Hosts discuss American Crime Story for the episode “Manhunt.”
AFTERBUZZ TV — American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. In this episode hosts Shaka Strong, Juliet Vibert, Russel Ray Silva, and Ronnie Jr. discuss episode 2. | 25 January 2018
After sharing the limelight with the Versaces in the premiere of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Darren Criss’ Andrew Cunanan took over the spotlight in Wednesday night’s second installment. The first episode showed us how the actual murder happened; this one was a step away from that action, and a beginning of the character study of Cunanan that this series really is.
It’s also the introduction of that infamous pink Speedo Criss was spotted wearing on set. Suffice it to say both episode and Speedo do not disappoint.
There’s another big moment near the end of the episode to focus on, but let’s first turn our attention to that Speedo. It comes out as Cunanan walks Miami Beach — where he’s fled to hide after a series of murders across the country. The police manhunt, as we see in parts of this episode, is hugely ineffective. Homophobia runs rampant in the police department; this is the ‘90s, and no one wants to put flyers up in the gayborhood.
As a result, Cunanan is able to hide in plain sight at a motel. He meets Ronnie, a squirrelly guy played by New Girl’s Max Greenfield, who nonetheless is earnest to a fault. Ronnie shares his tale of accepting that he was going to die, only to be flummoxed when he lived. “They handed me my life back, and I didn’t know what to do with it,” he says, voice trembling slightly.
Cunanan’s response is to lament the deaths of his best friend and soulmate — people, we know, he actually killed. When Ronnie questions if they both died that year, Cunanan is ever so slightly defiant in his affirmative response. Trusting as Ronnie is, there’s a hint of skepticism in his eyes.
As depicted by Criss, Cunanan is a performer, a chameleon. His life is whatever he needs it to be in the moment. But he’s not quite convincing enough. There’s always a seed of doubt there. He has to supplement his decent-but-insufficient storytelling skill with charm and sex appeal — hence the Speedo reveal.
Cunanan strips down to his bright, pink swimwear to take a shower on the beach, all while bragging about his connection with Gianni Versace. He goes so far as to invent a proposal from the legendary fashion designer, which Cunanan says “didn’t work out.” His story is clearly bullshit, even to someone as trusting as Ronnie. But when he’s fit, cute, and wearing not much clothing, it’s easy to be charmed by Andrew Cunanan.
Throughout the series, we’ll see men with sharp minds being won over by Cunanan, either sexually or merely to succumb to his will. In this scene, we see exactly how hypnotizing Cunanan can be when he properly mixes his tall tales with his impressive physique. With historical hindsight, we can question why anyone ever trusted Cunanan. We can see how flimsy his stories were. But devils don’t lead with their horns; they appear in forms most tempting. His darkness is seductive, shrouded in grand stories of brushes with fame and fortune. The greatest danger of a man like Andrew Cunanan is in how charismatic he can be.
It’s little wonder Cunanan successfully lures a wealthy, married, older man back to his hotel room, only to duct-tape his face and leave him gasping for air. By the time Cunanan has used his john for a free meal and drink, the man is simply relieved to have survived.
Cunanan eventually leaves the motel and Ronnie, almost running into Gianni Versace himself at a club. He misses the designer, however, and instead ends up dancing with a random guy on the dance floor — yet another man entranced by Cunanan’s looks. This time, though, as the guy asks what Cunanan does, the killer’s chameleon colors fail him.
“I’m a serial killer,” he confesses. The guy questions him, confused. “I said I’m a banker!” Cunanan says. And then he breaks.
“I’m a stockbroker, I’m a shareholder,” he begins. “I’m a paperback writer. I’m a cop. I’m a naval officer. Sometimes, I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis, import pineapples from the Philippines. I’m the person least likely to forgotten. I’m Andrew Cunanan.”
Without his grand stories, the true Cunanan is laid bare: He’s a kid desperate to be remembered, to be interesting. History has remembered him, of course — not as a banker, or a stockbroker, a shareholder, or any of his other many disguises. In his desperation to be famous, he became infamous.
But it was well into his spree of killings that Cunanan got to the end of his rope. Next week, we’ll learn what drove him to murder Lee Miglin — and the effect it had on his wife, Marilyn Miglin (played by Judith Light). That episode, like this one, and all the others, is just another piece of one complicated puzzle: How did Andrew Cunanan become Andrew Cunanan?
Not one to pass up a good sense of wordplay, the second episode of FX’s Versace series is titled “Manhunt.” On the surface (and boy is this show delighted and seduced by glitzy, glistening surfaces!) this refers to the FBI’s literal manhunt for Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). One of America’s Most Wanted killers— even before he shot the Italian designer—Cunanan narrowly avoided being caught by the FBI in the days leading up to the infamous assassination that guaranteed we’d all know his name. But, as the show is focused on the way gay men nurture different kinds of intimacies with one another, the literal meaning of a man hunt is always there in the edges of every scene.
The FBI describes Cunanan as a predatory escort: every interaction he has simmers with a kind of inauthentic authenticity. He’s always calculating how well his lies are landing and how successful he’s being at passing himself off as whoever the person in front of him would like him to be. Since we get to see him alone, where he rehearses his lines in front of the mirror and indulges in off-kilter behavior (like, you know, covering his eyes and nose with duct tape before telling his newfound Miami friend that he’s going to take a shower now), we know there’s something off about him. But he’s charming to a fault, which is why he’s able to lure an older man to hire him and allow him to toy with autoerotic asphyxiation while Cunanan dances around to Philip Bailey and Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover.”
And if the episode is clearly most interested in Cunanan’s ability to seduce any and everyone around him, “Manhunt” also shows us the intimacy that bonded Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin). Despite what Gianni’s sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) would have wanted, the two had found a way to live their lives in contradiction to what’s expected of a couple. No talk of kids or marriage or stability, things presumably Gianni wanted at one point. Instead, they had lots of fun, and often enjoyed inviting others into their bedroom. A point of contention between the two Versace siblings, the episode nevertheless suggests that days before the designer was killed, his beloved Antonio had finally decided to settle down:
“I don’t want this anymore,” he tells Gianni as they lounge by the pool. “I want you. I want to marry you.”
