Daniele Luttazzi

Daniele Luttazzi

Daniele Luttazzi (born January 26, 1961), real name Daniele Fabbri, is an Italian theater actor, writer, satirist, illustrator and singer/songwriter. His stage name is a homage to musician and actor Lelio Luttazzi. His favourite topics are politics, religion, sex and death.

He is also famous as in 2002 he was effectively banned from RAI, the Italian public broadcasting company, by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was angry because Luttazzi, at that time host of Satyricon, a raunchy late night comedy show, interviewed Marco Travaglio, the author of a book that pointed at the unknown origins Mr. Berlusconi's wealth as potential links with the Mafia. Nowadays he only works in theatres. He is often cited by the European press (i.e. The Economist, Le Monde, El Pais) as proof of Mr. Berlusconi's censorship of the opposition. In addition to writing and performing monologues and theatre works, he occasionally writes political and satirical essays for Micromega and il manifesto, two left-wing periodicals.

Luttazzi is also interested in drawing, with a selection of his graphical works published as a book called Capolavori (Masterpieces). Daniele Luttazzi is also a musician: as of 2007, he released two CDs, named respectively Money for Dope and School is Boring, in which he sings in English.

Biography

Luttazzi was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna, province of Rimini. He began his comic career performing satirical monologues in theatre shows. In 1994 he performed characters in the popular comedy show Mai dire Gol (Never Say Goal), aired by Italia 1.

In 1988, his monologue won an award in a comedy contest held at Rome's Teatro Sistina.

In 1998, he began his first one-man show, called Barracuda. Luttazzi did monologues about recent news, interviews with famous showbiz and political personalities, and skits for adult audiences. The same formula was then adopted for his next TV show, called Satyricon, aired by the public channel Rai Due.

In March 2001, Luttazzi interviewed journalist Marco Travaglio about the contents of his book "L'odore dei soldi" (The scent of Money). Topic: the mysterious origins of Berlusconi's money. "Satyricon" was suspended, Silvio Berlusconi, Mediaset, Fininvest and the Forza Italia party sued Luttazzi and Travaglio for defamation, asking them 40 billions lire (about 20 million euros). Luttazzi and Travaglio won all the trials.

In 2002, Berlusconi said that Luttazzi, the journalist Enzo Biagi (the Italian analogous of Walter Cronkite) and the anchorman Michele Santoro made "a criminal use of public tv" (Rai, the State owned TV company) so Berlusconi "hoped this thing couldn't happen again." This action has since then been named the Editto Bulgaro, and had an harsh impact on the careers of those three men. Since the banning, Luttazzi is still not working in Rai, his once huge TV share notwithstanding.

After television, Luttazzi concentrated on theatre shows and bookwriting. Since his debut as the host and writer of the late-night talk show Barracuda in 1999, he has also collaborated as script doctor for Comedy Central and HBO.^[1]

Luttazzi returned on TV in 2007 with the new satyrical programme "Decameron: Politica, Sesso, Religione e Morte" (Decameron: Politics, Sex, Religion and Death) for the small national private channel La7. He was suspended again after the taping of the sixth episode of the show (a monologue about the Pope's new encyclical).^{[2][3][unreliable source?]}

Plagiarism

Early accusations of plagiarism came in 2007, from "Il Foglio", a centre-right newspaper under control of Berlusconi's family and of his political allies; and from "La Repubblica", a centre-left newspaper often critical towards mr. Berlusconi. Those accusations^{[4][unreliable source?][5]} were focusing only on very few of the jokes found plagiarized subsequently. At the time Luttazzi was back after the television ban following the Editto Bulgaro, and his new show "Decameron" had just been canceled by La 7.

In 2010 he has been accused of having plagiarised many jokes from comedians such as George Carlin, Mitch Hedberg, Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Bill Hicks and Robert Schimmel.^[6] Five years before those charges, Luttazzi himself told about his scheme on his personal blog: he wrote that he adds unoriginal material to his work as a defense against the million-euro lawsuits he has to face because of his satire. Luttazzi calls his ruse “the Lenny Bruce trick” after a similar trick played by his hero, Lenny Bruce. Luttazzi asked his readers to find out the original jokes. He awards a prize to anyone who finds a “nugget”, i.e. a reference to famous jokes: he calls the game “treasure hunt” ^[7]

Reactions

Many commentators accused Luttazzi of lacking integrity.^[8]

Other commentators, such as Wu Ming, while supporting the plagiarism accusation in full, pointed out that, with more and more jokes being spotted, many former fans were switching to angered detractors of Luttazzi, with the risk of denying Luttazzi's original artistic and cultural contributions and deep renovation of Italian satire.^[9]

On June 16, 2010 Luttazzi appeared in Keith Olbermann's "worst person in the world".^[10]

Luttazzi calls the charges “naive”, explaining why those jokes are not “plagiarized”, but “calqued”, which is a fair use of original material. He uses a joke by Emo Philips to prove that the meaning of a joke depends on its context.^[7] Luttazzi’s blog lists all the comedians and writers quoted in his works.^[7]

See also

• Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen
• Editto Bulgaro

References

1. ^ "Luttazzi torna in tv con "Decameron"". Corriere della Sera. October 31, 2007. http://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/07_ottobre_31/luttazzi_ritorno_televisione.shtml. Retrieved June 9, 2009. 
2. ^ "LA7 - Eventi". Archived from the original on 2007-07-15. http://web.archive.org/web/20070715050645/http://www.la7.it/eventi/luttazzi_video.asp. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
3. ^ Luttazzi exclusive interview with Articolo21 commenting on the announcement "Su La7 avrò carta bianca. Niente controlli, senno' che satira è?". http://www.articolo21.info/notizia.php?id=5158. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
4. ^ "You know how you can tell when a moth farts, Daniele?". Il Foglio. 2007-12-13. http://www.camilloblog.it/archivio/2007/12/13/“you-know-how-you-can-tell-when-a-moth-farts-daniele”/. Retrieved 2010-06-11. 
5. ^ "Luttazzi ha copiato la battuta? [Did Luttazzi copy the joke?]". http://tv.repubblica.it/home_page.php?playmode=player&cont_id=15286. Retrieved 2010-06-14. 
6. ^ "Quel copione di Luttazzi smascherato battuta per battuta". http://www.ilgiornale.it/interni/quel_copione_luttazzi_smascherato_battuta_battuta/06-06-2010/articolo-id=450860-page=0-comments=1. Retrieved 2010-06-06. 
7. ^ ^{a b c} "Caccia al tesoro". http://www.danieleluttazzi.it/node/144. Retrieved 2005-10-24. 
8. ^ "Luttazzi, gag copiate: ma così fan tutti - corriere.it". http://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/10_giugno_12/luttazzi_e481664e-762e-11df-9eaf-00144f02aabe.shtml. Retrieved 2010-06-14. 
9. ^ Wu Ming (13-06-2010). "Sbranato Dalla Comunità Dei Fan". L'Unità. http://cerca.unita.it/data/PDF0115/PDF0115/text7/fork/ref/10164b2k.HTM?key=luttazzi+wu+ming&first=1&orderby=1. Retrieved 2010-06-14. 
10. ^ "Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Person in the World". 13-06-2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzlNEv8CJjM. Retrieved 2010-07-07. 

External links

• Official site with blog and podcasts

Persondata
Name	Luttazzi, Daniele
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Date of birth	1961-01-26
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