Mister Rogers and Me (2013)

For thirty years and 900 episodes, Fred Rogers (1928-2003), an ordained Presbyterian pastor, spoke a simple but powerful message to his television audience of children: "There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are."  Deep and simple, he insisted, is better than shallow and complex.  Film maker Benjamin Wagner met Rogers when he spent a summer at his mother's cottage, which happened to be right next door to the television icon.  It was a moving experience of feeling safe in unconditional love that so many others in this documentary film who knew Rogers express.  The one thing that made him mad, said Rogers, was to see one person demean another, and so he vowed that his own life and work would be "an expression of care." I watched this 72-minute documentary on Amazon Instant Video.