“Alone” with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson
Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson discuss “Alone,” the final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story and how the show chose to portray the final days of Andrew Cunanan. More from star Darren Criss and Executive Producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson are the featured interview.
Tag: 2.09
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Season Finale: A Perfect Boy
Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Alone’
It turns out that “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” this gorgeous mess of a television series, was neither about an assassination nor, really, about Versace, the fashion designer who was shot to death on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997.
It would have been more accurately called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Andrew Cunanan,” Versace’s killer, whose spectacular orgy of violence briefly dominated headlines around the world at the close of the American century.
Over the eight previous episodes, starting with Versace’s killing, the series drew us back in time, through Cunanan’s killings of four other people; his career as a drug addict and escort; his resentment of the fame and accomplishment of other gay men; his odd childhood; his troubled relationship with his doting but oppressive and mendacious father; and — in the closest thing to a “Rosebud” moment — an imagined encounter between Cunanan and Versace years before the murders.
The finale is a riveting hour of television, filled with anguish and revelation as Cunanan, played by Darren Criss, relives his crime spree through television and radio reports that fill the Miami Beach houseboat where he is hiding out — appropriately blown-up to larger-than-life proportions on a home theater projector, no less. But, like much of what preceded it, the episode is a muddle, never quite settling on a coherent thesis or a sustained argument.
That’s a pity, because the series writer — the novelist Tom Rob Smith, who also wrote the chilling British mini-series “London Spy” — has consistently given the characters flashes of brilliance and insight.
No moment manifests those qualities more than the brilliant monologue by Ronnie, a gay man whom Cunanan befriended as he was hiding out from the law during the two months before he killed Versace. Ronnie recognizes Versace’s significance. “We all imagined what it would be like to be so rich and so powerful that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay,” he says during a police interrogation.
But he is also angered about society’s homophobia. The authorities had been slow to alert the gay community and to solicit its help in the manhunt — until, as Ronnie notes, one of the victims was famous. “You’re so used to us lurking in the shadows and, you know, most of us, we oblige,” he says. “People like me, we just drift away. We get sick? Nobody cares.”
“But Andrew was vain,” he continues, as a flicker of something almost like pride, or at least defiance, lights his eyes. “He wanted you to know about his pain, he wanted you to hear, he wanted you to know about being born a lie. Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
Maybe. But at that moment Cunanan is, in fact, hiding out on a house boat. If he had a message to communicate about his pain, he did not share it.
The series is loosely based on Maureen Orth’s gossipy book “Vulgar Favours,” but the dramatizations and embellishments are so extreme that the series appears more a flight of wishful fantasy than an act of journalistic reconstruction. Also extreme is the director Daniel Minahan’s insistence on making this finale a retrospective of horrors. Until now, the series was told in reverse chronological order. But the finale circles back to where it started, and it is bursting at the seams with tangential characters, visual cues and over-the-top emotions that leave a jumble of impressions instead of delivering a clear punch.
We pay a visit to Marilyn Miglin, a self-made cosmetics magnate who sells her wares on television and whose husband, Lee, a Chicago property developer, was the third of Cunanan’s five victims. She happens to be in Tampa, Fla., while the manhunt following Versace’s murder occurs. The local police urge her to return to Chicago for fear that Cunanan may be after her, but she refuses.
Her strength and resolve are admirable — and Judith Light turns in a magnificent performance — but we hardly learn anything that we didn’t know from Episode 3.
Similarly repetitive is a scene in which the father of David Madson, the Minneapolis architect whom Cunanan forced to flee home before he killed him, communicates his anguish on a TV interview. We knew from Episode 4 that the father and son were both pretty decent people.
The most strange and haunting moment of this finale comes when Cunanan, desperate and reduced to eating dog food, dials his father, Modesto, a disgraced former stockbroker who fled to his native Philippines after some shady financial deals. Andrew is sobbing, a man of 27 reduced to helplessness. “Dad, I’m in trouble,” he pleas. “I need help. I need you to come get me.” Modesto promises Andrew that he’ll drop everything and race to Miami to rescue him. “I will find you and I will hug you and I will hold you in my arms,” he says.
Of course he doesn’t. He’s a hustler.
The next morning, it’s clear to Andrew that Modesto isn’t coming. In fact, he hasn’t even tried to leave the Philippines. “My son is not and has never been a homosexual,” he tells television reporters. He adds: “He was a perfect boy, the most special child I ever saw. The idea that he could be a killer makes me angry.”
Modesto tells the reporters that Andrew called him a night ago. Asked what they discussed, he replies: “The movie rights to his life story. I’m acting as the broker calling Hollywood from here in Manila. Andrew was very particular about the title.”
The movie, he says, will be called “A Name to Be Remembered.”
It’s disturbing and nauseating, of course. But we already knew from Episode 8 that Modesto was a pretty despicable guy.