The response he gets is heartbreaking: “You can say it in the morning. But can you say it in the evening?” The hunt, both men know, calls out to Antonio once the sun goes down and he may not be able to let that go as easily as he’d like, even if it is what his lover would ultimately so want.
This Week’s MVP:
Given she’s a graduate of the Almodóvar school of melodrama acting, it shouldn’t be surprising that Cruz is nailing her role as Gianni’s caring if abrasive sister. Here is the kind of larger-than-life woman whose mood swings, paired with her raspy voice and striking blonde hair, would easily make her a punchline (see, for example, Maya Rudolph’s hilarious take on Donatella on SNL). But the Spanish actress plays her like a livewire always on the verge of lashing out (out of grief, out of anger, out of jealousy); what gives her strength is also what threatens to undo her.
Seeing her go head to head against Gianni (days before he’s killed, over disagreements about their runway show) and Antonio (years before, when the free-wheeling promiscuous lifestyle he and Gianni were leading finally took a toll on the designer’s health) was just divine. We expect to see that moment when she yells “You’ve given him NOTHING!” at Antonio to become a go-to reaction gif. But she’s just as good in the quieter moments, like when she seethes silently at seeing her brother’s latest collection be a success despite her reservations about it, or later still when she all but loses it as his remains are cremated, her face a frozen mask of grief.
Update on Ricky’s speedo: it made the briefest of appearances. More importantly, we also got treated to a full-blown sex scene in the Versace bedroom (including a third!) where Martin wore nothing but a black pair of briefs which he soon got rid of.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 2 Recap: Penelope Cruz is MVP
There’s a creeping sense of foreboding that is built effectively throughout this slower-paced episode, only to be deflated time and again. The effect builds stress for the viewer, and shows us that for Andrew Cunanan, violence was not indiscriminate but rather one of many ways to pass the time, like lying on the beach.
The Cunanan parts of the episode feel like the writers telling us: we’re not there yet. This is not the main event. The law enforcement discussion of Andrew’s four murders before Gianni certainly suggests that we will see those killings early on, rewinding to show how Cunanan became the man who showed up on Versace’s doorstep with a gun. Here again, Darren Criss’s performance sells us on this steely-eyed “predatory escort,” and his clear-eyed malevolence is so immediately understood by the audience that it’s more shocking when he doesn’t murder someone, or even physically harm them at all.
In the premier, we were treated to an awful lot of Cunanan showing off his off-putting, yet somehow winning, chameleon-like qualities as he met people in different times, places, orientations, and socio-economic standings. But if the Andrew of Episode 1 is inscrutable, the one we get to know in Episode 2 is surprisingly candid. Even before he tells a cute guy in a club that he’s a serial killer, confessing his many fake personas, we see Ronny repeatedly pick up on his strangeness.
“Manhunt” also expands on Max Greenfield’s Ronnie, a lonely HIV+ gay man who Andrew connects with easily. Ronnie’s story is heartbreaking because while we see it across Greenfield’s perturbed face every time he catches something amiss, he seems to want companionship so much that he’s willing to overlook his intuition. I hope we’ll be seeing more of Greenfield’s effective performance in the future, as his presence in Cunanan’s hotel room during the police raid suggested in the premier.
On that point, we spent more time with our law enforcement officials this episode. It’s startling that they knew Cunanan’s full name after he killed Lee Miglin, his third (known) victim, although they neglect to mention a circumstance of his death that bears a striking similarity to the events of this episode. They even somehow knew that he would be in the general area. But their shortsighted approach to finding their suspect (who needs fliers, anyway!) and their fidelity to the victim profile of closeted men, caused them to miss what was right in front of them all along.
Another heartbreaking moment comes courtesy of Andrew’s victim-who-wasn’t. The man clearly picks up guys often enough (and feels badly enough about it) that he answers “yes” when asked if he’s done it two or three times. The look on his face when he calls 911 to report what has happened is devastating. His self-doubt, shame, and likely correct guess about how that call would be received keep him from reporting, and Cunanan continues on his predatory way. To be clear, it’s not the man’s fault that Cunanan remained free. This small but portentous moment at the phone is an excellent reminder of the #MeToo dynamics specific to the experience of men who experience sexual violence, as the encounter with Cunanan surely is. Any experience where there’s no safe word (or even the means to say one, or otherwise object) and one person nearly dies cannot be considered consensual any longer, even if it started that way. Even if he paid for it.
On the other hand, Versace’s story gave a moving look into Gianni’s life, focusing on his two soul mates: his sister and Antonio. It becomes even more clear that they have no great affection for one another, or at least Donatella doesn’t for Antonio. And she does not mince words. There’s already a hint of what will happen to their relationship after Gianni’s death, and it certainly doesn’t suggest that they will be family, as he urged.
The heartbreak of Gianni surviving HIV but being shot by a near-stranger doesn’t escape Donatella, but it’s a worthwhile reminder for a modern audience, particularly those to young to remember the days when the so-called Gay Plague was a death sentence. Here we also got one of our first real looks into Gianni’s life and creative process, and the way he thought of his life’s work. His wish for models who are not dainty but rather look like they eat, have sex, and live real lives is certainly pleasing to modern sensibilities, and is a reminder of the way he departed from his contemporaries. The shout-out to Carla Bruni (then a model, not yet a first lady), the rise of Galliano and McQueen are reminders that while Gianni is a legend, he still had to fight for it, the empire he created from nothing.
In the premier, it comes across that Gianni is at least a happy participant in he and Antonio’s open sex life, although of course that comes from Antonio. This deeper look into their loving partnership shows that perhaps Gianni tired of that life before Antonio, and perhaps was never as interested to begin with. It’s sweet to see Antonio commit to a life together “in the evening,” not just in the morning, but the knowledge that they will lose each other (and a little real-world knowledge about how all of this turns out for Antonio) turns the moment into a wince.
