Director Daniel Minahan recalls Gianni Versace’s assassination and remembers where he was and what he was doing. What he didn’t know was this interesting backstory to Andrew Cunanan that would become the prime focus of Ryan Murphy’s newest series, American Crime Story: Versace. It wasn’t until Murphy hired him to work on the show that he would find out. Photos and police reports helped his research to direct one of the most bloodiest moments in the series when Jeff Trail is slaughtered by Cunanan.
It is this episode that Minahan has submitted for Emmy consideration in Best Limited Series and Best Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie.
Read our chat below:
The series is not about Versace as such, but it’s more about Andrew Cunanan. What did Ryan Murphy tell you about the show?
By the time Ryan had called me, I had read the first two hours and I was completely fascinated by it. It’s an event that I remember myself. I remember where I was and what I was doing. I was out on the beach and someone called me to turn on the TV. I watched it unfold. It was something I knew a little bit about, but what was interesting was when Ryan described the places that it was going to go to and the scope of it. It wasn’t going to be like the People V OJ because there wasn’t a trial.
When he called me, we had been hoping to find something to work together on for a long time and this was it. I’ve known Brad Simpson for about twenty years, the fact it was Ryan and Brad made it so appealing to me.
The opening where Jeff dies and is bludgeoned to death, talk about that opening.
It was a tricky thing to stage. The episode of House By The Lake is very delicately and carefully reflected and retracted in the fifth episode. When I shot that, we were shooting it for two episodes at the same time. The thing that was really challenging for me was trying to stage it in a way that it didn’t feel like a horror film, but that it actually honored the event of what happened.
To prepare for it, I had gone through a phone book of photographs and police reports that our researcher had pulled for us. As far as blocking and where things occurred such as where they moved the body and why they moved the body and what the sequence of events was, I pieced together on my own through that research. It was disturbing because it was a real-life event and these were real people and you wanted to honor it.
The unexpected thing was that when we shot it, we never shot the actual impact of the bludgeoning. It was never scripted that you would see what happened inside the door. Ryan and I both agreed that we should shoot that and then decide later what we would actually include. It turned out to be strong and emotionally disturbing. As we shot it, we shot the pieces looking at the door, the door slams and without having it planned for the day, I said to Cody Fern who plays David, “Let’s shoot.” I wanted to shoot his reaction and he said, “I haven’t thought about it and I haven’t prepared for it.” I told him that there was no way to prepare for it, but to just give it a go.
What happened that was really surprising was that, even though Darren and Finn were making the sounds and Darren was hammering on the floor, the dog was completely sensitive to Cody Fern. The dog had such a strong reaction to it, and the dog completely played off of Cody and it was such a magical moment, an honest thing happened. Up until that moment, I had prepared the boys really carefully, we had a readthrough and they asked whatever questions they needed to ask. “Why was he waiting?” Where were they going?” and all that. Once I got a sense of Cody and how much he thought about things, I decided to shoot Cody and get an off-the-cuff reaction and it worked.
We also looked at David a lot in this. Was he always the focus of the episode or did that change with that opening moment decision?
It was always going to be that we looked at David. That episode and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell were one part of the same piece. In hour four, I made the decision to try to dramatize everything from David’s point of view and this bad crazy boyfriend pursuing him. In hour five, I looked at it from Andrew’s point of view and tried to dramatize things so you could see what he was feeling instead.
Talk about those two episodes and what they establish for the viewer?
In the big picture of the story. The first two episodes establish a lot of characters in this big operatic and beautiful spectacle. It delivers exactly the title of the show. By the third episode, suddenly we’re in a whole different world because it’s about an older closeted man and his relationship with his wife. The fourth episode is where we really begin to explore the themes of homophobia and self-hate. With David’s reluctance to run away from Andrew, you get a sense that he’s implicated by his own shame and it’s such an important part. It’s when we begin to peel back the layers of the characters and their motivations. The biggest challenge of hour four was trying to make it plausible that David didn’t run away. The reality of it was that Andrew had a gun and seemed unstoppable in his furies, but they were together for four days. Trying to portray that in a way that was believable was the biggest challenge and I feel we succeeded. We tried to make a rule that he was always in arms length. They stop to eat and he’s pinned against the car while they’re eating. When they go to the restroom, they go together, there’s this idea that he’s a hostage.
