movie serve? We already have hours of footage of Rogers in interviews, the Congress footage, hosting his TV shows, etc; what is the point of seeing Hanks dress up and act it all out? It's like karaoke for actors.

ianthemovie wrote:The release of the new documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, which is getting good buzz out of Sundance, would seem to make this film utterly unnecessary. What purpose does such a movie serve? We already have hours of footage of Rogers in interviews, the Congress footage, hosting his TV shows, etc; what is the point of seeing Hanks dress up and act it all out? It's like karaoke for actors.

It’s this new exciting experimental genre called “the Biopic”.

Biopics can have value, especially if they're about figures of whom we don't already have any filmed footage--something like Mr. Turner, for example, though that film still suffered from some of the conventions and the cliches of the genre. But in the case of a twentieth-century figure like this, about whom an entire documentary feature has now been made, I find it hard to believe that a narrative film will have much to add. If it re-stages the Congressional hearing: why not just watch the actual footage of the Congressional hearing? Is Tom Hanks going to act it better than Rogers did in real life? The same thing drove me crazy with that HBO film Game Change a couple of years ago, much of which consisted of Julianne Moore re-enacting Sarah Palin's debates and speeches.

Variation in telling the same story is as ancient an element of storytelling as the act itself. This becomes of interest because this won't be Fred Rogers as Fred Rogers, but Tom Hanks as such. Now that doesn't mean this is going to inherently a good film, but it does bring an initial worth in the sense that we have not seen these acts through these set of storytellers before. It's basically the principle van Sant's Psycho was built upon.

I can't believe someone is arguing that no biopics should be made about people of whom there is filmed footage. It is 2018 - literally any public figure that a biopic could be made about who has lived in the last century is going to have a good deal of filmed footage out there. That doesn't mean that there isn't appeal for viewers inherent in a biopic that isn't there for a repackaging of that footage in a documentary format. Why artificially limit narrative filmmaking because some films in a particular genre aren't good, or seem superfluous?

Maybe it'll end up being like I'm Not There or Secret Honor. That'd be cool. If it's Hanks re-enacting archival footage which already exists and has been assembled successfully into a documentary, I'd rather just watch the latter.

It will likely be like that Disney movie staring Hanks from a few years ago.

FWIW, Marielle Heller tweeted a link to the Variety article and said "Other than it being called a biopic this is all true and VERY EXCITING"

Let's just hope that whatever we see wasn't captured by a camera somewhere!

To be disgustingly frank I'd love to see more wholesome films made in this day and age. That's literally why I want to see it. Mister Rogers is an absolutely perfect topic for that.

Big Ben wrote:To be disgustingly frank I'd love to see more wholesome films made in this day and age. That's literally why I want to see it. Mister Rogers is an absolutely perfect topic for that.

I agree, just as long as somehow we can redefine "wholesome" as something that is apart from what the religious right has done with increasing desperation. But films that speak to the truth of these things just as well as Rogers himself did on television. This quote from Tom Junod, writer of the previously linked article and whose experiences with Rogers formed the screenplay, says just about everything as far as this project's importance in today's climate.

Hate to break it to you Big Ben but...

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."

swo17 wrote:Hate to break it to you Big Ben but...

Spoiler

It's so wholesome to find out he's human.

I’ve been reading up on this guy as a result of this thread (I’d never heard of him before), and am kind of amazed by the way he seems to be treated as this figure of absolute adoration in the US. Surely so much wholesomeness has to have a catch somewhere!