So far, almost every character who we’ve seen spend any real amount of time with Cunanan has figured out some aspect of his act, though I doubt most of them would suspect what he was truly capable of. The john who Cunanan almost suffocated, his college friend, the high school friend and her boyfriend, and poor Ronny have all noticed. In Murphy’s eyes, Cunanan is a compulsive liar and shapeshifter, though not the most diligent one. He can be convincing for a few minutes, but he quickly loses track of his lies, or otherwise doesn’t care to keep them straight. He even signs his full name and hotel address when he pawns a gold coin, and the pawn shop owner checks the board for where that flyer should be. All of this reinforces the larger point of Versace’s narrative: how did this guy get away with it?
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Episode 2 Review: Manhunt
Wednesday’s American Crime Story returned us to the summer of 1997 — La Bouche was topping the charts, body glitter was all the rage and a wide-eyed Andrew Cunanan was arriving in Miami Beach ready to make a name for himself.
And by “make a name,” I mean the bespectacled serial killer conjured yet another alias to secure a room at Miami’s Normandy Plaza, where he came upon a tragic soul named Ronnie (played by New Girl‘s Max Greenfield). I would say he befriended Ronnie, but that would imply Andrew was capable of forming a genuine connection with another human being — and I’d sooner believe that Will Chase grew out his own mustache for this show. (Side note: Anyone with behind-the-scenes intel on Chase’s ‘stache should feel free to drop a comment on the matter below.)
Money wasn’t an issue for the duo, as Andrew’s side business — which mostly involved seducing married men, wrapping their heads in duct tape, then eating room-service lobster — was simply flourishing. You know, if you look past all the lies and drugs and face-stabbing, these two actually had a nice little arrangement. And Ronnie really cared about Andrew; he even had aspirations of opening a flower kiosk together. It was very “Somewhere That’s Green.”
Sadly, Ronnie’s dream was not meant to be. After wrapping his own head in duct tape (there was a lot of that this week) and taking a long shower, Andrew walked out of Ronnie’s apartment — and his life — for good. Even worse, when Ronnie questioned if Andrew considered him a friend, Andrew chillingly replied, “When someone asks if we’re friends, you’ll say no.”
That line, of course, was a reference to the final scene of the pilot when the police knocked down Ronnie’s door looking for Andrew at his last known address. And speaking of the authorities, this episode really showed how little interest the police — and even the FBI — had in pursuing a string of gay-related crimes, even one as twisted as Andrew’s killing spree.
Wednesday’s episode also took us back to 1994, the year Versace was allegedly diagnosed with HIV. (Though Versace’s family denies his illness, Maureen Orth’s biography — upon which this season of American Crime Story is based — claims the fashion icon was HIV-positive at the time of his murder.)
And the fallout from the diagnosis brought out Donatella’s true feelings about Antonio, whom she blamed for her brother’s infection. “He wasn’t enough for you,” she said. “You wanted more. More fun, more men.” She also chastised him for not finding a way to give her brother a family, which she claimed Antonio knew he always wanted. “If you had given him anything, I would have given you respect,” she said. “But you gave him nothing.”
Versace later clashed with his sister, who expressed concerns about newer designers stealing attention — and business — away from the company. (He also argued that the Versace models were too skinny, but that’s a whole other fight.) Determined to prove her wrong, and to prove that he wasn’t going to let his recent diagnosis slow him down, he pulled off a crowd-pleasing runway surprise, temporarily zipping Donatella’s lips. (No small feat, as you can imagine.)
American Crime Story: Versace Recap: Sex, Lies and Duct Tape
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Each week, we’re taking a close look at what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are the results of our digging into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode two, “Manhunt.”
What They Got Right
The Normandy Plaza Hotel
Though Andrew Cunanan reportedly changed rooms more than once, ACS can be forgiven compressing time by jumping directly from his first accommodation to fateful room No. 322 with the ocean view. Otherwise, all the depressing details of his final lodging place check out, from the Mylanta-toned décor and decrepit hallways down to the lobby area’s Marilyn Monroe portrait and Cunanan’s affable rapport with manager Miriam Hernandez. The only minor discrepancies? The address shown on the building’s façade in “Manhunt” reads 7436, when the actual listing for Normandy Plaza was 6979 Collins Avenue. Also, all real-life documentation of Cunanan’s Kurt DeMars pseudonym spells on his passport with one “r,” not two.The FBI fliers
As in episode one, “Manhunt” harps on the fact that FBI agents inexplicably failed to distribute fliers warning that Cunanan was on the loose in the greater Miami area, let alone within the gay community. In a flashback to the days before Gianni’s murder, G-men on hand even tell Miami PD that “fliers aren’t a priority for us right now.” Sadly, as the FBI file on Cunanan(see: page 158) illustrates, their position on that only changed in the hours after Versace had been brutally gunned down.Donatella’s feud with Antonio
Last year, Antonio spoke publicly about Donatella’s supposed viciousness toward him, telling the Sun, “In public Donatella was crying on my shoulder and in private she was treating me like shit […] I felt she was doing everything she could to get rid of me from the business.” Donatella, for her part, told the New York Times in 1999 that, “My relationship with Antonio is exactly as it was when Gianni was alive. I respected him as the boyfriend of my brother, but I never liked him as a person, so the relationship stayed the same.” (Elton John, for whatever it’s worth, had Antonio’s back.) Their rift, underscored as it is in “Manhunt,” appears to be one of the few things all parties involved can agree upon.The Versace family’s insecurities
Wall Street Journal writer Deborah Ball gained access to Donatella and brother Santo, among others, for her 2010 book, House of Versace. In it, she confirmed that there was a degree of jealousy and competition between the siblings, as “Manhunt” makes plain. Also, Gianni was definitely kept on his toes by then-upstarts like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. However, if New York Times fashion critic Amy Spindler’s review of all three designers’ spring ’97 runway looks is any indication, Gianni was far from done as a pioneering designer.What They Took Liberties With
