Page 30 - ARUBA TODAY

A30 PEOPLE & ARTS
Thursday 7 February 2019

Film on Breslin and Hamill shows perils of local journalism

By DAVID BAUDER lives of normal folks, Alter
Associated Press said. It often seems like the
NEW YORK (AP) — HBO’s working class is now missing
new film on newspaper from a modern New York.
columnists Jimmy Breslin More likely, it’s because
and Pete Hamill romanticiz- few people with powerful
es an era in New York and platforms are writing about
journalism that feels like a them.
long, long time ago. It’s striking to see the film
The fact that it’s very re- catch a tenderness be-
cent history makes “Breslin tween two men who
and Hamill: Deadline Art- climbed to the top of a
ists” partly a tragedy. business fraught with egos
The two men embodied a and infighting. That’s a tes-
time when New York was a tament to Hamill; the brawl-
rollicking and complicated ing Breslin would often write
place, and each lived for about people with whom
the streets and stories of he was feuding.
the little guys who made “He knew that I was not
the city run. Every city had ever trying to hurt him or
their own Breslins or Hamills, conquer him,” Hamill said.
who made the powerful “We didn’t have a sense of
tremble or shake their fists. rivalry. I was just trying to be
Their newspapers were re- the best Pete Hamill, which
quired reading. This combination photo of images released by HBO shows journalists Jimmy Breslin, left, and Pete was hard enough.”
Toward the end of the doc- Hamill who are the focus of the HBO documentary “Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. Breslin fought through
umentary, which premieres Associated Press personal tragedies: he
Monday at 8 p.m. ET, film- cated across the country, of director Jonathan Al- 1984 during an attempted witnessed his mother try
makers unspool a statistic where local journalism is ter, who started in 2015 to subway mugging, and to commit suicide, and
that shocks. In 1988, the in crisis. The media indus- bring a camera to periodic when five minorities were both his first wife and two
New York Daily News, the try continues to implode, get-togethers where Breslin wrongfully accused of an daughters predeceased
tabloid both Breslin and Ha- where this week alone and Hammill talked about attack on a white jogger in him. Despite a happy sec-
mill called home at times, more than 1,000 journalism the old times. Breslin died at Central Park in 1989. ond marriage to a former
had 400 reporters and edi- jobs were lost in layoffs an- age 88 in 2017. Hamill, fight- The columnists’ willingness New York City council-
tors. Thirty years later, that nounced by Gannett, Ve- ing his own health issues, is to listen to, and champion woman, Ronnie Eldridge,
number was 45. rizon Media and BuzzFeed. 83 and lives in Brooklyn. when necessary, people the toll seemed evident in
That, too, is a story repli- All of this was on the mind “I knew that an era was that society found easy to his final years. Ah, but the
coming to a close,” Alter condemn often put them glory years? They had their
said, “but I also knew that at odds with authorities. fun. Hamill dated former
we didn’t want to make a Breslin was not always a first lady Jacqueline Ken-
nostalgia film. We wanted hero to a police force pop- nedy Onassis and actress
it to be gritty and funny.” ulated largely by fellow Shirley MacLaine — at the
Breslin made his name first, Irishmen. Director Spike Lee same time. Breslin filmed a
mostly through hustle. He and others speak in the film beer commercial and ran
broke from the pack to find about their importance to for New York City Council
memorable stories, notably minority communities. president on a ticket with
following President John Hamill, who brushed off the writer and mayoral candi-
F. Kennedy’s assassina- broken hips and regular di- date Norman Mailer.
tion in 1963. Breslin found alysis that keeps him close “There was this constant
the man whose job was to to home these days (“there ‘truth to power’ quality to
dig Kennedy’s grave and are people in a lot worse their work,” Alter said. “Do
wrote about him, and inter- shape than I’m in”), told we still have that? Yes, at
viewed Kennedy’s emer- The Associated Press what the national level.”
gency room doctor for a he and Breslin thought was But not necessarily at the
you-are-there account of necessary to cover a city of local level. And it’s there,
the president’s final min- immigrants. at the city halls and state-
utes. “Jimmy was more like “We were able to explain houses, where your pock-
a hustler,” Alter said. “As the newcomers to the peo- ets get picked, columnist
someone once described ple who were here, and Richard Cohen explains in
it, he was right at you all the explain the city to the new- the film. Hamill, who works
time. Pete was more like a comers,” he said. “I think with students at New York
poet ... They both believed that was a very important University, said he knows
that the worst crime in the task that we took care of.” that there are talented
world was to be boring.” To do that, he said, “you’ve young people who want
Their jobs often brought got to go to the third floor to do the type of reporting
them to painful intersec- loft and knock on the that he and Breslin once
tions of race and class — door.” did.
big stories where a seem- There’s an importance to Whether they get that
ingly mild-mannered white the social fabric in hav- chance is a question that
man, Bernhard Goetz, shot ing exceptionally talented “Deadline Artists” can’t
four black teen-agers in people write about the answer.q