Halfway through its intense and diverse season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story manages to out-“American horror” American Horror Story and claim the prize as one of the most engaging shows on television. Between its expert storytelling, its incredible actors, and its flawless delivery of social commentary, the series manages to exceed expectations each and every night.
The title, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, can be misleading at first glace. In Season One, we knew The People v. O.J. Simpson would primarily focus on the Simpson trial… and that’s exactly what we got. Assassination tells a much more complex story. Based on Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History by Maureen Orth, the season spends significantly more time on Darren Criss’ serial killer Cunanan and his other victims than the time it dwells on the inner-workings of the Versace clan. That isn’t to say that Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, and Ricky Martin aren’t completely magnetic on screen- because they’re incredible- but the structure of the storytelling allows for breathing room as the viewer takes in the scope of Cunanan’s actions.
What’s even more impressive is the filmmakers’ tendency to explore the nuances of Cunanan’s victims in favor of constant exploration of Cunanan himself. The last couple of episodes focus entirely on Cunanan’s non-famous victims, and they explore their circumstances with an empathetic and engaging retelling of events. Criss is incredible in his American Psycho-esque delivery of a performance no one is likely ever to forget, but Assassination is careful to always keep in mind that Cunanan is the villain of this story. While we get inside of his head from time to time- not unlike Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer– Cunanan is never glorified or portrayed as anything but a depraved monster. This process allows the audience to truly understand the circumstances of the victims of these senseless crimes and to never root for Cunanan as one might for a fictional “heroic” killer like in Dexter. Showrunner Ryan Murphy and company have an obligation to the victims of this real-life story not to sensationalize a tragic event, and it is clear that they have approached this responsibility with care.
Ryan Murphy’s other series, American Horror Story, struggled to deliver the social commentary it strived to achieve with this fall’s Cult, primarily due to the fact that its often ham-fisted delivery of ideas were completely overshadowed by larger-than-life characters and outrageous plot scenarios. The People v. O.J. Simpson first demonstrated Murphy’s strength in restraint when working with a fixed storyline, and this trend continues with Assassination. Because these characters are based on real people who lived through real events, the series delivers its social commentary naturally, in ways which resonate with the viewer. This show is flat-out scary at times. Criss plays a convincing and terrifying killer, and viewers can’t help but cringe when we know where a certain scene is headed. And because we’re spared the over-the-top cartoon-style gore which always causes American Horror Story to jump the shark each and every season, we’re left with chillingly practical scenes of violence which are far more frightening than anything Cult could cook up. This level of terror carries over into other scenes which heighten the realism of the series’ exploration of the social implications of Cunanan’s crimes. In Episode Five, Versace’s public announcement that he is gay is juxtaposed against another of Cunanan’s victims speaking on camera with his face shadowed out about the horrors of working in the military under the “liberal for it’s time” Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Murphy is clearly demonstrating just how deeply privilege and wealth impacted one’s ability to live an open lifestyle, free of physical harm and harassment; and the most horrific scene of the episode culminates in the man forcibly trying to remove a tattoo with a knife to avoid being identified as gay by his superiors. It is scenes like this which truly have the power to inspire debate and engage viewers in serious thought in ways that Murphy’s other works have yet to achieve.
Assassination is not completely without its faults, but its missteps are minor and easy to overlook given its incredible writing, directing, and performances night after night. Because the series is retelling events which no participants survived, the show sometimes goes too far in dramatizing some of its scenes. The results are often well-intended, but unverifiable as to whether such liberties in storytelling are fact or fiction. One such scene reveals Cunanan’s victim finding peace with his father, in his mind, moments before dying. While its clear these decisions were made with the best of intentions, the show might have been able to treat the victims with just as much respect by sticking to the hard facts. Of course, the filmmakers need to develop a coherent storyline, so some liberties had to be taken in order to present the story in the television format. What’s important is that they ultimately deliver a thoughtful and reflective program despite these necessary adjustments.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story successfully juggles a variety of haunting storylines and ideas in a way that’s sure to please fans of Murphy’s other works and to engage horror fans in a killer’s story in ways that many of its contemporaries could only dream of doing. The show represents modern television at its finest, and viewers are in for a treat if its second half is as incredible as its first!
Every week, we’re obsessed with The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. Unfortunately for us all, we don’t get our fix this week. The show, which has been focusing on the previous murders of Andrew Cunanan the last few weeks, is taking some time off.
Maybe that’s for the better. I know in the beginning, I was obsessed with the show and everything it represented. But as the weeks have gone on, it is almost a chore to keep up with. To be fair, that’s not because the show isn’t good.