The duct tape scene
It’s not entirely untrue that Cunanan wrapped an older, wealthy suitor’s head in tape and dined on his tab. But Cunanan’s real-life submissive was Lee Miglin, the Chicago businessman whom he killed roughly two months prior to murdering Versace. And he covered Miglin’s face with masking tape, not the duct variety, and left breathing holes in his nose, as opposed to puncturing an oral opening. Also, per at least one account, pruning shears were among his weapons of choice while brutally slaying his victims. And while the show’s portrayal of Andrew gorging on lobster and mic-dropping a champagne flute were dramatic flourishes, he capped off his far deadlier encounter with Miglin by making himself a ham sandwich.The little girl in the parking lot
According to the voluminous FBI file on Cunanan, there’s little doubt he swapped out license plates on his stolen red pickup truck at a Walmart parking lot in Florence, South Carolina, around the second week of May. (See: page 49 of said file.) This is not to be confused with widespread reports of an anonymous tip that Cunanan had been spotted at a North Carolina Walmart after killing Versace. (That lead was a dead-end.) Still, there’s no evidence of a moment when Cunanan snags those S.C. plates while a terrified little girl stares blankly at him and he grins back like a murdery creep.The date with Versace in San Francisco
Cunanan’s claim to Ronnie about Versace having proposed to him at San Francisco’s Stars restaurant is very much the kind of story he wanted people to believe. Except this particular fib is lifted from a similarly tall tale that Cunanan spun way back in 1990, one that was debunked by the San Francisco Gate two days after Versace’s death.The SWAT raid on Ronnie’s room
Whether Ronnie referred to his Normandy Plaza bestie Cunanan as “Andy” is anyone’s guess, but in fairness to American Crime Story, very little about their relationship is clear. For one, a Washington Post piece reported that Ronnie’s girlfriend Fannie, not Ronnie, was occupying the room when SWAT teams burst in. But CNN’s on-scene story counters that Ronnie was in fact the one stirred by their raid. The two outlets also differed on whether law enforcement found Ronnie and Fannie’s room number on a pawn ticket or business card in Andrew’s stolen pickup truck. Minor details aside, there’s not much concrete evidence that Ronnie, as “Manhunt” implies, tacitly abetted Cunanan’s getaway. He was, however, a former florist.The night before the murder
In “Manhunt,” Cunanan stops by popular Miami Beach gay dance club Twist, nearly crossing paths with Gianni and Antonio, who apparently spent their last night together in the same venue before departing and having an emotional conversation about marriage. In fact, Cunanan did hit the town late on July 14, but it was reported to police that he was seen at rival hotspot Liquid, where he stayed for hours. Also, an employee at Miami Subs was among the many who allegedly spotted Cunanan, according to the Washington Post, but he did not actually phone his sighting into the cops like his counterpart did in “Manhunt.” To be fair, depicting a close call with the law is more dramatically taut than detectives interviewing a would-be witness days later.
Fact-checking The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Episode Two, ‘Manhunt’
Like the 2001 film “Memento,” the second season of “American Crime Story” unfolds in reverse chronological order: Each episode recounts events preceding those of the episode before.
So here we are in Episode 2, just before the murderous rampage of Andrew Cunanan reaches its climax. We learn of his sadism: A chilling bedroom scene involving duct tape, scissors and a would-be sugar daddy contains a sublime mix of comedy and terror. We learn of his lies: He tells absurd yarns more easily and smoothly than most people tell the truth. We learn of his jealousies: He seems more interested in the accomplishments of the men he stalks than in notching any accomplishments of his own.
What we have yet to learn is what this all adds up to — what makes Cunanan distinctive from any other serial killer, other than his lively intelligence and large vocabulary — or the answer to, in my view, the crucial question: Did Cunanan’s experience as a gay man in the ’80s and ’90s inform his violent psychopathy? And if so, why and how?
Perhaps I’m too interested in causation — I’m a newsman, keep in mind — but isn’t that what we want to know? If sexuality winds up being to “Versace” what race was to “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the first season of “American Crime Story,” we will need a framework for understanding its role in the crime. There are still seven episodes to go, so I’m hoping that what right now are tantalizing but scattered hints cohere into a whole.
To its credit, the episode does make clear that law enforcement was reticent, if not downright homophobic, about using the gay community to find Cunanan, who was wanted for four killings before he murdered Versace. An F.B.I. agent insists that their target is an expert predator targeting wealthier, closeted older gay men and unlikely to frequent clubs. Lori Wieder (Dascha Polanco), a Miami Beach police detective, urges investigators to canvas the South Beach clubs with fliers and pleas for the public’s help, but she is overruled.
Cunanan emerges as a truly terrifying figure in this episode, thanks to the strong performance by Darren Criss (“Glee”), whose emotional range is put to effective use. He steals license plates in a Walmart parking lot and breaks into a deranged smile when a little girl stares at him in suspicion. He switches the radio station when a newscaster says he is wanted for the murder of Lee Miglin — a victim we haven’t yet met — and manically sings along to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria.” He checks into a seedy South Beach hotel and smooth-talks the receptionist. Scoping out the Versace mansion, he comes face to face with a life-size medallion of Medusa, the mythical Gorgon whose image Versace adopted as a logo, on the front gate. It’s an even match; Cunanan is scary as hell.
I’m struck by his verbosity — has any serial killer ever had so much to say? His monologues reflect an eye for detail and, of course, a penchant for self-promotion, even delusion.
“I need to make my way in the world,” he tells the hotel receptionist, explaining his interest in being mentored by the Italian designer. “I think Mr. Versace will find my conversation very excellent. I would say, ‘Sir, nothing is more inspiring to me than that one outfit that Carla Bruni wore. It was a skirt of crinoline, like a giant floral handkerchief fastened with a gold belt and daringly mismatched with a denim shirt.’”
