WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR

Film Review by FIORE

Documentary films, in the past few decades, have slipped from the lofty platforms of newsworthy, to propaganda.  This generally makes them useless once the agenda is ferreted out of the tripe.  Thankfully, that is not the case with WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR.  The documentary, detailing the TV career of Fred Rogers is as close to a true documentary as I’ve seen since RESTROPO.

Through archived footage, and interviews with family and co-workers, a fitting image of Rogers is offered.  Included in the interviews are Joanne Rogers, Francois Scarborough Clemmons, Yo-Yo Man and Joe Negri, among others.  What Rogers accomplished in TV is unheralded, and is likely never to be duplicated.  A lifelong Republican and ordained minister, Rogers brought a message of individualism and patriotism to children, first in the Pittsburgh area, and then nationally.  In 1968, his first week of broadcasting, he solved the dilemma of the Vietnam War, according to WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR.

While the majority of current mass media proponents promulgate group think and identity politics, it’s difficult to believe Roger’s message of individualism, and the importance of self, would be allowed to disseminate on a global scale.  The special press screening I attended was filled with folk who seemed quite immersed in group mentality; refugees from an NPR mindset inhabiting every victim assemblage imagined, seeking a unifying anchor in Rogers.

The true stars of any documentary are the editors.  Aaron Wickenden and Jeff Malmberg slice and dice WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR in an entertaining fashion.  Their bias comes through, however, in the segments dealing with homosexuality and the funding of Public Broadcasting.  These segments are disproportionately lengthy and slow the Rogers narrative to a crawl. 

Director Morgan Neville is also not above having a Michael Moore moment.  His method of presenting the controversy of Rogers’ message initiating the entitlement generation is diminished to a back-handed reproach of the conservative reporters who investigated the connection.  He even takes an interview by Brian Kilmeade out of context, so he can equate Kilmeade, who is now a staple on Fox News, with an imagined anti-Rogers cabal.  

Rogers is a Pittsburgh icon, yet WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR downplays the city and concentrates instead on the man and his message.  This is not a bad thing, and the city benefits by association.

The current state of documentary filmmaking is in shambles, filled not with journalists, but activists.  It’s sad there are agenda items engrossed in WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR that

are so readily noticeable.  Yet, given the current state, WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR holds far closer to a newsworthy film than most of its peers.  It is well thought out and constructed.  And, while it does not put Pittsburgh on a pedestal, which most of the city pundits will desire, it does tell the tale of a man and his message.