On the contrary, it is one of the best shows out right now. The problem is that it isn’t what we were promised. I’ve said it before, but I tuned in thinking I was going to get a show about Gianni Versace. Instead, it is the life and crimes of Andrew Cunanan with a side dish of the famous Italian designer.
Penelope Cruz has barely been in the show. But then again, what else is there to tell about Gianni that isn’t already known? We don’t know much about Andrew Cunanan, so it is a little bit of information (or at least one story about) into the man who shot Versace dead on the street.
Still, I wish it was less about Andrew and more about the actual crime. But we’ll have to wait until next week to see what the show is going to do since we don’t have any new episodes on tonight. Maybe then next week, we’ll be ready for a new story.
After years of being known as preppy singer Blaine Anderson on Glee, the actor takes a dark turn in American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace as Andrew Cunanan — the serial killer known for shooting the Italian fashion designer on the steps of his Miami mansion and murdering four other men in 1997.
“I had a friend tell me when I got the part, ‘You’re playing the gay boogeyman,’” Criss, 31, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday. “I was like, ‘Excuse me?’ He was like, ‘When he was on the run, we would all spook each other [by saying] Andrew Cunanan is going to come get you.’ The things that are said about him in the show aren’t crazy.”
When it came to playing Cunanan, Criss wanted to make sure he was portraying all of the complex aspects of his character, which included everything from killing in cold blood to singing Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” at the top of his lungs in his car.
“Human beings are so complex,” he says. “We are capable of so many different emotions and the reasons behind those emotions. I’m not asking people to empathize or pardon anything that Andrew has done, but I do like people unconsciously figuring out how much they can relate to this person whether how little or how much.”
He adds: “It is my job to humanize him, but the hope is that we’re not glamorizing anything.”
The series, which is based on journalist Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, starts with Cunanan’s murder of Versace and moves backward through his killing spree. While viewers have now seen how all of Cunanan’s murders went down, Criss promises that scenes of his younger years are soon to come.
“That was some of the most fun stuff for me,” he says. “With someone like Andrew, I don’t think he had homicidal tendencies as a teenager. He was a lovable, fun, smart, gifted kid and it is confusing and heartbreaking and mortifying for people that knew him at that age to think he’d be capable of something like this later.”
Before filming, Criss says he knew just as much as “most people tuning in” about Cunanan — basically only that Versace was shot by a young half-Filipino man like himself.
“I met quite a few people who didn’t even know Gianni Versace was murdered,” Criss says. “What I’m getting to realize is that, for the most part, people didn’t know a whole lot about Andrew.”
Since taking on the role of Cunanan, Criss says people started to come up to him to share their stories about him.
“When he was alive, he literally was everywhere in the sense that he knew people, people knew him and he made himself the life of the party,” Criss says. “Even after he gained this degree of infamy that augmented his persona, people would have stories about him or think they saw him.”
Though the show has been met with its fair share of controversy — the Versace family slammed it as a “work of fiction” in January — Criss says he can understand why.
“I don’t blame anybody for having any reaction to this,” he says. “I mean, that’s their family member on TV. It’s completely understandable. You just hope the work speaks for itself and some good is brought through this.”
For Criss — who announced his engagement to his longtime girlfriend, Mia Swier, on Jan. 19 — the show’s success couldn’t come at a more exciting time.
“Some actors have to wait a lifetime for this kind of stuff,” he says. “This happened exactly when and how I would have liked it to happen in my life.”
He continues: “I just hope I don’t blow it from here!”
On July 15th, 1997, famed fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down outside of his opulent Miami home by 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan. Versace’s death swept through the media like a wildfire. I was eleven at the time, and while I didn’t pay attention to the specifics of the case, I remember the incessant news coverage playing out in my periphery. A crazed fan murdering a celebrity? That was a straightforward narrative I was familiar with due to trashy talk shows and scandalous entertainment news programs. Such a simple rationale was all the thought I’d put towards what turns out to be a much deeper and more horrific tale of a sociopathic young man intent on being a “somebody,” even if that person were falsely manufactured of his own corrupt invention. All of those in his life would each fall victim to his destructive nature and pay emotionally, if not, ultimately, with their own blood. His story would become a mirror for the rampant homophobia of the 90s in America and an antecedent for the celebrity-obsessed culture we find ourselves in today. At least, that’s the truth as presented by season 2 of Ryan Murphy Hit #125, better known as “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”
To follow up the massive success of season 1 (“The People vs OJ Simpson”), Murphy along with screenwriter Tom Rob Smith turned to a true crime novel entitled Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History written by Maureen Orth. “The Assassination…” premiered its first episode on January 17th and has already raised the ire of the Versace estate who protest numerous details as presented in the series. They’ve labeled the show as being riddled with fabrications based on vicious gossip. Speaking with EW, Murphy had this to say in the show’s defense:
“[The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story] was based on a non-fiction book by Jeffrey Toobin. Versace is based on a non-fiction book by Maureen Orth that has been discussed and dissected and vetted for close to 20 years. She worked for Vanity Fair. Maureen Orth is an impeccable reporter and we stand by her reporting. Our show is based on her reporting so, in that way, it is not a work of fiction, it’s a work of non-fiction obviously with docudrama elements. We’re not making a documentary.”
