This screenwriter's debut, "Big Night" (1996), was one of the more impressive of the mid-1990s, earning him both good press and public acclaim. Tropiano attended Yale University, where he sang with an a cappella group and performed in several shows. Moving to New York, he attended Columbia University under a Richard Rodgers Scholarship. Tropiano's professional career began in the early 1990s as a public relations writer for THE WASHINGTON POST. He landed a job with an agency that handled TV clients and Tropiano went on to work for Bill Moyers at PBS, for the CBS series "Picket Fences" and on such TV documentaries as "Marian Anderson" (PBS, 1991) and "Why Bother Voting?" (PBS, 1992).

With his cousin, actor-director Stanley Tucci, Tropiano fashioned the critically-acclaimed "Big Night", the story of two Italian brothers who discover their differing aspirations of the American dream. A warm, gentle, yet sumptuous comedy-drama, the script garnered the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.