Tag: 2.08

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Brideshead Regurgitated

We gave it a B

I assume this is as far back as the flashbacks are going to take us. Unless Andrew Cunanan had some truly formative experiences as a toddler, ACS: Versace’s eighth episode, “Creator/Destroyer” provides our final, and most intimate, look into Cunanan’s past.

It’s a series of gradually more unsettling vignettes, watching Cunanan’s childhood and seeing the original seeds of truth in his lies: His dad did work for Merrill Lynch, talking his way into a highly coveted job with his professed work ethic and track record of upward mobility. His dad did give him the master bedroom — not as an indulgence, but as a somber reminder of his special status. Even though Cunanan has two older siblings, he is beyond the favorite: His father gives him a car before he’s able to drive, he reads him etiquette books in bed, he reminds him constantly that he’s better than other people.

Cunanan gets into a prestigious private school, where he’s voted “most likely to be remembered.” He happily stands out with a flamboyant flair for attention-seeking behavior. He meets Lizzie at a house party while spinning on the dance floor in a red, leather one-piece jumpsuit. Even by high school, he was dating older men (in this case, a married man who refused to come into the party with him) and dazzling people with his confidence. But he wasn’t a liar yet. He wasn’t a child who skinned squirrels or bullied others. Instead, he read Brideshead Revisited (a massive poster on his bedroom makes sure the audience doesn’t miss the symbolism there) and acts like a manic charmer, seducing people around him with his refusal to fit in.

We get one glimpse of Gianni Versace’s childhood, mostly as a means to contrast Cunanan’s: When Versace is sketching, and called a “pansy” in school, his mother comforts him and promises to teach him. “You must do what you love, Gianni,” she says. When young Andrew Cunanan tells his father he dreams of being a writer, his dad — borderline abusive to his wife and other children — reminds him that writing isn’t an effective way to make obscene amounts of money.

We flash forward to see Modesto “Pete” Cunanan working not at Merrill Lynch, but in a depressing cubicle, scamming the elderly out of their money. That’s how his downfall comes about: called into the boss’s office, who reminds him that he was thrown out of Merrill Lynch under mysterious circumstances, that his track record is spotty at best, that when the FBI comes for him, they’ll give up all of their information. And the FBI comes sooner than anyone might have expected: They’re there at the office, barely giving Modesto enough time to escape home, pry out some cash from underneath floorboards, and exit through a backdoor (agents already made it to the front) before flying away to Manila and leaving his family with nothing.

They’re losing the house, but Cunanan, still loyal to his father, tells his mother that he left money for them — of course his special, genius father would have left money for them. Cunanan’s mother cries, usually so ready to believe pretty lies, but not this one. Cunanan packs his case and leaves her to go to Manila alone to find his father, where he confronts him for his crimes. “Weak, like your mother,” Modesto spits at his special son when Cunanan makes it to the shack where he has been living. “You’re not upset that I stole; you’re upset that I stopped.” And then Modesto spits in his son’s face.

When Cunanan returns home and gets a job at the pharmacy where we saw him at the beginning of last week’s episode, he’s resigned and miserable. His answers in the interview are curt and sad. But then, like a light switch, Cunanan tastes his first lie. He can will a universe into existence where his father owns pineapple plantations. He can build his own future. His yearbook quote was in French: “After me, destruction.” He said he liked how it sounded, but it was prophecy — no matter what personas Cunanan builds for himself, his only talent is in bringing ruin.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Brideshead Regurgitated

American Crime Story Review: Ego, Therefore I Am

As we’ve discussed, people are not born sociopaths. They are made. And it generally happens in early childhood. It’s a humbling thing for a well-meaning but fallible parent to contemplate, and the idea at the core of “Creator/Destroyer” from the first minutes, in which we see young Gianni Versace in his mother’s dress shop in Calabria, watching her work and sketching. It’s not… well, it’s not entirely a “boy” thing to do in midcentury Calabria. Potentially the kind of thing a conservative parent would try to quash.

Instead, his mother (Francesca Franti) teaches him her trade. Boys in school pick on him for being queer and his teacher tears up his sketches, but his mother promises her support in whatever he wants to be and do—and she means it. When he reports that the teacher has called him a pervert, she quietly reassembles the torn pieces of his sketch and says, “It’s beautiful,” then proceeds to show him how to make it.

And that is one big reason why Gianni Versace grows up to be Gianni Versace, and Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) grows up to be a fraud, a pathological liar and a spree killer enraged by men who have earned respect for their work.

We cut to 1980 San Diego, where the Cunanan family is loading a moving van under the direction of Andrew’s father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), a man whose ego issues are apparent from the first frame. The rest of the kids are sweating in the heat while Modesto bombasts about how he will turn the $500 they would have paid for professional movers into $10,000. Meanwhile, Andrew’s upstairs reading Brideshead Revisited. They arrive at, well, let’s say a bit of an upgrade from their previous digs, a huge, white suburban house, and Modesto leaves his three other children and his wife to unpack while he takes “Prince Andrew,” who is blatantly and toxically favored by Dad, into the house for a private grand tour.

Interestingly, Andrew hadn’t been lying about his parents giving him the master bedroom. One of the weirdest details in his bizarre spiel to David Madson was actually true. Modesto says he’s giving the bedroom to Andrew because “When you feel special, success will follow.”