Their main beef concerns whether or not Gianni ever actually came into direct contact with his killer, Andrew Cunanan. Orth who was following the murderer’s trail prior to the death of Versace, claims it’s “on the-record reporting.” The two men existed within similar social circles, that of the gay nightlife and a seedy subset – male escorts. Versace and longtime partner Antonio D’Amico were known to hire third-parties to join them in their bedroom on occasion, and Cunanan had an intense drug habit which was supplemented by often selling his body. No matter what the stone-cold truth may be, Murphy and co are crafting undeniably captivating television by using the sordid details of a star-studded murder case to spin off into alternating moments of emotional pathos, timely social commentary, and suspense-filled horror.
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is a bit of a bait and switch. The advertising lured viewers in with the promise of Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace in a fierce (likely memeable) performance as the grieving sister to Edgar Ramirez’s Gianni. We also got to see a dusted off Ricky Martin proving that he still has what it takes to shake his bon-bon. The down-south neon Miami glitz was placed front and center in what looked to be a stylish, sexy, sensationalized telling of the true story. And, that is basically what the premiere episode delivered. Of course, there was also Darren Criss as the charmingly deceptive dandy, Andrew Cunanan. The brilliance of the show so far is that, after that first episode, each hour has focused more on Cunanan and the months leading up to Gianni’s death. This isn’t the Versace story, it’s the Cunanan story. The narrative weaves in and out of the events immediately following Versace’s death as the cops continuously bungle the investigation, mostly due to ignorance of the homosexual lifestyle they refuse to understand, and the exploits of Cunanan.
On “Glee,” Criss showed a lovable charisma as “the boy next door.” Here, he takes that built-in expectation and flips it on its head. Criss’s Cunanan can walk into a room and captivate an entire crowd as he weaves one unbelievable tale after another. From stories of building sets in Mexico for the upcoming film Titanic to loving recollections of his time spent in the Philippines working at his millionaire father’s pineapple plantation, Andrew has never met an alternative fact he didn’t like. But underneath his pearly white smile lies a soulless snake ready to poison those whose company he’s tired of. It’s a complex character whose murderous inclinations, as of so far, haven’t fully been explained. Nonetheless, it’s Criss’s portrayal that makes it seem believable even if the motivations has yet to crystallize.
One moment we may see Andrew’s jealousy leading to the death of a victim. The next corpse might be due to a sense of betrayal. Cunanan is constantly a threat to those around him, and any moment a potential danger. The highlight so far, though, comes in the third hour when he visits Chicago to spend the weekend with a frequent john, Lee Miglin. Miglin was a real estate tycoon married to an equally savvy businesswoman in her own right, Marilyn (played by an award-worthy Judith Light). The episode begins as she comes home to find the front door ajar, a baked ham left out on the counter, and a deadly silence greeting the calls for her husband. Instinctively, she knows something is wrong. What follows is an intense back and forth as we follow Cunanan greeting the elderly, closeted man for a weekend while Marilyn is out of town, intercut with Marilyn relying on local police and a friendly neighbor to search her home for any sign of her husband. We know at some point they will find his body and we know at some point Andrew will be the one to kill him. It’s a fine display of Hitchcockian suspense that proves this “Crime” story isn’t afraid to go for the “Horror” prevalent in that other Ryan Murphy show.
The climactic moment of brutality is all the more upsetting for the reasoning Andrew provides. He isn’t content just to kill Lee Miglin, he needs to destroy his legacy. An upstanding “pillar of the community” is to be found dead with sex toys and gay porn scattered around his body, skull crushed from a bag of cement and stab wounds all over his chest. In this period of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (also dealt with devastatingly in a later ep) and a general stigma of depravity associated with homosexuals, the idea of being “outed” is more terrifying than death itself. Marilyn copes with the discovery with a sense of denial even if she knows the truth. That truth, she fears would destroy everything she’s built with Lee over the years.