He lies with abandon, not caring whether his fabrications are even remotely plausible. Befriending a drifter — Ron (Max Greenfield), a fellow gay man who is hanging out at the hotel — Cunanan discusses with him the loved ones they’ve lost to AIDS and other tragedies. Even the most personal statements seem hard to believe, as when he insists that he “lost the best friend and the love of my life” — both that very year.
He tells Ron that he and Versace met in San Francisco and that the two were once an item and that Versace had proposed — almost certainly a lie. He gushes about Versace’s talent: “The man invented his own fabrics. When they told him what he wanted wasn’t possible, he just created it himself.”
He adds: “I don’t see something nice. I see the man behind it. A great creator. A man I could have been.”
Ron asks: “Or been with?”
Later, as if to complete the occupational tour d’horizon we’ve been on, he tells a young man named Brad (what else?) at a noisy gay dance club that he’s a serial killer, the only definite truth he’s uttered thus far.
When Brad looks confused, Cunanan spins again, in a monologue so wondrous it deserves reproduction:
This Whitmanesque survey of economic possibility took my breath away. What if this young, handsome, eloquent man had pursued dreams that didn’t involve duct tape and scissors? Such a pity.
The other story in this episode is of Versace’s final weeks, focused in particular on his relationships with his longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico, and his sister and muse, Donatella. Played by a sultry, terrific Penélope Cruz, she worries — unnecessarily we are told — that her brother’s brand needs refreshing, lest it be overtaken by new designers like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.
Of greater emotional consequence is Donatella’s stabilizing influence on her brother and on his partner, whom she scorns for not demonstrating greater fidelity or a willingness to start a family. Whether it’s because of her chiding or a premonition of imminent doom or simply the result of getting older, D’Amico relents. “I want to marry you,” he tells Versace. The designer is skeptical.
“You can say it in the morning,” he asks. “But can you say it in the evening?”
Earlier in the episode, the couple visit a hospital — Versace in the celebrity semi-disguise of a hoodie and sunglasses — where two AIDS patients, emaciated and deathly ill, can be seen. Lifesaving “cocktails” of antiretroviral therapies had become available, lifting the death sentence the epidemic had imposed on a generation of gay men. Versace, who takes a blood test, recalls that before Donatella was born, he lost an older sister, Tina, to peritonitis.
“Until that moment, I always believed that if you get sick you can also get better,” he says.
The episode doesn’t explicitly state that Versace was HIV-positive, as the journalist Maureen Orth contended in her book “Vulgar Favors,” on which this television series is loosely based. The implication is certainly strong. But from a dramatic perspective, it’s not important what his illness was — what matters is that the prospect of premature death hung over these men, who grappled with questions of loyalty, commitment and family, years before same-sex marriage seemed possible, much less became the law of the land. It’s poignant and well worth pondering how Versace’s genius and relationships might have evolved had his life not been cut short at age 50.
Fragments:
• Race has so far been a subsidiary theme, but for brief references to Cunanan’s Asian heritage. (His father was Filipino.) But there’s a telling moment when Cunanan is at a pizzeria and an employee, who has seen the most-wanted poster, goes to the back and dials 911. “Is he black or white?” the dispatcher asks the pizza worker, who is himself black and looks confused. “White guy — he killed four white guys,” the worker pleads. As if any greater urgency were needed.
• A post-mortem scene — in which Versace’s body is lovingly dressed by his sister before cremation — is arguably this episode’s most elegant. His ashes are scooped into an ornate metal box, which flies back to Italy with Donatella. Impeccably tasteful.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 2: The Great Creator
“Manhunt” B-“
“Manhunt,” like the pilot episode, jumps back and forth in time and between characters, an approach that I’m still not sure totally works. Versace is still alive (save for a brief moment in the cold open that takes place after his death) and Andrew is on the run for a different murder: Lee Miglin. Yet “Manhunt” doesn’t, as I expected it to, then jump back to introduce us to Lee and everything that happened there. (That, presumably, will be in a later episode.) It just takes us to Andrew’s arrival in Miami.
What “Manhunt” does do quite successfully is plunge further into Andrew’s world, a blend of fact and fiction. It’s fascinating and disturbing (the best blend of Ryan Murphy’s strengths) the more we see how skilled Andrew is atlying, whether he’s breezing through a story about being a “fashion student” who wants to meet Versace or when he’s confidently telling new friend Ronnie all about how Versace proposed to Andrew. It didn’t work out, Andrew says with the casualness of a less-important conversation, but they’re still friends. His fictional relationship with Versace is so strong that Andrew becomes defensive, insisting that the more someone knows Versace, the more they’ll love his clothes. To Andrew, Versace is “a great creator—a man I could have been.” He doesn’t want to elaborate. (And that’s to say nothing of the mini-monologue Andrew gives a dancing partner at the end of the episode, able to confidently say he’s a banker, a spy, a propane salesman, etc. all in one breath.)
“Manhunt” also introduces one of the major real-life controversies surrounding The Assassination of Gianni Versace: the fashion designer’s health. In Vulgar Favors, author and Vanity Fair reporter Maureen Orth alleges that Gianni Versace was HIV-positive and that she was told this, on the record (some people also believe this is why Versace’s body was cremated and rushed out of the country so quickly). Versace’s family denies it but Orth still stands by it. Assassination includes this in the cold open which flashes back to a sick Versace, accompanied by Antonio, getting blood tests and treatment in a hospital. Perhaps to give themselves some leeway, the episode doesn’t say it’s specifically HIV (Donatella did say Versace beat cancer six months before his death) but it’s more than implied.