Talk about the locations for those episodes such as the diner.
There really was an instance where two waitresses claimed that they saw two men who fit the description of Andrew and David. They noted that they were dressed differently and appeared to be two guys having food in the diner. Whether they actually saw them but I think that was Tom’s jumping off scene. Part of the reality is that when they’re doing a road trip like that, they had to stop for food and anytime they stopped at a rest area, there’s a possibility they had been sighted. You get a sense of their backstory and what things were like when they had a good relationship or were falling in love, but then you realize David is really testing the boundaries of his situation. It’s such a strong scene.
What scene moved you when you were shooting?
The scene that really moved me the most was David’s murder scene. The day we shot it was the day of the lunar eclipse. We didn’t know if we’d lose the light, but it gave us this shimmery light that day. We were by the lake and we shot the scene with David pleading for his life before running away from Andrew and goes into the house. There’s the memory of his father and when we see him again, he’s dying on the shore. We intentionally didn’t shoot it with music and drama. It was very flat with just the sound of nature and the pop of this gun. The crew became silent and it was sad and moving because it was the end of that story. We meticulously imagined the end of David’s life. The idea of working on a true crime story hit everyone at once. It gave us a feeling of reminding us of the importance of what we were all doing. It was remarkable.
I loved that scene with his father and what his dad said to him.
I think him coming out to his dad in the basement was heartbreaking, truthful and surprising. We don’t know how David really came out to his parents. I chose that location. My dad’s workroom was in the basement of our house and that’s where I had that conversation with my dad. For me, it was personal. I put a lot of my personal experience into that episode and into that scene in particular. If David and Jeff had survived they would be my age. I might have crossed paths with them and they reminded me of people I knew.
I saw the finale of that series at the DGA and seeing it on the screen was incredible to see how it transformed.
We really tried to make all our decisions and gave it the production value of a feature. We shot it that way, we cut it that way. It was amazing to see it projected that big. When I see it with a big audience, I get the equivalent to stage fright.
makeuphag: American Crime Story;The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Please consider for Outstanding makeup Non- Prosrhric and Prosthetic in a Limited Series. Thank you!
LOS ANGELES – Daniel Minahan has known Ryan Murphy since the mid-1990s. Both were journalists in L.A. at the time and were starting to pen prospective narratives for TV and film. Murphy went on to be a prolific and lauded TV series creator (Nip/Tuck, Glee, American Horror Story, Feud), winning four Emmys and nominated for assorted others while Minahan established himself as a producer and director, becoming an Emmy nominee in the former capacity for Outstanding Drama Series on the strength of House of Cards (season 5). Minahan’s other credits include serving as EP and showrunner of Marco Polo and directing episodes of such series as True Blood, Six Feet Under, Homeland and Game Of Thrones.
Yet as their careers progressed, Murphy and Minahan’s professional paths hadn’t formally crossed–until the true crime anthology TV series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX) brought them together, as EPs/directors. Minahan directed three episodes, including the finale and “House by the Lake,” an installment submitted for Emmy consideration in directorial achievement.
When first presented with The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Minahan said he felt “very connected” to the material. “I thought it was brilliant and it was in a time period I know something about. I grew up during that time. It was a story I felt that I could really bring something to. and there was the additional attraction of working with (EP) Brad Simpson again. He worked on one of my first features.”
Minahan had the advantage of getting to work on The Assassination of Gianni Versace from the very outset. “I was there while Ryan was shooting the first hour. I picked up the atmospheric stuff in Miami, got to know the crew and saw the style of what Ryan was establishing. What I found as I began directing was that the work took on a life of its own. Each episode is almost a standalone piece, with the show spanning different genres.”