Then there’s a jarring shift to Milan, where Versace is honored with a ceremony akin to a state funeral. We are reminded — as we learned in Episode 2 — that his sister and de facto heir, Donatella, and his partner, Antonio D’Amico, have a frosty relationship. Antonio wants to move to one of Gianni’s properties, on Lake Como; Donatella says it’s up to the company’s board to decide. (Later, we are shown, Antonio is driven to such despair that he attempts suicide.)
Watching the live broadcast of the funeral, Cunanan kneels before the television and makes a sign of the cross: a shockingly sacrilegious moment, but hardly of great emotional power since Cunanan’s Catholicism hasn’t really been a theme at all. A scene with Cunanan’s friend Lizzie, whom we have barely heard from, is similarly lacking, as she begs him on television to turn himself in. Lizzie — a straight, older friend who asked Andrew to be the godfather to her children — has intrigued me throughout the series, but the underinvestment in her character makes her appeal seem wooden.
The one time when Cunanan’s eyes suggest remorse comes when he sees his fragile mother being hounded by reporters outside her home.
Otherwise, Cunanan’s victims flicker on the screen like Macbeth’s ghosts, and finally he is visited by one — himself, as a child of around 11. And then we have the “Rosebud” moment: a scene in which we return to a San Francisco opera house where, it is imagined, Versace and Cunanan met during a 1990 production of “Capriccio” that Versace designed.
Cunanan, at that point 21, tries to kiss Versace, but the designer turns away.
“It’s not because don’t find you attractive,” Versace says. “I invited you here because you are a very interesting young man. I want you to be inspired by this, to be nourished by tonight. If we kissed, you may doubt it.”
Versace, in this telling, had some useful advice for Cunanan: Success isn’t about convincing people that you’re special. Success is about hard work. It is sad that Cunanan didn’t learn this from his deadbeat father, but it takes us nowhere in explaining the blood thirst that followed.
Homophobia, mixed-race identity, sexual abuse, the lust for fame, the worship of celebrity — each of these themes is brought forward and then discarded.
Like many a true-crime drama, this second season of “American Crime Story” was more interested in the journey than the destination. I get it. But in the end, like Cunanan himself, the show was a beautiful, glittery, violent, extravagant mess.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Season Finale: A Perfect Boy
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ finale recap: A bug in a jar
We gave it a B+
It’s finally back to the beginning, the titular assassination. Remember Andrew Cunanan in a red baseball cap? Remember Gianni Versace bleeding out on his stairs, flanked by doves?
The second time, the assassination is shot almost like a music video: quickly paced, and in tempo. It’s more like a dance than a murder. The same is true of Cunanan’s breaking and entering of a Miami houseboat, where he pops champagne for himself and begins watching news coverage (focused on him, of course) on bigger and bigger screens until it’s finally projected onto the wall. It’s all almost choreographed — a perfect encapsulation of Ryan Murphy’s overly stylized style. A man on television remarks how he saw Versace’s head blown off just as the cap pops off the champagne. Cunanan descends into giggling hysterics. “Oh my god,” Cunanan says to himself when he hears his name on the news. He swings a massive silk scarf around his neck like a movie star, and lounges on a balcony chair. He looks like he’s pretending to be famous.
Lee Miglan’s wife, Marilyn, is informed that Versace was also killed by the suspect in her husband’s murder. “When will this end?” she says. “How many more are going to die?” Barely restraining her fury, she makes the most pointed case of the show: The police had months to find Cunanan, and they didn’t.
Ronnie makes the same point when he’s brought in for questioning. “Hiding? He wasn’t hiding. He was partying. The other cops: They weren’t searching so hard, were they? Why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?” Ronnie finally gives the show’s thesis: “Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
And now that the victim is famous, the police hunt has tightened. Cunanan can’t get out of the city with checkpoints set up to catch him. And so he flings his car keys into the ocean and screams — he’s famous, finally, but he’s also completely important. He is the bug trapped under a glass.
Cunanan sneaks onto a boat and eats stolen tortillas, barricading himself in the bedroom when a woman hears him onboard, and running away when he hears her tell someone to call the cops. He watches them arrive from his houseboat hiding spot, where he also watches Lizzie on TV talking about him, imploring him to end the standoff and give himself in. “The Andrew Cunanan I know is not a violent person. I know that the most important thing in the world is what others think of you.”
Cunanan’s mother watches television from under a blanket and lets the police in through a latched door. “Have you killed my son?” she says, voice soft as a ghost.
Starving, living on nothing but cable news and garbage, Cunanan succumbs to eating dog food. “Dad, I’m in trouble,” he cries on the phone to his father. His dad promises to fly in and come and get him.
