You spoke French and English (with an awful accent, it must be said). You came from a mixed marriage, half-Catholic, half-Protestant. And all that gave you a broad perspective and natural tolerance rare in your generation. For me, born after the war, it was much easier to follow in your footsteps. Animators were your family: Alexandre Alexeieff, Norman McLaren, Lotte Reiniger, John and Faith Hubley, Jiri Trnka, Jiri Brdecka, Yoji Kuri, Ion Popescu-Gopo, George Dunning, all of the artists of the Zagreb school but in particular Zelemir Matko, Jan Lenica, Peter Földes, Ernest and Gisèle Ansorge, Paul Grimault, all the Italians. Your favorites were the American Bill Littlejohn and the British-Hungarian John Halas -- your colleagues for decades on the ASIFA International administration. Halas, who would concede to friendship only with heroes and demi-gods, esteemed you as perhaps no other.

For all these people, in greater and lesser degrees, you were a stimulus, an example, a point of reference. For me you were also a friend, a teacher -- along with two other of the great departed (quite different from you), the illustrator and pin-screen animator Alexandre Alexeieff, and the professor from Chicago Robert Edmonds.

When you realized that animation had entered my blood (and it got me quite quickly), you did everything, with absolute discretion but without the least hesitation, to make sure that it never left me again. You escorted me into ASIFA. You counseled me freely and articulately about what to read (not just related to animation; you placed Umberto Eco into my hands...), and feigning to ask my opinion, you would manage to correct my inexperience. You introduced me to dozens of filmmakers so that I could interview them. And at every festival, conference, discussion group or cocktail party you would take me to one side and talk, talk, talk... Thus offering me another great lesson: You must doubt whether it is a historical truth when it comes from the anecdotal memory of a creative artist, even the best one, whether a filmmaker, or even yourself. Subjected to scrutiny and verification, your own memories more than once proved inexact. But you, Max, were an author of fiction, and nothing in the world could have made you give up changing a story with your imagination if the change would make it more entertaining than the truth.