There it is, in a nutshell. One child is told to “feel special,” while the other is guided through the concept of “special” being something you work your ass off for, for years. One is taught empty entitlement; one is given tools.

It gets creepier. Modesto and Andrew get dressed side by side, each laying out their suits and attending to every fussy little detail while staring at their reflections in a closet door mirror (more Narcissus imagery). Andrew goes to a school interview while Modesto does the same at the local branch of Merrill Lynch (so there’s some truth to that, too—sort of). While Modesto goes on like a used car salesman about having come from nothing and pulled himself up by the bootstraps (obviously a superior recommendation to a degree from Harvard), Andrew’s interviewers ask him what he’d choose if he could have one wish. He rattles off a list of cars and assets; the question is re-asked and he answers simply, “To be special.”

Modesto gets the job. Now we know where Andrew’s recurring Lobster Dinner motif comes from. And we get a flash of how Mary Anne (Joanna Adler) became… a bit off. Modesto’s a wee bit of a gaslighter—show of hands, who’s surprised?—as well as a Big Fat Liar at work—again, surprised? He interrupts Andrew and his mom trying to do homework together because he’s bought Andrew a car (Andrew is about twelve and has several older siblings whom Modesto basically ignores). Mary Ann protests that it isn’t fair to the other kids, who are actually old enough to drive, and Modesto calls her crazy again, and grabs her by the throat and throws her to the ground while Andrew watches. Modesto tells Andrew that his brother and sisters aren’t “special” and that his mother has a weak mind and that Modesto is his mother and his father. As Mary Anne dusts herself off and approaches the car, Modesto puts the window up, so her face is reflected in the glass, with Andrew and Dad enclosed on the other side. Andrew mentions wanting to be a writer. Dad says it’s better to be “an opportunist.”

We cut to 1987, when a decidedly queenly Andrew sashays out of that car and into a yearbook portrait session, where he gets called a “fag” for increasingly loud protests over the uniforms and identical poses. “If being a fag means being different,” he says to the jock who’s insulted him, “sign me up!” He marches to the front of the line, unbuttons his shirt, and strikes a campy pose.

Oh, and Modesto’s not at Merrill Lynch any more. He’s doing “trades” from a seedy office in a strip mall. And he seems to be ripping off little old ladies. Hmm.

Andrew’s mom can tell from his cologne that he’s seeing someone: “Who is she?”

“What would you say if I said she was over 30?”

Mary Anne says a young man should be with an older woman, who will teach him to be a man. Andrew goes upstairs and dresses for his date. The date’s definitely over 30, and doesn’t appreciate being brought to a high school house party because he’s married and can’t be seen out with Andrew like that. So Andrew goes to the party alone, tossing aside his trench coat and swaggering into the party in a tomato-red leather jumpsuit. This definitely clears him a lot of space on the dance floor, and also attracts the attention of the delinquent house sitter who’s hosting the party. Hey, Lizzie! (Annaleigh Ashford). She takes to him at once and confides that she’s not a high school student but a bored housewife who promised the owners-—he daSilvas— that she’d watch their place while they were out of town.

So Andrew has now made one of the two closest things to an actual friend he’ll ever have (Jeff Trail will be the other). Meanwhile, the stockbrokers are on to Modesto that he’s been conning little old ladies over fake stocks. The feds are involved. Modesto runs for it, pretty literally—he’s still in the building when the FBI shows up.

Andrew’s senior yearbook page is captioned, “Apres moi, le deluge.”

“I dunno, it just sounded sorta cool,” he says to a classmate of the enigmatic words, attributed to Louis XV and/or Madame Pompadour.

Meanwhile, Modesto runs home, pries open a floorboard, removes cash and passports, knocks his wife out of the way and flees. Andrew pulls up just in time to see Dad jumping a fence. “Don’t believe a word they say,” he says to his son, and takes the car keys from his hand.

Mom tells Andrew they have nothing left, that Modesto had even secretly sold the house because he knew they were coming for him. Andrew decides to go to Manila to track him down, over Mary Anne’s hysterical protests. “He’s dangerous!” she screams, and Andrew puts his hand over her mouth.

“You’re wrong about him.”

Gaslighters are interesting folks, folks. Here’s a kid who has grown up watching his father mentally and physically abuse his mother, and when she says he’s dangerous, he disagrees.

He finds his father in his home village outside Manila, staying with an uncle Andrew’s never met. No, there is no money, and no plan; yes, he defrauded and stole. Modesto never stops defending his actions. Andrew loses it.

“You’re a lie! And if you’re a lie, I’m a lie, and I can’t be a lie!”

Spoiler alert: That ends up not being strictly true.

Modesto’s response? “You’re weak, just like your mother.” Spits on him. Says he’s ashamed of him. Calls him a sissy. Andrew jumps up with a knife in his hand (He’s been chopping pineapple with it) and Modesto dares him to use it. Instead, he just grips the blade until it cuts through his palm.

“You don’t have it in you,” Modesto sneers. One wonders, had his father not said that sentence, whether any of what happened afterward might have been different. See, being a narcissist-sociopath-psychopath involves total dependency on the projections of others. If they say you’re nothing, you’re nothing. If they taunt you to prove them wrong, you’ll do it.

