Gianni and Donatella. Gianni and Antonio. Donatella and Antonio. Andrew and Ronnie. Yes, this week’s episode featured duct tape sex helmets, Daren Criss dancing to Phil Collins in a speedo and Ricky Martin’s butt, but don’t get distracted. The focus of this week’s episode was these fraught relationships. As it jumped around in time, we got a closer look at the dynamic between these various pairs.
First, we see Donatella (Penelope Cruz) hissing at Antonio (Ricky Martin) over Gianni’s illness (fact check: the Versace family denies Gianni having HIV, but Marleen Orth’s 2000 book, “Vulgar Favors,” claims that Gianni’s autopsy revealed that he was HIV positive at the time of his death). Donatella blames Antonio’s promiscuity for Gianni’s illness and she’s upset with Antonio for not giving Gianni the stability he craves.
Donatella seems out of line here, though – why is she intruding on the intimate details of her brother’s relationship with his partner? She may not agree with their lifestyle, but she shouldn’t freeze Antonio out. Gianni seems very capable of fighting his own battles, especially with Antonio. It is especially tragic after Gianni dies. The two could lean on each other, but Donatella sees no reason to keep up the charade and flies back to Italy, with Gianni’s gold-boxed ashes in tow.
Whether it was Donatella’s words or simply good timing, Antonio is finally ready to commit to Gianni. Even though Gianni questions his decision, challenging him and asking if he’ll change his mind when the two are out clubbing like the kings of Miami they are, I truly believe Antonio. All he wants at this stage of his life is Gianni. When Antonio repeats himself outside of the club, his words are shattering because you know it’s too late and Gianni will be dead the next day. The storyline between Antonio and Gianni is arguably the most devastating in the entire show, because they care for each other so deeply in a way that not even Donatella can recognize.
Gianni and Donatella, who clearly share a deep bond and mutual respect, have their moments of discord too, especially when it comes to their creative visions. They clash over a fashion show – Gianni thinks the models are too skinny and she scolds him for not being edgy like McQueen and Galliano. They fight, as families do, and agree to disagree and each dress separate models for their show. This is why their business and personal relationship works so well. They can throw down and quickly pick back up and move forward, despite their passionate creative difference. What an envious partnership they have.
In stark contrast to all of this, we see loner Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) desperately trying to make a connection with someone, even if that connection is as fake and shallow as himself. Arriving in Miami after killing four other men, he latches on to the first junkie he sees at his fleabag motel, Ronnie (an unrecognizably gaunt Max Greenfield). This relationship is the only one that isn’t factual and was probably created for plot reasons, but it shows us how sleazy Cunanan is and how much he yearns for a companion. He breezes in, offering Ronnie a cut of his escort business, regaling him with false stories of his fiancé, Versace.
Despite his transparent braggadocio, Cunanan seems well liked wherever he goes – the kid is charming AF – so it’s hard to understand why he is so broken inside. He seems to feel cheated by life, but perhaps if he put half as much effort into having a career as he does being a conman, he really could have accomplished something. Instead, he uses all of his creativity to snow the people around him.
Next week, we jump in time again, back to one of Cunanan’s other murders. And as for Darren Criss in a speedo, you can resume thinking about that now.
Tag: february 2018
Analyzing Judith Light’s Amazing Performance in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’
So, are you hooked on this show yet? Honestly, the first two episodes worried me. I loved last week’s American Psycho tribute, but the early scripts still jumped around too much, introducing a huge cast of characters and cramming years’ worth of vignettes about Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace into less than two hours. All that exposition made it hard to get emotionally invested in any one story. As soon as you started to care about Gianni and Antonio, there was Andrew bellowing “Gloria” in a stolen truck, or some FBI dope confusing Versace with Liberace.
Last night’s “A Random Killing” was something entirely different—a spare, focused episode and easily my favorite so far. I’ll get to the fact-vs-fiction part soon (promise) but first we need to talk about Judith Light. Who else could’ve played Marilyn Miglin, the wife of Cunanan’s third victim and allegedly closeted Chicago real estate magnate Lee Miglin? She’s a complicated woman. The queen of HSN is sharp enough to realize something’s wrong in her marriage, yet she loves Lee for his belief in her. And yet, her reaction to his murder is so practical! She goes into crisis-PR mode, feeding the police narratives to obscure the reality that a halo of gay bondage magazines surrounded Lee’s body. But there’s pain under the surface. When she finally lets down her guard, the monologue Light delivers about being a “real wife” is heartbreaking.
