I retreated to my old Rudolph Schindler Residence on 833 N. Kiings Road and tried to survive as best as I could. It took me six months during which time I reconsidered my life up to then and decided that contrary to what I had assumed, the most important thing in life was to try to be happy. I made a list of all that made me happy and remembered the day my father gave me a Kodak Reflex Brownie on our cruise from Brooklyn Naval Yard to Buenos Aires in 1945. I decided film made me happy. I enrolled in UCLA, Motion Picture Department. At the end of the summer program, Dean Colin Young happened to see my name on a projection credit. In those days you had to stand up to defend yourself from critique. He recognized my name and recalled my house in Malibu, which he admired and asked what was an Architect doing in his summer program. I explained my marital circumstances. Perhaps he too had gone through the same tragedy, in any event he started giving me leads to jobs.

Within the first month of starting the Masters Program, I started shooting for Dunhill Records, a division of Universal Pictures. In those days, MTV-like videos were called Promos. I would take a B- or C+ group like the Irish Rovers to the Marina del Rey, have them jump around and make fools of ourselves, give the exposed film to my counterpart in Universal, John Hyde, and it would appear within weeks on Dick Clark or some other TV program. My sample reel became more diversified and using the new arc light at Melnitz Hall, my 16mm reel looked fairly good. Enough to warrant an advance into feature film production.

I've made a total of 4 feature films in the 11 to 12 years that I worked in film. Each picture seemed to pass like smoke. I decided to put the profit into something solid. Because, I had earlier worked and even taught Urban Planning, I put my lessons to serve myself.

Beginning in 1968, with each picture, I bought a piece of land for the future in what I had studiously expected to be an increasingly more desirable beach town - Venice, CA. While this was going on, I was still a graduate student at UCLA. I determined that some 6 years had passed and I should think again of starting a family. This time I thought that I should not depend on love alone but base my decisions less haphazardly. This time I followed the Benjamin Franklin edict and tried to bring some data , order, and calculation to my decision. I sought out the many girls I had met in school and out. Eventually, I settled on 3; I tried to live as intimately as I could with each. My choice was a fellow film classmate from Beverly Hills, Adrienne Jampolis Lowe. We lived together for 2 to 3 years and have been married now an additional 33 years this October 25th. From this union we have been blessed with another child. A daughter this time, my stylish and beautiful Jessie Schwin-Fong Lowe.

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