We use the word “ego” almost as if we’re describing a character flaw. In fact, the literal translation of the word is “I am.” To be completely egoless might be the ostensible aim of some religious philosophies, but there’s a big difference between relinquishing one and never developing one in the first place. People with broken or empty or malformed egos are miserable and very often highly dangerous. This episode is basically a primer on how to build a human being with no stable idea of who he is. The pressure of that instability is like the seismic buildup between tectonic plates in a subduction zone. The longer the pressure builds, the more catastrophic the quake’s going to be when the ground finally gives way.

Andrew comes home and applies for the job at the pharmacy, telling the elderly Filipino proprietor about his dad in in Manila running pineapple plantations. “Is that so?” the man says, a bit skeptically.

Cunanan’s eyes are dead as a fish’s. “As far as the eye can see.”

American Crime Story Review: Ego, Therefore I Am

The Assassination of Versace’s Jon Jon Briones Explains How He Transformed Into Andrew Cunanan’s Father Pete

If there’s one constant in the thrilling The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, it’s unpredictability; from the very title itself, which obscures the fact that the series is really about Andrew Cunanan, to theseriousness given to pop culture icon Donatella Versace, Ryan Murphy’s series keeps the surprises coming. That’s true of the penultimate episode “Creator, Destroyer” too, which offers up one of the strongest performances not from Darren Criss but from Jon Jon Briones, who plays Andrew’s father Modesto “Pete” Cunanan. Briones arrives late to the show, but leaves a lasting, chilling impression as Andrew’s disciplinarian dad obsessed with success — and Andrew.

A native of the Philippines, Briones was part of the original London run of Miss Saigon in 1989, and went onto reprise his role in various productions of the work including a West End revival. He became a U.S. citizen in 2010 — a path he shares in common with Pete, who served in the Navy and became a stockbroker. As depicted in Versace, Pete Cunanan worked slavishly to give his children the advantages he didn’t have, even if a sense of entitlement and eventually contempt warped his intentions and turned him into a con artist. Briones gives Pete a sense of combustible intensity imbued with danger and though Pete has just now been introduced in series, Briones perfectly encapsulates the portrait of Pete painted in Vulgar Favors, from his tenderness to his insatiable drive and his propensity for outlandish lies and violence. Because of Briones, viewers go into the final episode of with a new understanding of Andrew — and perhaps a sense of unsettling empathy. TV Guide caught up with Briones over email to talk about the episode, how he got into Modesto’s mind and what he hopes people take away from his performance.

How’d you prepare for this role?
Jon Jon Briones: Research was a big part of the preparation, but it was a bit of a challenge in the beginning as there wasn’t much information on Modesto Cunanan. Fortunately my director, Matt Bomer, lent me his copy of the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth, which is the book the show is based on, and I was able to read it before I began filming. It also helped that Maureen Orth and Tom Rob Smith, the screenwriter, were on set and I was able to pick their brains.

What about Modesto and Andrew interested you?
Briones: Modesto was such a driven individual in his single mindedness toward the pursuit of his goals and his vision of the American Dream. He would do anything to achieve it. He envisioned it and lived in that world, which was really a fantasy as he never actually achieved it. He surrounded himself with lies and grandeur beyond his means; such a tragic and flawed character, as an actor that is so interesting to delve into and so much fun to play. [Andrew also] is such a tragic character. The way he was raised by his parents to believe that he was better than anyone, including his siblings, and that he deserved everything. He seemed to be doomed from the beginning.

It’s really easy to hate Andrew up until seeing you play his father. Did you empathize with Andrew more after playing Pete?
Briones: Absolutely! We learn from our parents at an early age. They are the “sacred” voices we listen to and learn from. As Sondheim said “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn.”

You give Modesto some very singular movements, like slamming hands down on the table or slapping them together for emphasis. Where’d that come from?
Briones: I guess the key to that is understanding Modesto’s wants and how he tries to achieve them. He is very intense and it’s about him getting the attention he needs. When he’s speaking he feels people should listen and he will do what it takes to make that happen. So on set, all of these things came out organically. Modesto is definitely a man who likes a good entrance and exit.

Did Modesto’s sense of discipline, his sense of aspiration resonate with your own experience as someone who immigrated from to the US?
Briones: I believe all immigrants can understand, but not necessarily agree with, Modesto’s pursuit of the American dream. I know when I was growing up in the Philippines, I thought America was this magical place where money grows on trees. I think Modesto must have thought the same thing. Then he managed to get himself to the US and realized that as an immigrant he had to work even harder than most people to achieve that dream.

There’s a very eerie and sometime surreal feeling through this whole series. Did you experience that at all?
Briones: The writing is just amazing and I felt the eerie and surreal sense of it while reading the script. Even while filming there were hints of it. Some of the things I was directed to do in certain scenes seemed a little intriguing to me, but now after seeing the preceding episodes I understand the whole flow of it. I believe the eerie, surreal feel makes it even more riveting for the audience.

What was it like filming the scenes depicting the Philippines? How’d that impact you?
Briones: It was cool getting to the sound stage and being shown Modesto’s house. They did an amazing job because as soon as I sat on the chair in the kitchen and they turned on the rain machine, I was transported somewhere in rural Philippines. In the middle of FOX studios, Hollywood.

There has been speculation that Andrew’s’ father was abusing him. Did you have that in mind while playing him?
Briones: I did not have that in mind while playing the role. I believe that Modesto loved his son more than anything or anyone in the whole world. It might have translated into something else, but he wouldn’t have seen it that way. In his mind, he was always doing the right thing and being a loving father. He may have been delusional, but not with evil intent.

