For Rudin, any absolution may have less to do with his own reforms — real or merely performed — than with a recognition among writers, directors, actors, and investors that his sins often redounded to their benefit. Whether Rudin regains his position in film and theater or not, this period of exile has forced a lot of his peers and colleagues in the business of high-middlebrow culture to contemplate how he was able to succeed so consistently and for so long, how complicit they were in his reign — and whether they should ever welcome him back.