“Twenty-four hours,” his dad says. “I will find you, and I will hug you, and I will hold you in my arms, and it will all be okay.” He promises again to come, and tells him to pack some clothes and be ready to leave as soon as he arrives.
And then Cunanan sees his father on television, talking about Cunanan’s innocence, telling them that they talked on the phone — to discuss movie rights to his life. Cunanan shoots the screen. He is fully alone.
Meanwhile, Antonio learns that the homes on Lake Cuomo where Versace told him he could stay are actually owned by the company, not Gianni. Donatella tells him he can take some time to stay there after the funeral. “And after that?” he asks. She tells him that it’s time for them to start a new life.
Eyes wide, Cunanan watches Princess Diana and Elton John parade into Versace’s lavish funeral. He sings along in falsetto with the church choir, eyes to heaven. He shaves his head, kneeling before the mirror.
Eventually, the police surround the houseboat and completely cut Cunanan off. Cunanan grabs his gun and hides in his bedroom, quietly sitting next to the childhood version of himself, and then, alone again. The police cut the power and deploy smoke bombs. They force their way in.
Cunanan takes off his glasses, cocks his gun, and shoots himself in the mouth after looking at himself in the mirror one last time.
Finally, we see the end of his interaction onstage with Versace — a polite rejection, a fundamental difference of understanding on the nature of art. Cunanan’s act, his charm, didn’t work on Versace. “Another night,” Versace says. “Another stage.”
Gianni’s remains are at a Lake Cuomo altar, gilded, surrounded by candles. Cunanan gets an anonymous block in an endless mausoleum. The final shot speeds away, his final resting place disappearing into anonymity.
The show was ambitious, beautiful, and impossible to look away from. Its conversations on the nature of fame and ego and homosexuality in the early 90’s were far more interesting in Cunanan’s story than in Versace’s — the latter’s plotlines were far thinner. But Andrew Cunanan is one of television’s most terrifying and memorable villains, a fully unique character equal parts tragic and despicable.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ finale recap: A bug in a jar
‘Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is The Best Ryan Murphy Show You Didn’t Watch
The second season of “American Crime Story” arrived with the near-impossible burden of topping 2016′s immaculate O.J. Simpson retelling. Simpson’s scandal was familiar to almost anyone who watched the show, but the saga of Gianni Versace, the designer murdered at the gates of his Miami mansion in July 1997, had faded from our cultural discourse, perhaps because the fashion scene doesn’t attract the significance granted to something as macho as football.
So when “Crime Story” graduated from Simpson to Versace, it felt like the perfect fodder for Ryan Murphy, master of sophisticated schlock. Murphy could again explore a nuanced tragedy, but this time he had less preconceived mythology to address.
Does “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” indeed top “The People v. O.J. Simpson”? Not quite, but that doesn’t matter. In both seasons, Murphy and his company of writers pushed past exploitable headlines to tackle race, sexuality, class and the media.
“Versace” came to an end on Wednesday, and we count ourselves ― reporters Matthew Jacobs and Cole Delbyck ― as massive fans. Instead of revolving around the titular couturier, this was really the story of Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss), the spree killer who executed at least five men ― four of whom were gay, including Versace ― before committing suicide. The cross-stitched narrative turned out to be a smart tactic, even for those of us who expected a show with Versace in the title to fixate more on the Versace empire. Gianni and his sister, Donatella, were background players in a seedy pageant that resulted in an FBI manhunt and a stirring case of internalized homophobia writ large.
Time to discuss!
Matthew Jacobs: All right, Cole, let’s delve into the nine episodes of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” a show that not enough people watched, probably because it was very dark and very gay. But those should be selling points, and now that the season is over, I think it’s among Ryan Murphy’s best, most complicated works. Even in its disjointed moments, “Versace” felt haunted by demons literal (Andrew Cunanan) and figurative (class envy, crippling homophobia). Every bit built toward the finale’s unapologetic bleakness ― nothing left but a mausoleum and its entombed tragedy. What’d you make of the whole thing?
Cole Delbyck: Having watched Ryan Murphy productions in good times (early seasons of “American Horror Story,” anything Mary Cherry, “Feud,” that “Rumor Has It”/“Someone Like You” mashup on “Glee”) and bad (“AHS: Cult,” the “Glee” puppet episode, Julia Roberts not fitting into her “Eat Pray Love” jeans), I feel confident saying that “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is the crown jewel of his career.
The show featured classic elements of his storytelling, e.g. truly batshit moments like that duct-tape asphyxiation sex scene. But it also managed to comment on all too relevant issues facing the gay community today, filtered through the lens of the very troubled and often shirtless Andrew Cunanan. Experiencing the killer’s mental breakdown in reverse was a true exercise in empathy that left us with a portrait of a man who just wanted to be remembered. Now, of course, Murphy has granted his greatest wish, which also feels somewhat troubling.