HIV was heavily looming over the culture at the time so it’s necessary here—Ronnie is HIV-positive, and explains how he once thought he had only one month to live—but whether or not Assassination needed to include it specifically with regard to Versace’s unconfirmed status is certainly another question, especially as it feels a bit shoehorned into the cold open. But it does work in the conversation between Ronnie and Andrew: Ronnie is immediately open and talks with an underlying sadness; Andrew lies about how he lost both the “love of my life” and his best friend to the disease, both in one year. There is nothing Andrew won’t lie about in order to fit in, or in order to capitalize on people’s emotions and sympathy to make sure they remain on his side. (The earlier scene where he’s practicing “I don’t want to be a pain” for something as simple as switching his hotel room is telling, too. He wants to make sure he remains in the hotel clerk’s good graces—just in case.)
As for other series-long thematic elements at play, “Manhunt” brings up two in one scene: being closeted (which popped up last week, too) and BDSM. Andrew, in dire need of cash, picks up a businessman he meets on a beach—a man who readily admits “I can be submissive”—and goes back to his hotel. It’s vaguely reminiscent of both junior-league American Psycho and Murphy’s campier American Horror Story elements as Andrew wraps the man’s entire head in tape and listens to him struggle while dancing around in a speedo, all scored to “Easy Lover.” Jump to afterward and the man is visibly shaken from the encounter, quietly urging room service to come back in thirty minutes, and keeping his distance while Andrew enjoys some surf and turf.
As soon as Andrew leaves, the man bolts the door and calls 911 … but he ends up not reporting anything. From the ring he slips back on his finger, the assumption is that he’s closeted and married to a woman—and if he reports anything, he’ll likely be outed. It’s an uncomfortable scene for a number of reasons, and one surface-level reading—that the limitations of being closeted helped Andrew continue for so long—doesn’t feel right. (As for the BDSM factor, well, truthfully I can’t speak to how it will play out in the long run with this season, but Orth’s emphasis on linking Andrew’s interest in BDSM pornography/activities to his murder spree was often frustrating to read in a way that made me deeply uneasy, but hopefully it’s done better here.)
Distilling “Manhunt” into one short recap is annoyingly hard, because it was telling so many stories at once, and some better than others. There’s the investigation and how agents claimed Andrew was a “predatory escort” who targets “closeted, older, wealthy” gay men, and assumed he’d be in Ft. Lauderdale rather than Miami, thus not allowing Detective Lori Weider to warn bar owners/community leaders in Miami (or to put up flyers, which the pawn shop employee would have definitely had hanging on her wall). There is Versace and Donatella’s backstage conversation which didn’t hit as well as it could, maybe because it was trying too hard to link back to his alleged illness or to hammer home what Andrew took away from the world (though that is necessary to reiterate!). However, Versace and Antonio’s conversations in which Antonio says that he wants just Versace, not the other men, were all lovely to watch and felt more natural. Ronnie and Andrew’s drug moments were just disquieting enough—Andrew’s abrupt taped-up shower was chilling—and Max Greenfield portrays Ronnie with incredible depth.
Mostly, I keep thinking about timeline. It doesn’t yet feel effective, but it is interesting that it mirrors how we often learn about serial killers: We hear their names, we learn about their murders, and then—if we choose to keep digging—we read their personal details (any relationships, mental illnesses, drug or alcohol abuse, etc.). Finally, if we stick around, we might learn a bit about the victims themselves. And that, too, is something that I keep thinking about while watching: How much time will Assassination dedicate to the victims? Hopefully, more than most true crime series, especially as it keeps unfolding backwards.
- Seriously, there are about fifty other things I’d like to yell about if I had the space. Dascha Polanco—an obvious standout on Orange Is The New Black—is putting out an effortlessly lowkey performance, and I hope she becomes an ACS mainstay.
- The restaurant employee calling 911 on Andrew, but being unable to remember his name, and the police getting there just a bit too late reads so much like fiction but it’s not! One thing about the Versace/Cunanan case that I am utterly fascinated by is how many super-close calls there were, and how often Andrew escaped unscathed.
- OK, one final thing: the soundtrack is superb.
We gave it an A-
This week’s episode begins like we’re seeing a bizarro-universe version of last week’s: Versace is in a hospital again, but this time he’s standing, looking at the bodies of two gaunt men in beds, while holding Antonio’s hand. At first glance, a viewer might mistake the sick bodies for theirs.
He’s getting treated for something, but the show is intentionally vague on what that something is. The Versace family has always maintained that Gianni Versace was HIV negative, and suffered from ear cancer in the final ears of his life, but the obvious implication here is AIDS — as a gay man living at the height of the epidemic, Versace would have been at risk, and the doctor’s comments about new possibilities with regards to treatment seems to line up. Artistically, it makes sense: It provides a counterbalance to Cunanan, who will emphatically deny being “sick” to Ronnie later in the episode. But vagueness is the best choice of all, mirroring the conversation and speculation that followed Versace in real life.
Versace returns home from the hospital to lounge on a gilded daybed in the center of a room, looking like Marat in the tub, with his sister sitting over him. “What is Versace without you?” she asks. “It is you,” he replies. The scene dissolves from tableau to familial drama: Donatella blames Antonio for Versace’s illness, or for failing to protect him (again, this subtext works better with the implication of AIDS. How was Antonio supposed to protect him from ear cancer?). Antonio asks for basic respect but Donatella balks. He gave her brother neither children nor safety. “If you had given him anything I would have given you respect, but you have given him nothing,” she says. Versace pleads for all three of them to be a family, but things seem prickly at best.
We are transported to the house after Versace’s death, with Donatella watching people place their offerings at the gate. “He is gone, Antonio. There is no need for us to pretend anymore.”
The mortician begins his work of making Versace look as near to his living photograph as possible. Donatella arrives to see his body, bringing a suit for him. She tenderly tightens his tie in the coffin and fixes his cufflinks. He looks perfect, almost living, and then he is cremated. All of that beautiful effort is turned to ashes, and put in a gold box to go back to Italy on a plane with Donatella.
