1902 - 1951 World boxing champion, 1929-35 and also homosexual, a jazz musician and a lover of champagne and opium

“From his birth he could place a punch as a poet does a word.” Jean Cocteau

AN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY COMIC

BY JACQUES GOLDSTEIN, ALEX WIDENDAELE AND CAMILLE DUVELLEROY

ProDUCED BY Laurent Duret [email protected] +33 (0)778842394 / bachibouzouk.net

Al crossed the Atlantic, and the flamboyant world champion had a ball in . sUMMARY His winnings finally raised him from poverty, and Paris fell in love with this incredible negro who quaffed champagne between rounds. He lived in high style, keeping racehorses in Maison Laffitte, driving a Bugatti and funding Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris’s first ethnographic expedition. Al knew full well, however, how fragile this all was – like his fingers, which were breaking with increasing frequency. When Cocteau ran into him in a club in Montmartre, Al had just lost his world title.

A fallen champion, he was playing the sax and singing in the pit of a club. The Al Brown: A Mysterious Force tells the story of a fantastic poets offered Al a truly Faustian pact: Cocteau would help him quit drugs and boxer and world champion who detested boxing. return to his former glory. The price he had to pay, however, would be to give up He was a sensation in Paris from 1926 to 1938. We will tell his story in an interactive comic blending FIction and boxing once he had regained his title. This was ‘l’art pour l’art’, or the poetry’s documentary. entrance into the murky world of boxing. Cocteau loved and manipulated the boxer. With money from Coco Chanel, Al abandoned drugs and brilliantly won back his world title. Yet he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hang up his gloves, and Cocteau distanced himself from the boxer. Al Brown returned to America at the outbreak Panama Al Brown was an undisputed master of his art, but he hated boxing. of the Second World War, and died in penury in 1951 to general indifference. A talented musician, and a lover of champagne and opium, he rarely trained. As a homosexual in a milieu where ostentatious virility was the norm, and a young He was, in all his great intensity, what the poet called ‘his poem in black ink’. black man in the early 20th-century United States, he was a loner who led an extraordinary life.

Al was born in Colón, Panama. His father was a Jamaican émigré worker who had helped to dig the canal, but he died prematurely of exhaustion, leaving his son to grow up penniless in the Pueblo Nuevo ghetto. However, young Al discovered during a street fight that he had a potent gift: an explosive right jab that came as even more of a surprise because he was skinny, spindly even, with disproportionately long arms and legs. He was soon spotted by boxing scouts and was crowned Panamanian champion before heading to Harlem, the black capital of the Americas. There he experienced his fair share of misery and glory. He won every one of his fights by a , but it wasn’t enough for him to avoid being branded a pariah. America was profoundly racist at the time and would not tolerate victorious black boxers, especially if they won with style. Rumour had it in Harlem that life was sweeter for blacks in France, and that one of their own, , was bringing the house down in Paris. Panama Al Brown and Cocteau

page 1 A Mysterious Force is an interactive documentary biography in which imagined events It is also relevant to paint a portrait of Al Brown today because his extraordinary play as important a role as memory. This is fitting for a character whose name went destiny gives an insight into the nature of sport, its role and its depictions, all of down in history as a boxer, but whose complex story as a man has been forgotten. which are central to our modern world. Of the boxer there remain films or radio broadcasts of some of his bouts, and a Al Brown is an anti-hero – like James Baldwin, who rejected being called a “black” large number of photos and newspaper headlines; of the man there remains only writer: he wanted to be a writer, period. the shadow in Cocteau’s writings. The last person to know him, Jean Marais, died Brown also refused to be dressed in clothing that was not his own. in 1998, leaving only second-hand witnesses, mostly scholars of Cocteau’s works. He wanted to be free. A well-known artist, Arroyo, spent several years of his life trying to gure out the The aim of ghting was to finish of his adversary as quickly as possible, take the mystery of Al Brown. Everyone was captivated by the grace of the character and the purse and go off with his musicians to paint the town red. He liked fighting for the mystery of the man. elegance of its moves, for love of the game. He didn’t like the punches, the hatred or death. He loved life – and life was elsewhere. He didn’t play by the rules, nor did he care. He touched the stars, he was free and he could live life as he wished – at least for a time, in Paris. But he was to pay the price.

