Ah, Corto, Corto...

Un annetto fa ho scritto questa lettera a (ehm) Daniel Day Lewis...

Milan, November 27, 2017

Dear Mr. Daniel Day Lewis, Sir,

my name is Paolo Bacilieri, I'm an italian cartoonist, I've done some work(comic books, they call them graphic novels, nowadays), one was recently translated in english, Fun, it's about crossword puzzles...

Well, this is NOT the reason I'm bothering you, I'm writing you because I am, I always been since I was a boy, a great, passionate Hugo Pratt fan, as many others in Italy and worldwide, and of course fan of the main character HP created, Corto Maltese.

Did you, by any chance, ever read them comic stories? I know that they are now well published in UK/Eire/Usa too, even if maybe they aren't as well known in English language as they are in french, spanish, italian, etc.

I'm writing to you this open letter with my poor, basic english for 2 reasons:

1- I had a vision.

2- I'm desperate.

The vision I had some years ago was a terrific movie with you, Mr. Daniel Day Lewis as Corto Maltese.

I'm well aware of your decision to quit acting, but nevertheless I beg you, for this time only, please reconsider, 'cause you're probably the one and only who still can impersonate Corto Maltese in a movie.

Not an easy task. Who's Corto Maltese? A sailor man, a pirate (he prefers Gentleman of fortune), a business man, an outlaw, a hero? He surely is one of a kind, very much different from many superheroes-comics carachters (which I like too, by the way), he's, yes, a kind of romantic hero, the way some Conrad's or London's carachters are, but, well, he's REAL, he, in some way, manages to keep a foot in the XIX century and the other in the modern XX century... and he often deals with real historical people, like M. Von Richthofen, the Red Baron, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Jack London, J.Stalin, Tamara de Lempicka, Hypatia, etc. 

You are perfect, you're him, without the slightest effort.

I dream about a movie who's not a mere transposition of this or that Corto Maltese story, a movie who, combinig slices of different stories, digging into them, gives a personal view, of Corto Maltese and his world, which is a wide, rich, complex, unpredictable one.

About the director, Mr. Paul T. Anderson, as he did in your last film togheter, the magnificent The Phantom thread, in There will be blood, The Master, Inerent vice, even in Boogie nights, the way he carefully recreates an historical background without big things, with ideas, and suggestions, should be  in my opinion the perfect director, for DDL/CortoMaltese, well, to say all the truth, there are one more who is, (in my wildest dreams, always), up to this task, Mr. Peter Weir, but PTA, for the reasons above and his special commitment with you, is my first choice.

I'm desperate, because, even if I know some of them, I've absolutely nothing to do with the owners of the rights, publishers etc. of Hugo Pratt's work. I'm writing to you, Sir, totally on my own, just because I think about Corto Maltese as public domain, basic goods, just like water or landscape, or Giotto's frescos.

I'm desperate, because the chanches of seeing Daniel Day Lewis as CM are less and less. And worse than that, someone will maybe someday do a movie based on this beloved charachter and it will be a shitty, poor exploitation for deprived nerds, with nothing of the rare, subtile, unconventional, revolutionary and always stunnung beauty of Hugo Pratt's stories and drawings.

Best wishes.

Respectfully yours,

pb