EDITOR ON LOCATION IN DINER

''The difference between this and a miniseries is that we're living this,'' Hamill says, undoing his tie between TV interviews. ''We don't have a last act yet.'' Late at night one staffer riles up the newsroom to prevent another ouster: ''We don't believe they'll have the courage (to occupy Hamill's office), but if they do they're gonna have to carry us out!'' On March 19, the bankruptcy judge permitted Hirschfeld to run the Post and Hamill to edit it, for now. Hirschfeld barred four top staffers, including Hamill's staunchest supporter, columnist Jack Newfield, from the building. In solidarity, Hamill moved his office from the Post to the South Street Diner, next door. ''It's Elaine's South,'' McDarrah says, comparing the funky luncheonette to the snooty writers' hangout uptown. ''It's neat that we're above-the-fold news in the Times,'' he continues, referring to the page-one coverage in the Post's august rival, but the reporters yearn to get back to the work of ''bashing politicians and crashing Eddie Murphy's bachelor party.'' McDarrah insists that the Post party is not over: ''Bess Myerson and Father Ritter lost their jobs through the New York Post. In '52, we exposed Nixon's slush fund and provoked his Checkers speech. The paper is like a cockroach-you keep hitting it with a broomstick, but it's not going away. We're like a fish flopping on a dock: Some rich fool keeps coming back and kicks us in the water.'' Hoffmann offers a different allusion: ''It's like that movie The Wages of Fear-we're in this big nitro truck that could explode at any second.''