“House by the Lake” Minahan described “House by the Lake” (episode 4) as “a psychological thriller” in which Minneapolis architect David Madson (portrayed by Cody Fern) is forced to go on the run with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the man who murdered at least five people, including fashion designer Versace, Madson, and Chicago tycoon Lee Miglin. “This episode had a really intense emotional through line,” assessed Minahan. “To me, it’s sort of where the show begins to explore deeper themes of hate and homophobia. We get into the core of the series through the eyes of David and Andrew.”
The inherent challenge throughout the show, continued Minahan, was “depicting real people’s lives, particularly the victims.” This necessitated Minahan having to maintain a delicate balancing act between his role as a dramatist while still honoring these real-life characters. “It was important to me that the show be compelling and that people would want to follow our story, but at the same time we had to be respectful of the victims as individuals as well as their families. I feel we told the story in a way true to the lives of these people.”
There was also painstaking research to accurately depict the events. For example, Cunanan’s first murder victim was Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) with Minahan and his compatriots turning to forensic photography and police reports “to imagine the blocking of the crime and where it took place.”
Perhaps the biggest creative and logistical challenge of the show, though, was its casting which extended far beyond the principal performers. There were more than 200 speaking roles. Minahan related, “It took a lot of energy to find the right actors. Our casting people were spectacular and tireless. A lot had to be done on tape, with my trying to meet in person those considered for the more important roles. One of the hardest to cast was Andrew’s mother, Mary Ann.” Ultimately Minahan gravitated towards Joanna Adler, a well-respected New York theater actor, for that challenging role.
As for the biggest takeaway or lesson learned from his experience on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Minahan observed, “I’ve been working closely, shoulder to shoulder with the crew, executives, creatives and showrunners on the last five shows I’ve done. The major takeaway for me moving forward is I want to create a family like the family that Ryan has created at Ryan Murphy Productions. When you reach a certain level, there’s the expectation that everyone brings their most excellent work to the show. But beyond this, Ryan’s company has a respect and familial quality for its people. You feel safe, protected. There’s loyalty. You have the feeling you are doing something important. It’s still a series. It’s still entertainment but there’s a greater sense of purpose and significance to the stories you tell.”
The subtitle of the second installment of “American Crime Story,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” emphasized Andrew Cunanan’s (played by Darren Criss) most infamous murder, but writer Tom Rob Smith was determined to not overlook the killer’s other victims in his adaptation of Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.”
With a Friend Like This…
Cunanan’s first murders were close to home. As depicted in the fourth episode Andrew snaps and ambushes his friend, Jeffrey (Finn Wittrock), much to the horror of former boyfriend, David (Cody Fern), who becomes his second victim.
“There is a difference in tone and in the way Andrew saw [those] murders compared to [those] of Versace and the others,” Smith says. “It’s someone who has had a nervous breakdown, in effect, who crumbled to nothing — who is full of loathing in his life, and is lashing out at the two people who he feels have drifted from him. Once he crosses the line, he thinks, ‘Now that I’m a killer, what should I do?’”
With these two killings Andrew’s potential future life collapses, Smith says.
Orth’s reporting was vital for Smith’s research and gave vital insight into the real-life mindset of everyone as it was happening. Smith credits Orth’s book with helping to establish how “American Crime Story” would handle David’s death, which occurred after Andrew coerced his ex to go on the run with him post-Jeffrey’s murder.
“What Maureen’s book did was go to the family, and their grief, after describing his death,” Smith says.
Drawing Out the Death(s)
Smith took great pains to make David’s final moments on-screen appear as close to reality as possible (replicating the lake, tall grass, and the home nearby that was evident in crime scene photos), but because the murder itself “would have taken a couple of seconds.” Smith lingered on the moment.
“Clearly, we don’t know what went through his mind in those few seconds, but I really wanted to contrast Andrew, and it became about the love of his family,” Smith says.
Though the show would quickly reveal these are David’s final thoughts, “it was about trying to take that part of the book, which deals with the grief of the family, and put it into that moment, so it didn’t become a series of mechanical facts about the murder,” Smith says.
To give the proper respect to the other deaths, Smith’s limited anthology series jumped around in time, starting with Versace’s (Edgar Ramírez) homicide, and then backing up to show what led to it.
