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♪ ♪

Gail Collins:
You know, where
I used to go to work,

I would see
all these people
on the subway,

reading the paper.

They're working
at working-class jobs,

and they get up in the morning
and they grab this paper,

and they read the whole thing.

The firefighter,
the emergency room nurse,

the beleaguered
schoolteacher,

the factory worker
losing the job.

♪ ♪

There was nothing like
a big city paper,

especially
a big city tabloid.

Nick Pileggi:
These cities
were big enough

and interesting enough
to be able to justify

three, four, in my day,
seven newspapers.

Ed Kosner:
You know, the WASPs
read theHerald Tribune

and theWorld-Telegram.

The Jews read thePost
and theTimes.

And the Irish and Italians read

theJournal-American,

and theDaily News,
and theMirror.

And there was
the number one columnist,

and, usually,
it was an Irish columnist.

Back in the day,
I mean, you would buy the papers

to see what
Jimmy Breslin's saying,
you know, or Pete Hamill.

I mean, these guys
were like superstars.

They were able to connect,
and that's why people saw them

as the voice of
true New Yorkers.

Richard Wald:
Both of them were people

imbued with that sense

that we're on the side
of the little guy.

And the way to be on
the side of the little guy

was personal stories.

Tom Brokaw:
They had their own
kind of street poetry.

They always brought
a blue-collars sensibility
to whatever they did,

but they could also explain
about what was happening
in the underclass.

Jonathan Alter:
Sometimes they
were colleagues

at the same paper,

sometimes
they were rivals,

but they were
always good friends.

Pete, he had almost no enemies.

Jimmy had more than a few.

Man: How do you define
your enemies?

Everybody that doesn't like me,

and that's
an awful lot of people,

that's an all-inclusive topic.

Michael Daly:
He loved being
Jimmy Breslin.

It's infectious
to be around somebody

who really loves
being who they are.

-(laughing)
-I went to
John Adams High School,

and I wasn't a dropout.

I went the full five years.

(laughter, applause)

-Man: The New York Times
said that you wrote literature.
-Yes.

-That this is literature.
-That was the worst thing

-that could've
happened to me, too.
-(laughter)

There's something the matter,
I don't know.

There's something very much
the matter with the thing.
It doesn't work.

Tom Wolfe:
He looked like you'd
taken a ball of clay,

and then you'd gotten
another ball of clay
for the head,

and these arms were stuck on.

What color were
the four kids who got shot?

-Host: Black.
-What color was the gunman?

-White.
-Thank you.

So what are you saying,
this was a racial murder,
is that what you're saying?

No, it was over geraniums.

Lemme call you back in
a little while. Okay, bye.

Breslin.

Charlie Carillo:
Pete went for the heart

without being
sentimental.

Pete had a high school
education.

Everything he learned,
he learned on the streets.

You would come
in the subway
home at night,

and there was an
aroma of perspiration
in the place,

a salty kind of
smell in the subways

because working men
were on their way home.

Gay Talese:
The guy had another side
beyond the journalism.

He had this almost
movie star life!

You know, with
Ms. Kennedy or Onassis.

Shirley MacLaine,
they were together
for years.

♪ ♪

Colin Quinn:
Two guys in New York,

they're both like these
Irish bar columnists,

and they both are
so similar and so different
at the same time.

Man:
Hamill was, I always
thought, like a poet.

He'd give you
the poetry of New York.

(Hamill speaking)

Robert Krulwich:
This guy had sweep
and majesty.

It was like walking into,
you know, a French novel--

the light glancing
off the buildings,
the atmosphere.

-And Breslin
would give you the...
-(smacks palm)

...here's what happened
yesterday in New York.

(Breslin speaking)

This is literature
in real time, on deadline,

and it still lasts.

♪ ♪

(train rattling)

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

Newswoman:
Berhnard Goetz,

New York's so-called
"Death Wish Gunman,"

is in a New York
jail this morning,

after confessing to the
vigilante-style shooting
of four youths

aboard a New York
subway last month.

Newsman:
Goetz wounded
four teenagers

whom he said
surrounded him
on the subway

and asked for money.

Newsman 2:
Police say the teenagers
had arrest records

and three were carrying
long screwdrivers.

It is not clear exactly
what the kids intended.

Newsman 3:
Many New Yorkers
consider him a hero,

and fundraising efforts
are underway to pay

his bail
and legal expenses.

If I were in his place
and I had a gun,

I would do exactly
the same thing.

I have no pity
on criminals, you know.

If they're gonna rip off people,
they get what they deserve.

Les Payne:
This was the most
terrifying period

that I have experienced
in New York.

The city had rose up
almost as one,

and said that yes,
he should have shot them.

You know, it served them right.

Alfonse D'Amato:
I've been on that subway

when these young thugs
come in there.

And they don't even
have to approach you.

When three or four
or five come in,

and they start their
messing around,

they are menacing
by their presence.

Payne:
It was that vacuum
that happens

when journalism is
not doing its job.

Journalism was out to lunch,

save Breslin.

Breslin:
They burned down
something irreplaceable

in New York this week,

and there were people
who looked at the ashes

and termed them
beautiful.

A man on a subway
took out a gun
and shot four people--

two in the back--
and ran away.

One of the two shot
in the back was 19

and he will be
in a wheelchair
for the rest of his life.

There were people
who praised the gunman.

As lawlessness
was applauded,

we in New York
arrived at the sourest
of all moments:

when people become
what they hate.

Would the gunman
have fired,

and would people
now be jubilant

if the four
had been white?

Almost no one wants
to hear that question

because it would
shorten the celebration.

Mr. Breslin,
if somebody were to attack you,

would you just stand
there with your arms out
and not protect yourself?

I hope I'd fight back,
and I also hope I wouldn't shoot

two people in the back
and another one in the side,

because he didn't turn
around quick enough

that I could shoot
him in the back!

Once my father found out

from one of his

friends in the NYPD that
the kids were shot in the back,

that's when my father
said game over.

How can you be threatened when
they have their back to you?

I can understand how he cracked,
and I think the people who--

Breslin:
Do you know
what he did?

Did you know that he bent down

and he shot a kid on the floor
with the fifth bullet

because he had one left and
he said lemme get rid of it?

Behind this lunatic gunman,
you had New York City.

We in America, the victims,
have been portrayed to be
the wimps.

Give your money over,
wave the white flag, roll over

and hope that these guys
are gonna spare your life.

Jimmy Breslin was
the only voice out there.

Mr. Breslin, sir,
you do appear to be

whistling
a very lonely tune.

-No. (scoffs)
-(laughter)

(applause)

Donahue:
This is not to say
that you are wrong.

-How can I be wrong?
-Your speeches are not
playing in New York City.

I don't care!
It's the law!

It's in a book!
Go look it up in the book!

You're not supposed
to shoot four people!

Payne:
It began to
become obvious

that this guy was not
this fair-haired hero,

the Death Wish Gunman
that everyone said
that he was.

If I had more bullets,
I would've shot them
all again and again.

Payne:
And this is why Breslin,

people who stand
head and shoulders
above the mob

in this craft
of journalism,

they're so important.

They realize that, yes,
crime is rampant.

But if your son is
one of those four kids,

should he be shot in the back

by Bernhard Goetz
because crime is rampant?

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

You better believe
that I hate the people

that took this girl
and raped her brutally.

You better believe it.

And it's more than anger,
it's hatred,

and I want society to hate them.

-(yelling)
-Newswoman: It is
the ages of the accused,

14 to 17 years old,

and the horror
of their alleged crimes
that has caused a furor.

A woman, jogging in
New York Central Park,

raped and nearly
beaten to death.

Man:
She was dragged
about 200 feet

into the woods,
where they beat her
with their fists,

we believe a rock,
and a metal pipe.

We must reinstitute
the death penalty.

Newsman:
So outraged by the
brutal rape attack

of the young jogger
in New York Central Park,

Trump took out
full-page ads in four
city newspapers.

It was an ad
that suggested that there
was no mercy necessary,

no justice,
as we know it,
necessary.

He thought they just
should be killed.

They hadn't even
been indicted yet.

They were still
in the police precincts.

♪ ♪

Trump inflamed race hate
in New York City.

Of course I hate these people,

and let's all hate these people,

because maybe hate
is what we need

if we're gonna get
something done.

Esposito:
Donald Trump is happy
to inflame divisiveness.

That's what makes
a gifted writer
like Pete Hamill--

the sensibility
to see that before
other people see it.

Hamill:
Snarling and heartless

and fraudulently tough,

insisting on the virtues
of stupidity,

it was the epitome
of blind negation.

Hate was just
another luxury.

(Hamill speaking)

♪ ♪

Newsman:
Now, after each has
completed his sentence,

this man, Matias Reyes,

imprisoned for
another rape,

says he raped
the jogger,

and DNA evidence
confirms it.

And then we find out that,
years later,

those guys were innocent,

and their lives' are never
gonna be the same.

What the best, the past
in the tabloid era did

was it put forward
big personalities

with big opinions who backed
them up with real reporting.

And they were
uncompromising in trying

to hold people in
power to account,

and tell the stories of
people who were suffering.

-(typewriter clacks)
-(indistinct chatter)

Keep walking,
but watch your step, Jim.

There's wires
on the floor.

-Step lightly.
-Oh, just what you said.

There you go,
almost there.

-Hamill: There we go.
-Breslin: All right.

-Hamill: Here.
-Breslin: You got
coffee here somewhere?

-Man 1: Oh, coffee!
-Man 2: You want coffee?

-You okay? Good.
-Yeah, I'm all right.

♪ Nice and easy does it
all the time ♪

-Man: Marking.
-(clacks)

♪ ♪

Interviewer:
Where were you born?

Breslin:
Ozone Park, Queens,
New York City.

Interviewer:
What year?

Breslin:
10/17/29.

I lived on 101st Avenue,

and it was a house
with a porch

that people
used to sleep on.

Those were
the Depression days.

Scraping to get a job.

And then we'd go down two blocks
from there to Liberty Avenue,

there was a bar.

By the time I'm 17,

two guys came in with guns
and held the joint up.

Hamill:
Oh, in my neighborhood,

there was a bar on
every corner except

the one with
the movie house.

A lot of them
had been speakeasies
during Prohibition.

Most of them were
populated by men.

