Continuous Script Development
Week Six: Screenplay Pre-Visualization
Week Five: Revised 3 Page Script Draft
Week Five: Escalation
Week Four: Inciting Incidents & Urgency
Week Three: Conflict Excerpt & Character Bone Structure Exploration
Lajos Egri's Character Bone Structure: Bobby Driscoll
Main character bone structure here: https://www.academicmatt.com/individual-assignments/crwr3200-week-3-creative-journal
Note: The Bobby Driscoll who appears in my script is a supernatural reimagining of the real-life Bobby Driscoll. It blurs the facts of Bobby’s life with the fiction of my story. I am fascinated by the story of the child actor who voiced Peter Pan but would later find themselves in the grip of substance abuse and an addiction which would ultimately take their life in 1968 at age 31. Driscoll is truly a Lost Boy. An illustration of the delta between the wonderful dreams of the movies and the crushing reality of the world. Driscoll flew, but perhaps he flew too close to the sun. More Icarus than Pan. His story is one of voicing the boy who never grew up, but being the real-life boy who never exceeded the joyful reach of his childhood fame. In Driscoll’s life we find a vacuum inside of which we can tell a story. To this day still buried in a Pauper’s grave on Hart Island in New York harbor, Driscoll remains unrecognized by those who celebrate the legacy of Disney animation.
Based on my short story ‘The Pirates of Hart Island’, my screenplay ‘Lost Boy’ will open with the discovery of Driscoll’s body in an abandoned East Village tenement building, surrounded by empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets. Set in early 1968, it will open with the story of two boys who find Driscoll, establishing the context for what is later to happen in flashback, and will serve as the opening 3 minutes to a hypothetical film of Driscoll as a supernatural being consumed with a desire to remain young. Driscoll’s physical appearance shifts during the story, but I will describe Bobby as we find him at the opening of the script.
Physiology
Sex: Male
Age: 31 at the time our opening protagonists, the two boys, find him. Through the supernatural ritual in which John and Mike transfer their youth to Bobby, it is inferred that Bobby is much older than his human years, and has been harvesting children for much longer.
Height and Weight: Bobby retains some of the physical attributes of being a former child star. He doesn’t strike an imposing figure, but clearly shows the weight loss of sustained years of drug abuse and the recent gaps between periods of harvesting the young in order to regain his youth. He is 5’5” but only weighs 120 pounds.
Color of Hair, Eyes & Skin: His skin is gray and sallow, more like a thin tissue wrapped around his bones, with a junkie’s sunken eyes which still dart around a room. His hair is a matted, greasy crop and he’s unshaven, although he was never able to grow a beard. Despite it all, he retains the vibrant, sparkling blue eyes through which he experienced stardom as a child. The ritual by which Bobby harvests the futures of children proves dramatically restorative to Bobby’s complexion.
Posture: Slumped against the wall in the last moments of addiction, Bobby’s posture holds all the agony of a life shot into his arm. His fingers are crippled, his bones distorted through years of sleepless nights.
Appearance: Bobby is near death, but through it all we can still see traces of the handsome young movie star who played Peter Pan. The star is long faded, but retains many of the elements cherished by the public. He is filthy and his clothes hang off his shrunken body, but also his shrunken life. There is a deep sadness to his appearance, but the sadness is more ours than his. Bobby’s face holds all the hallmarks of a good-looking midwestern kid whom the world destroyed. In Bobby’s case it was fame and substance abuse which took him, but the real story is that it was lack of love and a deep desire, like Peter Pan, never to grow up.
Defects & Diseases: It’s never explicitly shown, but strongly inferred that Bobby is riddled with disease. His lifestyle as a junkie in Manhattan’s East Village at the tail end of the sixties, and his association with the hangers-on of Andy Warhol’s Factory have left him ravaged by infection. Beneath his clothes is a body covered in the sores and welts of dangerous sexual encounters and the experimentation which comes with trying to keep the party going. His knees are swollen, making him hobble, and his flying days are long behind him. He coughs himself to sleep, and the detritus which surrounds him bears the internal trauma marks of breathing blood.