What do you hope people take away from your performance?
Briones: I want people to know that Asians are good storytellers. There are a lot of us just waiting to be given the chance, just as I have been given with this role.

The Assassination of Versace’s Jon Jon Briones Explains How He Transformed Into Andrew Cunanan’s Father Pete

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Like Father, Like Son

The first seven episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story have followed Andrew Cunanan’s journey backwards in time. We’ve seen his vicious killing spree, his descent into madness and his ascension into the life of luxury. Now it’s time to meet someone even worse: his father.

“Creator/Creation” follows Andrew’s young life, first as an 11-year-old boy and then as a teen and we get introduced to his father, Modesto “Pete” Cunanan. It’s clear that the apple didn’t fall from the tree as Pete is a bit of a con man himself, lying and taking the easy road to live in luxury. And just like with Andrew, the story results in Pete being hunted by the FBI when his house of cards collapses.

The title suggests that Pete is the creator and Andrew is his creation, which makes sense as Pete’s terrible life lessons and heinous actions seem largely responsible for turning Andrew into the monster that he will become.

A Tale of Two Origins

The show goes way back to 1957 to introduce us to Gianni Versace as a young boy in Italy. His mother encourages him to become a dressmaker if that’s what he really wants to do, but the other kids make fun of him and even his teacher calls him a pervert. His mom stands by him, explaining that success only comes with a lot of hard work.

This quick scene at the start is all we get of Versace in this episode, meaning Edgar Ramirez, who plays the title character, has only appeared in five out of the first eight episodes while Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin have only been in four each. It really does seem like false advertising to call this series The Assassination of Gianni Versace when the Versaces are wholly irrelevant to the main story.

Meanwhile, in San Diego in 1980, a young Andrew Cunanan and his family move into a new house. It’s obvious that, despite being the youngest child, Andrew is spoiled rotten by his dad. Pete gives his young son the master bedroom so he’ll feel spcial. There’s a massive difference in how Andrew and Gianni were raised: Gianni was told he needed to work hard for success while Andrew was handed everything and told that success will come to him without any effort because he’s special.

Andrew’s Awful Father

Pete interviews for a stockbroker job and gets it. His biography is impressive, going from a tiny home in the Philippines to the U.S. Navy to having a family and a big house in America. He’s a hustler, but there are plenty of red flags. At work he starts to fabricate accounts so it will look like he’s succeeding when he’s not.

Pete then interrupts Andrew from doing his homework to give the 11-year-old boy a new car. His wife questions the decision, especially since they have two children who are actually old enough to drive, and Pete gets physically abusive with her. He insists that the most important lesson to teach his son is to dream big.

At night, in an incredibly disturbing scene, it’s heavily implied that Pete is sexually molesting his young son. Is the goal of this episode to make me feel sorry for a future serial killer? Because it’s working since Pete is the real monster who essentially screwed up his kid for life.

Andrew: The Teenage Years

The show jumps ahead to 1987 when Andrew (now played by Darren Criss) is 18 and driving the car his dad gave him when he was 11. Andrew is the spitting image of his father, an insufferably confident brat.

Even in high school, Andrew is drinking and sleeping with older married men, though he seems to want a genuine relationship. He goes to a party wearing a hilarious red leather jumpsuit and meets Lizzie, the girl from the beginning of the series. They become fast friends and she reveals that she’s actually older and married, but Andrew loves that she’s an imposter.

Pete on the Run

Pete, however, has gone downhill, still making the exact same stockbroker pitches, but now at a much smaller firm in a tiny cubicle, trying to swindle little old ladies out of their dead husbands’ pensions. His bosses call him in to reveal that he’s being investigated by the feds for fraudulent trades.

Pete claims that he has nothing to hide, but he immediately starts shredding documents and he books a one-way flight to the Philippines. The FBI shows up with a warrant for his arrest, but Pete flees back to his home to get his go-bag filled with money and a passport. The FBI shows up at the house, but Pete escapes again.

Will Andrew Turn Into His Father?

Andrew and his mom are left with nothing as Pete emptied the bank accounts and sold the house before fleeing. Andrew is angry and lost, but he still believes in his dad and flies to the Philippines to find him. His dad is living in a tiny shack and Andrew learns that there is no money or plan. His dad is a fraud and a liar.

Andrew is distraught. His entire world has been shattered as he discovers that none of it was real. Pete refuses to take the blame, spitting on his son and calling him a sissy, claiming that Andrew is just angry that he now has to work instead of getting a free ride. Andrew picks up a knife and his dad dares him to stab him, but he can’t. “‘I’ll never be like you,” Andrew says through his tears.

Andrew flies back home where the house is being packed up so he and his mom can move into a tiny apartment. They’ve lost everything and the episode ends with Andrew applying for a job at the pharmacy. The Filipino manager asks about his heritage and his father, with Andrew lying that his dad owns many pineapple plantations. I guess that trip to the Philippines was pointless because Andrew clearly learned nothing.

Do you feel sympathy for Andrew knowing how he was raised by his father?

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Like Father, Like Son

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash

Editor’s rating: ★★☆☆☆

Here’s the most surprising thing about Gianni Versace: Even at the age of 10 in Calabria, Italy, he apparently spoke fluent English. He and his mother only speak English to each other, as does his Latin teacher at school and the one classmate who calls him a pansy. This must be an especially good school district, since it teaches English so well that Italians would prefer to speak it at home rather than their native tongue.