They lived across
the street from the bar.

Their favorite bar
was the closest one.

That was it, the bar.
Everybody was in the bar.

Every-freaking-body.

The main problem
in my house

was anything
outta the bottle.

There was
a lot of drinking.

Interviewer:
And you didn't know
your father, right?

No, he was around.
That didn't last long.

My father took off when,
I guess, when I was about seven.

He went out for rolls one
morning and didn't come back.

And that took care of
that end of the family,

and then the rest of it,
it was just a nice,

large, cold Irish family.

Do you know where
your father is now?

No, he died
a couple of years ago.

-Did you see him after
he left the house?
-No, never. No.

-He must've--
-No.

What? What,
are you gonna tell me

-it's a heart-tugging thing?
Who the hell cares?
-(laughing)

The guy went away. Who cares?

Oh come on, Breslin,
cut it out. (laughing)

♪ ♪

Breslin:
My mother, she got mad
and just declared him dead.

He just was gone,
and that's it.

All those years.

When I grew up, my mother
never kissed me, ever.

Nor did I ever kiss her.

The closest we ever came
to touching each other

was when we sat
together on the subway.

I was a stranger
who was out of her.

I sat on the staircase
and peered through
the banister.

My mother was there for
a long time, for hours,

weeping and talking
to her reflection
in the big mirror.

I dozed.

Suddenly,
a click woke me up.

My mother was motionless.

My eyes closed.
There was another click,

and her weeping rose
almost to a shriek,

and I saw that
she had a pistol
at her left temple.

She was gonna shoot herself.

So, I told my grandmother,

and she just came
down from her bed,

and just took it from
her and turned around,

and walked back up to the room.

Afterward, nobody ever
mentioned in the house
what had happened.

The night was part of
the dust in the air.

Barry:
His father leaves.
His mother is troubled.

He's a lonely kid.

And what he would do is,

he would get lost
in the newspapers.

♪ ♪

Harriet Arnone:
Jimmy Breslin was devoted

to newspapers from the day
he was able to read.

He always said,

"I'm going to be a newspaper
reporter when I grow up."

Breslin:
I was in a Catholic
grammar school.

The nuns were interested
in the writing.

Subject, verb, and object--

that was the story
of the whole thing.

Concrete nouns,

-active verbs.
-Yeah, it's all...

That's what we were
taught that way.

It was pretty
good teaching.

Well, we'd put out a paper,

the kids' paper,
on 134th Street.

The Flash.

We never heard of, in fact,
the typewriter thing.

-(chuckles)
-Never.

It was always your hand.

I realized early that
bad news was great,

even if it involved me.

I protected myself
by writing about it.

Interviewer:
When you were putting that your
mom had tried to kill herself,

were you upset when
you wrote the article?

I had to write
an article!

What's going on inside your
head and your heart at that age?

Me.

When I finishedThe Flash,

I took it around to
Worship's Candy Store

and asked them to put
it in the newsstand.

My headline said,
"Mother Tried Suicide."

Later, I learned
that the headline

should've been in
the present tense.

"Mother Tries Suicide."

♪ ♪

To get here,
I had to beat a rough,

bleak, shrinking business.

I started out
in Queens County,

where I was born,
on theLong Island Press,

as one of the last
of the generation
with no college,

and who came off
the copyboys' bench.

People at desks in
the City Room called out,

"Boy! Copyboy!"

Copy!

And a copyboy
comes running over.

There is no thing
like it today.

City rooms have no sound.

People are sitting
at their computers,

and they're
sending messages

to people six feet away.

Man:
Boy! Take that over there.

Breslin:
I was 16, just 16.

It was tough
making a living

for being that young
in that business.

Eighteen dollars a week was
a huge amount of money

from the newspaper.

Eighteen dollars
and ten cents,
that I remember.

That's one fact
outta the whole life
that I remember.

I mean, in the early,
gritty days of journalism,

you didn't have
an Ivy League degree,

and you never made
a particularly good salary.

You were much more
naturally of the street

than you were when
the whole thing

became a profession.

These journalists today

go to best-- the elite colleges.

We went to
the not-elite colleges.

Hamill didn't even go
to any college at all.

I would say more
than half of the guys

I was a reporter with in that
time had not gone to college.

What happens when you have

that kind of employee base?

You have connections
to the street.

You have cops in your family.

You have guys who
work at sanitation.
You have all that stuff.

If you're gonna cover a city
like Breslin covered it,

you have to have
that street sense.

You can go to Oxford
four and a half,
a thousand years,

you're not gonna come in
and cover the street
like Jimmy Breslin.

♪ ♪

Caldwell:
He could understand

the working guy's,

or woman's situation.

(typewriter clacks)

Breslin:
One day, Cibella Borges
met a photographer

who offered her $150

to pose for pictures that
were supposed to give men

the thought of
incredible pleasures.

Her photographer
spent many months

showing the pictures
around town.

Jimmy and Cibella:
Finally, he was able
to sell them to a magazine

"...called Beaver,
which is a publication

read with one hand."
(chuckles)

TheBeavereditor had
no idea of the name

of the small, Hispanic
woman in the pictures.

That was me.

When I came
on to the police academy,

I knew I was gonna
have a rough time.

Number one,
I was a female.

I was a Hispanic,
and I was 4 feet
11.5 inches.

I was recruited to work
for Public Morals Division,

as an undercover.

And when I went
to the 19th Precinct

that day,
to report to work,

the administrative lieutenant
called me into his office,

went into his drawer,
took out the magazine,

and just threw it
at me, and said,

"Is this you?"

♪ ♪

I said, it's me.

Newsman:
Cibella Borges,
she's a cop

who posed nude in
a girlie magazine,

faced police brass...

Newsman 2:
...posed nude in
a men's sex magazine

before she joined
the force...

Newsman 3:
Ms. Borges is
accused of misconduct

and bringing discredit to
the police department...

Newsman 4:
...disqualifies her
as a member

of the police force.

Pictures in
Beaver magazine.

Borges:
Before I became
a police officer,

a guy approached me and told
me that I was beautiful,

and I would've been
a perfect model.

The pictures never identify me,
just by a name, Nina.

Newsman:
Well, as of today,

Ms. Borges is no longer
a police officer...

Borges:
It just ripped
my heart out

because this
is the job I love.

-(indistinct chatter)
-I hated the news media.

It was like
a Salem witch hunt.

Major headlines
for weeks.

I kept on telling myself,

I'm not a criminal.

I didn't do anything wrong.

And then Jimmy wrote
an article

about what was
happening to me.

♪ ♪

Breslin:
The nasty thought arose
that the police union

did not stand up
for a member because,

in this case, she was
Hispanic and female.

And Cibella Borges has been
suspended from her job,

which paid over
$400 a week,

the most anyone in her
family had ever earned.

Borges:
The union that was supposed
to be representing me

paid $16,000 for an ad

in theDaily News
to attack Jimmy Breslin

because Jimmy Breslin
was in my corner.

He was my champion.

Bill Clark:
Jimmy was probably not
running for PBA president.

Jimmy was left of center,

and cops are always...

(chuckles) right of center,

so when it became any
kind of political issue,

Jimmy was always on
the opposite side.

And he wasn't
gonna back down.

Breslin:
The police department
should've been

proud of the pictures,

as they proved that
at least one member
of the force

is in marvelous
physical condition.

Most officers are in
such deplorable shape...

Breslin and Borges:
...that if called upon
to pose for pictures,

"they would put on
overcoats." (chuckles)

♪ ♪

Borges:
I was so happy that there
was somebody out there,

backing me up because
nobody else was doing it.

I was reinstated by
the Appellate Division

of the Supreme Court
in April of 1985.

Man:
Detective Cibella R. Borges.

(applause)

-Man: Two...
-(shutter clicks)

That's great.

(smooches)

Take care, and thank you
for everything you did.

Oh, shut up. Good.
God bless you.

All over the country,

even in little bitty
cities and towns,

there were people
trying to be a Breslin,

trying to get that
kind of writing

about their community out.

Esposito:
You have Mike Barnicle

up in Boston.

Mike Royko in Chicago.

These people were anchored
in a place and time,

and they told stories
to their audience.

Collins:
They brought
a sense of urgency

about local reporting,
in an attempt

to make local stories
not only important,

but incredibly,
wildly readable.

Interviewer:
What happens
if communities

don't really have
good local journalism?

Well, it's bad.
I'll tell you what happens

is the crooks get away with
what they wanna get away with.

I mean, you know, it's not
at the federal government,

is my view, that your
pocket gets picked.

It's in statehouse,
and it's the city hall.

You know,
the New York Times
used to cover local news,

it no longer does.
I mean, nothing.

Even if you go
on the web page
of the Daily News,

it starts with the fact
that somebody in Australia

ate their baby
or something like that.

The complete obliteration
of statehouse coverage

and coverage at
the local level...

I mean, if you're gonna
be upset about something,

focus on that because
that affects you directly,

every single day.

-(horns honking)
-(sirens wailing)

Hamill:
This is 75 West Street.

It was then the home
of the New York Post.

I had more laughs

and more joy
in this building

than almost any other
place I ever worked.

♪ ♪

(typewriter clacks)

I had been writing letters
to thePosteditor,

and he was
publishing these letters
every once in a while.

And finally he sent me
a letter back saying,

have you ever thought about
becoming a newspaperman?

If so, give me a call.

Kosner:
And he walks in
and he says,

"I'm Pete Hamill
and I have a tryout."

And lo and behold,
his very first story

ran right in the front
of the paper,

and that was the beginning
of his career.

Hamill:
Newspaper people
were flamboyant,

hard-drinking,
bohemian anarchists

with great gifts
for obscenity.

I loved being
in their company

in city rooms,

at murder scenes,

or standing at
the bar after work.

Kosner:
TheNew York Post
nightside,

it was like Devil's Island.

The night city editor was

the former managing editor
of the Daily Worker.

There were drunks,

and screenwriters, and poets.

Everyone was strange.

There was one guy
who was an opera singer,

who wanted to be a newspaperman.

So he would sing... ♪ Oh! ♪

-...and he would type.
-(laughter)

You know... ♪ Oh! ♪
...and type.

(typewriter clacking)

(train clattering)

Hamill:
I grew up in
a blue-collar neighborhood

in Brooklyn in
the 1940s and '50s.