Darren Criss gives the episode’s other great performance. It’s chilling to watch Andrew slowly turn on Lee, puncturing the romantic veneer of what is actually a business transaction before mocking his powerful prey as he wraps Lee’s face in tape. Does writer Tom Rob Smith sometimes overload his dialogue with symbolism? Absolutely—“Concrete can build, but concrete can kill” is just awful—but the most revealing exchange in a mostly excellent script takes place in Lee’s study, when Andrew psychoanalyzes his host’s plan to build a tower so tall that its observation deck will look down on the Sears Tower.
Andrew sees that the project is really an egotistical power move; Lee protests, unconvincingly, that he’s only thinking of how delighted kids would be by the view. Andrew has a knack for perceiving people’s hidden dark sides, which makes his relationships with the victims he knows personally fascinating. Look for more of that next week. On to the annotations…
Lee and Marilyn Miglin
They weren’t international celebrities like Versace, but Lee and Marilyn Miglin were well known and loved in Chicago society circles. As Marilyn helpfully points out in the episode, the couple’s story was a classic “American Dream” narrative: Lee was the son of an immigrant coal miner who talked his way into his first real estate job at age 31, rising quickly from there. As Maureen Orth reports in Vulgar Favors, the firm he founded with business partner Paul Beitler built many of downtown Chicago’s most prestigious edifices, including Madison Plaza and the Chicago Bar Association Building.
The Miglins also independently owned over two dozen properties in the city. But Lee’s and Beitler’s grandest ambition, to build a 2,000-foot tower called the Skyneedle that would have been the world’s tallest building, remained unrealized. (The Chicago Tribune published a fascinating article on the project shortly after Lee’s murder.)
Marilyn was a model-turned-makeup mogul whose eponymous cosmetics line—particularly, a perfume called Pheromone—became a Home Shopping Network sensation. Orth notes her complicated personality, citing an associate who observed, “She’s not a cream puff… Marilyn hides it till she needs to bring it out.” When she returned from her business trip to Canada to find her Gold Coast townhouse in disarray, she cryptically told her neighbors, “I know he’s dead and they’ll never catch him. They’ll never find who did this.”
The lack of emotion she displayed in the wake of Lee’s murder really was a topic of local gossip. Marilyn remarried in 1999, but her second husband, the businessman Naguib Mankarious, died soon after, while getting a facelift. A lawsuit caused her to file for bankruptcy in 2007. Nevertheless, she persisted. Over a decade later, Marilyn is still alive and hawking her wares on HSN. (Here’s a video from 2017.)
Lee’s Murder
The show’s account of Lee Miglin’s murder and its aftermath sticks pretty close to the facts. Yes, Marilyn returned to find a Coke can and an open carton of ice cream in her normally spotless kitchen, while neighbors spotted a ham with a knife stuck in it in the library and signs that a dark-haired man had taken a bath in one of the bathrooms. Lee’s body was found in the garage next to an assortment of gay porn magazines, fully dressed but wearing lacy Calvin Klein bikini underwear, his ankles tied with an extension cord and his face wrapped in masking tape.
What happened before the murder isn’t nearly as clear. Was Lee Miglin a closeted gay man? How did Andrew end up in his home? Did they already have some kind of relationship? An expert told Orth that there was likely a sexual element to the killing. Signs that Cunanan had hung around at the Miglins’ for a while after the crime suggested he knew Marilyn was out of town. And a neighbor named Betsy Brazis spotted Lee talking with a younger man in his kitchen shortly before his death.
An AIDS educator, Brazis also mentioned to Orth that “Lee’s name would come up occasionally as a gay ‘straight’ man” in the support groups she led. A local queer newspaper published an anonymous report that Miglin had been spotted in gay bars, although other Chicago journalists swore to Orth that they tried and failed to find evidence that he slept with men. Meanwhile, Orth plays up Lee’s stereotypically gay characteristics, from his neatness to his effeminacy. These descriptions are kind of uncomfortable.
But the investigation into Andrew’s motive never got far, in part because Chicago law enforcement and other local officials were personally invested in protecting the family’s good name. The murder was declared random. An anonymous city official told Orth, “The case is closed. There’s nothing in the file. His employees loved him. The church loved him. His wife loved him. Case closed.” Twenty years later, the suggestion that Lee was anything less than a heterosexual family man remains controversial. A recent Chicago Sun-Times headline reads, “Revisiting Chicago murder, FX series depicts Lee Miglin as gay, close to killer.”