I’m teasing the show, of course, but how hard would it have been to translate the two scenes of Versace’s childhood into Italian and put in subtitles? Yes, I know we are all lazy and hate to read while we’re watching TV because it makes us look up from crushing unspeakable amounts of candy on our phone screens, but come on.

While we’re talking about unbelievable things, one of the jocks at Andrew’s school called him a “fag” for yelling in line at school picture day, but we’re really supposed to believe that no one would say anything when he shows up to a house party vogueing on the dance floor in a red leather jumpsuit like he’s Michael Jackson in the “Bad” music video? It’s appropriate that the house party was in 1987, because no house parties are as cool, crowded, or well-behaved, except for the ones in John Hughes movies that were coming out around the same time. Oh, and what happened to that nerdy blonde guy who was going to ask Andrew out? He just disappeared, poor guy. He was just like Duckie in Pretty in Pink.

This episode is called “Creator/Destroyer,” but we get much more of the destroyer than we do the creator. It opens with Gianni sketching dresses in his mother’s atelier and her encouraging his love of fashion as a young boy, but she does it with the kind of platitudes that are usually reserved for motivational posters in sad cubicle farms. “You must do what you love, but it takes hard work and practice.” “Success only comes with hard work. And it’s never easy. And that’s why it’s special.” This opening is more like a Lifetime movie than it is a prestige show on an Emmy-winning cable network.

While the language and dialogue are rather silly, the worst part about this entire episode is that it lasts 90 minutes (with commercials). I’m all for cable channels letting their creators experiment with run times, but no one exploits this privilege like Ryan Murphy and his crew. “Creator/Destroyer” is boring, slack, and full of exposition that we didn’t really need.

Yes, there are lots of good parts, but did we need to see Lizzie talking to Andrew on the couch about how they’re both imposters? No. Did we need Andrew and his father saluting over the American flag in the front yard? No. Did we really need all those cringey moments of Andrew getting his yearbook photo taken and then crowing about it to his one friend we previously hadn’t met? No. We’re nearing the home stretch, and this needed to be a lot tighter to be more effective.

But we did learn some interesting things, mostly about Andrew’s father. Both Andrew and his father never felt like they belonged in the all-white, upper-class world to which they aspired, but Modesto (a.k.a. Pete) taught Andrew to fit in. While Versace’s mother taught him about hard work and persistence, Andrew’s father taught him “to remember that you’re special, and when you feel special, success will follow.” Both Andrew and Modesto felt special, but when success didn’t follow, they both got angry and became violent, thieving liars.

The best and most heated scene comes when Andrew finally tracks his father down to Manila after he’s fled the Feds for bilking old ladies out of their pensions. Andrew is crushed that his father’s success was all lies, that the superiority he based his personality on was all a sham. “You’re not upset that I stole, you’re upset that I stopped,” Modesto says. “Now you have to work. You are a sissy kid with a sissy mind.” He then spits on Andrew and tells him to stab his father with a knife to prove that he’s a man.

Maybe that is the essential difference between Andrew and Gianni. The show has taken great pains to paint them almost as equals — very intelligent, artistic, gifted, and bullied for being gay — but Andrew had a father who used his sexuality against him, whereas Gianni’s mother trained him to be a couturier regardless of what she thought it would say about her son.

The oddest thing about this hour, and the series in general, is that it seems to be suggesting this all wasn’t Andrew’s fault. It keeps trying and trying to make us feel sympathy for a man who killed multiple people in cold blood. Here, Andrew has a father who raised him with the wrong values and made him feel better than everyone else, even his long suffering older siblings. His father also taught him that lying and stealing were the only way to get ahead in America. Andrew was given the education and refinement to reach the upper echelons of society, but not the work ethic to make it stick (something that Norman brought up when they fought on the balcony of his house).

Does that mean that Andrew couldn’t help but become who he was, because he was a sensitive gay kid born to the wrong parents and living in a homophobic world? That can’t be the answer because no one forced him to become violent. Killing all of those people was his choice and he needs to be held accountable for that. Yes, the portrait of every killer might be more nuanced than the nightly news would lead us to believe, but there are plenty of people who escape troubled backgrounds without resorting to spree killing, so why couldn’t Andrew? Maybe next week’s finale will do a little bit more to tarnish the image the show has given him so far.

That’s the big question, isn’t it? After his confrontation with his father in Manila, Andrew says, “I will never be like you,” so what turned him into exactly the kind of person that Modesto was? We see it a little bit at the pharmacy, where he’s filling out a job application and the Filipino owner starts asking about his father. Andrew initially lies out of a sense of survival, because he feels like he won’t get the job if the owner knows that his father is a crook. But then his sense of superiority is dinged and he starts telling the owner that his father owns multiple pineapple plantations. It’s the very start of a road that will lead right to Versace’s front door.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Introduces the Most Influential Person in Andrew Cunanan’s Life

Tonight’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story centered on Andrew Cunanan’s origin story. Spanning several years in Andrew’s early life, from childhood through to his late teens, “Creator/Destroyer” explores his formative relationship with his doting-yet-abusive father, Modesto “Pete” Cunanan. The elder Cunanan is played by actor Jon Jon Briones, who, in the space of just one episode, turns in one of the series’ most mesmerizing, frightening performances.