THIS PORTRAIT RAISES ISSUES OF AN ‘INTERSECTIONAL’ MAN : he was black (during segregation), Hispanic and homosexual. How does someone live in a society where he won’t fit into the boxes that society would like to put him in?

We shall therefore call on a number of witnesses from different historical periods (a journalist, his sister, a barman, etc.). These witnesses and the library material we have will allow us to incorporate a documentary into the (very well- documented) drama that we are writing and drawing; and it is precisely this difficult line that we intend to walk.

Lastly, this story can be held in one hand: it is specially designed for reading on a smartphone. We will combine a fragmented rhythm of reading with an intuitive interface and an easy-to-use format. Our project investigates this “mysterious force”. Outside the ring, Al Brown preferred to let his demons run wild rather than subjec- ting himself to the strictures of training.

SO A MYSTERY SURROUNDS HIS FATE – THE MYSTERY OF THE SHORT AND BRUTAL DISTANCE HIS FIST TRAVELS WHEN HE PUNCHES HIS OPPONENT. “A MYSTERIOUS FORCE” IS THIS STRANGE GIFT ON WHICH AL BROWN BUILT HIS WHOLE LIFE.

page 2 page 3 A STORY IN THE PALM OF THE principes YOUR HAND Panama Al Brown is designed to be read and OF OUR INTERACTIVE played on a mobile phone. We have invented a visual, spatial and mobile DOCUMENTARY Comic unit on one and the same screen The smartphone screen is the panel AND the page. The panel is vertical, and the story nestles in the reader’s hand.

The reading experience will be punctuated by gentle animations: we shall employ gyroscopic THE ESSENTIALS parallax effects and GIFs in our panels. The interface is invisible, as we want to allow people to immerse themselves in the story. This is a true story. To reach the menu the reader has to slide the It’s a story for reading on a mobile. left-hand edge towards the centre. The menu The reader will repeatedly come across period video footage, texts or photos. allows the reader to view the list of chapters, This archive material will interweave to form a very fluid experience, a blend of change language (French, English or German), drama and documentary. to use the sound options (turn the soundtrack The reader will fight a battle that cannot be won. on or off) and share via social media. The The comic will be hyper-disseminated on social media. Every day a new chapter will interface uses the same graphic design to the be posted in the form of stories on social media. At the same time, the entire comic printed comic (colours and font). It is simple is available as a web app, which is available in freemium mode, i.e. the first round is and discreet. free, the other five need to be bought.

Readers control how the narrative progresses. They move their fingers across the screen at their own speed. They can rewind the story if they so wish: it’s entirely up to them. The story is told in six rounds and 30 chapters. It takes between one and a half and three minutes to read a chapter.

We have deliberately inserted a specific type of page between chapters and rounds to mark the changes. We always give the time it will take to read the section, which allows readers to pause when they need/wish to. Lastly, the comic works on all mobile devices. We use a black full-width bleed and all our presentations are done in responsive design.

page 4 MERGING DOCUMENTARY AND DRAMA

Our comic combines drama and documentary. It won’t be necessary to click or do anything in particular to “find out more” because the content glides past under your fingers. It is always tricky to switch from one mode to another in a story, and the temptation is always to banish the documentary to a separate part of the app or to a different page on the website. People are scared of losing some of their audience and of interrupting the pace of the story or boring readers. We don’t want to single out the different elements but to mix them instead, so that the heterogeneous types of content are incorporated into one continuous reading experience. That is the primary principle of our merger – a single narrative thread for all our content.

In order to carry the reader smoothly into the documentary part of the narrative, we have come up with a graphic layout that merges the various forms.

We are developing a form of artificial intelligence for these transitions and mergers that will “learn to draw like Alex V. Inker”. We shall feed lots of pictures of Alex into this AI so that the machine learns to identify the forms in each medium and transforms them as if they were drawn by Alex. The initial frames of a video (or a photo) appear first in comic form, but they then revert back to their original format. Similarly, the final key frames of the video are transformed into a “static” > WATCH THE trailer comic, and the panels take over from there. For instance, we give the AI several different pictures of Alex’s face. The AI learns to transform this human face into a drawing of a face “in the style of Alex”.

