People around Clint, those that work for him, won’t talk without his permission. Even many people who had known him for years — or hadn’t seen him in years — wouldn’t talk to me without his permission. They did not get that permission. He has been the master of his own image and publicity. He is a very different kind of actor than Jack, and a different kind of person — and people feared his reaction in a way that was not true of Jack. On the other hand, Clint has left many people behind in his career — personally and professionally — in problematic ways; and many people had never been approached before for their views of and experiences with him. More than one key person left behind told me that I was the first person who had ever asked for an interview about Clint. And for the first time, in any of my books, many people asked to speak to me “off the record” or went “off the record” during their interviews. I tended not to use what was off the record, but what I heard informed my portrait.

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