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is powerful television that brings to mind the gut punch psycho-thrillers of the 80’s such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Maniac. Much like those films placed their psychotic villains as central characters in order to reflect the societal temperament of the time, so too does this season’s “American Crime Story.” And, while Ryan Murphy might exist as a polarizing storyteller who often allows excess of style to outweigh his narratives, “The Assassination…” just might be the perfect marriage of his trademarks. Awash in sex and violence but with a greater commentary at play, this is one serial killer thriller you don’t want to miss.
The bad news: there’s no new episode of American Crime Story: Versace this week. Good news: we still have episode five, entitled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” to talk about.
More good news: Gianni Versace is finally back, even if most of the episode takes place even further back in the past. Seriously, I was under the impression that most of this season was going to be about the relationship between Versace and Andrew, but that doesn’t look to be the case anymore. Oh, well.
The message that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” hits the audience with relates back to the idea of homosexuality — what does it mean to come out as gay? Is it easier for some people? Harder? Or is it just different?
We start with Versace arguing with Donatella about coming out. Versace’s scheduled an interview with Advocate magazine in which he plans to reveal his secret, which Donatella says is a bad idea. It’ll hurt their brand, after all, and the world isn’t ready for this kind of announcement.
Versace, with Antonio at his side (who may or may not have his own motives here, as he’s been called Gianni’s assistant for the past 13 years and wants to make a name for himself), still plans to go forward with it though, despite Donatella’s dissatisfaction.
Then we go back in time, before the murder of Jeff Trail — a move that seems odd at the time, but eventually makes sense by the end of the episode.
Andrew is booking a flight to Minneapolis to see his two best friends — Jeff and David. He’s low on money, injecting heroin into his toes and lives in a pretty empty and sad living space. But we do see an important, albeit, hidden image: a collage of Gianni Versace, with the Advocate interview at the heart of it.
At the airport, David and Jeff are reluctantly waiting for him. Neither of them is particularly happy to see Andrew — especially Jeff, who thinks Andrew is a creep after he “accidentally” sent a postcard to Jeff’s dad that tried to out him as gay. Yet, both of them owe Andrew in some way, so they’re more or less forced to show up.
That doesn’t mean they plan to be around the whole weekend, though. Jeff is letting Andrew stay in his apartment, while he plans to stay at his sister’s (who is pregnant and due any day now). The less he has to interact with Andrew the better.
Instead, Andrew goes home with David. David doesn’t particularly care for Andrew either, but he’s at least sympathetic towards him. At least, he is initially. That feeling doesn’t last too long when Andrew to gives him a $10,000 watch and proposes — something David has no interest in accepting. To make matters worse, Andrew won’t even take no for an answer. He tells him to think it over for the weekend, assuming David will change his mind in that time.
The situation goes downhill from there. David takes Andrew along with him to a polka club that night to meet up with one of his co-workers. David introduces Andrew as a friend, only for Andrew to get offended and re-introduce himself as a lover. After hearing Andrew make up a bunch of lies about what he does for a living, David can’t take it anymore: he tells him flat-out that he will never marry him.
Andrew heads back to Jeff’s house in a saddened glaze, unsure of how to react or what he’ll do next. He starts poking around Jeff’s belongings, only to find his Navy uniform. He takes it out, puts on the hat and then finds a hidden VHS tape at the bottom of it.
Putting it in, we see a news report that’s covering the topic of homosexuals in the military. All of the witnesses are anonymous, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the blackened shadow we hear speaking in the video is Jeff.
Then we go to ANOTHER flashback, two years earlier when Jeff is in the Navy. We first see Jeff break up a fight in which a sailor is being mercilessly beaten for being gay. Later that night the same thing happens again — the sailor is being attacked, and Jeff saves his life.
Jeff brings the sailor into the bathroom to look at his injuries. He tries to offer him some advice (just leave, he says), but winds up just silently comforting him. And, of course, that’s right when someone walks into the room and sees him.
The two aren’t beaten to death right there, thankfully. Instead, the man that saw him tries to intimidate Jeff the next day. He says that a gay sailor is going to identify all the other homosexuals on board by revealing what tattoos they have (the sailor doesn’t actually know their names, in this story).
Jeff just so happens to have a tattoo on his leg. After unsuccessfully trying to remove it with a knife (a scene that made me want to vomit), Jeff decides to give up and hang himself in the bathroom.