Prisma (on iOS and Android) is a good illustration of how this works. Take a photo of a landscape and apply a Van Gogh or Bacon filter.

page 5 We shall do the same thing in our comic by placing the drawing filter over our We shall also insert photos directly in the comic archive footage. panels so that the documentary elements are Making this transition as simple as possible is a feat of technology. directly incorporated.

Lastly, documentary content will be adapted for reading on a mobile: short and vertical. We shall cut and reformat the documentary content. For instance, a four- page article in L’Équipe will be turned into a 300-character box text with a photo., A three-minute video is edited for a 20-30 seconds in vertical format. We then maintain the dramatic tension of the story.

AN ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE We are drawing on period material – Al Brown’s songs, boxing gyms of yesterday and today, and clubs – to compose an original narrative and musical score. We transcend periods, merging and mixing them together.

Jazz resonates with punches, electro blends in with the blues and circus numbers, as on Jaimeo Brown’s latest album, “Transcendence”. The entire comic is set to a soundtrack, and the sound design is an integral part of the narrative.

The AI will allow us to transition smoothly between the various forms.

Another element of our work in blending forms is the use of the same typography for all our content. We shall create a unique, original typography based on Alex’s writing, and invent three sets of glyphs to mimic the irregular character of handwriting.

This may seem like a minor detail, but it makes reading easier by using the same graphic codes.

page 6 FIGHTING A MATCH HE HAD NO CHANCE OF WINNING

On 26 May 1935 Al Brown entered the ring in Valence to fight Sangchili in defence of his world title. Although he doesn’t immediately realise it, he had been drugged. His movements were sluggish, he couldn’t dodge Sangchili’s punches and he lost his title.

No one knows who drugged him, but oddly, when the fight was over, his manager teamed up with his opponent – the new world champion, Sangchili. This was THE match that changed Panama’s life.

So how do make sure the reader can live every minute of it? How do we make him or her experience the surprise and injustice of this defeat? How do we put readers in a situation they haven’t chosen, plunging them into a fight whose rules have been fixed and where they feel powerless, as if everything is against them?

We’ll do it by changing the rules of our comic. We’ll switch into an interactive scene inspired by video fighting games. Readers see Sangchili from his opponents’ POV. They see their own fists and can punch Sangchili. They get into the fight and try to beat Sangchili, but it’ll never work because their vision becomes blurred, they punch more and more slowly and they always end up knocked out.

Everything is against the reader – the story (our story and the facts) and the gameplay. Just like Panama, the reader will never be able to win this bout.

This fixed fight is two-thirds of the way through the story. The narrative will continue, but it won’t be quite the same any more, for Panama is being slowly crushed by fate, with no room for manoeuvre.

page 7 HYPER-DISSEMINATION MULTIPLYING

READING POSSIBILITIES

We are combining two types of dissemination to create two different reading experiences. Both will be launched on the same date – 13th March 2018. On the other, we are developing a 30-day serial that will be posted daily on Instagram and Facebook. Twitter will be our launch ramp during the first week. Social media will serve as a reading platform and a recruitment platform. Our promotional period will end on 11 April, the anniversary of Panama’s death, but of course the comic will continue to be available afterwards as a web app.

READ AT YOUR OWN SPEED Our comic will be on sale as a web app for use by anyone with a mobile device. All they have to do is go to an unchanging URL to start the experience. No need to install anything, no need to log in either. The whole story is available there: Round 1 is free, but you have to purchase the rest. The rounds are downloaded automatically as the reader moves through the story for greater reading comfort and better web app performance. We suggest that readers create a shortcut on their screen to be able to find their spot in the comic.

A SERIAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA We will use social media as a reading platform and a recruitment platform.