Heredity: (Adapted from Wikipedia) Born Robert Cletus Driscoll in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the only child of Cletus Driscoll (1901–1969), an insulation salesman, and Isabelle (née Kratz; 1904–1981), a former schoolteacher. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where they stayed until early 1943. The family moved to Los Angeles when a doctor advised the father to relocate to California because he was suffering from work-related handling of asbestos. Driscoll's parents were encouraged to help their son become a child performer in films. Their barber's son, an actor, got Bobby an audition at MGM for a role in the family drama Lost Angel (1943), which starred Margaret O'Brien. While on a tour across the studio lot, five-year-old Driscoll noticed a mock-up ship and asked where the water was. The director was impressed by the boy's curiosity and intelligence and chose him over 40 applicants.
”A child lives in a world of its own, so, logically, a successful story for children must strike a chord in that world; possibly involve something he would like to do if he had the chance, like fly with his own wings or go down a rabbit hole, but above all, it must be something he can understand. Anything a child understands, chances are he will enjoy. However, everyone seems to enjoy these successful, so-called children’s stories. For instance, you’ll never meet a truthful person who says he doesn’t like movie cartoons, especially a man. Someone said that women were always women, and men were always children.” (Bobby Driscoll)
Sociology
Class: Bobby’s upbringing in the lower middle-class suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa proved helpful during his rise to fame as a child star, and gave him a humble wholesomeness which would prove spellbinding to millions of fans. Yet as an adult he has become a bum. Despite his association with the upper reaches of the art world and Warhol’s circle, he begs for money as much as scraps of food, and lives every day for the simple purpose of his next hit.
“I became a beatnik and a bum. I had no residence. My clothes were at my parents’ [house] but I didn’t live anywhere. My personality had suffered during my marriage and I was trying to recoup it.” (Bobby Driscoll)
Occupation: Bobby’s relationship with work is one of trauma. He still holds a deep desire to return to the movies, despite being discarded by the studio system. In recent years he’s found himself as an extra in underground experimental arthouse movies, and has even begun to create his own artwork collages. All of the money he had as a child has gone into his arm, and anything he does manage to get still goes the same way.
“I had everything. I was earning more than $50,000 a year, working steadily with good parts. Then I started putting all my spare time in my arm. I’m not really sure why I started using narcotics. I was 17 when I first experimented with the stuff. In no time at all I was using whatever was available, mostly heroin, because I had the money to pay for it.” (Bobby Driscoll)
Education: Bobby’s fame was so bright and so early that he never had time for school, despite the efforts of his parents to continue his education in parallel with his filming schedule. As such, he is bright, but more a graduate of the school of life than book smart. This has made him intensely resourceful, but deeply reliant upon the resources of others. Bobby is deeply eloquent and articulate, skills which have served him well in life, but he is keen to hide his lack of education, especially in the artistic circles in which he now moves.
Home Life: Driven by a deep desire for a life better than the ones they had been given, Bobby’s parents were keen to exploit any and all opportunities to leverage their son’s abilities to further their own lifestyle. His father’s background in insulation sales would drive him to move from selling insurance, to selling his son.
“I wish I could say that my childhood was a happy one, but I wouldn’t be honest. I was lonely most of the time. A child actor’s childhood is not a normal one. People continually saying ‘What a cute little boy!’ creates innate conceit. But the adulation is only one part of it … Other kids prove themselves once, but I had to prove myself twice with everyone.” (Bobby Driscoll)
“Bobby Driscoll had a very rough childhood. I know that his father used to whack him around a lot, when he was very young. His parents used to lock him in the closet all night. He’d have to sit there in the dark.” (Childhood friend Russ Tamblyn)
Marital Status: Bobby is divorced, and he has spent his life in pursuit of the genuine love which was absent during his childhood. Raised on the synthetic love which comes with fandom, he would spend his life looking for a partner uninterested in exploiting him, but he would never find her. On December 3, 1956, Bobby eloped with his girlfriend, Marilyn Verna Rush (whom he met at a party in Manhattan Beach), after around 5-6 months of dating, in Mexico to avoid their parents’ objections. This marriage was later annulled and not legally recognized. They were apart for some months. However, the couple was re-wed in a Los Angeles ceremony on March 8, 1957. After the wedding, he relocated to Santa Monica and began working as a clerk in a haberdashery in Pacific Palisades to support his marriage. Sometime in August, Bobby has his first child, a son named Daniel, who becomes the first of three children. Sometime in 1960, Bobby was separated from Marilyn, which later in the year resulted in a divorce. A day after Bobby’s 23rd birthday, his third child named, Katherine, a daughter, was born.