“The other murders aren’t just a prelude to the thing that everyone knows,” he says. “The format was a way of increasing their weight in the structure of the story, and not make them just look like they were a stepping stone on the way to a thing that everyone knew. These victims, who had been given no attention, were incredible people. To be able to pull their story into the light was sad, rewarding and emotional.”
Gunned down by a serial killer on the steps of his Miami Beach home, the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace in July 1997 captivated the world. But the crimes that festered around, and later were exposed by Versace’s death, most fascinate Darren Criss, the 31-year-old actor who plays killer, Andrew Cunanan, in a new TV drama series. After his breakout role as Blaine in Glee, Criss has made a string of TV appearances; wowed Broadway as Hedwig in the musical Hedwig And The Angry Inch; developed the alt-pop band Computer Games with his brother, Chuck; and in January this year got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, writer-producer Mia Swier.
American Crime Story 2: The Assassination of Gianni Versace has already aired in the US, what’s been the reaction?
I’m just thrilled people have watched it — not for my own ego — but because it’s such a fascinating and compelling story that raises so many questions. It’s the kind of show that I’d like to talk about, even if I wasn’t in it!
We don’t totally know Cunanan’s motivation for the serial killings, do we?
I don’t think it is as simple as this guy wanted fame and fortune or glory. It’s sort of a pretty big cocktail of a lot of unfortunate factors.
And the crimes around that crime?
The show tries to hone in on this theme of homophobia in the United States. One of the great things about American Crime Stories is that we centralise our story on a crime, but we kind of really investigate and explore the other crimes around that, and how they affected the central crime, and vice versa. The first series (The People v O.J. Simpson) obviously is centred on the murder, but what it is really investigating is racism in Los Angeles; and what that trial meant for national black identity. What we focus on here (Versace) is how homophobia plays a hand in these crimes — not just for Cunanan and Versace, but how it manifests itself in the FBI and in the military.
20 years on, those issues are still relevant.
Absolutely. It’s unfortunate, fear and prejudice always seem to be in fashion in one way or another.
Aimee Mann guest stars in a powerful scene for Cunanan, where she sings “who’s going to drive you home tonight?” (The Cars, Drive). How psychologically revealing are those lyrics?
Oh, yeah. It’s a great scene. He’s terrified of being left alone. There’s a key line — and I’ll summarise — where he says, ‘I’m a new person. Now I just need someone to be a new person for’. He just needs these people so he can share this fantastical version of himself.
Segueing now, The Cars, ’Til Tuesday, did they influence your band Computer Games?
Sure. Any popular good music. Everything influences you either consciously or not. So, yeah, sure, I’ve played my fair share of Cars covers in my day.
Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell will be in Brisbane next month. Did John give you any advice on the role when you took over from him on Broadway?
He’s been such a great friend and a great mentor in general, that I can’t boil it down to one specific piece of advice. But I will say John was always very encouraging of me to learn my own stuff to sort of add to the internal narrative that is Hedwig. And, yep, I’m a ‘Hed-head’ myself. I was a Hedwig fan that got to wear the wig!
American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Foxtel, showcase, Thursdays, 8.30pm; also available Foxtel On Demand
The Origin of Love: The Songs and Stories of Hedwig, QPAC Concert Hall, July 17, 8pm, qpac.com.au
Going into episode four of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, we again find ourselves jumping backwards in time, this time to a week before the events of episode three. Last hour, we saw Andrew’s (Darren Criss) murder of Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), and the dynamic there was of the older man taken by the younger, filled with the thrill of being alive that Andrew’s presence brought into his life. Episode four flips this situation, Andrew now the one enamoured with someone he can’t have.
