Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

Tom Junod: Self - Journalist, Friend

Photos 

Quotes 

• Tom Junod : Across the street from Fred's funeral, there's this hubbub, and there's all these people holding up signs saying, "God hates fags." And I went and talked to them because Fred would have it no other way. I said, "Are you condemning Fred? Are you saying that he was gay? Wh-what's... what's happening?" And they were saying that, "No, no, he just... He-he tolerated gays." And so they were... they were intolerant of the tolerance. And the thing that... the thing that struck me that day, uh, more than anything else was the children that were there. Children that had been drafted into doing this work, into standing there with their parents and holding up signs and screaming. And those kids looked so unhappy. Those kids looked so exhausted. Those kids looked so ill-treated. It was just heart-breaking. And I... and I knew that if Fred had seen that, that that's where his heart would have gone.

• [regarding the urban legends surrounding Fred] 

  Tom Junod : That, to me, is just, like, a classic example of people looking at Fred in all his eccentricity and singularity, and trying to basically say, "Well, that can't be. He has to be this way."