Religion: Bobby was raised Catholic, and was married in a Catholic ceremony. He has long lapsed but we find his body surrounded by religious literature from the nearby Church of Heavenly Rest on 5th Avenue.
Race & Nationality: Despite his gray skin, Bobby is a caucasian American.
Place in community: Once the center of the turning world, Bobby is now a distant outsider. Any friends he may have are also in the grip of addiction, and more transactional than cordial. As such, despite all the fame and adulation he’s experienced in his life, he remains as we find him, alone.
Political affiliation: Bobby has no affiliation other than to those who would enable him.
Amusements: Bobby has a single source of amusement, the spike which he puts into his arm every evening. Lately he has begun to spend time at a nearby catholic church, and has begun to take home some of their literature. He will occasionally read the film industry’s trade papers, but even through the fog of addiction, knows that it is unhealthy for him.
Psychology
Sex Life & Moral Standards: Rumors have always circulated around when Bobby’s first sexual experience took place, with many buried inferences of abuse inside the studio system as a child. As an adult he always enjoyed a healthy sex life, fathering three children. But as his marriage collapsed and he moved to New York, his sexual experiences changed from amorous to transactional, and his moral standards declined. Hustling for the cash he would put into his arm, sex became a means to an end, and the love which had eluded him for so long, now just a synthetic means of making the rent.
Personal Premise & Aambition: Bobby’s ambition is simple. To remain young. But the crushing tide of adulthood has meant that despite his close association in the public imagination with Peter Pan, he was indeed the boy who had to grow up. In his youth he knew fame, and enjoyed the adulation of millions, but as his star faded and the studio system turned their backs on him, the roles dried up as much as he lost his baby fat and his voice dropped. Bobby will do anything to remain young. His addiction keeps the demons at a distance, but he’s unable to see that he himself has become the very demon he feared the most. It’s not the drugs which calm his fears, it’s the supernatural harvesting of children which provides the restorative medicament that turns back time. By taking the youth of others, he consumes it for himself with growing appetite and violence inside of a ritual of luring children into abandoned buildings.
Frustrations & Chief Disappointments: Bobby is truly a Lost Boy. Someone defined by who they were. Beloved by a studio system which would discard him as easily as they had embraced him, he harbors a deep resentment against the only source of love he ever found in life, the movies. He has spent his life in pursuit of the one thing he thinks he can never recapture, the love of the millions who adored him as a child.
Temperament: Bobby’s temperament dances to a junkie’s rhythm. Stable and coherent when under the influence. Violent and destructive when it wears off. The optimistic boy who never learned to grow up has transformed into the adult who seeks to recapture their youth through the harvesting of others’ futures. He is deeply distrustful of others, despite his need to be surrounded by them, and a lifetime of lies has forged him into a grotesque husk of a human.
“A newspaper clipping says the ‘First Human in Walt Disney Films is Now the First Human To Be Treated for Narcotics as an Illness, Not a Crime.’ And so, Bobby goes off to the penitentiary, and I communicated with him, and the first letter that he sent me from the penitentiary says, ‘There are no nurses here’. They lied to him.” (George Herms, Friend)
Attitude Toward Life: Bobby is resourceful, and has retained much of the exuberance of his childhood, despite the deep desire to hold on to the past. He finds it easy to talk to others, but is naturally distrustful of their motives.
“I have found that memories are not very useful. I was carried on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage can.” (Bobby Driscoll)
Complexes: Bobby is terrified of growing old. The cockiness of his portrayal and real-life behavior as Peter Pan has given way to the ravages of time and developed into a deep cynicism about the world. His obsession with the past motives him to reclaim it by stealing the futures of other children. Luring the curious who would seek to understand the myths which have sprung up around him.,
“I really feared people. The other kids didn’t accept me. They treated me as one apart. I tried desperately to be one of the gang. When they rejected me, I fought back, became belligerent and cocky and was afraid all the time.” (Bobby Driscoll)
Extrovert, Introvert or Ambivert: The more harvesting Bobby generates, the more extraverted he becomes, but his life as a junkie between harvests manifests a deep and melancholy introversion which proves crippling both mentally and physically.
