FOREWORD
I t was half a dozen years ago that the notion of doing this
book lhst took root. And in that time I ve changed my mind
half a dozen times about whether---and how---to put it to-
gether. Simply writing it， of cour:，c， would have bccn thc most
obvious way. l hat is， writing it myself. But at the beginning， be-
cause 1 wasn t sure i d have time for the task， 1 worked with a
young ghost writer named Nell Offen. We had long conversations，
taping sessions， followed by months of waiting for the product of
those encounters. Neil and I became good friends， but somewhere
along lhc way we agreed that it wasn t going to work out.
So the following summer 1 settled down to have a go at it myself，
and by the time 1 quit 1 had put fifty thousand words to paper. But
then I had to go back to work on 60 Minutes， and the fact is that
the rigors of doing twenty-live or thirty film pieces a year for that
broadcast soaked up just about all available psychic energy and
made it impossible (at least for me) to work up the requisite ardor
~hat such an additional undertaking required. At that point， I felt I
had no choice but to abandon the project， or at least put it off until
a time ~hcn the ticking stopwatch of O0 Minutes was no longer
serving a:， lhc insistent alarm clock that governs most of my work-
ing life.
But my agent， Bill Adler， who must bear the responsibility for
inducing mc to do this book， was determined to keep the ，，~:nture
alive， and when Bill has his mind set on something hc is a very
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