And I was the oldest
of seven kids.

♪ ♪

We didn't think of
ourselves as poor.

And we lived in a place

that was cold water.

There was no heat.

(kids laughing)

♪ ♪

Kathy:
Our neighborhood was
like a small town

because everyone
knew everybody else,

and everyone knew
one of my brothers.

Hamill: We were poor,
but we weren't impoverished

'cause four blocks away
was a public library.

They had a sign outside,

chiseled into the wall. It said,

"Here are enshrined
the longings
of great hearts."

And I'd be 12 or 13,
walking around saying,

maybe I could be
a great heart some day.

♪ ♪

(recording playing)

Kathy:
My mother was a really
gentle kind of a person.

Everything we are,
we can owe to our mother.

Hamill:
I remember when
the atom bomb dropped,

and we were running
around all excited,

"We got a secret weapon!"

And I remember
my mother saying,

"Don't do that.

"Pray for those
poor Japanese.

"They didn't start the war.

"It was the guys with
the fancy uniforms

"and everything
who started the war.

They're just like us."

Denis:
She was a Catholic,
a devout Catholic.

But better than that,
she was a real Christian.

-She hated bigotry,
in any shape or form.
-Kathy: Yeah.

She was an early, early
supporter of Martin Luther King.

You were not allowed
to use any racist terms
in our family.

-You got hit with
a wet dish rag.
-Kathy: Yeah.

Poverty was not a sin.
It wasn't something
to be condemned.

It was something to be fought.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Hamill:
There had been no
heat at 165 Eldridge

for more than a year.

The kitchen bathtub
was filled

with a solid block
of dirty yellow ice.

But the inspectors
come around,
and fill out their forms,

and go away,
and nothing happens.

It just stays this way.

Maybe that is
the story of the city,

or at the least,
the story of the poor:

it just stays this way.

Kathy:
He was an ordinary kid,

but he had an
extraordinary brain.

He was always looking
for the next adventure.

He couldn't wait to
get out and actually

experience life.

(recording playing)

Hamill:
I had dropped out
of high school,

breaking my mother's heart,

and I found this apartment
for eight dollars a week.
(chuckles)

I wanted to be a painter.

I originally wanted
to draw comics,

and went to Mexico,

and there I failed out
of painting into writing.

By the time I came back,

I was a writer
rather than a painter.

I knew nothing. I never
went to journalism school,

or anything like that, but you
didn't have to in those days.

You needed editors
who took a chance

in what they saw as
some kind of talent.

'Cause it's a craft,
it's teachable.

♪ ♪

Breslin:
I once went
to the racetrack

with one of the
sportswriters,

and I saw they had
a big cooler of beer,

and all you had to do was
reach in, in the press box,

-and you had a free beer.
-(laughter)

-So, I sat there that day
and I had, like, 50 of them.
-(laughter)

And I said,
"Jeez, I'm gonna be
a sportswriter for sure."

1951, I covered
a baseball game,

the Giants
against the Dodgers.

The pictures came

by carrier pigeons
from the baseball field.

They'd strapped the film,
after they took it,

onto the homing pigeon,

and threw them up
in the air.

They circle around home plate,

while the umpire
and everybody ducked.

And then they went
up in the sky,

and they flew
to theJournal-American,
theHerald Tribune,

all these newspapers,
and theLong Island Press.

-(flashbulb pops)
-(crowd cheering)

(bell ringing)

Dan Barry:
He will tell you, "Go to
the losers' locker room.

The person you don't remember,
that's where the story is."

Breslin:
The losers' dressing room,

or the loser always
was the best story

'cause there's nobody
there in the language biz.
The best.

Then he hauls off and writes
the funniest freaking

baseball book that
anybody's ever written
in the history of the world.

I mean,Can't Anybody
Here Play This Game?,

you could pick it up today
and read it like a novel

and laugh your ass off.

Barry:
Breslin is drawn to
the New York Mets

because they sucked so bad.

They're horrible, okay?
They're horrible.

Esposito:
Jock Whitney,

who is the publisher
of theHerald Tribune,

his sister owns the Mets.

And the book led Whitney

to want Jimmy to come to
work at the Herald Tribune.

-(typewriter clacks)
-(chatter)

His writing his fresh,

his writing is concise,

and his writing cuts to
the heart of a matter

very colloquially.

TheHerald Tribunewas
none of those things.

It was a dull newspaper.

The New York Times
just overwhelmed us,

so the Tribhad to stay
in business somehow.

It became a writer's newspaper.

It became kind of,
almost avant-garde.

So, Jimmy Breslin was
the star columnist,

and Tom Wolfe was
the star writer.

Wolfe:
The editor would come right
over to your desk and says,

"pour it on!
Don't worry about length."

'Cause I was always saying,
how long should this be?

And he'd look at me
incredulously and say,

"Until it's boring!"

Talese:
Breslin introduced
what became known as,

the New Journalism,

using the specific
techniques of fiction,

but sticking to the facts.

He tried to be a storyteller,

but to tell a story
that's also true.

Breslin:
And they were walking
around looking at me

as if I was doing something
new and I was a genius.

It was all
sports page stuff.

The columns they had in
newspapers before that

consisted of somebody
like Arthur Krock.

You know,
big name from the past.
You ever read him?

You wanna freaking die.

(laughter)

Hamill:
Before I ever had a column,

Breslin had a column.

It was not
the Alsop brothers,

or the guy who read
theWashington Post

and wrote a column.

It was going out,
get outta the building,

get outta the house.

♪ ♪

That was like a revolution.

Bob Costas:
How would you define
yourself as a journalist?

Breslin:
Reporter, not a journalist.

I don't know what
those words mean.

That's a college word.

I just go out and report.
Wanna chase news.

That's the keyword: chase,
chase, chase, chase.

And in the chasing,
you always ran into something.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
Jimmy had opinions

because he was a columnist,

but the opinions were
all based on reporting.

Knowledge that
you can get only

from talking to
ordinary people,

one at a time.

♪ ♪

He knew about worlds
I didn't know about,

and made me feel like
I understood them.

Collins:
If something bad
happened to somebody,

man, woman, young,
old, black, white,

Jimmy was so there,
and he was literally there.

He would go there
to their place.

Carillo:
You hope the dog
doesn't bite you.

You sit down there.
You accept the drink

from a glass that
may or not be clean.

You're part of it.

Breslin:
Because you're dead

with stories done by the phone.

You're not gonna
hold my interest.

There has to be some
chemistry in a story,

and that has to come
from the reporter

talking to the person involved,

face-to-face, getting
those little odd facts

that really make a story.

Wald:
The beginning columns,

the people Jimmy was talking to

were people you could
recognize as New Yorkers.

Tony Bennett:
I used to be a
singing waiter in Astoria

when I was a kid.

I used to wait on tables
and take requests.

And he would be going from bar
to bar underneath the L trains.

Esposito:
He had this place
in Queens,

Pep McGuire's Bar,

and that's the place
where he held court,

and that's the place where

these characters
would congregate.

Jim Hennessey:
Pep McGuire's
was the center.

There was judges
there sometimes,

and there was wise guys there.

It was a colorful place.

Daly:
I mean,
it's not for nothing

Jimmy wrote a biography
of Damon Runyon.

But these are
like people who,

it isn't like they
were on Broadway.

They were out living
their lives in Queens.

Sam Roberts:
Queens Boulevard was his

boulevard of broken dreams.

This is where he
found his characters.

Fat Thomas, Marvin the Torch,
Klein the Lawyer.

They were like some
kind of dreamscape of

what it would be
like if you lived

in the richest,
craziest movie on Earth.

-(alarm ringing)
-There was a guy who
professionally burned down

any house that ceased to
be valuable to its owner,

and you could hire him,
his name was Marvin.

Breslin:
Two weeks later
on a dark night,

Marvin the Torch
arrived at the restaurant
with his team.

Now, arson is
a three-man job.

Two men pour, then one
of his pourers comes out

and becomes
the blanket man.

He holds an old car
blanket and throws it over

anyone coming out whose
clothes are on fire.

Marvin the Torch is my favorite.
I mean, we used to get

fire helmets for Christmas
every year. "MT Torch 1."

We were introduced to

all kinds of
felonious people

when we were
very, very young.

Fat Thomas, you know,

he was my babysitter
a whole bunch of times.

Daly:
He was a bookmaker.

His brother was in
jail for robbery.

During the
Civil Rights Era,

he went down to hotels

and registered as
Martin Luther Fat.

Rembrandt was another guy.
He was an art thief.

Melvin Lebetkin was
Klein the Lawyer,

who he really had a ball with.

Mel was a criminal attorney
on Queens Boulevard.

These were all real people.
They were real.

Many of Jimmy's characters
were at least half Jimmy.

They never complained
because he made them look

wonderful and colorful and wise.

But on the street,

when I worked for UPI,
it was the saying that,

if a guy jumps out of
the 33rd story window,

Breslin's the only
person who'll tell you

what he was thinking
on the way down.

Daly:
Somebody at theTimes

started saying
this stuff isn't real.

You know, there's no Marvin
the Torch, Fat Thomas.

Jimmy took him out
to Pep McGuire's Bar,

and there they all were.

There's Fat Thomas,
there's Marvin the Torch.

You know, they're all there.

♪ ♪

David Frost:
Summarize for us,
if you could,

what the gang that couldn't
shoot straight were like.

Breslin:
Inept criminals, which is

the worst charge of all
you can level at people.

They're not as smart as
everyone says they are, simply.

They can be buffoons.

Robert De Niro:
I read for the movieThe Gang
That Couldn't Shoot Straight

for Irwin Winkler
and Bob Chartoff,

and somehow I got cast.

(speaking Latin) Amen!

De Niro:
I read the book.
I loved the book.

I liked the sense of humor.

It had that New York kind of,

Italian neighborhood
sort of humor.

Go starta the car.

Breslin:
So one guy I know,

when he goes
in the morning
to start the day,

his wife,
they have breakfast,

and then she goes
out in the driveway,

and she gets in
the car to start it,

and he sits down on the floor
of the kitchen, he's like this.

(laughter)

(engine starts)

If there's no explosion

when his wife
starts the car,

he comes out
and kisses her on the head,

and says thank you,
and gets in and drives away.