Abilities: Retaining much of his original role as Peter Pan, Bobby is able to levitate in real-life, something his victims get to experience in the final moments of their short lives.
Qualities: Bobby is highly imaginative in his attempts to lure others towards him, often seeding myths about Peter Pan within local communities, and baiting the traps of gossip over many years until the curious cannot resist any longer.
I.Q. Despite his lack of formal education, Bobby was a smart kid, and remains smart through his addiction. He has a the capacity to be eloquent and capable of holding informed, insightful conversations with others.
Week Two: The Pirates of Hart Island
Bobby Driscoll, East Village, Manhattan, Late Sixties
“I have found that memories are not very useful. I was carried on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage can.” (Bobby Driscoll)
What follows is a short supernatural story inspired by the life and times of child actor Bobby Driscoll, who passed away in obscurity in 1968. Driscoll had enjoyed enormous success as a child actor, famously voicing Disney’s Peter Pan, and appearing in dozens of films and television episodes, including Song Of The South and Treasure Island. An academy award winner, adulthood would be less kind to Driscoll, who endured multiple marriages, and whose life soon descended into substance abuse as professional opportunity dried up. He would eventually make his way to New York, where he began to associate with Andy Warhol and the hangers-on of The Factory. In March 1968, Driscoll would be found dead by two young boys in an abandoned East Village tenement building, his body ravaged by heroin, surrounded by substance paraphernalia and religious literature. No-one claimed his body upon discovery, and his remains were interned in a mass pauper’s grave on Hart Island in The Bronx. They remain there to this day.
Driscoll’s contribution to the Disney legacy continues to be unrecognized, despite frequent appeals for him to be inducted into the organization’s Hall of Legends. The story concerns the moments of his discovery by the two boys in the East Village, and what may have happened next.
The crumbling tenement building at the corner of Orchard and Broome in Manhattan’s East Village had long exceeded its original purpose for immigrant shelter. The doors blew off their hinges as the bite of another late sixties spring chewed at the paint and tore strips off the layers of wallpaper, long abandoned by its hopeful residents, but far from its eventual redevelopment into the exotic housing of a renewed neighborhood. The community which had built these homes was now homed elsewhere. Numerous tongues now absorbed into downtown New York’s melting pot, which these days only melted dreams and money. The wind produced a chill which would freeze the hearts of those brave enough to venture out for essentials, and punish those foolish enough to tear themselves away from the warmth of the television. The building at 103 Orchard was long condemned, but had defiantly weathered the elements of both climate and city bureaucracy as a final tenement, a final testament, a final middle finger to those who would destroy it in the name of progress and profit.
As the neighborhood exodus accelerated, myths had grown up around the old buildings. Ghost stories told by parents to warn off the curious from going inside. Tales of a colony of giant baby-devouring cockroaches, hundreds of rats whose tails had grown together over time into the monstrous tale of the mythical Rat King, and how the building’s water system fed directly into the alligator-infested sewers below. A favorite of John’s parents was to tell him that Peter Pan had died inside the tenement at 103 Orchard, and that going inside would see the youth sucked out of him by a deranged and violent adult Peter, consumed by a rabid appetite for the lost young. But even at aged eight, John was wise to his parents’ warnings, and knew they were just as fabricated as the shows he loved to watch late into the night when his folks had gone to bed. The kids at the local school would dare each other to go into the building in search of the truth, but no-one ever found anything. Wendy Peterson had gone inside with a freckled boy from the neighboring school, and eloped north with him shortly afterwards, disappearing into local myth herself. Or at least Yonkers.
John’s best friend Mike had always been the more adventurous one. He’d once hidden in the public library after hours, spending the entire night there alone in search of a hidden doorway which held a codex used by a secret society. Or the time he found a map of the entrances into the tomb of James Bennett in Herald Square. John had always followed Mike into the unknown, but upon the threshold of not being back by the agreed-upon curfew, all-too-frequently would let Mike adventure alone. But tonight would be different. They’d been daring each other for weeks to see who could summon the guts to reach the roof of 103 Orchard, and a bitter evening in March would be the opportunity for them both to make good on the dare. As they crawled under the rotting doorway which moaned with cold, they began their ascent through a sadness of narrow ornate stairways which had seen more departures than arrivals. Careful to tread lightly, they began to check the open doorways of apartment buildings along the way. “It fucking stinks in here” muttered John under his breath, betraying his innocence to Mike, who was already inside. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened” replied Mike, sifting through an abandoned dresser and finding only damp and disease. “There’s bird shit everywhere, someone needs to teach these little fuckers how to use the can, let’s keep going” smiled Mike as he wiped a clump of it from his boot.
