Meeting Fred Rogers in 2001 led Benjamin Wagner to make the documentary “Mister Rogers & Me,” which screened locally at the 2011 Three Rivers Film Festival and aired on PBS stations nationwide.
Wagner sees a direct line from that film to his latest doc, “Friends & Neighbors” (4-5 p.m. May 13, WQED-TV; a 76-minute version of the film streams via video on demand through Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Comcast and Vudu on May 15). Wagner’s new movie explores how chronic stress has reshaped American life and why the power of connection may be the best path to healing. The film debuts timed to May as Mental Health Awareness Month.
Wagner, an executive at MTV News when he made “Mister Rogers & Me,” later worked a stressful job at Facebook and ultimately was diagnosed with PTSD.
In “Friends & Neighbors,” Wagner interweaves his own story — including childhood trauma from his parents’ fights before they divorced — with interviews he conducts following Rogers’ mantra to “look for the helpers.”
Wagner has conversations with “helpers” in “Friends & Neighbors” that include educators, public leaders, therapists, artists and community organizers who address belonging, inequality and emotional well-being.
“What Fred really gave me — meeting Fred and talking to Fred and then digging into Fred — is the courage to really be more authentically myself,” Wagner said. “I am still figuring that out.”
Wagner left Facebook in 2021 and now works as a consultant. He’s also written a book that could serve as a more focused companion to “Friends & Neighbors.” Wagner’s book “Strong and Silent: What Manhood Conceals and What It Costs Us All” will be published in August 2027.
Wagner credits Rogers with his own growing self-awareness about what matters most in life and took note of Rogers’ practice of “radical presence.”
“This was a guy who was radically practiced at being meaningfully connected to the moment and to whomever he was in relationship with at the moment,” Wagner said. “What better lesson is there for being a dad, a parent, a partner, a manager, a colleague, a friend, a neighbor.”
The genesis of “Friends & Neighbors” began during the pandemic when Wagner and his brother (one of the film’s editors, Christofer Wagner) began a podcast.
“It got me revisiting Fred in a deeper way, and that’s when I again saw that clip of him talking to Senator Pastore [in 1969],” Benjamin Wagner recalled.
Rogers was speaking before a Senate subcommittee meeting about funding for public broadcasting. His persuasive testimony helped to change the minds of skeptical senators. That news footage has become famous, but Wagner realized an important few words often get cut off when it is played.
“If we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service,” Rogers says in the famous clip, which continues with the words, “for mental health.”
Those last three words became Wagner’s focus in “Friends & Neighbors.”
“I want people to understand the physiology of stress and trauma, because for me it was a game-changer,” Wagner said. “I’m Gen X, and for Gen X and if you’re Boomer and beyond, it’s just hippie dippy [baloney]. But it’s not. It’s medical science, and there are actual studies and reams of research. There is plenty of science that says this stuff is real. Stress causes disease; unaddressed trauma causes disease, depression, anxiety.
“There are obviously cases where it’s going to take a ton of intervention and support,” Wagner continued, “but broadly speaking, we all have the agency and what we need inside [of us] to be able to direct our lives towards a healthier place and a happier place.”
Through his own experience, Wagner learned it is easier to talk about feelings than to bottle them up.
“That’s what Fred was saying: ‘Whatever is mentionable is manageable,’ ” Wagner said. “If you just start with, like, ‘Hey, I’m hurting, and I could use some help,’ and you call somebody you trust, that’s the way out. It’s not rocket science. It starts there.”