USING TWITTER TO REACH INFLUENCERS We shall start broadcasting on the evening of Tuesday 13 March 2018 by posting our first episode (Chapter 1 of Round 1), adding one every evening until Sunday 18 March. We have chosen to do this in the evening for two reasons – first, to let the info about TV programmes pass, and second because the evening is when people relax and enjoy themselves, and because Panama was more of a night owl!

page 8 We shall broadcast the whole of Round 1 in a Twitter-ready form – as a Tweetstory. There are many different kinds of tweets: text, picture, short video, GIF . . . We shall use them all. @Kolia will be in charge of this story.

On Sunday evening we shall invite our followers to keep reading on Instagram by following the broadcaster’s Instagram account/ There’ll be a new story waiting for them every day.

SERIALISING DAILY ON INSTAGRAM Every day from 13 March to 11 April we shall post a new chapter as a story. This story is broadcast only once - it is the daily comic rendezvous on the broadcaster’s account. At the end of each story we’ll invite readers to tune in again the next day and catch up on past episodes using the web app. We are also developing three trailers to post on the timeline of the broadcaster’s Instagram account to encourage people to follow Panama’s story via the stories and the web app.

USING FACEBOOK TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF VIEWS We shall post the content that isn’t part of the narrative on the Facebook account, as well as elements that we’ll use to bring in more viewers (videos, documentary extracts, “technical” videos showing how we combine documentary material with drawings). We will explicitly encourage people to follow the serial on Instagram.

We won’t use Facebook as a narrative space, or only if the story format develops in the meantime to give us the same posting flexibility as Instagram. It will be easy to tweak our posting plans as production progresses to include Facebook in our daily serial.

page 9 A STORY In 6 rounds The comic is divided into six chapters or ‘rounds’. Four chapters tell the tale of a champion’s rise and fall. One chapter tackles his encounter with the demiurge, and his redemption as part of a Faustian pact. The last chapter relates his desertion by all who know him, and his inevitable and lonely death.

Each chapter has a dramatic tension and a revealing event that moves the story forwards. As readers we follow Jacques, a Parisian journalist on his way down, who is attempting to piece together the story of Panama’s life. In each chapter, our journalist meets a first-hand witness to a specific period in Panama’s life. In each chapter the comic narrative is combined with interactive and documentary scenes.

page 10 round 01 A sharp crack to the chin of the strutting young bully, who is PANAMA’s revelations heavier and therefore thinks event : HIS FIRST PUNCH AND HIS HOMOSEXUALITY he is stronger. To everyone’s witness : his sister amazement, including Alfonso’s, the hard man drops to the One person knows who he really is, a person from whom he ground unconscious. has never been able to hide the truth – his sister. She has known from the start that he isn’t interested in Al’s heart is pounding like a girls. Jacques meets her in Panama after attending Coc- teau’s speech when he enters the Academy Française. drum and he feels strangely sick. Finally, though, the group accepts him as one of their own, and that’s something at least. He has no idea that he has just expanded Al Brown is born in 1902, his father a Jamaican worker who has come to dig the Pana- his narrow horizons beyond the ghetto. ma Canal. Alfonso grows up in Colón at the mouth of the canal, in a The rest is more or less the normal way of things: some adults spot his talent, labourers’ neighbourhood known as the barrio Pueblo Nuevo. followed by boxing clubs and training, which he doesn’t enjoy, then his first wins.

He is now a young man and is beginning to dream of a new life – different in any case from the one that appeared to be his destiny. There are more rounds in the ring, and he comes up against tougher and tougher opponents. Alfonso doesn’t like getting hit, and he quickly realises that he’s going to have to ‘shorten these hopeless dialogues by moving, punching and vanishing.’