Modesto’s obsession with building a successful life in America at all costs gave him the drive to land a job at Merrill Lynch against the odds, but—as the episode portrays—also drove him to commit massive financial fraud. When he’s discovered, he flees the country, leaving his wife and children with nothing. But before all that, he dotes on Andrew to an alarming degree while ignoring his other children and openly abusing his wife, all of which fuels Andrew’s sense of entitlement and his instability.

For this week’s recap, Briones spoke to BAZAAR.com about Modesto’s psychology, the lack of complex roles for Asian actors in Hollywood, and working with Darren Criss on that extraordinary final scene.

On his astonishment when he first encountered the role:

“To tell you the truth, when I first read the script, I immediately thought ‘is this really written for an Asian actor?’ There are, truthfully, not a lot of roles for Asian actors that are written with this much complexity, or that offer such a rich story. I had to calm myself down, because I was putting a lot of pressure on myself when I first read it. This is one of the biggest, meatiest roles I’ve ever read for an Asian actor, so I felt a real responsibility to do it justice.

"Before this, I was getting offered a tiny role for a terrorist, or drug dealer, or the guy behind the counter. There’s still a lot to be done, but I’m hoping that my performance might open up some minds a little bit in Hollywood, because there are a lot of amazing actors that could have done this role, but they just don’t get the opportunities.”

On what he focused on to understand Modesto:

“What really stood out to me was that this guy is an immigrant who came from very small means and is essentially self-taught; he put himself through school and got into Merrill Lynch, back in the days when it was just Caucasian Ivy League graduates. He’s an amazing man, in many ways, but he’s also hugely flawed and delusional. His pursuit of the American Dream is so intense, and in the end his single-mindedness was his downfall.“

"I’m a father, and I can understand loving your child, but his love is like it’s on steroids. In a way, it’s like he replaced his wife with Andrew. When the family moved into a bigger house, we see him bringing Andrew in, showing him the master bedroom, instead of bringing his wife in and introducing her to it, like ‘This is our house.’ It was all about Andrew. I think it came from pure love, but in a twisted, twisted way.

"Playing the abuse was hard. I understand it, and I know where it came from for the character—he just wanted success more than anything, and more than anyone. So when he doesn’t get his way, or when it’s not how he envisioned it, the frustration is like a volcano erupting.”

“I’ve always been a big fan of Darren’s, but to act with him up close was amazing; he’s such a giving actor. We rehearsed that scene a huge amount, we walked through it— myself, Darren, Matt and the first AD [assistant director]—and blocked it out ahead of time. He let us just move around the space, feel it out, and so it was like doing a play. When we actually came to film it, there was such a flow to our movements that the emotions would just explode from us. The lighting in that scene was so surreal, too; it reminded m a little bit of that "horror” scene in Apocalypse Now between Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen.“

On Matt Bomer, who made his directorial debut with this episode:

"He is amazing. I can’t believe that this was his first directorial gig, considering his understanding of the material and his preparedness. I was grateful that he’s also an actor, because he understood the insecurities of actors. This was the biggest on-screen role that I’ve ever done, so I felt a lot of pressure to deliver, and every time we would cut Matt would come out of the monitor village to give me encouragement. Also: he’s so talented, he’s so nice, and he looks like that?!”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Introduces the Most Influential Person in Andrew Cunanan’s Life

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 8: Prince Andrew

Episode 8: ‘Creator/Destroyer’

The penultimate episode of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” is a remarkable hour of television. It is a parallel portrait of two childhoods: those of Versace, the renowned fashion designer, and Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who shot him to death in 1997. It is a parallel portrait of a father and son: Modesto Cunanan and his darling youngest child, Andrew. And it is a rare, nuanced depiction of an Asian American family that finds heartbreak, not fulfillment, in its pursuit of the American dream.

The episode seems to offer some of the missing pieces of an explanation for Cunanan’s murderous pathology. It is such a masterly hour of drama that I’m tempted to say our patience has been rewarded. Yet, for reasons I’ll explain, I felt somewhat shortchanged: One hour of great television can only do so much to make up for hours of grisly and often hard-to-watch violence. This series has been told in reverse chronological order, putting tremendous weight on the final two episodes to explain the chaos and bloodshed we’ve experienced in the first seven.

The episode begins pleasantly enough. We learn that Versace, growing up in Calabria in austere postwar Italy, was encouraged by his mother, herself a dressmaker, to follow his dreams.

“I see you watching me work,” she gently little Gianni. “There is no need to hide.”

She explains that she wanted to be a doctor as a child, but that her father discouraged her. “You must do what you love, Gianni, what you feel inside here,” she tells her son, tapping his chest. With that encouragement — and in spite of homophobic mocking by a teacher — Gianni begins his rise, one grounded in technical virtuosity and boldness of vision.

Andrew Cunanan’s early years, we learn, were in most respects considerably more complicated.

It is 1980 and the Cunanan family — Modesto (played by a fantastic Jon Jon Briones), who is Filipino; his wife, Mary Ann; and their four children — are moving into a spacious new home in San Diego. Andrew turned 11 that summer. Modesto leads his youngest child — whom an older brother calls “Prince Andrew” — on a tour of the new house. He is given the master bedroom. It is clear that his parents have marked him as special, and not just in the way youngest children are often doted on.