After gasping for air for a few minutes, he changes his mind just in time. Instead, he decides to try something else — he’ll embrace it.
He heads off to a gay bar, clearly out-of-place and uncomfortable. Yet, that’s where he happens to run into Andrew, and suddenly we realize what Jeff meant when he said he owed Andrew. The two hit it off that night (Andrew once again proves he’s perfectly capable of being friendly and charming when he so pleases), and Jeff suddenly feels a lot better about himself.
Better enough to where he agrees to do this anonymous interview for CBS, talking about his experiences as a gay man in the military. We then cut back-and-forth between the Jeff interview and the Versace interview with Advocate, showing the difficulty that different figures in different lines of work have in coming out as gay.
Cut back to the day of Jeff’s murder. Jeff walks in on Andrew, still in his apartment. It doesn’t take him long to figure out that Andrew touched his uniform, and Jeff rightfully freaks out. After arguing for a bit, which ends with Jeff saying “No one wants your love,” Andrew leaves to head back to David’s place.
We know the rest from there, seen in the previous episode. However, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” hits us with one last heartbreaking moment. We end this week’s edition of Versace in Jeff’s house, seeing his Navy uniform laying out on the bed. We hear the phone ringing again and again — his sister has gone into labor, and his parents are calling to tell him to come on down to the hospital.
Too bad the apartment is empty and we know the truth: Jeff (and David) are dead.
At the Television Critics Association Winter press tour, the pair told IndieWire that before “American Crime Story” executive producer Ryan Murphy invited Ramirez to star as the titular designer, the two were already acquainted. In fact, the day that Ramirez got the role officially, he and Martin had plans to do a gallery tour together in Los Angeles. “I entered the first gallery and said ‘Ricky, I’m sorry I’m late, I was just finalizing this call, I’m doing Gianni Versace.’ He was the first person I told,” he said.
“I was very happy for him,” Martin added. “Weeks later, Ryan called me and he tells me ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Let’s have dinner.’ So I hang up the phone and I call Edgar, ‘Guess who I’m having dinner with tonight?‘”
Ramirez jumped in: “And I immediately said ‘Ryan Murphy, right? You’re going to be Antonio.’”
“He said it immediately,” Martin confirmed.
Ramirez continued: “You see all these elements of fate, of destiny?”
Martin wasn’t actively looking for a part like that of Versace’s longtime lover — or any part, really. “I was completely caught by surprise,” he said. “I had no idea. I was just moving to LA, of course always in my mind I was like, ‘If I’m going to do some acting, I would love to be surrounded by the right cast and great directors and great producers’ — and I gotta be careful with what I wish for, because everything happened. Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to do television series in the past in America and theater. But this is very significant and very important.”
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” tracks (backward) the events leading up to the murder of the famous designer by the unbalanced Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss). The reverse approach reflects a unique elegance and growing horror that’s quite different from the previous installment of “American Crime Story,” the Emmy-winning “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” reflecting the change in writers. While “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was overseen by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, “Versace’s” scripts were driven by British writer Tom Rob Smith, whose 2015 BBC miniseries “London Spy” was a critical favorite.
Ramirez noted that Smith’s approach to “Versace,” ultimately, “really resonates with the Greek tragedies. So it really feels like you’re reading and watching a big Greek tragedy.”
Beginning the film with the death scene was an intense choice for Ramirez and Martin — especially given that they shot it right where it happened, on the front steps of Gianni Versace’s Miami home.
“My favorite days were shooting in the villa in Miami — there were very significant scenes of course, when I find his body and when the FBI is drilling Antonio to take information from him,” Martin said. “It was very powerful, very intense, draining. And I would go back to a hotel every night…Coming back to L.A. and being able to get in your car and go to the set was easier.”
“It was easier,” Ramirez agreed, “but it was great that we were lucky enough to start off in Miami so we could bring all their energy and all that mood with us to Los Angeles. It was great for everyone, not only the cast but everyone, to experience that and feel the colors and textures of the house, because that house represents everything that Gianni wanted in his life. That house was somehow the apotheosis of what he wanted his legacy to be. It’s a physical manifestation of what he had in his brain.”
The full scope of Versace’s brain is something that, having reached the midpoint of the season, we’ve now come to understand far better than before. After five episodes, we’ve witnessed not just Versace’s death, but more and more of his life. For viewers who weren’t familiar with Versace, it’s a fascinating exposure to his personal journey. Meanwhile, for those who did know the name, it’s a fascinating challenge to their understanding of who he was as a persona.