Meanwhile, it’s 1996 again, and Cunanan drives a red pickup truck to Walmart, where he changes the license plate in the parking lot and smiles at a little girl staring at him before driving away. From the radio, we hear that he’s a suspect for the death of Lee Miglin (who had been Cunanan’s third victim), which confirms what we probably suspected: This is before the assassination of Versace. Cunanan, singing along to “Gloria” in the car, screaming out the window, dancing in his seat, is gleefully driving to Miami.
Using a fake passport, Cunanan books a room at the Normandy Plaza (where a massive art piece of Marilyn Monroe emphasizes the show’s theme of celebrity and notoriety) and we see another of Cunanan’s easy lies. “Born in Nice. Have you been?” He’s sociopathically smooth, and it’s a credit to Darren Criss that the oil leaks from his words.
Now that he’s made it to Miami, he heads to Versace’s home, only to find the gates locked. And so he’ll wait for his opportunity, buying sunglasses and a hat and a camera from beachside vender, taking dozens of pictures of the houses to set up a creepy serial killer collage back on the hotel wall.
Even before Versace’s death, Cunanan was on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list, and the FBI came to Miami to inform local police that they’re operating with the assumption that Cunanan is in town or coming soon.
The FBI agents condescendingly rebuff Detective Lori Weider’s (Dascha Polanco) questions. The FBI only has 10 fliers of Cunanan, and they’re not paying attention to the Miami gay scene. “The fliers aren’t a priority for us,” the agent says. (That decision will come back to bite them in the ass when Cunanan uses his real name to pawn a gold coin, and the pawn shop owner will look over at the bulletin board of posters and not see his face.) Weider photocopies a few herself.
Even as a wanted man, Cunanan lives with complete freedom. He talks his way into an oceanfront room with a little practiced speech and befriends the HIV-positive Ronnie (Max Greenfield) who had been hanging around outside. Ronnie’s appeal is clear: Cunanan loves an audience. He talks endlessly about Versace’s fashion and their close friendship, balking only when Ronnie seems skeptical about his obvious lies.
On the beach, Cunanan does what is implied to have become a habit: becoming an escort for wealthy, older men. He finds one and returns to his hotel room, where the man’s suggestion (“I can be submissive”) is all he needs to duct tape around his head, neck, and eyes — and finally, his mouth.
The man begins to struggle. Cunanan turns up the music and flirts with a pair of scissors. “Accept it,” he repeats. “Accept it. Accept it,” chanting it like a mantra, or the chorus of a song. While the man flails for air, Cunanan dances around the room in the show’s most unsettling scene to date.
Finally, Cunanan in his tiny bathing suit straddles the man and raises the pair of scissors above his head. It’s not obvious what he’s going to do. He stabs the man in the face — allowing him to breathe.
The man, alive but still looking very shaken, answers the door for room service in a robe. Cunanan gleefully eats and tells pretty lies about his mother packing his lunch when he was growing up. The man locks the door after Cunanan and puts back on his wedding ring. He calls 911 but hangs up. Cunanan’s greatest ally is the shame men feel about their gay dalliances.
In Versace’s glamorous life, the designer is arguing with Donatella about which models to use for the show. He doesn’t want girls who look too skinny. He prefers girls who look like they enjoy eating, sex, life. What do these models enjoy?
“Front covers,” Donatella answers. She is the business end of the operation, the public face who understands how to stay relevant and get people excited about a brand. Versace designs the beautiful, beautiful clothing — he has a vision. And he executes that vision at the show, ending with a “Versace bride” in a silver mini-dress. Even Donatella gives him a thumbs up from backstage.
His relationship with Antonio is evolving as well. “I don’t want this anymore,” Antonio says about their open, polyamorous lifestyle while Versace is swimming in his pool. “I want you. I want to marry you.”
“You can say it in the morning, but can you say it in the evening?” Versace answers, and swims back to the other end of the pool.
Presumably only a few miles away, Ronnie and Cunanan are cohabiting a room, and Ronnie is beginning to realize how dangerous his new friend really is. While Ronnie talks through the bathroom door about wanting to open a florist kiosk, Cunanan wraps his entire head in duct tape, from the nose up. “Andrew,” Ronnie finally asks. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Cunanan says. “I’ve done nothing my whole life.”
Cunanan pawns a gold coin (stolen, I assume, from the man he duct-taped). The pawn shop woman, who knows enough to be suspicious, asks where he got it. “It’s a remarkable story,” Cunanan says, with his usual grease. We don’t even get to hear it, because we don’t need to. Everything is an easy lie. He is the talented Mr. Ripley without the talent at impressions.
While walking past the Versace house, Cunanan sees a woman with long blond hair trying to get in the front gate, pretending to be Donatella. Versace appears on the balcony. “Baby, I can only handle one Donatella, one is enough!” he calls out, trying to get the woman to leave. “Big kiss for you.”
Cunanan sprints home, thinking this is his shot. He grabs his gun and pulls all of the photos down on the wall before charging back down the hallway.
“We were friends, that was real, right?” Ronnie asks when he sees Cunanan leaving. He knows this is the end. “When someone asks if we were friends,” Cunanan says, “you’ll say no.”
But Versace isn’t home anymore — he goes out to the club with Antonio (who repeats his desire to get married, this time at night). And Cunanan gets a sandwich, where the clerk recognizes him from America’s Most Wanted and calls the police. Of course, by the time the police get there, he’s gone, managing to get to the same club where Versace went (again, just missing him). If only the police had staked out the clubs — this is one of the sites the detective mentioned specifically.
Cunanan doesn’t know Versace is gone yet, and so he frantically scans every face. When someone asks who he is, he rattles off every identity. I’m Andy. I’m a serial killer. I’m a banker. I’m a stockbroker, shareholder, set builder, importer. And then the most important identity: “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.” It’s Cunanan’s desire above all else: to be someone like Versace, someone important, who’s created something incredible. He wants to be remembered, linked to Versace in death if not in life.