As Andrew interviews for the Bishop’s School, an elite private academy, Modesto interviews at Merrill Lynch. Modesto’s charm is on full display. “Gentlemen, I’m aware that you have a long line of eager Ivy League-educated young men queuing up to be brokers at Merrill Lynch, but ask yourself, how many of them started from nothing?” he asks. When asked to discuss business, not his biography, he protests: “My life is a tale told in dollars,” he tells them, which started in a small village in the Philippines and wound up in an $80,000 home.

“Now is that biography or business?” he asks. “Because I will tell your investors that’s what I plan to do with their money. I will cross oceans with it. I will take it to new lands. I’m talking about growth they can’t imagine.” The monologue is notable because it is so much like the fantastic tales that Andrew will later tell to the many gay men he will try to impress. Modesto gets the job.

Young Andrew, meanwhile, is accepted to the Bishop’s School, after telling the interviewers that his one wish is “to be special.”

It is a high point for the father and son, whose lives start to go down from this point.

But first we learn about the family’s unusual and troubling dynamics. Modesto spoils Andrew to the point of buying a car for him, even though he is too young for a license. Even more troubling, Modesto is physically abusive to his wife, Mary Ann, whom he holds in contempt for her “weak mind.” And his obsession with Andrew is clearly unhealthy. In one particularly disturbing scene at bed time, there’s an intimation of possible sexual abuse. The scene goes dark, and we’re left to wonder. But the effect is unsettling regardless.

Flash forward a few years, to 1987: Andrew is 17 and finishing high school, and he has carved out an identity for himself: flamboyant, exuberant and carefree. Despite a homophobic taunt, he unbuttons his shirt for a school photo. He is determined not to conform. In his high school yearbook, he is voted “most likely to be remembered.” Under his photo is the slogan, “Après moi, le déluge.”

Modesto is meanwhile in serious trouble. Having left Merrill Lynch (presumably for underperforming, as is hinted at in earlier scenes), he now works for a smaller stockbroker, where he is accused of trying to fleece a 90-year-old woman of her life savings. F.B.I. agents arrive at his office; Modesto escapes out the back and races home. He runs upstairs, pries open a floorboard, grabs cash and passports and puts them in a bag. When Mary Ann asks what is happening, he violently shoves her aside. As agents enter the house from the front, Modesto again flees out the back, climbing over a wall … where he encounters Andrew.

“Don’t believe a word they say,” Modesto tells Andrew as he takes his son’s car and flees to the Philippines.

Convinced that Modesto must have stored money away somewhere, Andrew flies to Manila, and — in the most stunning scene of this series so far — confronts his father in what is essentially a tree-canopy-covered shack in the village where Modesto is living.

The father puts down the newspaper he is reading and offers his son another in a long line of fraudulent smiles. “I knew you’d come,” he tells Andrew, as if selling him a used car.

Asked where the money is, Modesto spins again, insisting that there are “millions” but “out of reach.” Later in the night, Andrew wakes up and confronts his father. He knows that there is no money. “My father’s a thief,” he laments. Modesto lashes back:

Andrew is crushed. “You were everything to me, dad,” he says. “But if you’re a lie, then I’m a lie, and I can’t be a lie.” He bursts into tears, but Modesto won’t have it. “Weak, just like your mother,” he sneers. “The two of you talk about honesty, but she never cared that I was stealing as long as there was money.”

He slaps Andrew, spits in his face. Andrew grabs a knife, but he can’t use it. Instead he cuts himself, as he agonizes and holds himself back.

Back in California, Andrew applies for a job a drugstore. When the owner — a Filipino immigrant like Modesto — asks Andrew what his father does, he replies: “He owns multiple pineapple plantations. As far as the eye can see.” And so begins the big lie.

It’s remarkable television, evoking everything from the Madoff scandal (which also destroyed a son) to the dashed aspirations of “Death of a Salesman.” It reveals the dark side of the 1980s, when greed and fraud operated under the veneer of pastels and sunshine. It exposes, to an extent, the myth of the “model minority” that has hobbled Asian-Americans, and of the notion that hard work is all the American dream requires.

It is not, however, an entirely plausible explanation for how Andrew Cunanan became a mass murderer. I’m looking to the season finale to see if this series means to give us one.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 8: Prince Andrew

Versace: How Andrew Cunanan’s Father Figured Into the Murderer’s “Breaking Point”

Was Andrew Cunanan born or made a serial killer? This is the question that American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace poses with Wednesday’s episode, “Creator/Destroyer,” when it flashes back to Cunanan’s childhood and his relationship with father Modesto “Pete” Cunanan—a stockbroker who abandoned the family after allegedly “misappropriating” $106,000 when Andrew was a college freshman. (The episode contrasts Cunanan’s youth with Gianni Versace’s childhood, showing how the fashion designer was raised by a dressmaker mother in Reggio Calabria, Italy, who—because her parents had quashed her own childhood ambition of becoming a doctor—was determined to nurture her son’s professional dreams.)

Up until this episode, Cunanan has been a confounding character study—equally proud and lazy, a pathological liar who was capable of occasional generosity before his descent into drug use and murder. According to series writer and executive producer Tom Rob Smith, though, the key to understanding Cunanan’s trajectory is his father, who provided the template.

“I don’t think you can understand Andrew without understanding his dad,” Smith told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “His mom is a key figure, too, but his dad really offers the template for Andrew’s life. His dad had this spectacular rise—he came to America from the Philippines and served in the U.S. Navy. I think he worked through night college to get his trader’s license and got this extraordinary job working at Merrill Lynch in San Diego. It was this amazing ascent, and then he burnt out.”