Oh, he knew everybody.
He knew a lot of guys.

He certainly hung out with

certified bad guys

who the cops were looking for.

(John Gotti speaking)

Costas:
You, like Runyon,

have always found
something fascinating

about these guys
who live on either
side of the fence.

Oh, I like bad boys.
Legitimate people are boring.

They're terrible,
I mean...

That's the worst
sentence of all,

to spend the night
with legitimate people.

♪ ♪

(typewriter clacks)

Newsman:
This is what we have
on a flash basis

from the Associated Press.

Two priests in Dallas who
were with President Kennedy

say he is dead
of bullet wounds.

There is no further
confirmation...

Breslin:
I went to Dallas on
November 22nd, 1963,

when Kennedy was shot,

and I thought that
every minute of every hour
I ever had worked

had prepared me for
writing about this.

This is a marvelous
emotion for you to have

when a guy with a wife
and two children gets shot.

That is called
news reporting.

Pileggi:
You know, you have
the press conference,

and everybody gets
the same information.

So, you all go off and
you write it differently,

but it's the same
pool of information.

Harvey Araton:
Most journalists
would've said,

Fine, I have enough.
I have an incredible deadline.

But this was
the essence of Breslin.

Breslin said, no,
I don't have enough.

I want more. I want more
than every other person,

every other journalist
who's in this room
right now.

And so, he pursued
Malcolm Perry,

and he got
an interview with him

where he found out
everything

down to what the guy
was eating for lunch
when the call came

that Friday afternoon.

John Avlon:
He opens up with the doctor

who gets called to
see if he can save

the president's life, and...

Jackie Kennedy is
standing there,

and you're in the room,
and he's telling their stories.

♪ ♪

(Breslin speaking)

(Breslin continues)

Lupica:
"A Death in
Emergency Room One"

just blew the doors off of

however people had
covered stories like this,

from the beginning of
time in newspapers.

What you were basically doing

is using the tools of a novelist

to tell a news story.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Breslin:
I came to the White House
for the day of the funeral,

and there were
3,000 reporters there.

I can't make a living here.

Everybody's gonna
have the same thing.

So, where does he go?
He goes to the cemetery.

He finds the poor bastard

who has to dig the grave.

A working man,
a black man,

digging a grave

for the assassinated President
of the United States.

And in the midst
of what we're witnessing
on television,

a parade filled with heads
of state following a casket

borne on a caisson
and horses driving
the casket,

you have this piece,

and it appears when the country
cries together.

The whole country
cries together.

Breslin:
Clifton Pollard
was pretty sure

he was gonna be
working on Sunday.

So, when he woke
up at 9 a.m.

in his three-room apartment
on Corcoran Street,

he put on khaki overalls

before going into
the kitchen for breakfast.

His wife, Nettie,

made bacon
and eggs for him.

Pollard was in the middle
of eating them
when he received

the phone call he
had been expecting.

Wolfe:
You're in the home
of this gravedigger,

and you don't even know
how he fits into the story.

But he wakes up,
he gets a phone call...

(Breslin speaking)

♪ ♪

Clifton Pollard
wasn't at the funeral.

He was over
behind the hill,

digging graves
for $3.01 an hour,

in another section
of the cemetery.

"I tried to go over to
see the grave," he said.

"But it was so crowded,
a soldier told me
I couldn't get through.

"So I just stayed
here and worked, sir.

"But I'll get over
there later a little bit.

"Just sort of look around
and see how it is,
you know.

"Like I told you,

it's an honor."

Jimmy Breslin wrote that
our father earned $3.01

to dig the Kennedy grave,
per hour.

And he came in on his off day,
which was Sunday,

and I don't think he got
overtime for that.

But he didn't care
about the money.

He cared more about
being able to
perform that honor.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
Jimmy revolutionized
the column

when he was at
theHerald Tribune,

and...

I ended up with
an opportunity at the Post

because the editor said,

we have to have some
equivalent of Breslin.

And I was offered the shot.

Breslin:
We were doing
the same thing,

against the world.

Araton:
They were like Zelig.

They were like
Forrest Gump.

They were everywhere.

(gunfire)

(explosion)

-(gunfire)
-(yelling)

Hamill:
In all wars, some men die

and some men
add up the losses.

The foot soldier lies in
the stink of a rice paddy,

his feet rotting
in his boots.

The clerks move in
to compile

the statistics of horror,

and hope that, somehow,

such statistics will
dilute the brutality.

♪ ♪

Breslin:
There are people
who have been beaten

because they are black.

They have had friends
and relatives killed

because they are black.

They have been
laughed at and spat at

because they are black.

And they have been
held down on the dust
of the streets

and made to be
dirty and uneducated

for all their lives
because they are black.

Yesterday, they stood
up from the dust,

and they asked for
the right to vote,

which is the start
of the right to live.

-(crowd cheering)
-King: We come
baring a message

that Chicago
can change.

Hamill:
King got up
and shook hands.

He had caused more
controversy in Chicago

than anyone
since Al Capone.

But on this afternoon,
he just looked very tired.

He knows
what is coming up,

and none of it
will be pretty.

For Martin Luther King,

it was all a more
innocent time

when your only goal

was to sit in the front
of a Montgomery bus.

♪ ♪

Breslin:
One cold Sunday morning
in January of 1965,

I went to the
Audubon Ballroom
to see Malcolm X.

He was working on a Sunday,

and I needed a column
for the Monday paper.

I went upstairs
into the back

where the fighters
used to get dressed,

and I was smoking a
Pall Mall cigarette there.

You couldn't smoke at
a Muslim gathering,

but you could shoot guns.

(gunshot)

By the time I looked out,
Malcolm had been shot down.

In the Audubon,
a uniformed cop asked
if anybody had any chalk.

(typewriter clacks)

Hamill:
We're lecturing
people in Detroit

and Newark about violence,

when we're using
violence to attain

the same ends that they
think they're after.

I think it's quite clear that
some of the domestic programs

are going to be cut back
because of the war...

Kathy:
Bobby Kennedy was getting
ready to run for president.

Denis:
Bobby was on the fence
about running,

and Pete wrote
him a letter.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
Dear Bob.

In Watts,
I didn't see pictures

of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga
on the walls.

I saw pictures of JFK.

That is your capital in
the most cynical sense.

It is your obligation
in another.

The obligation
of staying true

to whatever it was

that put those pictures

on those walls.

Denis:
Two days later,
a telegram came.

"I've decided to run.
I need your help."

I think he had learned
from his brother

that you can't
postpone everything.

-(crowd cheering)
-(typewriter clacks)

Kennedy:
So, uh...

My thanks to all of you,

and now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.

-Thank you very much.
-(cheering)

Man:
Senator! Senator...

(indistinct chatter)

And then, bang.

Senator Kennedy
has been shot.
Is that possible?

-Is that possible?
-(screaming)

Oh my God.

Senator Kennedy
has been shot.

Pow-pow-pow!

Pow pow! Five shots.

(indistinct shouting)

(yelling continues)

(Hamill speaking)

(indistinct yelling)

Hamill:
And there was Sirhan
with his arm out

like this and a long...

group of us...

leaped on him.

Breslin:
What's his name, Sirhan.

I'm on his feet,

and sat on him.

(yelling continues)

Hamill:
Robert Kennedy
was on the floor.

His eyes were open.

And the blood coming
from back here.

He had a look that was...

fatalistic.
He never said a word.

Man:
Move back!
Move back, please.

Hamill:
He got rushed
to a hospital.

He lived through all that
night into the morning,

and then died.

Did you go with him to
the hospital, Jimmy?

(siren wails)

Breslin:
They took him back
into the hospital,

and I went right
into the first cab

there or something.

'Cause I had to
make a deadline.

Robert Kennedy
is on his back.

His lips are open in pain.

He has a
sad look on his face.

You see,

he knows so much
about this thing.

It affected me

even worse because I had
made a terrible mistake

as a journalist.

I had become friends
with Robert Kennedy.

You know, I liked him,

and I was friends with him,
and that was a mistake.

I never was friends
with a politician again.

Right after it happened,
we went to the hospital,

and we were both still
drinking in those days,

and we bought a bottle of booze,
and we sat on the curb

right across from the hospital,
and got drunk.

In the days after,
Pete was...

you know, he was depressed.

Hamill:
I went into a funk.

Wasn't writing,

and I had lunch

with Paul O'Dwyer,
one of my favorite
Irishmen.

He said, "What are
you doing now?"

I said, nothing, Paul.

I have a kind of
a writer's block.

He says, "For Christ's sakes!

You're not important enough
to have a writer's block!"

And I laughed out loud,

and I started writing
as soon as I got home.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
For almost 20 years...

Hamill:
On a national stage,

-cultivating the haters...
-(cheering)

...the resenters,
the paranoids.

He played on the very worst
instincts of Americans

on his way to power.

And when he finally
attained power,

he did not change.

(indistinct chatter)

At Kent State,

two boys and two girls
were shot to death

by men unleashed

by a president's
slovenly rhetoric.

If that's the brave
new America,

the hell with it.

Cronkite:
Vice President Agnew

charged that
the liberal news media

are so irresponsible
and thoughtless,

that the American
people are beyond

being shocked by what
they read and hear.

In the United States
today, we have

more than our share of

the nattering nabobs
of negativism.

Hamill:
Then to find out
that by writing

what in fact is happening

that you're under attack for
being vicious, outrageous, etc.

by the president of the United
States, is a little strange.

Interviewer:
Agnew attacked you
at one point, right?

Hamill: Oh, yeah.
He said, "But worst of all
is Pete Hamill

"of the illiberal
New York Post.

Listen to his
irrational ravings."

I used it as the name of my
first book of journalism.

Irrational Ravings.

Interviewer:
What was it like to be
on Nixon's enemies list?

Hamill:
Oh, it was an honor.

There were a lot of good
people on that list.

They call my people

the white lower middle
class these days.

It is an ugly,
ice-cold phrase.

All over
New York City tonight,

in places like Inwood,

Corona, and Bay Ridge,

men are standing
around saloons,

talking darkly about
their grievances,

and even more darkly

about possible remedies.

(Hamill speaking)

Kosner:
Pete was drinking all
through hisPostperiod,

and he got sent home once.

He didn't think anybody
knew he was drunk,

but Paul Sann, the executive
editor, spotted it.

