Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is. The phone rang, and I went and pick up, and there's this voice. Hey, this is Tom Cruise. Is my wife there? And I said, you know, yeah, Tom, she's right here in my bed. Right after this ad.
I am wearing what I now realize is a cardigan that's not intentionally an homage to the cardigan. Yeah. And therefore to you. Yeah. But it hasn't pointed out to me. Cardigan on the Lou thing or cardigan on the Fred thing? I dare say there is resonance in both of those characters.
Chapter 2: What surprising call did Tom Junod receive from Tom Cruise?
I would say so. I feel like you got to explain, Tom, you know, who Fred is, because you're on a first name basis. Okay, so Fred is Fred Rogers. Fred is also known as Mr. Rogers. He was the children's television host from early 70s on to just before he died in 2003. Yeah. And he was the emblem not only of sort of incredibly nerdy children's television,
He even sort of like pioneered a certain kind of nerdy style consisting of, dot, dot, dot, cardigans. Yeah. I walk into this office here in our Metal Ark Media studios and I go into the closet and I take out this cardigan and I... It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? could you be mine?
It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood, a neighborly day for a beauty, would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood
with you so let's make the most of this beautiful day since we're together we might as well say would you be mine could you be mine won't you be my neighbor won't you please won't you please please won't you be my neighbor For those who are not familiar, you not only wrote this iconic profile of Mr. Rogers for Esquire, it also, years later, became a film.
And I watched that in theaters, not even knowing you, only to realize that when I met you, I had watched the cinematic adaptation of you. And what level of cringe...
does one feel when they're watching a hollywood actor depict you across from tom hanks mr rogers so when i first read that script the guys who wrote it um called me and said we really love the script and we really would like for you to give it a chance which is sort of a warning right away and i asked him i said well so why do i have to give it a chance
And they said, because pretty much everything that involves you and Mr. Rogers is accurate. and the family stuff we all made up. So I read it and I asked him afterwards to change the name because there was so many things that happened in the script and in the movie that just didn't happen in life. It was you, Tom Junot, that was the name of the character? Tom Junot was the name of the character.
Oh, that's great. Or not, I guess. Yeah, so there's a scene in there where me and my father get into a fist fight at my sister's wedding. Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You don't know the whole story. Your mom really was not the same. Don't talk about my mom! What are you doing? Come on. Get off me! Come on. My sister eloped. So there was no wedding. So there was no fight at a wedding.
And so, yeah, so I asked them to change the name and they did so. And I sort of, you know, sort of disconnected from the movie a little bit from there. I just like, basically, you know, it's Lloyd Vogel now. And so you can do whatever you want with this. And so I just got to jump in here to say that what I wanted to do with the real life Lloyd Vogel, Tom Juneau,
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Chapter 3: How did Tom Junod's relationship with Mr. Rogers shape his writing?
Maybe you're finding that there is some frustration in how he is in control. But it also sounds like the guy whose dad was Mr. Rogers, but inside out, the opposite on some level. Sure. I mean, absolutely. It sounds like you also enjoyed being fathered by Mr. Rogers. I kind of did. And I guess I was looking for that. I guess this was 1998. I was...
a little bit adrift since going from GQ to Esquire. The Kevin Spacey thing had happened. I had gone through this whole thing. I might as well explain it now. Yeah, please. I'd gone through this whole thing where I sort of outed Kevin Spacey. I really got my ass kicked on that story. So just because we're in 2026, it's worth saying Kevin Spacey
is gay right at the time you framing it as a conceit in this magazine piece right and using i think your mom yeah i used my mom as by the way this was a rumor and the question that i am grappling with all of the time on this show and to varying success i suppose that you were grappling with as a magazine writer was there's this conversation that's happening in private and to what extent can that be had in public
Chapter 4: What feelings did Tom experience watching the Mr. Rogers film adaptation?
And in this case, of course, there are good societal guardrails, ideally, for how we respect privacy. But the inherent tension of anybody who wants to write and report confrontationally and has a discerning taste for what qualifies as public interest... which can be both serious, drone strike, political level. But this was a celebrity profile, so that's a little bit different from the start.
Exactly. The journalist, especially at that time, was supposed to play ball. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, on that particular story, I didn't play ball. I think that you used a word just a few minutes ago, conceit. It was the conceit of how I talked to my mom. She was like, isn't Kevin Spacey gay? Yeah. And it was the conceit that everybody knew.
And so I think that's the thing that got me in trouble. That I didn't sort of like take on this question genuinely. I did it as a conceit. I did it like a little sort of... dance around just to be... It was the first story I wrote for Esquire after leaving GQ. Oh, I didn't realize that. It was basically of like, oh my, look at how provocative I can be.
And I think that that is the thing that really sort of turned people against that particular story. I get why. people had such a negative reaction to it. I get why you have since effectively owned up to saying, I wish I didn't do it in that way. In that way, yeah. But all of which is the setup for the fact that Esquire magazine assigns hotshot magazine reporter who loves provocation, Mr. Rogers.