According to Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth, whose book Vulgar Favors: the Assassination of Gianni Versace is the basis for American Crime Story, Pete had a special relationship with the youngest of his four children.

“Of all the children Pete has, he put so much attention toward Andrew, maybe because he thought Andrew was so good-looking,” Andrew’s godfather Delfin Labao told Orth. “It was not healthy. His father spoiled Andrew, made him feel he’s got to be somebody and, maybe that rang a bell in his uncertain mind, that that was what life was about.”

In addition to instilling that expectation, Pete embedded his son with bravado, materialism, and, even if Andrew didn’t realize it at the time, the compulsion of a pathological liar.

“By seventh grade, Andrew had developed a line of patter and a penchant for telling stories based on what he had read, and embellished for effect,” reported Orth. “The disturbing grandiosity that would mark his personality had already begun to take hold.”

Andrew was a precocious child and his parents spoiled him—even giving him the family’s master bedroom in high school. (Pete, who had a fraught relationship with his wife, MaryAnn, slept on the couch.) When Andrew was a freshman in high school, Pete even bought Andrew a brand-new sports car after his son was forced to miss an anticipated field trip—to the opera—because he was sick. Andrew was only 14 years old and did not have a driver’s license.

“Andrew, always the con man at school, was himself being conned at home,” wrote Orth. Ronald Johnston, who worked with Pete at four different firms, explained, “Pete always wore expensive suits, would buy expensive cars and expensive homes, and I think Andrew believed that was all for real. Andrew was led to believe by his father that he would attain anything he wanted to attain. And I know his father spoiled him rotten and gave him everything that he could possibly want.”

By the time that Cunanan graduated high school, though, Pete was cycling through a series of jobs and reportedly shady deals to combat his growing debt.

Explained American Crime Story writer Tom Rob Smith: “[Pete] committed what looked to be fraudulent trading activity. He moved down through various trading houses—smaller and smaller ones until he was finally caught. He had all of this fraud that was just circling him, and finally he runs to Manila.”

In 1988, when Cunanan was a freshman in college, Modesto took his cut of a deal that he was putting together, sold his cars and the family’s two “heavily mortgaged homes, and disappeared.” Per Orth, “Their family had literally had their home sold out from under them. MaryAnn was reportedly left with $700… . The experience was clearly shattering for Andrew, whose image of his dad as a powerful and reliable protector was smashed.”

Afterward, Andrew flew to the Philippines and tracked down his father—where he found the person he once believed to be a mythic figure living in squalor.

“When Andrew saw the crude poverty in which his father was living, a driving madness took over his mind,” one of Andrew’s teachers told Orth. Smith also believes that Andrew’s trip to the Philippines was a critical turning point.

“I think at that point, if Andrew had accepted that his dad was a fraud, embraced it on some level, and said, ‘This is what life is … complicated,’ he’d come back to the States having learned from the experience,” said Smith. “He could’ve done something interesting with his life. Instead, he comes back and continues his lies, telling people, ‘My dad is rich,’ and keeping up that pretense. To me, though, that was the break[ing] point in his brain. At that point there’s no going back.”

“Andrew goes through the exact same trajectory as his dad,” explained Smith. “He had his own rise—finding these wealthy affluent-older men that he’s living with. He ended up in a multi-million-dollar condo in La Jolla, this beautiful paradise, [living with Norman Blachford, a man who loved him.] He’s given an allowance. Traveling to the South of France. And he throws it all away because he can’t tolerate the notion that he is a kept man … he leaves and moves into a small place in Hillcrest, and descends through crystal-meth until he’s lost everything.”

Pointing out the similarity of father and son’s arcs, Smith explained, “His dad flees to Manila and restarts his life, but Andrew has nowhere left to go. So he goes to Minneapolis and has a breakdown. When you look at the shapes of their lives, that was absolutely the key of Andrew.”

So how, then, did Cunanan’s father Pete process the news that his son had not only mirrored his descent—he had done so in deadly fashion?

By shopping a documentary that would serve as a star vehicle for himself. Two months after the murders and his son’s suicide, the Los Angeles Times reported that Cunanan’s father Pete had already recruited a Philippines filmmaker, relocated to Los Angeles, and apparently alerted press of the project. Director Amable “Tikoy” Aguiluz VI made it clear that, in spite of Andrew being the focus of the media interest because of the murders, Pete still narcissistically saw himself as the star of the story. “I’m telling [the film] from the father’s point of view—a father who knew Andrew until he was 19—and his discovery of his son all over again,” Aguiluz told the L.A. Times.

As for whether Pete thought his son was guilty of the murders, he told papers, “This was a deep cover-up.” Rather than share sympathy for the victims and their families, he teased a potential F.B.I. conspiracy—“Hopefully, we’ll come up with some plausible explanations when we run the movie.” When speaking to Orth, Pete further revealed that he was asking for $500,000 for the rights to a film and book deal; thought it could make over $100 million at the box office; and even had an actor in mind to play his son.

John F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Their mannerisms are very, very close, almost the same,” Pete explained. “I watch John Junior very carefully. The guy has a lot of moxie in him—that dignity.”

In comparison and retrospect, Cunanan’s oft-told delusion of knowing Gianni Versace suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Versace: How Andrew Cunanan’s Father Figured Into the Murderer’s “Breaking Point”