Al doesn’t seem to be attracted to girls, but the century isn’t ready yet. Al grows lonely, becomes elusive, trains less and less, and parties a lot. He is forgiven, Racial discrimination, which the Americans brought with them when they took over though. Al is still young, and above all he keeps winning. the construction of the canal, was a feature of this neighbourhood, for it was entirely populated by blacks. Alfonso’s father, a strong man, survived the canal, but he is worn Alfonso Teo lo Brown is crowned Panamanian champion on out. He dies when Al is 13. 1 December 1922. Then he really suffers for the first time. His fight against Al Brown’s fate seems to be already written: just another candidate for a wretched life, a dogged sailor goes 15 rounds. Poorly prepared, Alfonso is prison or a premature death. unable to knock his opponent out, yet he doesn’t learn from this lesson. As a teenager he is lanky, and doesn’t appear to know what to do with his long limbs dangling from a small body. Being Panamanian champion isn’t enough for him to escape poverty entirely. For His comrades in misfortune are cruel to him, teasing and taunting him relentlessly. an ambitious boxer Harlem looms beyond the canal, but it is hard for a black man One day they go too far with their jokes, and he launches a reflex punch. to make it there.

page 11 page 12 Al lives an unsettled life in Harlem, alternating between misery and glory. America round 02 is a racist country, and it cannot stand victorious black boxers, especially ones who win with style. Crossing the line can spell death. Battling Siki, a Senegalese boxer HARLEM – MURDER FOR THE RECORD and victor over Carpentier, is living in exile in . He would show off event : THE MURDER OF BATTLING AND NO FURTHER PROSPECTS alongside white women and at the wheel of big cars. He was shot dead by strangers witness : THE BOXING CLUB JANITOR in cold blood on the corner of 10th Avenue and 41st Street. Prevented from rising any higher despite being the best featherweight in America, Jacques arrives in Harlem and hangs out in bars. He runs into Jess, who tells him all about Harlem: the dream of the new arrival in Hoboken, segregation, the racism shown by whites towards black boxers who earn too much... And Al’s desire to leave for Paris...

‘Waking up one morning I felt as if I was missing out on life. My destiny was enclosed in a boxer’s fists, not in a dishwasher’s water-softened hands.’ Brown

Brown feels his horizons shrinking and his fears returning. Battling Siki’s brutal end proves how dangerous it can be for a black man to show ambition in Jim Crow country.

Harlem is on the up, but rumour has it that life is sweeter for blacks in France, and that one of their own, Josephine Baker, is bringing the house down there. Alfonso packs his bags.

Al quits his job as a cook and arrives in Hoboken, New Jersey. It takes him three months to make a name for himself on the boxing scene. An American manager finally takes control of Al, and he becomes Al Brown – ‘Panama Al Brown’.

In eight months, without once leaving New York City, Brown ghts thirteen bouts and wins them all with panache. He is now in complete control of his sole breadwinning talent – a supremely accurate and powerful right hook. It is the only thing he can rely on, because he has given up training and much prefers Harlem’s bars to a jog in Central Park. page 13 round 03 Josephine Baker and Maurice Chevalier watch Al train, even going as far as to wipe the sweat from Brown’s brow during sessions that are more like shows than genuine PARIS IS A BALL boxing practice. However, the all-night parties night after night, are no longer enough to keep event : THE FIRST WORLD TITLE AND DRINKING CHAMPAGNE ALONE witness : THE BARMAN AT ‘LE CAPRICE VIENNOIS’ Alfonso’s fears at bay, and the champagne he so enjoys, even during bouts, only masks his loneliness for so long. He doesn’t like boxing, but it is all he has in life. He doesn’t like women either, and at the time only darkness could protect a Jacques returns to Paris. He heads to Pigalle to interview the barman at the “Caprice Viennois” where Al performs. He sees homosexual from contempt. Al has no con dant, either. Al getting high more and more often as he loses touch with reality. touch with reality. Al is black, and even though France is more tolerant than the United States, the extra burden of loneliness this brings can only be borne among other jazz players very late ‘In New York I spent my first night in Harlem, and in Paris I spent it in Montmartre. at night when the last customers have gone and the music becomes purer and blacker. I moved between clubs, where I now have nothing but friends, making one discovery after another.’ Brown

Paris is a ball for Alfonso. There are fights – lots of fights; his manager makes resu of that; but there’s lots of champagne and cabarets too, and very little training. People pay to watch Al train.

To escape the glaring light of day there is opium, which helps Al to forget his fear of fighting and soothes the pain in his fingers, which break with increasing frequency.

