Daniele Luttazzi

Daniele Luttazzi (Italian pronunciation: [daˈnjɛːle lutˈtattsi] ; born Daniele Fabbri on 26 January 1961) is an Italian theater actor, writer, satirist, illustrator and singer. His stage name is an homage to musician and actor Lelio Luttazzi. His favourite topics are politics, religion, sex and death.

Luttazzi was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna, province of Rimini. He began his comic career performing satirical monologues in theatre shows and writing comedy books. In 1988, his monologue won an award in a comedy contest held at Rome's Teatro Sistina. From 1989, he began working in TV variety shows: Fate il vostro gioco (1989, Rai 2), Banane (1989, Telemontecarlo), Magazine 3 (1993, 1994, Rai 3), Mai Dire Gol (1996, 1997, Italia 1). In 1998, he hosts his own late night show, Barracuda (Italia 1). 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 2 in 2001. In March 2001, Luttazzi interviewed journalist Marco Travaglio about "L'odore dei soldi" (The Scent of Money), a book on the mysterious origins of Silvio Berlusconi's wealth: bank Rasini, a bank largely used by Italian mafia for money laundering. The next year, shortly after Berlusconi's statement on the "criminal use of public television" made by Luttazzi (see Editto bulgaro), Luttazzi's show was cancelled by RAI's management. Since then, Luttazzi has been often cited by the European press (i.e. The Economist, Le Monde, El País) as proof of Mr. Berlusconi's censorship of the opposition.

After television, Luttazzi toured Italy doing theatre shows and wrote books. He returned on TV in 2007 with the new satirical program "Decameron: Politica, Sesso, Religione e Morte" (Decameron: Politics, Sex, Religion and Death) for the private channel La7. Eventually his show was suspended after a controversial joke on journalist Giuliano Ferrara (who was working for La7 too). 2012: Luttazzi wins his legal battle against La7. La7 shall pay Luttazzi 1 million 2 hundred thousand euros.

In 2009 he opens a satire gym on his blog. The authors of Lercio.it are trained at his school.

In 1994, Susanna Tamaro, bestselling author of Va' dove ti porta il cuore, sued Luttazzi for plagiarism after his parody "Va' dove ti porta il clito". Luttazzi won the trial: it was ruled a parody, not plagiarism.

Over the years, several detractors have accused Luttazzi of "plagiarism". One of the most assiduous was Christian Rocca, a journalist from Il Foglio (a conservative newspaper controlled by Silvio Berlusconi's family): after the first episodes of "Satyricon" (Rai 2, 2001), Rocca accused Luttazzi of copying the David Letterman Show. Luttazzi replied that "Satyricon" was a parody of Letterman. Rocca took things further in 2007, claiming that the joke about Giuliano Ferrara, which led to the closure of the program "Decameron" (La7), was plagiarism from Bill Hicks. In 2012 a judge ruled the joke was not plagiarized and La7 was sentenced to pay 1,200,000 euro as compensation to Luttazzi.

In January 2008 an anonymous blog listed a series of jokes in English claiming that Luttazzi had "plagiarized" them, and in June 2010, two months after Luttazzi's tv monologue on "Raiperunanotte", an anonymous video was released online comparing jokes by English-speaking comedians with jokes by Luttazzi. Italian newspapers reported the news. Luttazzi replied that that video was defamatory because it did not tell the whole truth: since the opening of his blog (2005) he has invited fans to find the quotes hidden in his monologues, through a game reported on the blog's home page, the "treasure hunt". Luttazzi also calls the allegations "naive", explaining why those jokes are not "plagiarized", but "calqued", which is a fair use of original material.[10]

Five years before those allegations, Luttazzi wrote that he adds famous comedians' 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.[11] Luttazzi asks 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". Luttazzi's blog lists all the comedians and writers quoted in his works.

In 2014, an academic paper explained why Luttazzi's jokes are his own and not "plagiarized" ones.[12] The essay positively evaluated Luttazzi's rewritings of pre-existing materials, defining them as transcreations, or creative translations that add new meanings to the sources, with the aim of modifying the cultural canon of their country.

In Luttazzi's defense, film director Roberto Faenza quoted Roberto Benigni: Benigni compares Luttazzi's copying to the greatest artists' copying, writers like Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Buster Keaton, Eduardo De Filippo, and Woody Allen.[13]