Pete always felt that
he was undereducated,

and he was kind of
an outsider.

That these guys
were towering

journalistic talents,

and so the drinking
probably helped then.

And then I guess, at a certain
point, it kind of tipped over,

and he felt it
wasn't helping him,

and he wasn't in
control of it anymore.

Interviewer:
So, you quit
in 1972, right?

Hamill:
Yeah. I had exhausted
the good times,

and I had other things to do.

I had Deirdre,
my daughter, and Adriene,

who were in my custody,
and I didn't wanna be

an asshole in front of them.

♪ ♪

One night, drunk again,
I came home,

and lurched into
the inner door,

smashing the window.

(Hamill speaking)

Hamill:
They'd awakened
with the crash,

and there, suddenly,
was their father.

Their eyes were wide in
fright or apprehension.

I handed each of them
a rose,

and told them
I loved them.

I did,

but I'd broken
too many things.

I realized,

I don't wanna do this anymore.

On a different level,

I wanted to see how
big my talent might be.

I had no idea.

And I couldn't
do that while

semi-conscious
part of the day.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Jonathan Alter:
In the 1970s,

theNew York Daily News,
which was then

the largest-selling
newspaper in America,

scored a coups. They
had both Jimmy and Pete

in the newspaper
at the same time.

Some people preferred
Jimmy's column.

Other people preferred
Pete's column.

Lupica:
At a time
when most people

are trying to do
Jimmy's act,

Pete never tried
to do Jimmy's act.

Hamill:
I didn't feel
a rivalry at all.

I was a big fan.

Alter:
Jimmy, by then,
was the most famous

print journalist in
the United States.

But he did all this other stuff.

He had run for city council
president of New York

on a ticket with
Norman Mailer for mayor.

Gloria Steinem:
Jimmy came to me and said,

he wouldn't do it unless
I ran as controller.

I said, Jimmy,
no way I can do this.

I can't speak in public.
I had never

spoken in public in my life.

Breslin:
The first step should be
taken to start New York

on its way to becoming
the 51st state.

We've been trying to
live under a system

where a man from
an upstate county,

which has more
cows than people,

decides the destiny of
our public school system.

...and let Harlem run
its own businesses.

Start getting the white
guys out of your lives.
Start running it yourself.

Steinem:
It was never
intended to win.

It was trying to insert

new ideas into the atmosphere,
which I think it did.

Breslin:
I'd like to say
that I am mortified

to have taken part
in a process

which required

the bars to be
closed all day.

(laughter)

Nothing gets my Irish up more

than a soggy,
wishy-washy cereal.

I'm Jimmy Breslin...

Krulwich: He was famous
for being famous.

He was really famous.

It's a good drinking beer.

That's how I describe Piels.
It's a good drinking beer.

♪ Piels! It's a good... ♪

I don't think there's ever been

another journalist

bigger than Jimmy Breslin.

Announcer:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Jimmy Breslin!

-(music playing)
-(cheering)

Hamill:
Occasionally, someone
in the subway would say,

"Are you Jimmy Breslin?"

And I'd laugh and say,

no, I'm the other guy.

♪ ♪

Lupica:
There was a time
at theDaily News

when you'd smell the smoke

before you got
to the office

because Jimmy's
smoking cigars

on this side,

and Pete's smoking
cigarettes on this side.

And if secondary
smoke can kill you,

it would've
killed Anne Marie,

who sat between them, often,

you know, like Switzerland.

Caldwell:
Anne Marie
was the secretary.

She knew a lot of stuff
that was going on,

you know, in...

Interviewer:
Organized crime.

(laughing)

There is a name for
everything, isn't there?

I knew she had
connections.

Her dad was a guy
named Quiet Dom.

Patrick:
My father wrote
something about

Tony Salerno once,

and Anne Marie came in
the next day and said,

"Mr. Salerno says thank you."

That's when my mother said,
"Anne Marie is...

she's hardcore."

Lupica:
And then you'd
hear Jimmy yelling,

and Pete laughing.

It was like a carnival.

And if you were
going to add it up,

one of them was a bit more of
a handful to manage than...

(chuckle) than the other one.

Breslin:
All these people today,
they run around

and they put their arms

around each other's
shoulders,

and they say how much
they like each other,

and they hope
the new year is better
than the old year.

(Breslin speaking)

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Lupica:
Every phone conversation
we ever had

would begin
the following way.

"Yeah?"

What kind of greeting is that!?

Barnicle:
"Yeah?" That's when you
know Breslin's on the line.

"What are you doing?
What are you doing?

The fuck are you doing?"

I was the media critic
at Newsweekon deadline,

on a story about Jimmy
that was a little critical.

The phone rings.
All I hear is,

"Alter! You fuck with me,
I will fuck you good

'cause I'm the fucking
John Gotti of journalism!"

Daly:
"JB Number One!"

My kids'll go,
"It's Mr. Breslin on the phone."

"JB Number One."

Who says that!?
Nobody says that!

Pileggi:
It's like he starts
talking to me

before he gets
to the phone.

Then he gets to the phone,
he dials. Then I answer,

and he's in the middle
of the conversation.

And then he says, "okay!"
Boom! And he hangs up!

But then he'd call
and my wife Nora
would answer the phone.

And he'd be this
sweet guy on the phone.

And she's,
"Eh, Jimmy's on the phone!"

Jim Dwyer:
There was a fire
in Brooklyn.

The editor had one of
the clerks call him.

"Uh, Mr. Breslin..."
"What, what, what!?"

"There was a fire
in Brooklyn and..."

"How many dead?"

Kid said, "Well, there's
two people dead." He said,

"More must die
before Breslin goes!"

And then he hung up the phone.

Cuomo:
My father would
answer the phone

and just say,
"Yep! Yep!"

So I would imitate
my father's yep.

That's all it took to start

the Jimmy Breslin machine.

And he would just go,
"F-ing this, that."

Just a string
of profanity,

which I enjoyed.

And I would say,
"Oh, Mr. Breslin.

You must want my father."

To which he would
take off again

with a string
of expletives.

"You little this,
you little that--" Click!

Breslin:
I'm very rude in the
course of business

because I got no time.

I'm always late
and I'm always nervous
about deadlines.

Bombast never hurt anybody.

Kevin:
We grew up in
Forest Hills Gardens,

which is a very
elite neighborhood.

All our neighbors were doctors.

Everybody, and their wives,
were perfectly quiet.

And he were the Breslins,
who's bombastic.

He always worked hard.

You thought a machine gun
was going off inside.

(imitates typing)

With the cage, he'd slam it.

He built the office
right next to the
kitchen refrigerator.

You couldn't open the
refrigerator.

You'd open the door,

"Aah!" he'd scream.

"I can't hear sounds!

I have to think!"

Breslin:
I've decided that
boring people

are the true criminals.

In a world where
you live for about a
minute and 40 seconds,

what right does
anybody have to deaden
one moment of time?

Kevin:
He's like a mad scientist.

Everybody would
walk on eggshells

because he was writing.

Jimmy, of course, would
sweat over every single word.

Pete would either phone
in from the Hamptons,

or come in,

dash out a column
in 45 minutes,

and disappear.

♪ ♪

Interviewer:
So, what do you mean
by hearing the music?

You write about that.
What does that mean?

I wanna see whether
while I'm reading,

my foot starts to keep time

to the rhythm
of the sentences.

I remember
reading an interview
with Gene Krupa.

"You're keeping a rhythm
going for the band.

What keeps the rhythm
going for you?"

And he said,
"I have a sentence

"I use all the time.

"Lyonnaise potatoes,
no pork chops.

Say, "Lyonnaise potatoes,
no pork chops."

♪ Lyonnaise potatoes
and some pork chops ♪

Hamill:
Was trying to get a rhythm
into the language,

and still tell the story.

♪ ♪

Man:
Pete was this dashing guy

who you saw everywhere,

with his shirt
sleeves rolled up.

Brokaw:
He was...

so authentically male.

Man:
He dated Jackie Kennedy.

Brokaw:
I was on a boat
with Jackie Kennedy

and Pete Hamill
one time.

He was wearing a bathing
suit that came out of

Queens, 1948, (laughing) and...

there was
the elegant first lady.

So I thought,
that's Yin and Yang,

if you ever want
to describe it.

You couldn't walk down
the street with him.

Ron Galella was a famous
paparazzi photographer,

and he hounded
Jackie Onassis.

And Pete wanted to whack
him out a couple of times.

It made the old
Brooklyn come out.

♪ That's the way to live ♪

You never knew
who the hell

he was bringing to
Thanksgiving dinner.

One day, Linda Ronstadt
came walking into my house.

Talese:
I thought,
what does he have?

I mean, what is he,
Mr. America in the bed?

What is the deal with him?

He knew how to listen.
And these women,

they didn't have men who gave
a shit about what they said,

and they didn't
know how to listen.

And listening is the route
to sex and grammar.

And Pete Hamill, who
went to high school,

maybe, and not much further,

seemed to pick up
that this is the key

to a glamorous life,
with some damn glamorous women.

Man: I got to know
Shirley MacLaine
through Pete Hamill.

♪ ♪

MacLaine:
His assuredness
in what was fair

and what wasn't
really moved me.

I loved that he
was from Brooklyn.

We lived in Brooklyn
for a while.

We had so much
fun doing nothing.

I loved our long
walks in New York.

But Jimmy, I remember,
called me up one day,

and said, "God damn it,

"I hope what you're writing
is all made up.

You can't believe
that shit, can you?"

I said, no, Jimmy.

I'm believing what I'm learning,

from other dimensional
truth, Jimmy. Um...

(Breslin speaking)

Denis (laughing):
And then God damn
Breslin writes a column!

And then Pete's sitting
in New York,

and he sees this column!

Breslin writing about
Shirley and Jackie!

Breslin:
Shirley should
get another guy

and go out on Pete Hamill.

What's good for the goose
is good for the gander.

Denis:
Shirley hit the roof,

but Jackie got a big kick
out of it. You know...

And he finally got
Breslin on the phone,

and in classic Breslin,

Breslin said, "I needed it!"

Like he was stuck
for a column!

Breslin was a
notorious thief.

You could give
Jimmy an idea,

you'll find it in his
column the next day.

MacLaine:
I called Jimmy
and raised hell.

