I had my childhood answer: distance. I withdrew. I was silent. Never as firm as Molly, I always saw two sides to every issue and every judgment. And so, in the body of my conviction, there appeared the worm of doubt. I still believed what I’d done was correct, but no matter that my reasons had been sincerely founded and carefully thought out, there was something indecent—that’s how I felt it, as shame—in what I’d done and something murky in my motivations. What I’d done was correct, but was it right? What self-concerns were hidden in the fine talk, how powerful a role had my love of filmmaking, which I’d been discounting, played in what I’d done? I felt unresolved, alternately humiliated then resentful of those who criticized me. Which is why I remained reserved and silent for so long. My refuge was what it had always been, to drown unhappy feelings in work.

No one who did what I did, whatever his reasons, came out of it undamaged. I did not. Here I am, thirty-five years later, still worrying over it. I knew what it would cost me. Do I now feel ashamed of what I did? When a friend who read the manuscript for this book recently asked if I had met with the others I would name as I had with Clifford and Paula and Lee Strasberg, I answered I had not. For a moment I wished I had. But to wish that now, after all these years, is meaningless. The truth is that within a year I stopped feeling guilty or even embarrassed about what I’d done, and the reason for that is a series of events in the year that followed, which I will now come to.