Editorial: A beautiful day...to be snubbed?

While some read the lists of Academy Award nominees with questions about how Bradley Cooper and Emily Blunt could be snubbed and why were no women nominated in the director category, in our little corner, the question is more about documentaries than blockbusters.

What about Mr. Rogers?

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” was the sweet and charming darling of biographical films, telling the story of Fred Rogers, the be-cardiganed best friend of every preschooler for decades. It grossed an impressive $22.6 million and was lavished with critical praise and awards.

But it didn’t score an Oscar nomination.

That’s bound to put as many noses out of joint in Westmoreland County where Rogers hailed from and the Pittsburgh area he later lived as a blown call in a Steelers playoff game. Why not Fred? Why not here? What makes those other stories so special?

Rogers spent 49 years teaching kids about their feelings, their imaginations and the world around them. There’s a better-than-average chance that most of the directors whose work was nominated got their first taste of documentary by watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” seeing how crayons were made.

But in that neighborhood, or in the world of Make-Believe, Rogers never missed an opportunity to show something new.

He would probably be delighted that the documentaries nominated would take viewers to a black community in rural Alabama, to northern Syria and the top of a mountain climbed without ropes. He would, no doubt, have loved introducing kids to a Supreme Court justice and teaching them about skateboarding and dealing with domestic violence.

Rogers would have taught us that it was okay to feel bad about being overlooked, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be happy for the people whose work was celebrated. After all, he had received plenty of accolades, with Emmys and a Peabody, an induction to the Television Hall of Fame and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. A PBS documentary on him last year, “Mr. Rogers: It’s You I Like,” was nominated for two Emmys.

And Tom Hanks will be donning that cardigan to portray him in a highly-anticipated big-screen biopic, “You Are My Friend,” slated for release in October.

Being left out of the awards chase is disappointing, but it doesn’t diminish the quiet importance of the man, or the simple beauty of the documentary. We can appreciate them both for what they offered regardless of accolades.

But if there aren’t nominations this time next year, well, we’ll have things we want to talk about.