Matt: The show’s troubling mien that you mention is a fierce and valid observation (as is Darren Criss’ bare chest). Murphy has long adopted a two-steps-forward, one-step-back quality to the progressive television he makes. He gives actresses of a certain age dynamic roles and tells unabashedly queer stories, then he has Emma Roberts call a character “white mammy” and liken her to a “house slave” in the “Scream Queens” pilot. Ryan Murphy is complicated!
In this case, though, I found the whole affair a bit ― what’s the word? ― cathartic. In the age of “Carol” and “Call Me by Your Name” and “Love, Simon,” there’s a poignancy in witnessing a gay man, living in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, wrecked by society’s chauvinism. I’m not sure “antihero” is an apt label, but the series was wise enough not to villainize him too much.
Cole: Greenlighting the “Love, Simon” and “Assassination of Gianni Versace” crossover in 3, 2, 1.
Murphy is for sure a problematic fave who’s had his fair share of cringeworthy moments. “Versace,” however, felt squarely within his wheelhouse. That’s why I’m a little nervous about the next “American Crime Story” installment, about Hurricane Katrina, because he’s at his best when deconstructing the various facets of masculinity and how it can either ensnare or liberate his characters.
Here, Andrew Cunanan became a sponge for the worst society has to offer, soaking up lessons of power, abuse and deceit at an early age from his father, played by Jon Jon Briones, who had some of my favorite scenes in the series. While Criss’ performance deserves all the acclaim and the Emmy Award he will eventually be nominated for, I even more so appreciated the smaller performances from Judith Light, Cody Fern, Finn Wittrock and Mike Farrell. Here is where “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” soared when dealing with figures we don’t know so well, in contrast to the Versace family moments, which were well-acted but clunky.
Matt: Judith Light! MVP. The sympathy that character feels for her husband, whose affair with Andrew resulted in his death, gave the show its most powerful moments. Her refusal to let the police talk her into hiding from Andrew in the finale ― “How many more are going to die?” she demands ― signals a woman who understands how troubled her partner’s existence must have been. As for the Versaces, well, yep. That’s what I was getting at earlier with regard to the series’ disjointedness.
As Donatella (Penélope Cruz) rose to her brother’s perch, the show drifted away from its twin stories of ambition and self-discovery; at some point, the politics of a lucrative fashion house diverge from those of a sociopathic twentysomething. But in another way, the parallel became all too glaring. Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez), who rejected Andrew’s kiss and pleas for mentorship, represented everything Andrew couldn’t obtain. Fame, wealth and love helped Gianni to embrace his sexuality. But Andrew failed to secure any of those, and it drilled such a hole in his heart that he picked up a gun and didn’t put it down again until he himself was dead.
Cole: The finale, better than any other episode, brought the show’s disparate strands together in a mostly satisfying way. Instead of ending with Andrew’s self-inflicting gunshot wound, the show lingered for another 10 minutes to examine how all of his victims otherwise would be impacted by his death. Aside from the Versace portion of the story, the other plot they completely dropped was how the investigation into these murders was hindered by homophobia in the police department. Like, raise your hand if you completely forgot that Dascha Polanco and Will Chase were even on this show. Total waste.
But Max Greenfield, who played an HIV-positive junkie who befriends Andrew, has this long-overdue hero’s speech in the interrogation room after Versace is shot that makes it all worth it. “You were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting,” he sneers at the cops after they press him for information about his friend. It reminded me how this show has gifted us with so many compelling insights into what it was like to be gay at that time, whether it be the experience of a drifter in Miami Beach, a closeted and elderly businessman, the world’s most famous fashion designer or a Marine struggling with his sexuality. We so rarely get to see such compassionate depictions of gay men on television.
Matt: Oh, precious Max Greenfield ― I don’t like seeing our strapping charmer so disheveled and sickly. But Greenfield got the defining line of the season, spoon-feeding us the overriding theme in typical Ryan Murphy fashion: “Andrew is not hiding; he’s trying to be seen,” he tells Polanco and Chase’s police officers after berating them for only accelerating the hunt now that Cunanan has murdered a celebrity. Everyday gay men don’t matter, just as they didn’t when the federal government ignored AIDS a few years prior. Glitz and glamour rule the day, so it’s no wonder Andrew sought renown.
But that’s also the concept that best served the show’s nonlinear narrative: Hope and despair came hand in hand. One door opened ― romance, tolerance, success, health ― and then another quickly closed, for both Gianni and Andrew. And that’s the real “crime” in this season of “American Crime Story.” Any chance Andrew had of escaping his dastardly father and unstable mother was stymied by a world that failed to teach him how to love himself.
