"The White Paper" by Jean Cocteau

Dockside at Toulon, sailors come and go, whistling boleros. One besotted admirer falls in with a tattooed brute fresh from the brig and sadly in need of a "fetish chain." Ooh--kinky! Read by Scoot. Time 9:14.

Film-maker, artist, novelist, dramatist, boxing manager, provocateur, and above all, poet: Parisian Jean Cocteau was one of the most important figures in the history of the arts of the twentieth century. Another one of those people who knew everyone and influenced them all. (Yes, even you, Ernest Hemingway!) Actually, this story is only "attributed to Jean Cocteau," though his indelible stamp is upon it and there is no question that he illustrated the collected "confessions" from which it comes. Where to begin with M. Cocteau? Well, you could start with his days of opium addiction and the novel Les Enfants Terribles. Or look at his surrealist masterpiece, Blood of the Poet. Maybe read the play he wrote for Edith Piaf between hot affairs with Princess Nathalie Paley and actor Jean Marais. Or just skip right on to his resplendent 1946 film, Beauty and the Beast. Obviously, we all have a lot of work cut out for us.