00:00Magnita. Congratulations on everything. Are we all good? All right, perfect. So, Mr. Rogers has made a lot of headlines, actually, this year in particular. I mean, why do people refer to him when they kind of look for hope?
00:15You know, it's hard to find people who are the perfect advocates for all the things missing in our culture. Fred Rogers happens to be one of those people. When I came across him as an adult, because I loved him as a kid, but when I came across him as an adult, I just kept thinking, where's this voice in our culture? How do I get more Mr. Rogers today? It's what we need. Somebody that advocates for kindness and neighborliness and these things that nobody seems to even talk about anymore.
00:42And so, when you came across him as an adult, how did you kind of make that approach, and how do you view him differently than you did as a child? Or do you view him exactly the same?
00:52No, as a child, I had no idea. I loved the puppets, but you have no idea what was going on. What you realize is what Fred Rogers was doing was working on five different levels at once. He was teaching kids. He was teaching adults. He was helping everybody process what was happening in the culture. I didn't know any of that.
01:10But as an adult, I came to realize again and again just how deep the show was, and that's why I think it keeps going on. That's why, in some ways, it's more relevant now than ever.
01:21Do you think it'd be important for kids to see that, when you were watching, if you knew what he was doing behind the scenes?
01:28I think it's incredibly important. I mean, all these things he was doing are things we now think about, like mindfulness and emotional maturity, helping kids understand how to treat other people.
01:37I mean, these are the important things. I mean, counting and, you know, spelling and all those things are important, but teaching kids how to be people and how to deal with their emotions, I think that's the most important.
01:48Absolutely. And so tell me a little bit about why right now is the right time to bring this doc to life.
01:55We live in an extremely toxic culture, and if there's an antidote, it's got to be Mr. Rogers.
02:01So it just felt like the timing could not have been better. I needed more of him in 2018, and I guess a lot of other people did too.
02:07What do you think he would say right now in response to, let's hold off on the cultural thing, but in response to people making documentaries about him and movies about him, what do you think he'd say?
02:23You know, Fred Rogers is such a shy guy. He always said, if anybody made a film out of my life, it'd be the most boring movie ever made.
02:30You know, I don't agree with that, but I think the point was that he didn't want it to be about him, and in that way, I feel like the film he made is really about his ideas, and that's what people resonate with right now, because they're eternal.
02:44What would his message be to people who might be losing hope, might be, you know, losing their way?
02:50I mean, it's easy to fall into hopelessness, but I think there's always a place to find something to be hopeful about, and that starts with us.
03:00You know, we have to work on us first, and then we can work on other people.
03:04Amazing. Thank you so much for everything. Great chatting with you.
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