La Dolce Vita describe intrusive photographers. As to the origin of the character's name itself, Fellini scholar Peter Bondanella argues that although "it is indeed an Italian family name, the word is probably a corruption of the word "papataceo", a large and bothersome mosquito. Ennio Flaiano, the film's co-screenwriter and creator of Paparazzo, reports that he took the name from a character in a novel by George Gissing." Gissing's character, Signor Paparazzo, is found in his travel book, "By the Ionian Sea" (1901). Marcello is a journalist in Rome during the late 1950s who covers tabloid news of movie stars, religious visions and
La vita agra La vita agra La vita agra, known in English-speaking countries as It's a Hard Life, is a novel by Luciano Bianciardi published in 1962 by Rizzoli. It became a best-seller in Italy and it is considered one of the most important novels in contemporary Italian literature. In 1962, when the novel was released it was praised by the public and the critics. It became a best-seller and was translated into English, French, German and Spanish. Italo Calvino wrote a review in which he regarded the novel positively and compared it to other works of the so-called "letteratura industriale" (Industrial literature),