Mike’s parents had always warned him about apartment 6B. They said it was where Peter Pan had died. John knew the bedtime stories meant to scare him too. And as they reach the sixth floor, curiosity got the better of them, and they sought it out. The entrance had been nailed shut, and someone long ago had scrawled the words ‘Never, ever land’ across the name plate. The wind intensified its howl outside. It was getting late but the boys were already too far in to go back any time soon, and they had already woken up that day and chosen violence. Despite the sign, the door easily gave up its resistance with a couple of short, sharp and well timed shoulder charges. The door collapsed into a rotting heap in front of them, and the apartment exhaled with a deep, sustained groan. “Fuck me, it’s even worse in here” mumbled John, covering his mouth as the smell hit his nostrils. “Take this, it’ll help” offered Mike as he handed John a torn piece of old linen to mask his face. “Do you really think anything ever happened in here?” asked John. “Fuck knows, but tonight we’re going to teach those old maids a lesson about how to get the truth” retorted a defiant Mike.
Apartment 6B had never been well lit, but the years of decay had opened a nocturnal skylight into which streamed the glow of a full moon, a nearby clock face, and two adjacent stars in a sky which was increasingly becoming consumed with the pollution of the neighborhood’s redevelopment. The boys were keen to creep cautiously around the apartment, still unsure if their movements were being surveilled by the myths of their parents. The apartment crackled with its own rhythm of decay, but through it all, a faint groan called out in the darkness, stopping the boys’ hearts. “What the fuck was that” asked John, more statement than question. “What was what?” laughed Mike, convinced John was hearing voices in his head… again. Another groan. And then another. Mike looked at John, but both knew they weren’t alone. “It’s in there” pointed Mike, nearing the bedroom, “… you first”. John looked at Mike and finally realized that it had all been for show. That it wasn’t he who was the coward, but Mike. All the times John had gone home early had only emboldened Mike to invent more and more fantastic adventures. But tonight would be different. This wasn’t an adventure, this was real life. John’s hand slowly squeezed the brass door handle, and he pushed his way in.
In the corner, illuminated by the second star to the right, was Bobby. More decayed than alive, he had become one with the building’s rot, and the years of heroin abuse had robbed him of the good looks which had long ago seen him ride a beautiful wave of childhood success. The sad figure was clinging to life, like a decayed, scratched drawing. His eyes sunken, his skin a grey leather, and his ribcage more rib than cage. His heart burnt out. Bobby’s own star had fallen, and his life had been broken by the neglect of a world which had simply moved on from the innocence he had so brightly embodied in his youth. The discarded paraphernalia of addiction surrounded him, but also the redemptive literature of the nearby Church of Heavenly Rest on 5th Avenue. Bobby, barely there, saw them. And they saw Bobby. Every impulse boiled within the boys to run. It was true. All of it. There was a lost boy living in the building after all. Bobby’s shadow danced across the wall in the as he lay still, slumped against the broken chair which, like Bobby, had seen better days.
What was left of Bobby pointed at the night sky above him, and then at the boys. “Straight on ‘til midnight” instigating a swirling supernatural miasma which accelerated and consumed them all. The boys, too terrified to run, became swept up in the scalding current of light, and were being drawn towards Bobby. As they grew nearer, Bobby was growing younger. The rot of neglect began to fall away, as did the years of abuse. The more he consumed youth, the more youthful he became. The life swiftly drained out of the boys. John fell first, his lifeless husk thrown in the corner with the filthy remains of what used to be a blue dress. Mike was more resistant. Struggling to free himself, he only encouraged Bobby to consume him faster. The life drained out of an extinguished Mike as the light bled into Bobby. If Bobby had been Peter Pan, the boys had been Icarus. Bobby’s life had been destroyed by adulthood, but reclaimed by the consumption of youth. Restored and reclaimed, Bobby swapped his junkie’s clothes for those of Mike, groomed himself, and calmly headed downstairs.
