I was always there at the Co-op for the first few years, and it was me who always ran those showcases and showed their works, so we were always working and for a couple of years we even advanced when they needed money through the Co-op until Jack Smith decided that he will never return that money, he deserves that money, but as I say, this is film-makers money, it's their rental. You know, they... no, he deserves it. So, then, of course, he left the Co-op. So, from there on, there was not advanced any monies. But it was a working relationship. Even back to Jerome Hill. Already in 19... it was like maybe in 1961 when Jerome asked me, he said, maybe we should establish some... oh, maybe it came from me, I don't know, but grants to film-makers some small... so for five or six years, every year, I handed to Jerome a list of 12 film-makers and every film-makers got $40 every month. So, it was our sort of very humble grant system, I kept, you know, I looked, it was not only the American, it was, you know, Peter Kubelka who was on it, also I included some European film, avant-garde film-makers. And if any of them were doing better in the year that followed I took him off or her off and put somebody else. And that was very, very, very helpful. I know Peter used to always, whenever I saw him, said, oh that's saved him because that was like paying the rent and even paying for some wine to celebrate the coming in of the money. Half of it they bought wine for half of it and the other half went to paying the rent. So, it was very, very helpful. And that's about that kind of relationship, of the practical and down-to-earth. But they kept coming to me and I had somehow always to try to solve it and looking now through my notebooks and calendars of that period, and I see $5 to Harry Smith, $2 to this and that and that was some, my usual tactic was that, okay, Harry you're broke so now I will take what I have in my pocket and I will put everything on the table and I will take yours from what you have and we'll split. I was the winner in many cases, in many instances, but Harry usually had nothing left. So, much that Naomi Levin, one of the filmmakers began spreading a rumour that was really, that I was really a millionaire in disguise, that I actually was a millionaire, but I was just playing a sort of a poor man, like an eccentric millionaire.