What the hell are you doing?

Think of something more

advanced where your
intelligence is concerned,

than who Pete dates,
for God's sake.

Interviewer:
So, talking about Jackie,

were you in love
with her, Pete?

Uh, I wouldn't tell you that.

I'd really agree with

Garcia Marquez,
who said once,

that everybody's
got three lives.

Public life,
a private life,

and a secret life.

Private life is by
invitation only.

The secret life is
nobody's business.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Newsman:
In New York,
the search continues

for the .44 Caliber Killer,
Son of Sam.

His victims,
mostly young women

with shoulder-length
dark hair,

usually shot at
very close range,

while sitting in
parked cars at night.

They've been shot
with a .44 caliber,
Bulldog revolver.

(gunshots)

(alarm ringing)

Breslin:
I was living in
a section of Queens

called Forest Hills
Gardens.

He killed one young woman,
Christine Freund,

five blocks from my house.

Five weeks later,
at virtually the same spot,

Virgina Voskerichian,
walking from the subway

after classes at Barnard
College in Manhattan,

had a gunman suddenly
crouch in front of her.

(Breslin speaking)

Patrick:
Anne Marie called
and said, "Jimmy,

"I got the scariest
letter in the world

here at the paper."

♪ ♪

Breslin:
"Hello from
the gutters of NYC,

"which are filled with
dog manure, vomit,

"stale wine,
urine, and blood.

"Hello from the sewers
which swallow up
these delicacies

when they are washed away
by the sweeper trucks."

It was printed in big,
backslash printing,

marvelous cadence.

Signed, Son of Sam.

All of a sudden, you get
a letter from Hannibal Lecter

saying I wanna talk
to you. Holy smokes!

What kind of power
did he have? I mean,

that gives you
an indication of the...

seductiveness of those
columns he wrote.

He got into people's heads

in a way that most
writers can't do.

"Oh wow, he wrote to Breslin!
He wrote to Jimmy Bre--"

But like in those days,
Jimmy Breslin was a big enough

star, where you'd be like,

oh, it's a little crazy,
but yeah. (laughing)

Yeah, why not Jimmy Breslin?

Breslin:
The police called and said,

"could we meet you at
the 109th Precinct?

This is a letter
from the fella."

He said now,
"What do you think you could
do with it to help us?"

Clark:
Jimmy comes up to the squad
room. It was like,

"What the hell is that
guy doing here? You know,

he hates cops. What is he
doing up here? Who let him in?"

This is the guy
who brought us the letter
from the Son of Sam.

Roberts:
The police urged us to

print the letters and Jimmy
to reply to the letters,

in hopes that he would
continue writing,

and there would be more
clues to his identity.

Interviewer:
What would you wanna
talk to him about?

-You wanna talk to
him about his writing?
-I mean, he writes so well.

It's a shame to
waste it out there!

I thought Hamill wrote
the thing, it was... to me.

I'm not kidding!
It's a well-written piece.

The guy could make
a living writing!

He told me, "We're telling
the guy he's a good writer."

I was like, what!?
You're using the newspaper

to see if he can sucker a guy?

And he said,
"Well, basically, yes."

He probably is the first

killer that I can ever recall

who understands the use
of the semi-colon.

I think he's had
some kind of training,
obviously.

Clark:
There's no doubt
in the world that

Jimmy was very instrumental
in keeping attention

on the case. I mean, he was
a major player in the thing.

♪ ♪

Shane Smith:
"The only way
for the killer

"to leave this
special torment

"is to give himself
up to me.

"All he has to do
is call or write me
at theDaily News.

"It's simple to get me.

The only people I don't
answer are bill collectors."

So, he's asking a serial killer

to give himself up to him.

Fantastic. Takes balls.

Man:
I am very pleased to
announce that the police

have captured

a man whom they believe
to be the Son of Sam.

Newsman:
David Berkowitz, 24,

spent his days
sorting letters
in the post office,

so meek and mild and quiet,
nobody ever noticed him.

Newsman 2:
He had a faint smile

as police moved him
around the city today

for booking, to court,

finally, to a mental ward.

He made a statement,
"Well, you got me."

Newsman:
In the end,
it was this parking ticket

that lead police
to Berkowitz.

Breslin:
There was a woman in
Brooklyn was out the night

Son of Sam had shot
the last two people.

And she had seen the car

and remembered it had
a parking ticket in the car.

And when she told police
what she had seen,

it was bingo.

Interviewer:
Did you ever have
a moment saying,

"Jeez, did I cause this?

Did this column
trigger this nut?"

No. And in reading
the psychiatric report

on Berkowitz, it just would--
when it's released finally,

it'll just reinforce
that, too. I mean...

Garry Trudeau:
The Son of Sam story

raised all kinds of
horrible questions about,

you know, how this is
taking new journalism

into new territory by having

a public dialogue
with a serial killer.

You know, I think it
came to the fact that,

explaining why
that original letter
was published in the news,

which I have a lot
of problems with,

-it's the police--
-You have problems with

publishing
that letter?

Then obviously, you're
not in the news business.

You never even
considered that that

might have prompted him to do
a killing that particular time?

Well, then, what should
we do? Not write?

I think you wrote a good
deal too much about it, yeah.

I certainly do,
and I think that...

The strips that I did
were a parody

on this exploitation
of a very terrible story.

♪ ♪

In the strip, I had
a fictional character named

Son of Arnold
and Mary Leiberman,

call into the
New York Daily News,
and try to pitch his story

before he'd actually
started committing murders.

And over the week,

he couldn't get
a hold of Breslin,

because Breslin's
too busy negotiating

the movie rights
for Son of Sam.

And by the end of the week,
he gives up.

Interviewer: Do you think that
that was the biggest story
of your career?

Oh, God forbid,
no, I hope not.

What was the biggest
story of your career?

-Me.
-Why were you the biggest
story of your career?

Read! You'll see.

(thunder rumbling)

♪ ♪

Breslin:
My first wife Rosemary
and I lived together

in love and affection
that was deeper

when she died in the
middle of a rainy night
in June in 1981,

than when I met her
on a Saturday night

in the spring of 1952.

She came running into
the Crossroads Bar.

The car had dropped
dead across the street

on the way home
from the wedding.

She came through
the door laughing

and with rain on her face.

"I caught the bride's
bouquet," she said.

She threw
the flowers to me.

"Now you caught it!
You wanna get married?"

♪ ♪

I knew she was
gone just as fast
as I fell in love with her.

She had an operation for
breast cancer in 1976,

and then seemed fine
for years.

She ran my life,
and those of her children,
almost totally.

She leaves us with
a tradition of decency

that we must
accept to carry on.

As was said
of another aristocrat
such as this one...

"Earth received
an honored guest."

He was devastated.

Completely devastated.

♪ ♪

James:
It was really the end of
the era in Forest Hills.

The door on that house,
for him, was closed.

He did not have
the ability

to, you know,
really deal with

the single-parent family.

Patrick:
I've never seen a person

who cares about
people so much,

but doesn't express it
directly to that person.

And I don't even think
I saw him cry
at my mother's funeral.

And he wouldn't let
us do it either.

♪ ♪

Breslin:
My wife died and that
took me out of here.

I walked out. I couldn't
even look at the place.

Gone!

Get me out.

I don't want any memories.

♪ ♪

I always went to
work the next day.

What do you--
Do you wanna sit home?

Oh...

Not I.

He came up to
the bedroom in Forest Hills.

It was six o'clock
in the morning. Kicked my bed,
told me to...

I'll speak truthfully, "Get
the fuck up and go to work."

That was the day after
my mother was buried.

"Stop your crying.

Life goes on,
the clock doesn't stop."

I remember those quotes.

They're burned in my brain.

The clock doesn't stop.

Time is the most
valuable thing on Earth.

♪ ♪

Ronnie Eldridge:
He thinks there's nothing

as lonely as the sun
on a blade of grass,

and nothing as beautiful
as a crowded street
in Brooklyn.

He thinks boring
is a felony crime.

He loves New York

and thrives on its
energy and excitement.

And finally, he's been my
husband for almost 20 years.

Together, we have nine children,

and 10 grandchildren.

So, welcome
to my program,

Eldridge & Company.

-Yes.
-Can you believe that
you've been married to me

-for almost 20 years?
-Yes.

Been delightful. Why,
you haven't liked it?

No, it's been a challenge,
but it's been great.

It's never boring.
As we've already said,

-you don't like that, right?
-No.

Anybody out there
that is thinking

of getting married,
and gonna take on

step-children from
two marriages,

under the same roof,

do me a favor, I'll give you
the home number. 212-496--

-Host: Oh, I wouldn't do that.
-(laughter)

Call me! 7616.

Call me,
I'll tell you the truth.

Don't even try it!

(laughter, applause)

Everybody hated everybody.

It was beautiful.

Eldridge:
Jimmy is very supportive
of me and my career.

He wanted me
to run for office.

I don't think I would've
if he hadn't really
prodded me.

He taught me a lot because
he has that ability

to go to the heart of an issue.

You know, shortly
after we were married,

I'd pick up the news,
and it's Jimmy saying

he's gonna go
and live on the street.

He's gonna be
a homeless man.

He had had a feud with
the Koch administration

'cause they had moved
a homeless man off a highway.

This homeless man
had been living there

in a beach lounge chair
and holding his cup out.

And Jimmy
wrote about him,

and the next thing
you knew,

Jimmy became
a homeless man.

Every homeless
person in New York,

it seemed to me,
came to visit him.

Interviewer:
When he finally
got his Pulitzer,

it was for that connection
to ordinary people.

And putting faces
to AIDS patients.

To me, he won the Pulitzer
Prize for that,

in a time when AIDS was
scaring people half to death.

(typewriter clacks)

(crowd shouting)

James Duff:
All around us,
there was a crisis.

I lost 70% of my friends.

David Camacho was

the first big love
of my life.

When David got sick,

we went to dinner
with 10 people.

And everybody else was served

with plates and silverware,

and we were served
with plastic dishes

and plastic forks
and knives.

And this is the kind
of willful ignorance

in which people
were living.

And into this
walked Jimmy Breslin.

Jimmy was looking for
a way to tell this story,

and asked David if he...

would be willing
to talk about it.

David was, "Absolutely.

I want people to know
this is happening
to human beings."