As the tenement resisted yet another night of biting New York weather, Bobby let himself out and walked slowly into the uptown darkness. That morning the boys were gone, but the myth remained. And as the warmer weather eventually arrived, a new sign appeared nailed to the front of the building.
’Coming Soon. Luxury Rentals.’
Scene and Sequence:
Central Idea: Always listen to your parents
Act 1: Set-Up (Page 1)
Place: Interior entranceway to abandoned tenement building at 103 Orchard Street, East Village, Manhattan
Time: Night, March 1968
Characters: John (12) and Michael (10), two tough local kids
Action:
Moving from front door to apartment entrance
Dialogue: Boys are there because their parents warned them not to go inside Apartment 6B
Dialogue includes parental warning that Peter Pan died inside the building
Dialogue establishes John as senior in age, but also confidence and experience, boys are daring each other on
Arrival at the door of Apartment 6B
Plot Point: Boys are testing their parents’ warnings
Act 2: Conflict (Page 2)
Place: Stairwell, outside Apartment 6B, Door warns not to go inside with ‘Never, Ever Land’
Time: Later
Characters: John and Michael
Action:
Dialogue: Boys argue over who goes first
John backs out, Michael turns the handle
Moaning heard inside
Moving from outside apartment to inside bedroom
Plot Point: John is all talk, dynamics between the boys are reversed
Act 3: Resolution (Page 3)
Place: Bedroom, inside Apartment 6B. Ceiling is open to the night and clock tower and 2 stars can be seen.
Time: Shortly afterwards
Characters: Bobby (Male, 27), a junkie with supernatural powers, John and Michael
Action:
The boys find Bobby, near death
Bobby casts a spell
Bobby consumes John and Michael’s bodies
The boys disappear as Bobby is restored to life
Plot Point: The boys’ parents were right
Ending: (Page 3)
Place: Exterior, Orchard Street, East Village, Manhattan
Time: Later, Early morning
Characters: Bobby
Action:
Bobby walks away
Real Estate sign attached to the front of 103 Orchard Street building reads ‘coming soon, luxury rentals’
Plot Point: This isn’t over
Ending: Fade to black
First Draft:
Week One
I am fascinated by the story of Bobby Driscoll, the child actor who voiced Peter Pan but would later find themselves in the grip of substance abuse and the addiction which would ultimately take their life in 1968 at age 31. Driscoll is truly a Lost Boy. An illustration of the delta between the wonderful dreams of the movies and the crushing reality of the world. Driscoll flew, but perhaps he flew too close to the sun. More Icarus than Pan. His story is one of voicing the boy who never grew up, but being the real-life boy who never exceeded the joyful reach of his childhood fame. In Driscoll’s life we find a vacuum inside of which we can tell a story. To this day still buried in a Pauper’s grave on Hart Island in New York harbor, Driscoll remains unrecognized by those who celebrate the legacy of Disney animation.
The screenplay Lost Boy will open with the discovery of Driscoll’s body in an abandoned East Village tenement building, surrounded by empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets. Set in early 1968, it will tell the story of two boys who find Driscoll, establishing the context for what is later to happen in flashback, and will serve as the opening 3 minutes to a hypothetical film of Driscoll’s life.
From Wikipedia: On March 30, 1968, two boys playing in a deserted East Village tenement at 371 East 10th Street found Driscoll's body lying on a cot, with two empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets scattered on the ground. A post mortem examination determined that he had died from heart failure caused by advanced atherosclerosis from his drug use. No identification was on the body, and photos shown around the neighborhood yielded no positive identification. His unclaimed body was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in New York City's Potter's Field on Hart Island.
Late in 1969, Driscoll's mother sought the help of officials at Disney studios to contact him, for a hoped-for reunion with his father, who was nearing death. This resulted in a fingerprint match at the New York City Police Department, which located his burial on Hart Island. Although his name appears on his father's gravestone at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California, his remains are still on Hart Island. In connection with the re-release of Song of the South in 1971, reporters researching the whereabouts of the film's star first reported his death.