Which makes you wonder whom exactly this television show is serving.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Welcome to Miami
Editor’s Rating: ★★★★☆
I don’t know how it’s possible to have two songs stuck in my head at once, but after this episode, both Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover” and Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” are competing for the space between my ears. The idea of Andrew Cunanan singing “Gloria” while wagging his head out of the window like a Labradoodle on the way to the park just seems incredibly reckless, no? How can one possible drive like that? How many crashes do you think Darren Criss got in before they finally got the shot they needed?
Anyway, Cunanan’s insistence on turning the radio station away from the tales of his crime and finding a little bit of escapist beauty is one of the keys to his off-kilter personality. He’s always looking for it, even in the portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the lobby of the disgustingly seedy Normandy Plaza hotel. (Only $29.99 a night! There’s always a vacancy!) He does it again while laying out all of the Versace magazine ads around him on the hotel’s disgusting carpet, and yet again when he recalls Versace’s “proposal” to him while bathing in a public shower on the beach.
Cunanan is obviously destitute and on the run, but that doesn’t stop him from living in his own fantasy world, where everything is fantastic and he is going to walk out of his discount motel and be discovered on the beach and get carted away to a life of fame and luxury. “I don’t see something nice,” he tells his new friend Ronnie about Versace’s clothing. “I see the man behind it. I see a great creator. I see the man I could have been.” That’s the key right there. Andrew thinks that nothing separates him from Versace when everything is what separates them.
With this episode, it becomes clear that the action of the series is moving backward and forward at the same time. While we’re dealing with the aftermath of Versace’s shooting and the hunt to find Cunanan, we’re also seeing Donatella grappling with her brother’s death and her desire to take control of the company. However, we’re also moving backward in both men’s lives, finding out how they intersected on that deadly doorstep by slowly retracing their steps.
For Andrew, we find out that he was hanging out in Miami for about a month, chilling with crackhead Ronnie and turning tricks with old men on the beach. The “Easy Lover” scene is by far the best so far, too: The song is a little bit on the nose for Cunanan’s appointment with a married, older business man from out of town, but that is the camp genius of it. We see Andrew, in his underwear and a blousy open shirt, swanning about while his lover nearly suffocates under a hood of duct tape. Andrew is telling his lover to submit to him; he wants control because he feels so absolutely out of control of the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, Andrew’s friendship with Ronnie is odd. He needs someone who he can impress and who will make him feel superior, but it also seems like he’s grasping for connection anywhere he can find it. Ronnie is happy to oblige. After all, Andrew is attractive, glamorous, carrying drugs, and willing to cut Ronnie in on his escort money for doing nothing at all.
There’s an interesting parallel between Ronnie and Versace here: They both thought they were going to die of AIDS and then were revitalized thanks to advances in medication that happened in the ‘90s. Gianni had gotten very ill, an illness that was kept from the public, and Donatella blamed his philandering lover Antonio for bringing men into their life and possibly causing Gianni to contract HIV. “If you would have given him anything, I would have given him respect, but you have given him nothing,” she tells Antonio.
Donatella is also grappling with the knowledge that she isn’t the genius that her brother is. She castigates him for letting designers like John Galliano and Alexander McQueen steal the spotlight from him and pushes him to be more modern. He says his clothes need to come from his emotions. They decide to each dress a few models in his upcoming show and they’ll see how people react. Of course, everyone loves Gianni’s clothes and they merely mumble when Donatella’s models saunter down the runway.
At home, Antonio is trying his best to have his cake and eat twinks’ asses too. We see Antonio romping in bed with several beauties (speaking of beauties, Ricky Martin’s butt!) while Gianni sits nearby and sketches. Antonio thought they were procuring men for them both, but it’s not what Gianni wants anymore. In the morning, Antonio says he wants to marry Gianni, though this was long before marriage equality was even a glimmer in the eye of the Human Rights Campaign. Gianni brilliantly retorts, “You can say that in the morning, but can you say it in the evening?”
That brings us to Twist. Twist is one of the all-time greatest gay dance clubs in the world. It’s still in operation in Miami and almost directly behind where Versace’s house was at the time. It’s a large, sprawling club with multiple dance floors on various levels and a small shack in the courtyard where brawny Latin men in banana hammocks offer lap dances for $20 a pop. God, Twist is major. This episode was not filmed in the real Twist, but it will have to do.
Anyway, Andrew and Gianni almost collide at Twist the night before their fatal encounter. Andrew initially sees Gianni fighting with a drag impersonator of Donatella, then runs home to get his gun to kill the designer while he knows he’s in residence. Instead, Gianni and Antonio take off for Twist to bask in the recognition of being local gay celebrities and maybe bring home a shirtless circuit boy or two. But Antonio doesn’t want them anymore, and they have a moment of affection where he finally declares that he wants Gianni at night too.
Cunanan heads to Twist as well, but they don’t quite meet up. This, as it happens, also shows how the FBI has been screwing up the manhunt for Cunanan because they don’t understand the gay community. When they roll into Miami, the local police tell them that the spots popular with the gay community are Twist and the 12th Street Beach, the two places we’ve seen Andrew hang out. But instead, they want to focus in Fort Lauderdale, thinking that he’ll be looking for older, wealthy gentlemen to take advantage of. If only they had bothered to listen and staked out at Twist and the beach, Cunanan wouldn’t have kept escaping like he did when the guy at the deli recognized him from America’s Most Wanted.
Instead, we see Andrew finally make his way into Twist, where, unable to find Gianni, he loses himself on the dance floor. He’s quickly approached by a handsome young man who asks him what he does. Andrew spews all of his lies, manufacturing all of those gossamer webs that he’s been spinning all at once. Rather than luring this man into his web, it repels him, his insanity driving him away. Then he finally says, “I’m the one least likely to be forgotten.” It is the only true thing he says in the whole episode.
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