In Ramirez’s words, “The thing is, life and work for Gianni was the same. In terms of the relationship Gianni and Antonio had, they were love partners but they were also work partners…They were workaholics.”
This goes against the perceptions many associate with the House of Versace. “What comes to your mind first, also part of the legend and also part of the misrepresentation, is the parties and the sexuality and the alleged orgies and all these things that are part of the legend, and not the work,” Ramirez said. “[He was] a guy that would actually go to bed rather early and wake up very early as well, because he was more of a craftsman than this big celebrity that lived this larger-than-life existence.”
And that aspect, plus the way in which “Versace” delves into showcasing his abilities as a designer, only heightens the tragedy of the story — a great talent whose life was ended, in part, due to the fact the authorities didn’t take the manhunt for Andrew Cunanan seriously.
Said Martin, “One of the reasons I definitely said yes is because behind the story, there’s so much injustice in so many aspects. for example the fact that it’s not how he was killed, it’s why he was killed and why did we allow it happen. This guy was not hiding, he went on a killing spree, he was living in Miami Beach. He was on the list of the most wanted by the FBI, but he wasn’t caught. So they were looking the other way. They were looking the other way because it was a gay man killing gay people.”
“It didn’t represent a public threat at the time,” Ramirez said.
“So what I’m saying about this is,” Martin continued, “it’s important to bring some light to anything my community is going through.”
“I think [homophobia] is the underlying theme of the whole series, of the whole show,” Ramirez said. “Homophobia and how this death could’ve been prevented…I think that Ryan and his team, we’re so lucky to be part of them now. They’ve been so clever and keen to identify stories that are both dramatically gripping and at the same time they speak about the zeitgeist. They speak about greater subjects of humanity that are going on in society.”
In 1999, just two years after Andrew Cunanan’s cross-country killing spree, a cartoon spot ran regularly in between the videos on MTV. The spot showed Ricky Martin walking down the street, and every woman fainting at his feet. This was the summer of “La Vida Loca,” when the public had agreed to enter into a collective sexual delusion, a la Wham, about the pretty and flamboyant Latin singer and his perfect leather pants—never mind that no straight man had ever made a hot relationship with a daring woman sound so dreadful or exhausting, or so apt to end in copious jail time. The cartoon’s punch line is that one girl doesn’t faint at all: she shrugs. We see a frightened Ricky Martin, soaked in sweat, sit up in bed and scream. The whole scenario was, for the “definitely-heterosexual” pop lothario, a bad dream.
Even aged eleven, I remember thinking something seemed a little off; which is perhaps the reason why the spot has stuck with me since then, and why, when Martin finally came out more than ten years later, happy and a father to two children, I remember also thinking that it seemed like the end of a real-life nightmare. It seemed like a realized dream. This, and not the adulation of the women of the world, was what the private Martin had desired all those years: to be himself, and to be loved for being himself, and to be given full permission to love anybody that he felt like loving. It is funny to be waxing serious and thoughtful, now, about a man who once released a single with the lyric “up in the Himalaya/you know I wanna lay la”—but this is a year of curious turns. If you had said to me six months ago that in this, The Year of Our Lord Disick 2018, I would find myself in tears at a scene from a TV drama starring Ricky Martin, I would not have bought it. Times, as well as being full of change, are strange. Thank God there is a little wonder left in all this chaos. I am, frankly, ready for the Martinaissance.
Despite Gianni’s status as the victim of the series’ title, he seems happier, more at peace, than any other character.
The scene in question is a recreation of Gianni’s interview with the gay magazine Advocate in 1995, and is the lynchpin of the episode—emotionally, and perhaps conceptually—despite being fairly brief. At this point, Gianni and Antonio have been together thirteen years (as famous and unfamous couplings go, this is no minor innings). Ricky Martin, as Antonio, is patient and devoted, and heartbroken by the fact that he’s usually mistaken for Gianni’s personal assistant. Gianni, clearly smitten with Antonio, is keen to right this wrong. He asks the journalist if they can do the interview together, a united front; and the look the two men give each other is a look of such excruciating tenderness that it can’t help but be informed by something real. “The ups and downs,” said Martin in an interview in January with US Weekly, “the frustrations, the uncertainty, the fear of losing your career because you’re gay is something that is there… I’m a gay man that lived in the closet for many years. To see the process of Gianni actually coming out and sitting down in front of a journalist to talk about his reality is something that moved me in many ways.”