Cole: Taking every gay fiber of my being not to quote RuPaul right now, but I will resist. Unlike Gianni, Andrew absolutely never learned those lessons, and therein lies the power of the effective, albeit obvious, final sequence. The designer is enshrined in eternal glory in his chicest mausoleum you’ve ever seen as his sister weeps over his remains, while Andrew is laid to rest among a seemingly never-ending hallway of no-name corpses before the camera cuts to black.
Matt: And what a stark cut it is, as if every ounce of hopefulness has dissipated along with Andrew’s life. He couldn’t overcome his demons, and he wasn’t clever enough to outwit law enforcement on the path toward a redemption that would never come anyway. How fitting that Andrew is last seen bloody and shirtless, sprawled out on a bed that should have been his haven. Even when the show’s theses become too heavy-handed to bear, there’s a knotty brilliance at its center ― one that’s depressingly acquainted with the stratification of gay tragedy.
‘Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Is The Best Ryan Murphy Show You Didn’t Watch
Versace: Andrew Cunanan’s Suicide
On the finale episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Alone,” serial killer Andrew Cunanan hides out on a pale-blue house boat in Miami, transfixed by a glowing television screen. When a news break reports that authorities have identified him as the killer of Gianni Versace, Cunanan is not wracked with the panic of a criminal about to be caught. Instead, he’s elated as he drinks champagne, relaxes on the boat’s roof deck, and enjoys his moment of infamy.
As the authorities intensify their manhunt, Max Greenfield’s character,Ronnie, poignantly articulates the most probable motivation behind Cunanan’s murder spree: “Andrew wanted you to know about his pain,” he says, invoking the stigma of Cunanan’s sexual orientation and the trauma of Cunanan’s childhood. “Andrew is not hiding,” Ronnie continues. “He’s trying to be seen.”
In real life, the F.B.I. confirmed as much during a press conference shortly after Cunanan’s death—revealing that, even as authorities closed in on the killer, “he went out in the afternoons and late evening. He was a very visible person, not a recluse, not a shut-in.”
But if that were the case, why did Cunanan kill himself after achieving what he had so desperately wanted all along? It is a question that series star Darren Criss, who plays Cunanan, and American Crime Story writer and executive producer Tom Rob Smith have pondered at length.
“Tom made a really good point that [Andrew] would have been alive to watch Versace’s funeral,” Criss told Vanity Fair’s Still Watching: Versace hosts Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson on the podcast’s latest episode. Had he watched the star-studded Milan ceremony, which took place one day before Cunanan’s suicide, “[Cunanan] would have seen on television in the front row Elton John, Princess Diana, Trudie Styler, Sting … basically his dream funeral. Literally living through this guy’s death,” Criss continued.
Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth, who wrote the book, Vulgar Favors,on which the series is based, reported that a nearby sailboat had been broken into during the same period Cunanan was on the run in Miami. Its owner, upon returning, found “newspapers opened to stories of the Versace killing, including Versace’s hometown paper, Milan’s Corriere della Sera.”
“[Andrew] would have seen his face in every magazine and every newspaper. If you say all he wanted was fame and recognition … he could have been [Charles] Manson,” Criss said, imagining a scenario in which Cunanan did not kill himself. “He could have gone to the trial, he could have gone to prison, he could have been incarcerated and been the stuff of serial-killer legend for the rest of this life.” Series producer Brad Simpson agrees, telling Still Watching: Versace: “He could have been Charlie Manson sitting in prison right now. He could have been O.J. Simpson. He ultimately chose suicide. Andrew is the final victim in the show. We talked about how to show someone going from exhilaration to complete despair.”
But as Ronnie points out on Wednesday’s episode, the consequences of killing a famous person like Gianni Versace are different from the consequences of killing a non-famous person. Cunanan had been able to evade authorities for nearly three months because his murders in multiple states had been clumsily handled by different, uncommunicative jurisdictions. After Cunanan murdered an international celebrity, Gianni Versace, the investigation became more focused and aggressive—involving1,000 agents across the country. According to the F.B.I., this intensity “drove [Cunanan] inside, forced him to change his pattern.”
Cunanan suddenly found himself trapped on the island city of Miami Beach—with airports on full alert, his face papered on posters, and police checkpoints stationed on each causeway connecting the city to the mainland. The media covered the story so exhaustively that, according to Orth, Cunanan’s mother, MaryAnn, was transported from her home by the F.B.I. and hidden in a witness-protection program.
Cunanan spent his final days in a state of desperation, according to a New York Times report that alleged Cunanan “telephoned an acquaintance frantically trying to get a fake passport so he could escape.” (There is no evidence that Cunanan placed a call to his father Pete, or saw his father participate in any televised press interviews, as is dramatized on the TV series. Orth reported that Pete did not return to America, to begin shopping the movie and book rights to his family’s story, until after Cunanan had killed himself.) Surrounded with no way to escape, Cunanan was forced to make a quick decision about his fate. And rather than enjoy his criminal infamy, Cunanan shot himself with the gun he stole from his first victim when he heard someone enter the houseboat.
