Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, Jonathan Alter, John Block
This is a doc about Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, columnists for the NY Post, NY Daily News, and other papers in New York.
I had forgotten about this part of my life, when I was obsessed with these two men, and this movie has given it back to me again.
When I was in HS in NJ, every so often, my Dad would bring home a Post or Daily News from the City, and I'd voraciously read anything Hamill or Breslin wrote. I later found a newsstand near my school, and I'd scrounge up change so I could by the papers daily, to feed my addiction to these two giants. They taught me so much, the least of which was what makes a good writer: mostly clarity and conciseness.
I went to college in Florida and could no longer read either of them, as it was before the Internet.
But when I got my first job after school in NYC, and would ride the train into Hoboken and then the PATH into Manhattan, I would read both religiously on the way, while eating a bagel and trying to get used to the taste of coffee.
There is nothing I loved more about working in NYC than riding the train and reading those columns. I read them before the front page, read them before the back cover sports stories, read them before the movie reviews. I did not want to start my day until I knew what Breslin and Hamill had to say.
I tend to prefer Breslin over Hamill now, just a bit, as his prose is so compact, so clean, so impactful, as brevity and punch is what I most like now. He hit with a hammer and never missed. When Iswas younger, I preferred Hamill a bit more than Breslin, as his writing style was beautiful and effortless, and flew about the pages with the ease of water flowing over rocks. Breslin's was hard like a hammer.
But they both were sincere and honest and wrote about what really mattered: people.
Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill are probably two of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. And this movie does them good.
******
Breslin on the death of John Lennon
Breslin, on the death of his daughter Rosemary, also a writer, after a long illness:
As it was with the mother who went before her, the last breath for the daughter was made before an onlooker with frightened eyes.
First, there were several labored breaths.
And here in the hospital room, in a sight not distorted by passion, was the mother sitting on the end of her bed, as the daughter once had sat on the mother’s in Forest Hills for a year unto death. They both were named Rosemary. When the mother’s last breath told her to go, the daughter reached in fear, but her hand could not stay the mother’s leaving.
By now, Rosemary, the younger, is married to Tony Dunne. He knew she was sick when he married her. He then went through 15 years of hospital visits, stays, emergencies and illness at home and all he wanted was for her to be at his side, day and night. His love does not run. And now, in the daughter’s hospital room, as it always does, fear and deep love brought forth visions of childhood.
The daughter is maybe 4, sitting on the beach. She wants money for ice cream. The mother’s purse had money to pay the carpenter at day’s end. Earlier, the mother had tried to pay a carpenter by check and he leaped away, as if the check was flaming. The daughter plunged into the purse and found no change for ice cream. With the determination that was to mark every day of her life, she went through that purse, tossing large bills, the carpenter’s money, into the air, digging for ice cream change. She sat there infuriated, throwing money into the sea wind. The mother was flying over the sand trying to retrieve it.
Another labored breath.
Then I could see her later, and with even more determination. Typing a script with tubes in her arms. Writing, rewriting, using hours. Clearly, being attacked by her own blood. She said that she felt great. She said that for 15 years.
I don’t know of any power that could match the power of Rosemary Breslin when sick.
Suddenly, the last breath came in quiet.
The young and beautiful face stared into the silence she had created.
Gone was the sound of her words.
The mother took her hand, and walked her away, as if to the first day of school.
Last edited by Dominic; 02-01-2019 at 12:54 AM.