Breslin:
He had two
good weeks in July,

and then the
fever returned

and he was back
in the hospital

for half of last August.

He got out again
and returned to 8th Street.

The date this time
doesn't count.

(Breslin speaking)

Tell me about
living with David.

Duff:
Well, let's see.

He came home from work one day

with a temperature
of 104 degrees,

and he was bright red.

He had those damn things

-that show on your
face. Those...
-The lesions, yeah.

He didn't care about the
lesions, out he was going.

But you can't convince a
government that a disease is...

No, this person, this
person, who went to Rutgers,

who worked his,
his heart out...

Mmm.

for the rights of the...

underprivileged
in this country,

is not considered a human
being by this government.

-Hmm.
-And so, what does it matter?

It's just one more faggot

in a graveyard.

♪ ♪

After the interview
Jimmy did with me,

I was working at
a theater restaurant,

and Jimmy would come in,

and he would
ask for a coffee.

And he said to me,

"What are you doing, James?
What are you doing here?"

I didn't come from
a wealthy family.

I had to work.

And I also thought I was
probably gonna drop dead soon.

And Jimmy was like, "But,
what if you don't drop dead?

"You don't wanna do this
the rest of your life.

You should be
writing something."

And I would say, "Well,
I don't know what to write."

And he goes,
"Like that makes a difference.

"I don't know what to
write most of the time.

"I go outside, I find
something to write about.

Write something."

He would hector me.

He came in
a difficult time,

and he could have
just walked away.

He got everything
he needed.

And he didn't.

Carillo:
We're looking at the Manhattan
Mini Storage facility

in Lower Manhattan,
and this used to be
the New York Post.

This is where I worked
for many years.

Right on the river,
between the Manhattan
and the Brooklyn Bridges.

Any time there was
a Brooklyn Bridge jumper,

everybody would
rush to the window,

and the photographer would
put a long lens on the camera,

and follow the guy.
Click, click, click, click,
splash!

It was quite an experience
for a young man.

And this is where
I knew Pete Hamill.

(typewriter clacks)

Alter: In the '90s,
when newspapers
were hemorrhaging cash,

and often changing hands,

Pete somehow managed,
at different times,

to be editor of both
the New York Daily News
and the New York Post.

Avlon:
Pete Hamill goes on
an editor's track.

He notably goes and tries
to be editor-in-chief

at theNew York Post,
in a time of real flux,

trying to turn the tide

during the death of print.

Kosner:
Pete is a wonderful editor.

And he was a
wonderful manager

because he's a wonderful
person. Everybody loved him,

and people respected him.

Carillo:
He'd come to you,
and he'd say, "Well,

you know, that lead,
maybe you should try..."

He would never say, "Do this!"

And you'd realize, oh,
he's right. He's right.

I think this man knows
what he's talking about,
and he certainly did.

I did not fire
Pete Hamill.

(crowd shouting angrily)

Newswoman:
Two days after a bankruptcy
judge awarded ownership

of thePost
to Abe Hirschfeld,

Hirschfeld held a news
conference announcing

Wilbert Tatum
to run the paper.

This is what happened when
Hirschfeld told workers

he didn't fire Hamill.

(angry shouting)

♪ ♪

Newsman:
Hirschfeld shot back today

by firing 71 employees,

and threatening
to fold the paper

if it doesn't
publish tomorrow.

Man:
This is for
Abe Hirschfeld,

this is a cheap two-dollar tie
that he gives out as a gift.

This is a cheap
piece of shit.

We're gonna burn it here.

Fuck you, Abe!
Fuck you!

Hamill:
More than anything else,

I'm sad about
the possibility

that this paper is
in mortal danger.

Alter:
In defiance
of Abe Hirschfeld,

the inmates, basically,
took over the asylum.

And with Pete barred
from the building,

the staff put out a paper
that trashed their owner.

Carillo:
The opponent's weapons
are money and power.

Our weapons are only
words and images.

So, we fight with
what we've got.

Newsman:
After Hirschfield
got a court order

banning Hamill from
thePostbuilding,

the renegade editor
conferred with his
reporters and editors

from a diner next door.

When I picked up today's paper
and I saw what those guys did,

laying their entire
careers on the line,

to put out a newspaper
that was totally fearless,

I had no choice.

Carillo:
So, Pete sat in
the South Street Diner,

and the layout sheets
were brought down to him,

so he could edit the paper,
and they went back upstairs

with ketchup and vinaigrette
dressing on them.

And it was really glory days.

People got
a vicarious thrill

about the wild west element
of theNew York Post.

-(shutter clicks)
-(laughter)

Newsman:
It was a zany scene

outside bankruptcy court,

as prospective
New York Post publisher,

Abe Hirschfeld,
kissed and made up

with the editor
he fired last week.

The slaphappy ending came

after the judge worked
out a compromise

in which Editor-in-Chief
Pete Hamill

gets editorial control,

and Hirschfeld has legal
control of the business.

Carillo:
The revolution was
a thrilling thing,

and even though it wound up to
be, sort of, in a losing cause,

it was unforgettable.

♪ ♪

Newsman:
The nation's oldest,

continuously
published newspaper,

is now officially bankrupt.

Newswoman:
Enter thePost's
former owner,

Rupert Murdoch.

Alter:
When Murdoch demoted Pete,

he quit, and that
chapter was closed.

Jimmy was also in
the headlines around that time,

but not in a way
you would wanna be.

Dwyer:
I think Jimmy is a genius

who spent a good
part of his life

trying to persuade
people that he's not.

He does this by being boorish,

by being impossible,

making up lists of people
he's not talking to this year.

And it's an act, but sometimes,

as they say, the dancer
becomes the dance.

♪ ♪

Newsman:
Jimmy Breslin is in
a heap of trouble

for alleged racial slurs,

and the staff of
Newsday's in an uproar.

Newsman 2:
It all began when

New YorkNewsday
columnist Jimmy Breslin

wrote this column
last week,

complaining that his wife

was not spending enough
time at home with him.

Enter Ji-Yeon Mary Yuh,

25-year-old reporter
working for the
same newspaper.

Yuh:
It seemed off
from the image

of Jimmy Breslin,
the columnist,

that I had in my mind.

And so,
I sent him an email,

saying that
I was disappointed
with his column today,

and outlining
my reasons why.

Newsman:
She sent a message
to Breslin,

saying the column
was sexist.

Breslin reportedly
stormed into the newsroom,

taking aim at Yuh's
Korean heritage.

The tirade went
something like this.

"I can't stand people who
don't know their place.

"The explicative
doesn't know her place.

"She's a little dog.
Just a little cur,

"a cur running down
the street.

"She's a yellow cur.

Let's make it racial."

Esposito:
He insulted the woman.

Jimmy was a
big commodity,

an important part
of the paper,

but Newsdaywas
a very ethical place,

and so this was
taken very seriously.

So, I said, well,
you know, you have
to write an apology.

And he goes,
"This is my apology.

"Once again, I am wrong.

JB Number One."

It was like...

that's it?

Okay, that's the apology?

It's not an apology, of course.

It's an acknowledgment
that he was wrong.

So I write, you know,
an apology for him.

Yuh:
He did send me a note.

It wasn't quite an apology.

"I'm sorry if I offended you,"
I believe is what he said.

But,

after I received that note,

is when he went on
the Howard Stern Show.

(recording playing)

♪ ♪

Esposito:
He made it worse.

He dug himself in
and he made it worse.

So, we had a meeting.

And there was a debate as to
whether we would fire Jimmy.

I objected. I thought

that was too big
a price to pay.

So, they said,
"Well, we'll suspend him."

At which point they
told me, "You do it."

I was like,
"Thank you very much.

I'm the youngest
person in the room."

So, I call Jimmy up,
and I say,

"Look, you're suspended,
two weeks."

He just lets me have it.

"You're just a clerk.
You were always a clerk.

You're no good."

Patrick:
I think the suspension
probably killed him,

'cause I don't think he had
a bigoted bone in his body.

We weren't brought up
to be like a lot
of the other people

in our neighborhood
who, you know,

were bigots. True bigots.

Costas:
Suppose I work next to you,
and you're 20 years,

and there's a general
level of respect,

and I didn't think
you didn't have
your fastball one day,

or you missed the point
and I say, "Jimmy,

that column
wasn't very good."

-Gonna take a swing...
-No, you don't come up and say,

"How could you
write such a thing?"

"How could write such a thing
about women," or something.

"How could you write
such a thing about men?"

I do what I please,
and you shut up, huh?

Do me a favor.
And that's the way it must go!

-I've got to--
-To anybody, or just
to Jimmy Breslin,

because he's
Jimmy Breslin?

Because I've gotta
do it tomorrow.

I don't know what
you're doing tomorrow.

I have to do my thing tomorrow,
and I don't wanna be bothered.

You know,
Jimmy is an impulsive

guy from the streets,

and I thought, you know,

he just made a huge mistake.

In anger, he said a really
dumb, destructive thing.

Eldridge: You know,
I said, how could you
have done that?

But he never realizes

the impact of what he
says on other people.

He doesn't.

I don't even know if
he knows what he said,

but he doesn't like it when
other people criticize him.

Esposito:
It's been said
of Breslin that

no sleight was too small

for him to elevate
to a feud.

That you are gifted,

that you are creative,
doesn't mean you're wise.

Doesn't mean you're balanced.

Doesn't mean you're
not an insecure,

sniveling little child inside

who takes
an insult from a rookie

and turns it into a war.

Like anyone who's
so self-involved,

that was part
of who he was.

Collins:
He was terrible in
many ways, but...

his sense of sympathy

was just amazing.

♪ ♪

Caldwell:
From the time that
I met Breslin,

he had such a feel

for the plight,

condition of black people.

Breslin wasn't

afraid to go into their homes.

He wasn't afraid to go
into their communities.

He asked me to take
him a lot of places.

"I want you to take me to

the roughest black
bar in this town."

And I told him,
if he went down there,
you might get hurt.

I can't defend you down there.

I don't even like
to go there myself!

We went down there,

and he went right
talking to people,

and they were acting
sensibly to him.

(typewriter clacks)

-(yelling)
-(glass breaking)

Reporter:
Demonstrators gathered
again near the site

of a car accident that
left a child dead,

and set off violence in
that Brooklyn community,

where blacks
and Hasidic Jews
live as neighbors.

