INTERVIEW: New HBO doc remembers golden age of print journalism
Photo: Jimmy Breslin was one of the most influential journalists of the 20th century. He is pictured at center. Photo courtesy of Paul Schwartzman / HBO / Provided by HBO Media Relations with permission.
Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, two of the most influential American journalists of the 20th century, are the subjects of a new HBO documentary called Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists. The film airs Monday, Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. on the cable network.
To tell the story of Breslin and Hamill, two giants of print journalism who plied their trade at the New York Post and New York Daily News, three directors were needed: Jonathan Alter, John Block and Steve McCarthy.
“Besides being about Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, the film is about race and class and the press,” said Alter, a journalist and columnist, in a recent phone interview. “Race, class, the role of the press — these are as resonant as any topics in America right now.”
Alter said it was a challenge for the co-directors to edit the film, even with the immense help of HBO’s team. They spent basically a year discussing what fit in the narrative and what needed to end up on the cutting room floor.
“We had 100 hours of archival material to go through and about 100 hours of interviews, so it was a lot of material,” he said. “These were all really complicated decisions that for me was a new experience since I come out of print journalism myself. All three of us have been in television news for a long time, but making these decisions was tough because we had an embarrassment of riches. On the other hand, all three of us had experience reducing a story to 1:30 on NBC Nightly News, so we were able to make choices. But making it a coherent narrative while making those decisions was tough and challenging.”
Breslin, who died in 2017, was a Pulitzer Prize winner who crafted a career out of covering New York crime, politics and society. Sometimes his focus turned to the national dialogue, like when he reported on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Hamill is currently 83 years old and can look back at an illustrious career that includes newspaper columns, best-selling books and even the liner notes for a Bob Dylan album.
“There was a ‘when-giants-roamed-the-earth’ quality to the influence they had, which wasn’t just about them,” Alter said. “It was about the structure of media in mid-century America and how print journalism was more at the center of how we consume news, and it’s not like that at all.”
Breslin was unable to see a cut of the film before he died in 2017, but Alter said Hamill has seen the documentary and enjoyed the movie. It must have been satisfying for Alter to showcase his team’s finished product for a legend that had such a great influence on his own life.
“They both influenced me a lot,” Alter said. “I would say for Jimmy my single favorite column was [‘A Death in] Emergency Room 1,’ which was the less-famous column about John Kennedy’s assassination,” Alter said. “Jimmy gets to Dallas on the evening of Nov. 22, 1963, and he manages to find out what happened inside the room where the president died. There were so many other reporters there; they weren’t able to get anywhere near as close as Breslin. It was just an amazing feat of reporting on deadline and then beautifully written, and the gravedigger column is one that’s taught in every journalism school and is more famous.”
As far as Hamill’s journalism, Alter found the author’s post-9/11 column in the Daily News the best.
“I knew what it was like to try to write that story,” he said, “and that was a beautiful piece of personal journalism that both told his own story and gave readers a sense of what it was like to be in the middle of one of the most significant stories in American history.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists will air Monday, Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. on HBO. Click here for more information. Click here for an interview with John Block and Steve McCarthy.