In 1929 Al becomes world bantamweight champion. Brown fights many bouts, but to the French public’s disappointment he is never knocked down. The crowds are caught in two minds, willing to hail the master’s talent each time, but also fervently wishing for his downfall. The crowd also has a mixed appreciation of the man before them: a man who is forced to fight for his living, and forced to finish the fight quickly because he isn’t fit, but also a man capable of taking boxing to a higher level of skill. In his fist’s short and violent flight, he gives the crowd a glimpse of a ‘mysterious force’.

Watch the video

page 14 round 04 THE TRAP IN VALENCIA event : THE FIGHT IN SPAIN, LOSS OF THE WORLD TITLE AND DOWNFALL witness : THE FLAMENCO GUITARIST

Here, our witness will be the flamenco guitarist who played for Brown’s lover, a young flamenco dancer with whom Al spends the whole night before the fight.

Al doesn’t only hang out with brilliant intellectuals and artists. He is also surrounded by a crowd of vulgar, rapacious courtiers who are very good at obtaining the substances he needs. A lot of people exploit him, encouraging his excessive consumption of opium and champagne. Bob Diamant, his manager, takes him to Valencia to contest his title against Baltasar Sangchili.

In Valencia Brown finds himself alone with his demons, freewheeling down the hill to oblivion and unaware of the trap ahead. His opponent, Baltasar Sangchili, is young, well prepared and a formidable fighter, whereas Al doesn’t spend a single night in his hotel room. He has made friends with a young flamenco dancer and is desperate not to miss a single one of the young man’s performances.

Al climbs slowly through the ropes, sweat gushing from every pore, his gaze turned inwards to the silent questions inside his mind. Yet it still takes Sangchili fiteen rounds to beat Brown into submission and steal his crown. Interactive scripted fight scene: Al Brown’s vision is blurred, as if he were drunk or drugged. It is the final round and if we tap the screen, the punch is slow and misses our opponent. The opponent hits us: he still has rhythm. We keep on losing. The scene ends with a photo of the new world champion, Sangchili.

Al Brown publicly announces that he was drugged without his knowledge and fought fiteen rounds in a fog. According to Brown the main culprit is his manager, Bob Diamant, and subsequent events could prove the truth of this statement, since his manager defects to the newly crown Spanish world champion’s team the day after the fight.

Back in Paris, doors begin to slam in the face of this black man who has upset too many people and who is no longer even world champion. He takes refuge in Montmartre, his old neighbourhood, where he vows to have nothing more to do with the world of boxing. Permanently high on alcohol and drugs, he takes a job at Suzy Solidor’s nightclub, the ‘Caprice Viennois’.

page 15 round 05 Later, when people are starting to leave, Brown comes over to their table. They are immediately on first name terms and discover that they share the same birthday – THE dEmiurge the fith of July. Al tells the story of his fight in Valencia. ‘Al Brown’s ghost refused to listen to a word about boxing. Little by little, the EVENT : FIRST MEETING WITH COCTEAU, THE FAUSTIAN PACT AND THE RETURN TO THE RING poet proved to the ghost that he must take revenge on death and continue his work.’ Cocteau WITNESS : marcel khiLl

Jacques continues his investigation of Parisian nightlife and Alfonso respects Cocteau and listens to what the poet has to say. The poet has gone meets Marcel Khll, the bisexual boxer who took Cocteau to straight to the fantastical and suicidal roots of Brown’s personality. the “Caprice Viennois” to see Al’s cabaret performance. Cocteau asks Coco Chanel to pay for Alfonso’s training and rehab. Alfonso withdraws to a farm in Aubigny, which its owners are persuaded to turn into a training camp for Alfonso by Mrs Chanel’s cheques. Cocteau arrived late that night at the ‘Caprice Viennois’ at 59 rue Pigalle. He was ‘The similarity between his methods and mine struck me so powerfully that I accompanied by Marcel Khill, a new friend of Al Brown’s. formed the strange plan to rescue him from the wreckage of drugs and alcohol, Khill has told Cocteau that people used to pay to watch Brown train, that Maurice and by putting him back in the ring to prove that if a sportsman uses his Chevalier and Josephine Baker once wiped the sweat from his brow and that Brown intelligence, it can replace force as a weapon...’ Cocteau owned horses at Mairson Laffitte, where Cocteau was born. Laughing, Marcel Khill whispers to the poet that Panama isn’t into girls. Cocteau watches with fascination as the boxer rebuilds himself. However, the poet Cocteau doesn’t laugh: he knows full well the horrific consequences of some has in mind that Al Brown must pay a price for this resurrection: he must give up misunderstandings. boxing once he has regained his world title.