We begin the episode inside the apartment of David (Cody Fern), a young architect entering the prime of his life and career. Andrew looks on as David takes a phone call, giving him the go-ahead to present a major new project. Andrew says he is happy for David, and for once it doesn’t seem to come from a place of naked jealousy. His buzzer ringing, David wonders who it could be. Andrew informs him that it is their mutual friend Jeff (Finn Wittrock). In fact, Jeff is more than a friend to David, and Jeff is someone Andrew considers a rival for the object of his affection. Bringing Jeff up from the lobby, David tells him that Andrew “knows about them”. Wondering how this could be possible, David tells his friend that Andrew has this “feline intuition”. As soon as Jeff enters the apartment, Andrew brutally murders him. We see Andrew Cunanan again exercising and manipulating control: he has invited Jeff here to murder him — to bind David to him, to destroy his life so the object of his affection has no other choice but to join with him or die. Andrew never makes this stark choice a verbal thing, it is simply obvious. When David, clearly in shock, asks Andrew why he did this thing, Andrew responds, “I lost control”. This, in itself, is a lie. Andrew knew exactly what he was going to do — he constructed this scenario for his own ends, and always had a plan. When David pushes Andrew to call the police, Andrew outlines the cold facts, “This is your apartment, you let him in. I’ll get thirty years — but you’ll get ten.” Cunanan then produces a gun, telling David that he can’t “allow” his life to be ruined over something he had no part in. Andrew has constructed a situation where the only outcomes David can see are death or imprisonment, and so he must go with Andrew. Slowly, surely, Andrew makes it clear that David is in a different world now — his world. David feels he has no choice other than to go with Andrew, wherever that might lead.
The discovery of the body in David’s apartment does not take long. A worried co-worker has the building super let her in, and the police are quickly informed. They look about the apartment, find the evidence of murder, the body wrapped in a rug, know that David is gay, and quickly construct a scenario — David met a man, something went wrong and David is the body wrapped in the rug. This falls apart when a detective notices the body does not have David’s blonde hair. The co-worker tells the police that there was a friend staying with David, a man named Andrew who seemed to be telling tall tales about himself. The police then assume Andrew the victim, David the murderer. As such, they have to seal the scene and return with a warrant. This leaves David in an ever-more precarious, dire situation. The police aren’t looking to save him, they aren’t looking for the murderer, Andrew Cunanan. David is left in the clutches of a dangerous man, isolated and at his mercy.
This bleeds into a scene of the young David, bird hunting with his father (John Lacy). After his father shoots a goose, David gently holds its limp, lifeless head in his hands and runs. He asks his father if he is mad at him for fleeing, for not being a hunter. His father simply responds that it doesn’t matter, that they can still spend time together, and that the only thing he wants for his son is to never be sad. David is a sensitive child, getting nothing from killing, and his father understands this. He won’t bond his son to himself with things that he isn’t comfortable with, he simply wants his son to be happy and enjoy their time together.
As the police perform their investigation on the body in the apartment, they find out his real identity and, hence, David and Andrew are both missing. The police talk to David’s parents, outlining their belief that he is a suspect, and we cut between that scenario, and David and Andrew. David talks about his lifelong fear of being outed, questioning what he has really been running from. As Andrew and David arrive at a bar, David makes his choice to try and escape from David. He smashes the bathroom window and looks out onto the dark street outside. At the same moment, Andrew is alone and listening to a a bar room performer singing The Cars’ Drive. Andrew breaks down in tears, trying to repress it, but cannot. This is the second time in the show we have seen Andrew find some kind of emotional release through music — the first being at an opera in episode one. The song deals with the absence of the familiar in the wake of a relationship breakdown, the hole left when someone is suddenly gone from one’s life. To Andrew, it seems that this song is also a clear, puncturing instrument of his own warped, mutated vision of “love”. Perhaps, in this moment, Andrew understands that he can never have a normal relationship with another human being — only ones predicated on his compulsive need for control and acceptance. He realises the only way he can tie someone to himself is through actions like those he has undertaken with David, through force and coercion. David returns, having decided he has nowhere to run to, and Andrew grasps his hands across the table.
