Gianni Minà has spent the last few times telling his life on Instagram, and what a life. He didn’t want to show himself, he didn’t give interviews, he needed his time to answer, and now the times of TV and newspapers have become ferocious. He said no many times, but we went to him with devotion, waiting for a story about his rebel stars, Muhammad Ali, Pietro Mennea, Maradona. Just Diego had left him a message on the answering machine shortly before leaving, and Gianni still suffered from it.
Muhammad Ali told by Gianni Minà: “Myth and fascination of the man who carried the other America on his shoulders”
by Gianni Minà
The announcement of his death was made by the family on social media, which is also a way to measure his extraordinary popularity. He was also on Facebook because he didn’t want censorship or measures, he was preparing a book on boxing, he had brought the film of his life to the Festivals, but only his wife Loredana, director, had gone to Bari. He no longer even felt like a Rai man and had launched a crowdfunding to recover the archive of images.
Gianni Minà, 80 years old and a long adventure: “I told the world with the voices of the protagonists”
He laughed heartily at Fiorello’s gag “It was me…” because it was the pure truth. His home was a mix between Cinecittà and the Olympics, between Sanremo and a Latin American music festival. Monica Bellucci went by in a leather suit, and there was Arbore playing, the Moncada Cubans playing Guantanamera. Or Massimo Troisi wearing Jennifer Beals, the Flashdance dancer. But it could happen to have lunch with Frei Betto, the theologian of liberation, who invited everyone to prayer. Gianni Minà was a magnet journalist and he recounted smugly about when he had put García Marquez, Sergio Leone, Muhammad Ali and Robert De Niro at the same table in the restaurant. The photo is historic, on the left there is a woman who looks at him, not them and wonders: how did he do it?
Trapattoni and the interview with Minà: “And yet I’m mine”
by Gianni Minà
For the documentary film A Life as a Journalist he had taken out the 500 with which he accompanied the Beatles around Rome in the year of grace ’65. It’s true, they arrived in front of the Piper and there was too much queue, Gianni took them to Club 84. Perhaps that story of his about the fabulous 60s was born there, even if I would like to say that his entire professional life was something fabulous.
In the environment he was envied and worked alone: before the World Cup in Argentina ’78 he was the only journalist to ask the members of the military junta at a press conference: “Here there are rumors about people disappearing”. “We don’t know,” the torturer admiral replied from the table, but then Rai officials advised him to leave immediately.
The Blitz season is an anthology of television. He carried Fellini, Celentano, Bene, naturally Proietti, Pino Daniele on Rai2 on Sunday afternoons. It could happen that De Niro called him in Venice, in the midst of a hundred microphones: Gianni, come here, please!
Surely the interviews with Fidel Castro were a turning point in his life. The first lasts sixteen hours and there is the Lìder Màximo who begins by saying “I will try to synthesize”. TVs from all over the world take it. In Natural Born Killers there is someone who says: “I want an interview like the one that Italian did in Castro!!!”. But they didn’t put that joke in the edition of the film that came to us. Gianni was accused of having made a condescending interview and suffered for it.
He worked with Robert Redford, met and interviewed Che’s friends. He took Eduardo Galeano around Rome, who one day arrived at Repubblica because he wanted to write a book on football. Yes, Gianni also wrote for this newspaper, in truth he went too far, every time it was a problem, but how could we cut a scoop… Maybe now it will be on the same cloud as Gianni Mura and Mario Sconcerti: together they brought a story of sport that was never trivial, that went beyond the playing field, that touched people’s hearts. We had his exclusives with Mennea, with Maradona. I worked a lot alongside him, it wasn’t always easy, but it’s great in the shadow of the giants, and you always learn. Every now and then he disappeared, maybe he was inside the Selva Lacandona, looking for Subcomandante Marcos. Who had sent him a handwritten note, delivered by a child. That day, Gianni was in Mexico City with Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. “The only thing I missed was Mandela” he said recently “but I tried”. And now it’s time for tears.