One of the most memorable scenes from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, FX’s brilliant and underwatched 2018 miniseries, concerns Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and a wealthy older man who thinks he has hired Cunanan to have sex with him in his Miami hotel room. What the man doesn’t know is that Cunanan is a fugitive serial killer who will soon murder the world’s most famous fashion designer. Cunanan has decided to torture his would-be john with some duct tape, a pair of scissors, and “Easy Lover,” 1984’s hit duet that Collins performed and cowrote with Philip Bailey.
The appearance of “Easy Lover” in The Assassination of Gianni Versace reveals new layers to Cunanan as well as the song. Setting aside the obvious logistical problems — why would Cunanan pack Bailey’s Chinese Wall CD for his cross-country crime spree, on the off chance that he would want to play it during an assault? — the song perfectly spotlights how the killer’s delusional megalomania fed his increasingly homicidal behavior. Criss’s ecstatic arm-waving to this frothy pop tune, moving in time with Collins’s titanic drum beat, while his prey slowly suffocates, is both chilling and darkly comic. The walls are closing in on Cunanan, but he will not be deterred from relishing his mayhem in the meantime.
As for “Easy Lover,” The Assassination of Gianni Versace teases out the song’s dark subtext, and then completely reinvents it. At the scene’s climax, Cunanan straddles his would-be customer, raising the scissors above his head. As he plunges the blade into the duct tape covering the man’s mouth, finally allowing him to breathe, Collins’s screaming vocal lifts on the soundtrack: “You’ll be down on your knees!” Whoa. Was that in “Easy Lover” from the beginning?
Should Phil Collins Be Celebrated or Vilified?
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