Eating in a diner, Andrew and David talk about the night they met — how Andrew was throwing money around, and they went back to Andrew’s thousand-dollar-a-night hotel room. They laugh and reminisce, and then David lays bare Andrew’s fakery. Just as Andrew often obtains power from reveling in other people’s pretensions, now he is on the other side. As they drive along a lonesome road, David continues breaking down Andrew’s motivations — the killing of Jeff, the plan to force David to be by his side. Eventually Andrew breaks, holding his gun to David’s chest and asking, “Why are you always talking about the past? We had a future, David.” Andrew doesn’t like talking about the past, his actions then, because they show that he is a false person, someone always operating in the moment and leaving the past behind, someone looking ahead to an impossible future. Standing beside a lake, Andrew asserts that this — David and Andrew’s future — could have been real. David finally tells him that it simply cannot be. In that moment, Andrew makes the decision to kill David, to destroy any illusion of a happy future. As he runs for his life, David has a final vision of his father, the two of them sitting together in their homely cabin, drinking coffee in serene, comforting silence. David is in the place of his childhood again, where everything was simple, uncomplicated pleasures, where the expanse of life before him was limitless in its possibilities. Then we snap to reality and David falls down, shot from behind. Andrew kills him and lies by his side for a while, before taking off once more and tumbling further down into the horror of his own creation.
The runaway success of the maiden run of American Crime Story, ThePeople Vs. O J Simpson, dealt with a multi-faceted crime that had everything a drama series could ever want: murder, deception, media sensationalism and a long-running court case, complete with a highly controversial verdict. It even had an extremely Hollywood live-action car chase ferchrissakes.
Such was the reception to series 1 that fans were hyped to find out which famous true crime would inspire its follow-up. And while there was little in the way of explicit criticism, plenty of murmurs before The Assassination of Gianni Versace began airing suggested that this ‘fan shoots fashion designer’ story wasn’t really enough to justify and hold its entire 450-minute running time. Thankfully, those murmurs have been proven quite wrong.
The main reason this story is more than capable of supporting a nine-part series is that Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan, has a story which is much deeper, darker and more grotesquely fascinating than many people realised, with most people, in fact, barely knowing who he was before this series. Another large factor is that each of his crimes is treated with time, patience and pretty much a full episode each. It’s as though each week is a separate play exploring one of the strings of the man’s diabolical murders, with Darren Criss’s Cunahan in the lead and one of his tragic victims in the supporting role.
We’re sure Signori Versace’s story will pick back up next week or the week after, but this first half of American Crime Story series 2 should really, by rights, be called ‘The Assassin of Gianni Versace’ instead, such is the emphasis so far on the gunman and his rampage.
This fourth episode, again, is stolen by the actors playing Cunahan’s victims. We’re sure Edgar Ramirez will have his chance later in the series, but last week we had the Miglins adding real pathos and emotion to events. And this week it’s his second victim, David Madson, who propels the episode – and the man playing him, newcomer Cody Fern, does truly a sterling job bringing him alive (albeit all too briefly).
Only slightly out of the closet, Madson is a young guy, an up-and-coming Minneapolis architect (what is it about that profession? Cunanan’s third victim Lee Miglin was also an architect…). He and Cunanan are former lovers and take to the road – to Cunanan’s mind – like Bonnie and Clyde, after Andrew smashes in the head of their mutual friend Jeff Trail. But, in reality, he basically kidnaps David and forces him to flee with him.
As with last week, there’s a further exploration into the idea of how shame and embarrassment work for gay people, this time via flashbacks to David’s childhood relationship with his father and how he came out to him – his main concern throughout their bizarre post-hammer time road trip being that his parents would be shamed by their homosexual son and his connection to a brutal ‘gay crime’.
While these fascinating and touching dives into the victims’ lives are welcome and provide excellent drama, they are a real juxtaposition with our spree killer Andrew Cunanan. He’s been at the crux of everything so far and will, presumably, continue to be. And yet still we know almost nothing about him and his true motives – although that is almost certain to change soon, we’re sure.
We’ve seen all of the victims come and go now, so the ‘what?’ and ‘who?’ parts of this season’s American Crime Story are out of the way. We’re really just left with the ‘why?’ – and with just over half the run left, we’re hopeful we’ll find out some of those answers…
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