And that was definitely sort of part of the whole thing. I think people thought it would be sort of interesting for that to happen. But I was, like I said, I was a little bit adrift at the time and had taken a beating and didn't know exactly what to do next because being self-consciously provocative did not work for me.
And then I went, I see Fred and he definitely gave me another direction to go in. The notion, though, of being a confrontational writer and just what that means and how you decided, I need to turn that approach, which is fundamentally investigation. Yeah, it's about finding out. Yes, yes. It's about finding out. Yes. This book... was in the works for how long?
I began it in 2015 and finished in 2024. So I guess that's nine years. I mean, I've been writing about my dad a number of times. I had written about my dad by writing about other people. I mean, one of the first things I did when I got GQ was write a story about Frank Sinatra Jr. I wrote a story after that about Tony Curtis. And then I wrote a story about my dad himself.
I do like the idea of us sort of traveling through your career with this as the inevitable endpoint. But Frank Sinatra Jr. Was that a sad character to you? He was the leader of his dad's orchestra. But the guy that he idolized wasn't Frank. It was Nelson Riddle, the guy who did the great swinging arrangements for that orchestra.
And I saw in him a guy who had dealt with just the huge shadow of his dad by just being sort of off-putting. He didn't really do anything to make people like him or even notice him. And I think that that was the thing about him that really struck me, was that he didn't want to be noticed.
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Chapter 5: How did Tom's father's secret life impact his understanding of masculinity?
writing from memory without really even requiring an investigation. But I started making those calls and realized that I was in the freaking deep end of the pool. I laugh because I can imagine, again, that this starts off being like, this is going to be a real quest of interiority. I'm going to have to negotiate within myself what I'll be putting on the page.
And what I get in reading this is you traveling around the country interviewing the women your father cheated on your mother with. Right. And getting details. Even somewhat graphic details. I mean, what's the most graphic detail that still feels like, oh, wow, that's a lot. How graphic do you want me to get?
I would like you to be so graphic that I'm wondering if it's time for me to pull out the part of the book that I've been gesturing towards. Okay. Well, what's the most graphic part to you? One of my father's lovers described how my father seduced her and how that went. And she had borrowed money from him. And she offered to pay him back. And he said, why don't we take it out in trade?
And so he invited her to his room at the Essex house, of course. Yes, an iconic New York. Iconic New York hotel. And she got up there and there was a bottle of champagne waiting and two steaks under glass. And as she said... you know, within, you know, in 15 minutes, he was giving me the greatest I ever had. So that's a lot. Hearing that about your dad. Put that on your book cover, Tom.
Is a lot. It's a blurb of sorts, but it's a lot.
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Chapter 6: What was the significance of the briefcase in Tom's family story?
I believe my editor, Bill Thomas, was just like, we don't need that. And I was like, I think you do. Because I wanted to account for my father's hold on women.
and i also also wanted to say to the reader that that hold was not something he was making up my father you know also talks about having affairs with with various movie stars and so on and so the question is is whether is this just in his head right or is just all the details that i got from that woman that day seemed in the investigative trade Confirmation. Zsa Zsa Gabor. And Ava Gabor.
Don't forget that. Some of this is just like a mad lib, admittedly. It's a mad men lib. It brings me to this briefcase. The briefcase. And I'm going to have you read this part because I... Really? Okay. Page 72 of the galley, at least. If you can just read for a while and then... Sure. Okay. Okay.
Like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. Unlike a lot of other men, I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father. There is an automatic light overhead, the light in his closet.
Although mom and dad have gone out and I am alone in the house, I don't want the doors to be wide open because I don't want to be, well, exposed if they come home and somehow sneak up on me in the middle of my investigation. Unfortunately, a floor-to-ceiling mirror covers the back of each door, and I can see myself, cross-legged in front of the briefcase, revealed as I seek revelation.
I do not walk away. I open the lid, and I look. For a second, I think that my father has stowed in his briefcase something that was once alive, that I'm gazing at a package of chicken parts he bought at the supermarket and then forgot about. I told myself that I was opening the briefcase to find the joy of sex and two vibrators of generic providence.
Note, two days before, two weeks before, two months before, I had gone into my father's bag and found two vibrators and the joy of sex. Which feels like a lot on its own. A lot on its own. Side note. But of course, I needed to go to the next place. You couldn't help but find out. I couldn't help but find out.
But while the joy of sex has not returned, the vibrators have mutated, metastasized, into two dildos so large they seem prosthetic. They are sheathed in sleeves of venous rubber, each remarkably realistic in detail, but outlandish in scale, the size of fungo bats.
They share space in the briefcase with a stack of invoices and order forms from various handbag lines, as well as several boxes of pornography, all of it on film in Super 8 format. Dad occasionally brings Playboys and penthouses at home, and I do not read them for the articles. But I have never seen real pornography before. Is this real pornography? It is, in that the photos on the boxes
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