“Lengthy Live the Tyrant: Life and Events of Giancarlo DiTrapano,” a feature documentary about the independent auteur, is being developed as an Italy-U.S. co-production. DiTrapano is described by Ian Thornton, one of the film’s producers, as the “Basquiat of the New York literary scene.”
The film is written by Guia Cortassa and directed by Cortassa and Vittorio Antonacci. It is produced by Jennifer Buzzelli, Giulio D’Antona and Thornton, with support from the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation. The manufacturing coordination of the project is by Susanna Verni. The road producer is Teo Segale.
Forty percent of the budget is in place, with filming about to begin in Italy. Producers are actually trying to secure full financing and recruit a narrator, with a checklist headed by Paul Giamatti.
DiTrapano, who died at age 47 in 2021, ran the literary journal New York Tyrant and the boutique publishing house Tyrant Books. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he “championed avant-garde work and loved taking chances on young, untested writers.”
Tyrant revealed works such as “Preparation for the Afterlife” by Atticus Lish, which won the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction; “The Complete Gary Lutz” by Garielle Lutz; and “The Sarah Book” by Scott McClanahan, which the New York Times called, in its review, “not a book you savor” but “one you inhale.”
DiTrapano once said, “My stuff isn’t for everyone, but nothing should be for everyone. Or at least nothing worth anything. Do you recognize what it is for everyone? Water. Water is for everyone. And if you’re publishing something for everyone, well, you’re publishing water.”
“Lengthy Live the Tyrant” will tell DiTrapano’s story “through the voices of his friends, the authors he loved and published, his beloved family, and the people who knew and valued him,” according to the producers. “Private archive footage and footage will enrich the story, which could incorporate a real exploration of Gian’s world; at the same time as it tells his terribly poetic existence, it will show the places he loved and lived.”
The venture was started by Cortassa, an author of global magazines specializing in art, music and literature, based in Milan. She is a radio presenter and creator, as well as an editor and translator for several international publishers.
In 2013, Cortassa exchanged emails with DiTrapano when she was working for an American literary magazine and DiTrapano wanted one of her authors’ novels to be published in Italy. “I always admired what he revealed, the way he approached the industry, the way he worked with writers, and I always wished we could do something together,” she tells Variety.
However, the writer moved to Italy and Cortassa moved to completely different fields of art, so this was not to happen. “When I heard he had died in 2021, I assumed he wanted to tell his story. It was like a kind of mismatch, and I needed to make that connection happen indirectly and the best thing I could do at that moment was to make his story known to as many people as possible.”
After speaking with D’Antona, Cortassa concluded that a documentary would be the best way to tell such a narrative. D’Antona was later joined by the DiTrapanos’ friend Buzzelli and Thornton as producers.
Cortassa was involved in archival analysis and was in contact with all of the Tyrant authors and with different individuals who were in contact with DiTrapano in his work and private life. “We’re recreating every step and every important point (in his story),” she says.
The film will focus on DiTrapano’s publishing career between 2009 and his death. “He was part of a specific literary group, called Alt-Lit, that tried to establish a new canon in literature,” says Cortassa. He revealed “all of literature’s underdogs, giving voice to writers and artists who would not otherwise have the opportunity to be heard. He had this passionate, visceral strategy for writing. He didn’t really care who the author was, but when he sensed something in the manuscript he was reading, he tried everything to get the writing revealed. This is what made Giancarlo’s work different. Let’s try to convey how he did there.”
The film will follow the writer’s life from his childhood in West Virginia, to New York City, where he rode Tyrant, to Naples, where he moved with his husband shortly before he died, and Sezze Romano – the Italian village of where his family came from and where his writers’ residence still operates.
Cortassa says he wants “(DiTrapano’s) feeling of constant discovery and exploration and love of the unknown and never heard before” to be conveyed in the film.
Thornton, who is also a novelist, adds: “That each really resonates with being on the opposite end of the literary business and having to try to piece everything together through brokers… Giancarlo and I have a mutual disdain for brokers – those gatekeepers – and that’s the barometer of someone who loves the work of art: he wanted to be immediately in contact with the creator and have that immediacy and stay away from the brokers, who are a particular breed, and I don’t say that as a compliment. But it underlines your true strategy and that’s rare.”
D’Antona is an Italian author, journalist and producer. For several years he was a foreign correspondent based mainly in New York, covering American literature and culture for several Italian magazines. He now writes for La Stampa. He was an affiliate producer of several documentaries, such as “Vitti d’arte, Vitti d’amore”, a documentary about the life of Monica Vitti, co-produced by Indigo Movie and RAI, “Ants”, a documentary about migrations across Europe and “ Il kidnapping Dozier”, a Sky docu-series about the kidnapping of American soldier James L. Dozier. He has produced 4 comedy specials for Netflix.
Thornton was co-producer of the documentary “The Face of Nameless”, about hacker Commander X, which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Awards. He is developing two documentary series with Terry Shand’s Emmy-winning Fort Leisure, based on analysis of his novels about occultist Aleister Crowley and Depend Dracula, as well as a scripted drama about the Leeds United football club with Ralph Ineson, and several other programs featuring legendary homegrown music and dance model DMC.
Buzzelli is a New York-based producer with 25 years of experience in co-production, distribution and worldwide programming for companies such as Nationwide Geographic, truTV and Konami.
Antonacci directed “Leap of Religion”, a documentary about itinerant employees during spiritual holidays, in 2018. It was selected in the thirty-sixth Turin Film Competition and distributed on Amazon Prime. He also directed and wrote the 2018 short “Meat Soup,” which won the Premiere Movie Award in the Alice nella città portion of the Rome Movie Competition. He has directed several documentaries, including “Vitti d’arte, Vitti d’amore”, produced by Dazzle Communications and Indigo Movie, and “L’intuizione di Duchamp”, part of Rai5’s ArtNight series. In 2022, he directed Michela Giraud’s comedy special “The Reality, I Swear!” for Netflix.