The person who stumbled upon Cunanan’s hideaway—just 41 blocks north of Versace’s mansion—was the houseboat’s caretaker, Fernando Carreira.When Carreira checked the boat, he was alarmed to see that the lock was unlatched, the lights were on, and the drapes were drawn. Inside, he noticed two sandals and a sofa that had been fashioned into a bed. Overhead, he heard a gun shot in the second-floor master bedroom. He ran outside and called his son, who phoned 911. Police arrived within four minutes—followed by a battalion of helicopters, boats, and dogs.
About four hours later, “police fired eight rounds of tear gas or ‘flash-bang’ grenades into the boat. They shouted ‘Come out! Come out!’ Eventually, eight officers—huddled behind shields—stormed the boat.”
When authorities entered the premises, they found Cunanan dead from a self-inflicted gunshot in the master bedroom. Orth described the grim scene in Vulgar Favors: “Andrew, eyes open, with several days’ growth of beard, was lying in a pool of blood on a pillow propped on another pillow. He had shot himself through the mouth. Blood from his ears, nose, and mouth had caked, and the pillow was also soaked in blood.”
“Is it shame? Is it isolation? Desperation? We don’t know,” series producer Nina Jacobson explained on Still Watching: Versace. “We didn’t want to project a full contrition and shame on him because we don’t have the evidence for it. We don’t know what his mindset was. We always had to walk this line of wanting to understand him without ever glorifying him. He is both the protagonist and the villain of the story.”
Today, a cursory Internet search will lead you to video footage taken inside the houseboat by police in the aftermath—with a shaky camcorder leading you through Cunanan’s final lair. A downstairs living room features a white couch with its cushions pulled off. A coffee table holds rubbing alcohol, gauze bandages, a bloody bandage, and an empty Tylenol bottle—to treat a stomach wound—as well as a stack of magazines including his beloved Vogue. A bathtub is stuffed full of fast-food wrappers—a stark contrast to the luxurious living conditions Cunanan had grown accustomed to while living with Norman Blachford, and a visual that must have been difficult to stomach for a man who told elaborate lies about growing up in incredible wealth.
At the end of her own book, Orth rationalizes Cunanan’s spree and suicide as follows:
In an effort to avoid the humiliation of his own failed life, Andrew Cunanan, who had wasted his gifts and lived resolutely on the surface, struck back. Fueled by drugs and filled with rage, his unmitigated ruin also drove him to destroy others, including the only person he had probably ever loved. With the exception of William Reese, each one of Andrew Cunanan’s victims—Jeff Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin, and Gianni Versace—was like a piece of himself. In the end, Andrew Cunanan was a sad testament to vulgar, unrealized aspiration. The little boy who wanted a big house with an ocean view died hunted on the water with a gun for his last companion.
Criss, trying to understand why Cunanan ultimately killed himself, gives another take: “There has to have been something in him, some sense of regret and remorse. Something that I kind of came to is that, if he had stretched this out, he would no longer be in control of his own narrative. It’s out of his hands, it becomes part of the media. If taking one’s life is the ultimate arbitration of control, then that is the final act of ‘this is my story.’ And he literally took it for himself—look at us, 20 years later, talking about it. So he did get what he wanted, in this sort of twisted way.”
2.09 Alone and Season Roundup
‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ Season Finale: What Does Designer’s Murder Mean 20 Years Later?
Tonight we returned to the July 15, 1997 crime scene where serial killer Andrew Cunanan guns down famed Italian designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, and a manhunt pursues. Having once been tested with an I.Q of 147, Cunanan was brilliant and he was able to dodge the Feds and change his appearance not just for another eight days in Miami Beach after his notorious crime, but for roughly three months prior after taking the lives of naval officer Jeffrey Trail, lover David Madson, Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin, and caretaker William Reese.
Cunanan ducks and covers in a house boat, where he watches the media coverage of his slaughter, that is until the police descend upon him, and we see that he commits suicide with the same gun he used to kill Madson, Reese and Versace.
Some have criticized this second season of American Crime Story for not having the resonance of 2016’s The People v. O.J. Simpson. In an era where social media over hypes headlines, that tabloid trial continued to ring true 20-plus years later, not only in the way it was originally covered by the media, but it also touched upon the reality that times haven’t changed. As series EP/writer Scott Alexander assessed during a panel for the show, bad relationships between police departments and blacks continues to exist, ditto for gender inequality in the workplace as we saw portrayed in Sarah Paulson’s Emmy-winning performance of prosecutor Marcia Clark.
