This is the first meeting of the [committee] that was put together, ... Truly, until we had the federal grant in place, there was really no real purpose of meeting.

As our September FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) meeting followed Hurricane Katrina by approximately three weeks and was held concurrently with the formation of Hurricane Rita, I felt that there was insufficient information as well as great uncertainty about how these forces would play out in the near term,

This meeting is especially important as the committee had not met since 1987.

Morris Kite was the chairman. I remember the first meeting of that committee, out in an abandoned Victorian mansion that was the first location of the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles, which Morris helped to found.

Meeting all the other filmmakers has been such a blessing,

But the Joint Committee is not meeting, so we are in a vicious circle at the moment.