If I can mention three people whose influence profoundly marked my life they would be my father, Henry Miller, and Ron Gottesman. My father gave me strength and knowledge, Henry Miller taught me Rabelaisian laughter and Chinese wisdom, and Ron Gottesman inspired my enduring devotion to humanity. All three have something mystical that emerged each time we were together. Meeting Ron had something else, however, it was – each time – reassuring. I met Ron for the first time in the auditorium of the UCSB campus in 1976 while attending a summer course on Sergei Eisenstein. As a budding film maker I'd read all of Eisenstein's essays. They were my bibles. I'd seen and admired Battleship Potemkin and was looking forward to watching his other cinematographic oeuvre which was part of the course – and learn more. I distinctly remember the first moment I stepped into the large dark empty auditorium. Everyone that summer was either at the beach or away on vacations. There were only 3 other students present. Ron stood aside waiting for more students to arrive. He was unlike all other professors I'd met on UC campuses. Casual, candid, instantly likable, and full of human warmth. Despite the fact that we were only an audience of 4 we felt like a hundred. He gave us a different, a more detailed interpretation of Eisenstein's masterful work and the epoch that spawned such outstanding cinematographic art. His Eisenstein lecture left the indelible mark of a course whose purpose is not just to remember facts and figures or to know something more but it motivated you to apply that je ne sais quoi to your life and work. The nomination of my film Luther Metke at 94 (a 1980 UCLA Ethnographic film production) for an Academy Award I can only attribute to the result of his teachings. A year or so later we met for the second time. I drove into the USC parking lot in my vintage pre-beat generation VW van whose front seat consisted of a loose wooden plank that slid around each time I took a turn, and the roof was riddled with rusty holes. The break fluid had leaked so it had no breaks. But I was looking forward to take Ron out for lunch at his favorite restaurant in Chinatown. Ron hesitated a moment before he scrambled valiently into my historic vehicle. Wincing as I sped down the freeway exit the wind blowing in all the holes in the roof, our seat slipping underneath us, as I calmly downshifted into the first gear to reduce speed explaining calmly that my breaks were shot, he didn't panic as the wreck came to a sudden halt at the next red light with a grinding of the handbreak. In the restaurant Ron revealed his passion for Szechuan cooking. I shall not forget the exultant conversation over exquisite kung pao chicken (it was one of his favorites and my first time) and moushou pork. His words flowed from topic to topic like a mountain creek over pebbles, something I had the pleasure to experience again and again each time we met. The third time and most remarkable meeting took place many years later by sheer accident and if you wish to belie coincidence – I'd been thinking about Ron. On my way to watch a film at the Cinémathèque at Chaillot Rebecca and I walked through the park and around a turn I run smack into a face I'd not seen for a long time. We both stopped in our steps. It was Ron and Beth coming out of the Cinémathèque, they were visiting Paris for a few days. The fourth meeting took place again in L.A. first in the office of the Humanities Department of USC, where I interviewed him for a French tv documentary on Henry Miller. He was working on an annotated version of the Tropic of Cancer which I look forward to reading. We had dinner at his Santa Monica home. The meal was sumptuous and the wine was delicious and he put me at ease. He introduced me to his other passion: Jazz. I had reached a dangerous point in my life, seeking for a way to extricate myself of personal, professional, financial and family problems. Unbeknown to him I was seeking help and he must've felt it. He suggested I write a screenplay based on Henry Miller's A Devil in Paradise, a short story from Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Miller invites a decadent French aristocrat astrologer who'd come into disrepute and misery after the Liberation of Paris to Big Sur, to help out a former Paris buddy. This human gesture turns into a nightmare. Moricand hates nature, disrupts Miller's marriage, and finally falls so ill he needs to be repatriated – all at Miller's expense who's himself begging for money from friends and neighbors. I rejected the idea – not another work on Miller! But after my return to Paris producer Georges Hoffman, Miller's agent, said he intended to produce a film based on A Devil in Paradise and whether I'd consider writing the script. This strange coincidence made me accept. (The film hasn't been made …) When I finally needed to prepare a lecture at the Sorbonne on Kant and the Metaphysics of the Internet, I immediately emailed Ron. What would he say? He gave me encouragement and help. He was back as though he'd always been there and will always be and should be for many others since Ron always leaves an indelible, energizing human spark that you carry in you as a human gift to continue.