If there was a gripe by critics over the Assassination of Gianni Versace, it was a superficial one, as the miniseries across nine episodes didn’t dote on the ins and outs of the intriguing fashion designer’s life, rather the deplorable murderer Cunanan. However, much like O.J. Simpson focused on how a fractured American has remained exactly that, Gianni Versace zeroed on the complexities that the gay community weathered in the late ’90s, and how homophobia continues to pervade society.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the piercing speech delivered by Ronnie (Max Greenfield turning in an Emmy worthy performance) to the Feds after they bring him in for questioning over Cunanan’s whereabouts. Wiry and HIV-positive, Ronnie berates them for their insensitivity and idiocy in not catching Cunanan sooner while he was in plain sight in Miami (As EP Tom Rob Smith said at TCA, the Cunanan murder case “was the largest FBI fail of all-time.”)
Ronnie blasts, “The other cops here, they weren’t searching so hard were they, why is that? Because he killed a bunch of nobody gays?…You know what the truth is, you were disgusted by him, long before he became disgusting. You’re so used to us lurking in the shadows. Ya know, most of us, we’re obliged! People like me, we just drift away, we get sick, nobody cares, but Andrew was vain. He wanted you to know about his pain, he wanted you to hear, he wanted you …he wanted you to know about being born a lie. Andrew is not hiding. He’s trying to be seen.”
EP Ryan Murphy at TCA said that Versace’s murder was a “political” one and that Cunanan was “a person who specifically went out of his way to shame and out people…He was having a form of payback for a life he could not live.” At one point Murphy and the American Crime EPs considering putting Cunanan’s name in the title, but they decided they didn’t want to glamorize him.
At a post season finale screening Q&A Monday night at the DGA Theatre in Hollywood, EPs and cast members discussed the personal impact for them working on the show, and how the gay community has been effected in the years since Versace’s murder.
Judith Light, who plays Marilyn Miglin, the wife of Cunanan victim Lee Miglin, said that Gianni Versace, “is a cultural and historical event, and that’s what I think is so powerful about it. And when we talk about the time it happened and the love that people had for each other, particularly Antonio and Gianni, and that relationship is iconic in the sense that we’re still living in a time of homophobia. And what this does, it talks about that and brings it present and reminds us where we were in the ‘90s and talks about that we’re still not finished with it today.”
“Had Andrew had a life where he could have been open and lived his life in a way that was supportive to him, these things may not have happened,” added Light.
“We live in divided times about how separate we all are, but it (American Crime Story) shows how interconnected we are” said Tom Rob Smith about how Cunanan’s atrocities didn’t just damage those in rich Italian circles, but extended to various society levels, rich and poor. Smith wrote tonight’s episode “Alone,” which was directed by Dan Minahan.
One of the more intriguing turn of events following Versace’s murder which tonight’s season 2 finale briefly covers is how the fashion designer’s boyfriend Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) was arguably casted out by the Versace family following the murder; blocked from taking ownership of the Lake Como property promised to him by Gianni no thanks to sister Donatella and the label’s board. The miniseries shows Antonio taking his life with a bottle of pills, when in fact that’s debated whether he actually went that far in his depression following Gianni’s murder. What is known is that Antonio is alive and well, with his own fashion label in Northern Italy, and a reported $30K a month payout for life in Versace’s will. Overall, Donatella and Antonio were never on good terms.
Having been a closeted gay during pinnacles of his pop music career, and finally coming out in 2010, playing Antonio was both a cathartic and painful experience for Ricky Martin.
“I feel so much sadness seeing this last episode, and also a lot of anger; this could happen over and over again,” said Martin about the struggles which gay men go through in a homophobic society. He is proud that Versace possessed a strong courage to be out. As Martin confessed on stage the other night he personally “made a lot of my partners hide” and endured “a lot of self hate.”
But despite reliving the pain, there was a positive, resilient takeaway from The Assassination of Gianni Versace for Martin.
Says the Grammy winner, “I just want to be louder, louder and louder”
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale Recap: The End of Andrew Cunanan
The second season of American Crime Story ends where it began, with the titular assassination of Gianni Versace. After going back in time throughout Andrew’s life, the finale returns to Florida with Andrew on the run from the FBI, stuck watching his own life’s story play out on the news.
In many ways, this season can be split into three parts. There are the first two episodes and this finale, all about Versace in Florida and the manhunt for Andrew Cuanan. Then we had the third, fourth and fifth episodes, all about the start of the killing spree with Jeff Trail, David Madson and Lee Miglin. Then we had the past three episodes, all about Andrew’s psychology from his childhood to his rise and fall.
Andrew on the Run
After a seven-episode detour in time, from Chicago and Minneapolis to California and the Philippines, the finale takes us back to July 15, 1997 in Miami Beach, the day of the assassination of Gianni Versace. We see the murder again, then at night Andrew breaks into a houseboat and watches the news reports where he has been identified as the prime suspect. Andrew seems pleased with himself and laughs at the speculation that the murder was a hit ordered by the Italian mob.
