"Mister Rogers & Me" will screen at Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center on Sunday, February 12th at 3pm. Co-creator, director and editor Christofer Wagner will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. Pre-sale tickets are available here. The screening will be a homecoming of sorts. The Wagner Brothers, Christofer and Benjamin, (who co-wrote, produced, and directed the 80-minute documentary) lived in nearby Oak Park, IL, as children. The two grew up watching a then nascent "At The Movies" (featuring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert) -- one of ...

Tim Lybarger launched The Neighborhood Archive in 2008 as "a web resource dedicated to one of the most influential icons of our generation." His site has become a definitive resource for all things Mister Rogers: episode guides, collectibles, character descriptions, order information, message boards and more. This weekend, Tim and I spoke at length about meeting Mister Rogers, making "Mister Rogers & Me," early screenings and future plans for the film. It was a deep and wide-ranging conversation with a few, small scoops, and some insight ...

Wagner Bros. documentary, "Mister Rogers & Me," will return to Mister Rogers' actual neighborhood when the film premiere's at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Film Festival next weekend. The film will screen at the Melwood Screening Room on Saturday, November 12 at 2pm. I will be on-hand for a post-show Q&A. "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" was nationally broadcast from Rogers' adopted hometown PBS station, WQED, from 1968 to just a few days before we met in 2001. It is one of the longest running programs on television, consistently providing ...

I first met "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" creator and star, Fred Rogers, at his summer home on Nantucket, Massachusetts, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday. My mother rented the cottage next door, so Mister Rogers really was my neighbor. On the afternoon of our first meeting, "America's Favorite Neighbor" asked me about my job as an MTV News producer. I felt a tiny bit exposed and embarrassed; I was just a PBS mind in a jump-cut, sound-bit MTV world. He was an icon of thoughtful, substantive programming. Mister Rogers said ...

My brother, Christofer, and I moved to New York City together in the spring of 1995. We shared a walk-up railroad in Hell's Kitchen with red-brick walls and hardwood floors. Our rent was an impossibly expensive $1200, up from just $375 Upstate in Saratoga Spring. Chris was working for a production company by day, and editing network news by night. I was unemployed and broke, save for $400 in cash I'd stashed in a Quaker Oats tin, and a tentative arrangement to transfer pop music features to my previous employer, The Saratogian, via ...

The morning fog was blowing quickly out to sea, casting fleeting shadows across pale dune grass as Abbi and I wheeled Maggie to the edge of the great, crashing Atlantic surf. We sat together a while. Maggie stared unflinching, wide-eyed and transfixed, her curly, golden locks billowing in the salty, steady wind. A few steps later, we'd repaired to the island's opposite, more peaceful shoreline, the vast, sandy crescent along Madaket Bay where for years Mister Rogers -- at home in his other neighborhood here on Nantucket -- took a daily ...

Ten years since I first met Mister Rogers on a quiet corner of Nantucket Island, "Mister Rogers & Me" will get its New York City premiere at The Paley Center For Media. The film will screen on Monday, October 24 at 6:30 p.m. Very, very special guest Joanne Rogers will join Christofer and me for a reception prior and a Q&A subsequent. Per The Paley Center For Media website: Benjamin Wagner was a rising MTV producer when his life was transformed by a meeting with the recently retired host of the iconic Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, ...

We Americans are precious with our television institutions; we like them just the way they were, thank you very much. And so, when our beloved programs evolve, we often balk. "Cheers" spinoff "The Tortellis" was canceled after just 13 episodes. Ten seasons of the wildly popular "Friends" spawned just 46 episodes of "Joey." And as a longtime employee of MTV, I can't count how many cocktail party conversations include, "Why don't you play music videos anymore?" As television institutions go, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" occupies ...

Chris and I spent Friday afternoon at the Fred Rogers Center For Early Learning & Children's Media in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, guests of Senior Fellow, Max King. It was an informative, inspirational, and serendipitous homecoming. Our documentary, "Mister Rogers & Me," was born in 2001 of my brief but life-changing conversation with Mister Rogers. And though my memory -- and the exact contents of that conversation with it -- has been faded by the cloudy distance of time, the film's thesis is clear, shaped by years of research and ...

Eight years years ago, National Public Radio delivered the heartbreaking news that Mister Rogers had died. I had just woken up, and was still in bed when I heard, "The death of Fred Rogers is sad news for his neighbors in Pittsburgh and for his many fans young and old across the country." Shocked, I hit the snooze bar, pulled the comforter over my head, and lay there motionless. Of course, Mister Rogers summered in a modest, gray, shake-shingled house on the edge of Nantucket island, and my mother rented the tiny cottage next door. So ...