(yelling)

Reporter 2:
Angry protesters
took to the streets,

tossing Molotov cocktails,

overturning cars,

setting fires...

Daly:
I remember coming home.
On the TV,

there's a picture of
a burning yellow cab.

I say to myself, there's
only one person on Earth,

first of all, who's dumb
enough to take a cab to a riot.

Second of all, could
get the cabbie to do it.

And I was right, it was him.

-(yelling)
-(police radio beeping)

(yelling continues)

(siren)

Breslin:
The cab I'm riding in

suddenly is running
into a wall of young
black kids.

-(yelling)
-(glass breaking)

Into the cab, they piled,
the young and the angry.

One of these young guys was
up on the hood of the cab,

and he swung a baseball
bat at the windshield,

until the windshield
turned seafoam green.

They were throwing
punches, holding me,

ripping up my clothes

for the only thing they
wanted at the moment.

Money.

(yelling)

Quinn:
They ripped
his clothes off,

and he's there
in his underwear.

Jimmy probably had, like,
the old-school underwear.

You know,
just those old-school,

you know,
tighty-whiteys and T-shirt.

Eldridge:
We had to go
to the hospital

to have stitches
in the eye.

He didn't make it
a big issue.

Other people made it
a bigger issue than he did.

The thing he made
a big thing of was

that what stopped
the crowd was some black man

there recognized Jimmy,

and pulled-- got
everybody away from him.

That was what was
important to him.

♪ ♪

Costas:
Did the irony of
this occur to you?

You spent a whole career...

-Breslin: Yeah.
-...as a champion
of blacks...

-Yeah, sure.
-...for decades,

putting their words
and their concerns
in the paper,

-and now, you were
just another white guy.
-So, what?

I've been for them
all their lives,

what do they care?
What does that mean?

You've been for me
all of your life,

well, you didn't do
very good for me,

I'll tell you that
'cause I'm still here.

(yelling)

Daly:
The cops came and
basically said,

"How do you like all your
stinking friends now, huh?"

Real happy you've been
championing these...?

Some cop said, "How do
you like the animals now?"

That was a cop.

-Interviewer:
What did Jimmy say?
-Fuck you.

Breslin:
I get down to
the police station.

They were standing outside.
"What happened?"

I says, get lost,

and I got in the cab
and went.

I didn't even want them.

I got beat up.
I wouldn't even go in there.

How do you like that?
Now that's carrying a feud good.

-You gotta gimme that, right?
-(laughing)

Payne:
Jimmy's an Irish American.

And the Irish,
over time, occupied

a dominant space in the
New York City Police Department.

Breslin:
People with
Irish backgrounds

in the city of New York

have hardly been
in the forefront

of the drive towards
civil rights. In fact,

they might have been on
the other side of the fence

too much and there was...

I've had quarrels
with them over that.

Barry:
He famously referred to
the Irish as having those

shopping center faces.

In other words,
the Irish had come up

and struggled in a city
that didn't initially

welcome them, and now,
we're not as receptive

to others who had
come up behind them.

Daly:
Crown Heights,
that just shows

that it was all genuine.

Here's a guy who actually

believes and feels
what he writes.

If you go and you read him,

you see what's wrong about us

and what's right about us.

Interviewer:
You didn't have even
a touch of bitterness about

the fact that you'd just gotten
the shit kicked out of you?

No, it's part
of the game!

I really believe that.

If Jimmy Breslin would just
put it down in plain words,

you know, short sentences,
and build,

build little bricks of beauty

from small little parts...

Pete Hamill was like Mahler.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
A great gray cloud

billowed in slow motion,

growing larger and larger,
like some evil genie

released into
the cloudless sky.

Sheets of paper fluttered
against the grayness,

like ghostly snowflakes.

Anybody who can place
you in the moment,

and make you feel what he
was feeling in that moment,

has done all the job
you can ever ask

for a reporter
or a columnist.

And Pete did that that day.

(inaudible)

Woman:
Oh my God!

-(rumbling)
-(people screaming)

Hamill:
I yelled to my wife, "Run!"

And we start together,
and this immense cloud,

perhaps 25 stories high,

is rolling at us.

Bodies come smashing
together in the doorway of

25 Vesey Street,

and I can't see my wife.

I keep calling her
name and saying,

"I've gotta get outta
here! Please, my wife!"

Go, go, go, go!

I thought he is following me.

Finally,
I turn back and,

"Oh my gosh,
he's not here!"

And I said, oh my gosh, I...

made the worst
mistake in my life.

I felt that I had
failed her somehow.

That I should've been with her,

hand in hand all the way.

♪ ♪

The street before us is
now a pale gray wilderness.

There is powdery white dust
in gutter and sidewalk,

and dust on
the roofs of cars,

and dust on the tombstones
of Saint Paul's.

Dust coats police
and the civilians,

white people and black,

men and women.

It's like an assembly
of ghosts.

(Hamill speaking)

That moment where
I opened the door,

and she was right
there coming out,

tried to find me.

Uh...

it was like, phew!

♪ ♪

-Woman (on phone):
Hi, Mr. Breslin.
-Hi.

I just finished
your daughter's book,
and I really enjoyed it.

I thought she was very
honest and courageous,

and I just wanted to know
how she's doing right now.

S'all right.

You know, this week,
fine. Thank you.

She's got a blood disease.
That's what that's about.

-(hospital chatter)
-(machine beeping)

♪ ♪

Eldridge:
You know, she was
sick for 16 years,

and he never
missed a visit.

Never.

Dunne:
Every doctor's appointment.

Every infusion.
Every transfusion.

Jimmy was there,

100%.

Culkin:
She had her mother's name,

and because Rosemary
pursued writing,

I think the apple of Daddy's
eye was exactly who she was.

(beeping)

Patrick:
What Tony Dunne
said to my father

while my sister Rosemary
was deathly ill,

he goes, "You know, JB,
we love you. I love you.

Rosie loves you."
And my father, he...

the word was hard to say.
But he gave you a little dip.

A little hit with
his right shoulder.

And that's a big thing,

to get the shoulder.

I knew exactly what that meant.

You know, it meant...

It meant, "Thank you.
I love you, too."

Interviewer:
But he would never say it.

I don't think he ever could.

I don't think he ever could.

♪ ♪

Maria:
His column after
Rosemary's death,

Jimmy had this vision.

In the last moments of
Rosemary's life that

her mother came to her.

(Breslin speaking)

...as if to the first
day of school.

♪ ♪

Eldridge:
He would always talk
about the fact that

three women
in his life died.

His wife Rosemary,
his daughter Rosemary,

and his daughter Kelly.
Always.

He would just say it.
"Three women in my life died."

Death's taken
a lot out of Jimmy.

Jimmy, Jimmy gets angry.

Jimmy's angry at the people
who've been taken from him.

Interviewer:
When are you absolutely
the happiest?

You're not put on this
Earth to be happy.

You're really not.

Eldridge:
Jimmy...

What do you want?

You have...
a thing about

people dying. I mean, you say
you don't have any feelings.

But, you know,
the other day,

we were looking up
a number in your phone book,

and you looked at
the page and you said,

"God, everybody's
gone." Right?

And what do you
do when they die?

You write what?

What's that? Oh, in
the book? What do I write?

-1-800-Heaven?
-Oh yeah.

-So what does that mean?
-That's his number.

So, you do believe
they're in Heaven?

I don't know.
I'm rooting for them.

I don't think they deserve
it, if I knew them.

(Eldridge laughing)

Interviewer:
Are you scared of dying?

Breslin:
No, it's too late.

I'm gonna be 87.

So, what does
it matter

whether I wanna go
or I don't wanna go?

The game-- (chuckles)
look at the scoreboard.

How exciting can it be when
you're in the last inning?

♪ ♪

(indistinct chatter)

One, two, three!

-(blowing)
-(laughing)

-Man: Give him a hand.
One for good luck.
-Woman: Woo hoo!

-(clapping)
-Happy birthday!

Look at that.

(indistinct chatter)

Jim, I'll talk to you later.

Yeah. I'll call you,
I'll give you a call.

(typewriter clacks)

Man:
There aren't anymore
Breslins and Hamills.

This was the
last expression

of great 20th-century,

muscular
American journalism.

Journalism that's gone.

It's gone.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
When I got the news
that Jimmy had died,

it was like 25, 30 people
had just left the room.

He had adapted
certain masks

to get through life.

I never mistook the masks

with the complicated
human being that he was.

-(typewriter clacks)
-(chatter)

Breslin:
I wrote the day seen
exactly as it was.

I always figured that
this was the only game.

Just go to any neighborhood
where the poor live,

and tell the truth
about what you see.

Please do not
put out a sermon.

That is for Sunday.

Avlon:
The old newsroom culture,

that he came out of,
certainly is gone.

But the heart of it

is absolutely real
and transcendent,

which is real reporting
with a ton of voice,

that comforts the afflicted
and afflicts the comfortable.

And that's eternal,

as long as the press is doing
its job in a free society.

The need for narrative
is never gonna go away.

It is why we've been
sitting around campfires

for 100,000 years,
listening to stories.

But it's gonna change form.

So, it may be the same
content in different bottles.

It's more democratic.

There's more public access.

On the other hand,
there's more public access

to a lot of bullshit.

You know,
I think if you hooked

the craft up to technology,

I think it would be greater
than we ever imagined.

I think you just get
older and you die.

It's over, and some other
guy will pick it up and...

do something that we've
never seen before.

I mean (laugh),
it's that simple.

There's always
gonna be new people.

Hopefully who take up the time,

and keep moving forward.

Whatever it is,
this chaos of the moment,

will resolve itself eventually,

and those people
will swim into place.

They're there.

♪ ♪

Hamill:
Journalism,
if it's any good,

becomes history.

(birds chirping)

It's always being adjusted.

It's always being
enriched by the new
people that come,

who, in turn,
get enriched by

the old people
who are here.

This tree is a
symbol of it.

This tree has
watched the change.

Has lived through it.
Has survived.

It's held up with help,

like most old creatures.

It's got a cable
running across it

to help some of the branches.

But, here it is.

And so this tree reminds us

of the passage of time,

and the ache we have,

and the joy we have,

being able to find out and say,

it's still here, God damn it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