The next morning he steals a car and tries to flee, but there are police checkpoints everywhere so he’s stuck on the houseboat, reduced to digging through the trash for scraps and even attempting to eat dog food.
Meanwhile, the FBI questions Ronnie (Max Greenfield), who gets snarky with the police about how they didn’t care about Andrew’s killing spree until he murdered a celebrity. He claims that society was disgusted by Andrew because he’s gay long before he started killing anyone and now Andrew isn’t hiding, he’s trying to be seen.
Andrew Cunanan, This Is Your Life
Most of the episode focuses on Andrew watching the news, offering a glimpse at his own life and what his story will be. He seems happy to have his name linked with Versace’s, but less pleased by the rest. His mom is being questioned by police and harassed by reporters. His best friend Lizzie begs Andrew to turn himself in because she knows how much he cares about what other people think of him.
A report about David Madson’s father defending his son as a victim seems to enrage Andrew, a reminder of the life he dreamed about having that ended in tragedy.
Andrew also sees Marilyn Miglin, marking the return of the best part of this series, Judith Light. She is in Tampa for an appearance on the home shopping channel, talking about her father dying when she was young and how that impacted her, forcing her to get a job and work hard. She talks about wanting to go back in time and tell her younger self how special she was. This seems to resonate with Andrew and he resents the fact that Marilyn is now successful but he isn’t.
Andrew has an emotional breakdown and calls his dad in the Philippines. Pete is profiting from the interviews he’s doing because his son is in the news. Andrew cries and begs his dad for help. Pete asks where he is and promises that he’ll fly right over to help him.
The next night Andrew sees his dad on the news, saying that his son is not gay. He adds that they talk regularly and Andrew is too smart to get caught by the cops, saying that he’s talking to Hollywood about selling the movie rights to Andrew’s life story. Andrew is furious that is dad is selling him out like this and he shoots the TV.
Gianni’s Funeral
The show jumps to Italy a week after the murder. Antonio and Donatella are preparing for Gianni’s funeral. He wants to spend his days at one of Gianni’s Italian homes to stay close to him, but Donetlla informs him that the homes are all owned by the company, effectively leaving him with nothing. He also gets snubbed by the priest at the service.
The only purpose is to highlight the difference between the two major figures in the series. While Gianni’s funeral is ornate in an Italian cathedral, with Princess Diana and Elton John in attendance, Andrew is stuck watching it on a houseboat while eating dog food and seeing cockroaches crawl along the floor.
I also wonder if this is a little Easter Egg for the second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud, which will center on Diana and Charles, because Gianni’s funeral takes place a little over one month before her death. It would be kind of cool if FX connected the two shows and included Diana attending Gianni’s funeral in Feud season 2.
The End of Andrew Cunanan
Eventually, the owner of the houseboat shows up and sees that it’s been broken into. He enters with a gun, but Andrew fires a warning shot. The man runs away and calls the police, who swam the scene. Andrew sees the whole thing play out on the news, knowing that he’s surrounded. The police try to contact him, but he refuses. The police storm the houseboat. Andrew sits on a bed, puts his gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger.
In a beautiful piece of symmetry, the show immediately cuts back to Andrew’s meeting with Gianni at the opera. You may remember this scene from the premiere, when the show abruptly cut away from it to the moment when Andrew shot Versace. This time it picks up right where the scene left off last time.
Andrew talks about fearing that no one will think he’s special. Gianni tells him that it’s not about persuading people, he should just go out and do it. Andrew desperately wants to work with him because Versace is the only man who believes that Andrew is special. Andrew tries to kiss him, but gets rejected. Gianni just wants him to be inspired.
The Aftermath
Following Andrew’s suicide, Marilyn is informed and she’s glad it’s done. She also reveals that she’s received letters about the charitable things her husband did that he never told her about.
In Italy, Donatella tells Antonio that the morning Gianni died he called her to talk about a runway show she was doing. She was annoyed that he was micromanaging her so when he called back 30 minutes later, she ignored the call. The show ends with Donatella visiting her brother’s tomb, cut with Andrew’s meager tomb as well as Antonio making a failed suicide attempt.
It’s all a little rushed, perhaps because Penelope Crruz and Ricky Martin were underused and their characters were underdeveloped throughout the series. The finale tries to make it seem like Versace was an important part of this story, even though he was largely absent from most of it.
In the end, the show offers a brief disclaimer, saying that while the series was inspired by a true story, “Some events are combined or imagined for dramatic and interpretive purposes.” In other words, some of it was kind of true, but they made up some stuff. That feels like the kind of warning that should have appeared at the beginning of the series, not after it’s all over.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale Recap: The End of Andrew Cunanan
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