NEW YORK, December 23, 2004 -- I went again to my friend Jack's 'Fight Night' the other day. The usual motley crew was in attendance — a packed house of pols, pros, cons, cops, champs and cut men, mooks and musicians, movie stars and directors, unionists, journalists and assorted hangers-on.

But Fight Night wasn't at Jack's place this time. Instead it was at the Riverside Chapel.

And Jack was there only in spirit.

The rest of us had gathered, most likely for the last time, to celebrate the life of our mutual friend Jack Newfield, the warm, funny, brilliant, acerbic, and articulate polymath whose enthusiasm, erudition and wide-ranging interests had brought us all together for food, fun, frivolity, and the fights — as well as serious discussions and networking non-pareil.

The memorial service was one of those uniquely happy/sad events, packed with the famous, the infamous... and the unknowns and anonymous, the ordinary folk whom Jack spent so much of his professional and personal life sticking up for.

Wynton Marsalis blew some sad blue notes; Mario Cuomo reminded us what it's like to have eloquent rather than incoherent leaders; ex- FBI agent Joe Spinelli marveled at the unlikely love he felt for ex-SDS member Newfield; Jimmy Breslin rightly pointed out the failure of New York's two Senators and its mayor to oppose the brutal, immoral war in Iraq, and how it would have Newfield turning in his grave; and fight trainer Teddy Atlas reminded us how Jack's friendship was never a passive thing, but always forceful and action-oriented…

It was just like old times at Jack's place in the Village.

I remember the first Fight Night I ever attended there — newly initiated into the unique fraternity of disparate people known as "Jack's friends."

The first two people I saw were a sitting judge and the police commissioner.

The next was a capo in the Colombo crime family.

They were discussing the merits of Mike Tyson with Spike Lee and Helen Mirren.

You can't make this up…

And although my personal enthusiasm for boxing had disappeared years earlier when, sitting ringside, I saw Marvin Hagler hit Vito Antuofermo so hard his eyebrow flew off and landed on the suit of the scribe next to me, I kept going back to Jack's Fight Nights for the crowd and the scene if not the fights.

Now it's all over, gone forever, and far too soon.

Like Marvelous Marvin, Jolting Jack was still at his peak, hitting harder than ever, when his life and work was snatched from him, and from us — an unexpected knockout round before it could and should have been expected.

I had a chance to work with one of my heroes, and I suppose I should be thankful for it.

But I'm not — I'm hurting and sad and angry instead.

It's bad enough to witness the death of journalism.

But worse to witness the death of journalists like my friend and colleague, the great, and now late, Jack Newfield.

Like so many, I grew up in awe of Newfield's muckraking work in the Village Voice, the granddaddy of alternative newspapers.

When as a teenager I first left New York to attend university in Massachusetts, it was people like Newfield (and Andrew Kopkind and Paul Solman and other pioneers of the form) who inspired me and led me, away from writing poetry, to emulate them by practicing a new and exciting form of journalism at Voice-like weeklies such as the Boston Phoenix and the now-defunct Real Paper.

Later I had an opportunity to write an investigative piece for the Voice, and Newfield — ever supportive of younger reporters, and a mentor to many — had kind words for me.

But it wasn't until I moved back to New York in the mid-Eighties, and began producing television series like Globalvision's 'South Africa Now' and documentary films for PBS Frontline, that Jack and I became friends. Like me, he was expanding from print into television and film, and we soon began to compare notes regularly. Although a neophyte to the visual media, Jack quickly became adept and was a key player in the production of some of the best documentaries of the era, building on his substantial body of newspaper and book work but bringing a new dimension to it and to subjects of longstanding interest to him, from his hero Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to his nemesis, boxing impresario Don King.

Soon Newfield — as enchanted with a new medium as a kid with a bright new toy — began calling me regularly to discuss topics, stories, magazine-show segments, and entire films that he wanted to make. His interests ran the gamut, from boxing to politics to rock and roll, and we ended up working together on pieces about Rudy Giuliani, the aforementioned Don King, and a promising but mysteriously missing Russian boxer.

But it wasn't until Hollywood came calling, and we lived through our own version of "Get Shorty," that Jack and I became truly close.

Briefly, here's what happened: a boxing lifer named Tommy Gallagher began pestering us about a friend who was in jail "for the one crime he didn't commit."

As any reporter who's ever covered cops, crooks and the courts can tell you, everyone in the joint claims he's innocent.

Most doing time are lying... but a few really didn't do the crime.

Mainly to get Tommy off our backs, Jack agreed to look into the matter.

Lo and behold — it turned out to be true, or true enough that after Jack wrote a couple of columns about it, the con was released from prison while his case was re-opened.

A few days later Jack called and said, "You'll never believe what just happened."

The con's grateful wife had telephoned him, weeping for joy. "How can we ever thank you enough?" she asked. When Jack told her he had just been doing his job, she responded, "Even so — I want you to know that you'll always have one free murder with us!"

Jack was merely bemused — but I saw an entire film in the comment — "One Free Murder."

Soon we were "in the movie business" together. And — to make a long, long story fairly short — one script, two rewrites, one 'polish,' one law suit from Dustin Hoffman, many meetings with Sylvester Stallone, one Mafia-style "sit-down" in a shuttered Rego Park restaurant, and many studio executives later — we were out of the movie business together — albeit with some money in our pockets, lots of great stories to dine on, and a film project in permanent 'turnaround.'

We talked over the years about writing another film together — sometimes about baseball (Jack's all time hero was Jackie Robinson, of course,) sometimes about rock and roll (Frankie Lyman, Moishe Levy) and even, occasionally, about boxing (maybe Sugar Ray Robinson, but more likely one of the older and way more obscure fighters I had never even heard of -one of the many underdogs who had seized Newfield's imagination and never let go.)

Now Jack's gone and his friends have got to let go.

And I'll never watch another boxing match again.

Donations in Jack's memory can be made to:

The Dr. Theodore A. Atlas Foundation
P.O. Box 140998
Staten Island, NY 10314

-- Rory O'Connor's blog, "Media Is a Plural," can be found at www.roryoconnor.org.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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