Every episode so far of The Assassination of Gianni Versace has been more unpleasant, and moreover more violent, than the last. This week, an ugly exploration of individual, internalized and institutionalized homophobia, is grimmer still. “You live in isolation, surrounded by beauty and kindness,” Penelope Cruz’s perfectly extraordinary-looking Donatella tells Gianni. “You have forgotten how ugly the world can be.” When she worries that his coming out as gay might cost the brand endorsements, he says—wryly and delightfully—“we’ll still have Elton.” Andrew Cunanan’s first victims have been closeted or down-low: we have yet to see what Gianni’s open lifestyle, opulent and unashamed, provokes in him. One has to guess it might be envy. Seeing Gianni and Antonio, in love and in the public eye, one cannot help but almost feel a pang of loss on Cunanan’s behalf—they make a then-brave thing look easy.
Apparently not having overwhelmed myself enough already with the ugliness of Andrew Cunanan’s cross-country killing spree, this week I started reading Three Month Fever, Gary Indiana’s book about the case. “[A] synthesis between ‘the classic serial’ and ‘the classic spree’ killer,” writes Indiana in its preface, “Cunanan seemed less a threat to the general public than to familiar narrative genres and their claims to classicism.”
American Crime Story does not share the same disdain for a conventional crime narrative, nor for a classic serial killer trope. It does disdain conventional chronology, which helps explain why this week’s episode is dedicated to the Minneapolis-set murder that begat—or at the very least began—the spate of killings, even though it is the series’ fourth. Cunanan’s first victim was Jeff Trail, whose great misfortune stemmed from having slept with Cunanan’s intended long-term partner, and his sometime lover, David Madson. Madson, a young up-and-coming architect, bore witness to the crime, which happened in his gorgeous home: the episode begins with Andrew having lured Jeff to the front door. There are lingering, worrying shots of Madson’s photogenic dog.
Andrew Cunanan, a homme fatale, is both scorned and resentful of the straight world’s status quo.
The blows begin to rain the moment Jeff steps in. Ensuring we will never forget Cunanan’s first time, the sound design conspires to make us feel we’ve seen all twenty-seven hammer strikes. Blood Pollocks up the wall. It pools around the body like a wet, red joke: so bright and so extravagant in volume that it looks like Pop art, or a cartoon. Cunanan describes the killing as a loss of control, which would feel far truer if he did not say this in a voice so even-tempered and considered that nobody ever sounded more assured. If David calls the cops, he says, they will suspect him, too. The dog howls bloody murder. David ends up on the run with Andrew, looking even more like a conspirator than if he’d stayed.
A seducer, then a killer, Cunanan exists as a kind of male inversion of the hot-but-crazy femme fatale, whose unnerving affect tends to be mistaken for erotic freakiness instead of—well, just freakiness. Often, femme fatales are furious because they want to game the heterosexual system, which casts men as the deciders and the femmes, who ought to be obliging rather than fatale, as something men decide on. Sometimes, they are women scorned. Andrew Cunanan, a homme fatale, is both scorned and resentful of the straight world’s status quo. “They hate us, David,” he explains, fanning out gay porn as manufactured evidence. “They’ve always hated us. You’re a fag!”
“He has this feline intuition,” David says at one point said to Jeff, an observation notable for the fact that almost no one likens men to cats. Cunanan, aloof and neat and perfectly methodic, is a cat. (With this in mind, I had expected him to kill the dog. Thank God: he does not kill the dog.)
Jeff, meanwhile, is a cute, blonde, jockish boy with close-cropped hair and an appealing but unmemorable face, which means he’s nearly interchangeable with David. (Nothing stranger than white racists who insist that other races look homogenous, when most attractive Chrises and hot Laurens look—to me, at least—like variations on one milquetoast factory model.) Loving one’s own doppelganger might be the textbook definition of a narcissist, at least the way Narcissus happened to embody the idea; a sociopath like Cunanan might, under different circumstances, understand the impulse.
As it happens, Jeff and David’s interchangeability succeeds in throwing the police. They call the murder, first and with an air of casual disgust, “a gay thing.” They assume that David is the dead man, and a hookup’s gone far south. They’re half-right, in the sense that David Madson is a dead man walking from the minute he steps out with Andrew Cunanan—that while the latter sees their going on the lam as a lovers’ road trip, an excuse to sing along to Technotronic on the radio and fantasie about how Mexico will look at sunset, Madson sees a monster. One day later, Cunanan has killed him, too: strike one, and then strike two, of five eventual strikes.
3. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Network: FX Last Week’s Ranking: 2
Last week’s emotional heavyweight “House by the Lake” focused on the psychological torture and eventual murder of architect David Madson (Cody Fern). But the hint is that the killer of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramierez), Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), got to Madson via Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), the man he bludgeons with a hammer in the first minutes of the episode, so we’ve been primed to expect this week’s installment to take us back to how Trail got wrapped up in this horrible spiderweb. The fifth episode of American Crime Story’s second season is the first not to have an actual murder in it, but trust me, it’s doesn’t make anything less painful: “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is a layered meditation on uniforms and conformity, masks and unmaskings. It moves back and forth in time in a way that’s easy to track but a little hard to describe; there’s a logic to this episode that poets will recognize. It turns on symbol and metaphor at least as much as plot, and it has a lot of layers of commentary on… well, on the nature of identity, when you get down to brass tacks. —AmyGlynn
The long-awaited second installment of the miniseries American Crime Story may include Gianni Versace’s name in the title, but this season truly focuses on the sociopathic serial killer who murdered him —Andrew Cunanan. In 1997, the 27-year-old ended a three-month cross-country murder spree by shooting and killing the beloved Italian designer, Versace, outside of his Miami, Fla. home.
Like its O.J. Simpson-centric predecessor, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (10 p.m. Wednesdays, FX) — based on Maureen Orth’s nonfiction book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History — examines a very public and publicized crime. But many don’t remember or even recognize Cunanan the way they do the players of the Simpson trial, and even less so his bizarre story and the murderous path that led to Versace’s South Beach doorstep.
Similar to how The People vs. O.J. Simpson featured a limited amount of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Simpson, this season is really about Cunanan. While viewers are treated to indulgent glimpses of Versace’s life, there are entire episodes devoted to his killer’s journey. Cunanan was a chameleon — he exhibited the unique ability to significantly alter his appearance with just a pair of glasses and haircut — and could be very charismatic and convincing. The same can be said of actor Darren Criss, who nails Cunanan’s manic, psycho killer ways. Cunanan wasn’t a skilled murderer, but he was a deranged one — one who managed to evade authorities for months. Getting to know Cunanan’s background and what makes him tick — as much as can be understood — makes him all the more terrifying.
Where The People vs. O.J. Simpson delved in to the larger race issues of the time, The Assassination of Gianni Versace contemplates the implications of being gay, particularly for men in the 1990s. And those experiences vary greatly between characters. Of course you have Versace, who was an openly gay man with a partner of 13 years, Antonio D’Amico. As the founder of an international fashion house, Versace was able to publicly come out in Advocate magazine in 1995, despite his sister Donatella’s concerns about the effect it would have on the company. He was no stranger to personal struggles; in the show, it is revealed that Versace was HIV positive (his family has long denied this).
But being a wealthy celebrity, Versace saw some privileges that most gay men at the time did not experience. Cunanan’s first victim was a former U.S. naval officer who we see struggle with “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and gay-bashing in the military. Cunanan himself used his sexuality to take advantage of and manipulate people. He frequently befriended wealthy, older men — sometimes closeted men with wives and families — and bragged about the lavish gifts he’d receive. In a split second, he’d hold the arrangement over their heads as a threat.
Iconic figures and lesser known real-life characters come to life thanks to a phenomenal cast. Criss will undoubtedly receive award attention for his role; the Versace siblings are uncannily portrayed by Édgar Ramírez and Penélope Cruz. Ricky Martin’s take on D’Amico is surprisingly solid. Other supporting actors like Finn Wittrock and Max Greenfield (regular players for producer Ryan Murphy) and newcomer Cody Fern give fantastic performances, if only for an episode. The top-notch acting, paired with colorful, extravagant sets, thoughtful storytelling choices and a spot-on soundtrack make this season a feast for the senses.
Versace is truly Murphy at his finest — it’s scarier than American Horror Story, with dark humor à la Nip/Tuck and dotted with his signature camp featuring a heavy dose of glamour and the grotesque. And yes, I think it’s better than Simpson.
The TV giant just signed a five-year, $300 million deal with Netflix (one of the biggest in TV history), but that doesn’t mean Murphy’s many 20th Century Fox projects are making the move or getting cut short. American Crime Story will continue for at least two more seasons, which will focus on Hurricane Katrina and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal; his other projects American Horror Story, Feud and 9-1-1 all have new seasons in the works. As if he isn’t already, Murphy is about to be everywhere, but let’s hope he focuses on quality, not quantity. Because when he’s on his game, he can produce a work of this caliber — one that’s not to be missed.
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