Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill’s brilliant, honest and courageous writing defined New York City journalism. For five decades, these colorful columnists and longtime friends spoke for ordinary people and brought passion, wit and literary merit to their reporting on their city and nation. Their writings probed issues of race, class and the practice of journalism that resonate powerfully today. Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists explores the famed writers’ intersecting lives and careers while celebrating New York’s grit and charm during the last great era of print journalism. Born and raised in working-class New York City neighborhoods, Breslin and Hamill were products of fractured Irish-American families. They rose through the ranks of reporting without formal training or college degrees. Sometimes working on competing newspapers, and sometimes working on the same publication, they became good friends who challenged and inspired each other. They were also swashbuckling, often controversial personalities whose TV appearances and comings-and-goings around town could be as entertaining as the stories they wrote. Among the landmark stories they covered were the Kennedy assassinations, the Bernhard Goetz and Son of Sam killings, the AIDS crisis, the Crown Heights and Central Park Jogger cases, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists draws on rare archival footage, family archives and interviews with Hamill and Breslin (who died in 2017). Offering insights are cultural figures, journalists, editors and those who knew them best, including: members of the Breslin and Hamill families, Tom Wolfe, Guy Talese, Gail Collins, Gloria Steinem, Spike Lee, Colin Quinn, Robert De Niro, Shirley MacLaine, Andrew Cuomo, Shane Smith, James Duff, Earl Caldwell, Richard Esposito, Mike Lupica, Sam Roberts, Charlie Carillo, Robert Krulwich and Garry Trudeau. Michael Rispoli (The Deuce) voices passages written by Breslin, while Hamill reads his own work.