To regain his title Al Brown must win twelve fights to earn the right to a revenge bout against Sangchili. He wins all twelve by a knockout. Al Brown regains his world boxing title in 1938.

A few days later, Brown follows Cocteau’s instructions and announces to the press that he plans to hang up his gloves, drawing a stinging riposte from the boxing world and the specialist press: ‘And anyway, Mr Cocteau, do you not think that we too, all of us, have a right to this boxer. Since when have you taken him under your wing? Let me tell you that his one and only true interest is to box again and to box for a long time. So, can we agree that you’ll let us have him, Mr Cocteau?’ Extract from ‘Why is he getting involved?’ by Henri Desgranges in ‘L’Auto’ magazine

page 16 round 06 This is the beginning of the end for Al. harlem nocturne From having been a drug user, he has become a drug smuggler, because the purses for fights are nothing like they were in Paris, and come less and less frequently. event : DEATH AND THE PRECEDING FALL He has to get by, soothe his pains and fears and above all he has to forget the witness : georges peEters

Jacques runs into Georges Peeters, the journalist who found Al in Harlem when everyone in Paris had forgotten about him.

Two days after he regained the title, Al Brown is hired by the Medrano circus for a show directed by Cocteau himself.

tuberculosis that is eating away at his health. Al returns to Harlem. It is 1948, and Al has been living by his wits (drugs, gambling) for a while. ‘Al gives boxing lessons at the New Garden Gymnasium on 116th to young black men who pay him a dollar or fifty cents a time. He hasn’t changed much, but his face bears the scars. He last fought a year ago.’ Despite the relentless efforts of the boxing world to get him to continue, Panama George Peeters for ‘L’Équipe’ magazine. for once has an opportunity to escape the curse of being a boxer who hates boxing. But Cocteau is drawing back: he has just met Jean Marais. On 11 April 1951 Al Brown dies at Staten Island hospital. Some young wiseguys from Harlem pretend to be his family and take his body out of It is 1938, and Europe is teetering on the brink of disaster. Hitler lays claim to the hospital morgue. They tour the bars of Harlem, asking patrons for money to give Sudetenland, and Europe’s democracies cave in to him in Munich. The atmosphere the ex-world boxing champion a decent burial. In each new bar, they lean the coffin in Paris is no longer what it used to be, and champagne is not strong enough to against the bar and drink the proceeds of the previous collection. After this crazy fu- obscure the approaching storm. neral pub crawl, they abandon the coffin at dawn on the steps of the hospital.

Al arrives in Panama on 27 June 1941. He has to take up boxing again at the age ‘I wonder whether I oughtn’t classify Al Brown among my imaginary characters.’ of forty. He deals easily with a few inexperienced youngsters, but then comes his Cocteau downfall. Like in a bad Western, the lawman is from out of town, Peru to be precise, and his name is Eduardo Carrasco. He manages to knock Al Brown down for the first time in his career. The Peruvian has done the one thing Parisian crowds had dreamed of seeing: Al Brown KO.

page 17 planning

FEBRUARY / MAY 17

- “Proof of concept” of interactive mechanisms - Prototype of reading by panel/on screen - Develop the technical engine - Select documentary sources - Rework storyboard and first de nitive “panels” - Experiments with sound - Visual style guide: research on interface

MAY / NOVEMBER 17

- Develop artificial intelligence - Integrate round 1 for porting and testing - Playtest, analyse reading behaviour - Sound design

DECEMBER / FEBRUARY 18

- Integration of 5 rounds - Translation - Sound Integration - Create stories, test broadcast - Write TweetStories - Quality control, then delivery

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