The piece quotes American Crime Story executive producer Brad Simspon, who explains, ““Our writer, Tom Rob Smith, had to dramatize what we believe happened that weekend starting from the established facts of the crime scene. Based on the evidence, we believe that Lee and Andrew did know each other, and Andrew’s attack, as with all his victims except for William Reese [the man Andrew kills for his truck later in last night’s episode], was targeted and specific.” The implication is that homophobia not only prevented the truth behind Miglin’s death from coming out, but—along with that exasperating car-phone leak, which did happen—also contributed to the FBI’s failure to catch Cunanan before he killed again.
Duke Miglin
Wait, there’s more. Remember Duke Miglin, Lee and Marilyn’s 25-year-old “Hollywood actor” son? Evidence exists that he and Cunanan knew each other before the murder. Although Duke and Marilyn always denied having ever met him, acquaintances of the family told Orth that there was something off about their evasions. Shortly after Lee’s death, Andrew’s friends confirmed to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he and Duke “spoke frequently.”
And, in an interview with Orth, two of Lee’s professional acquaintances related a memorable encounter with the Miglins at United Airlines’ Red Carpet Lounge at LAX, a few years before Lee’s death. “The Miglins were on their way to Hawaii for family Christmas, and were waiting for Duke to join them,” Orth writes. “He finally arrived with a friend, who made a great impression.” When they saw Cunanan’s photo, both confirmed that he was the man they’d met at the airport.
So, what happened to Duke? Well, despite his big break in Air Force One, he didn’t pursue his Hollywood dreams for long. Instead, he got married, had kids and got into the family real-estate business. Last year, Duke insisted to a Chicago ABC affiliate, “There was no relationship whatsoever. A lot of false things were brought up and they were very hurtful, very painful, for me personally and there were attacks on me as well that I really didn’t appreciate. And I still don’t.”
Analyzing Judith Light’s Amazing Performance in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: ‘A Random Killing’ – An Underwhelming Course is Corrected – The Pop Break
Coming off the heels of two solid, yet slightly underwhelming episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is the next chapter in the saga titled “A Random Killing” directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton.
Despite having his name in the title of the show, Gianni Versace only makes a cameo of sorts in this episode. In fact, it has very little to do with the Versace family as a whole. One thing mentioned in the review of the season premiere was the discovery that instead of the show focusing on Gianni Versace, as the first season did with its premiere character, O.J. Simpson, the show focuses on Andrew Cunanen (Darren Criss), the murderer of Versace and the lead-up to the murder, which occurred in the season premiere.
This particular episode is the show’s version of a flashback to May 1997 – before the assassination of Gianni Versace – and is about a “random” murder that takes place in Chicago, Illinois.
The opening scene is brilliantly done. It begins in Chicago with a lady, Marilyn Migland (Judith Light), returning home to discover something wrong in the house – and the disappearance of her husband, Lee (Mike Farrell). The suspense during the entire sequence is crafted magnificently. The police and one of her neighbors eventually find Lee’s body in the garage. The episode then shifts back in time to when Marilyn was leaving out of town and to Lee meeting Cunanen for his “services.”
As the show has done thus far, it highlights Lee’s struggle with his sexuality in private and this is explored in a scene that takes place in a room in his basement that appears to look like his small version of a church. During this scene, he tells the painting of Christ on the wall that he is “trying so hard,” which, in hindsight, is to be about him trying to be a straight man for his wife, but cannot contain himself and invites Cunanen over, which eventually leads to Lee’s death in which he is found wearing women’s panties and surrounded by homosexual pornographic magazines.
The episode then takes a turn that makes this one easily the best in the season so far. It focuses on Marilyn trying to process and deal with her husband’s death and how she tries to hide from it, but cannot do so. The episode also spends a great deal of time with the police and their efforts to track down Cunanen after Lee Migland’s death and the trouble they continue to have in that department. Cunanen is also a central point in the episode (since he is the show’s main character) as he is on the move.
Even though Cunanen is viewed as the “bad guy,” we see through his eyes how he is escaping and the tension-filled choices he makes, which might not necessarily make us care more for him, but rather keep us on the edge of our seats to see what he does to get out of a bad or dangerous situation for him. Cunanen also takes another life in an attempt to steal a man’s truck to lose the police, in which he is obviously successful.
With this episode embracing and highlighting the troubled efforts of the police and FBI tracking down Cunanen, spending time with the loss’s loved ones and their attempts to grieve, and Cunanen himself on the move, the intensity has picked up and the so has the quality. This episode felt much more like the suspenseful, murderous, manhunt version I was expecting to see when I started, which is clearly a big positive for me.
To make a comparison, this episode was much more in the vain of acclaimed films such as Zodiac and Se7en. In this particular episode, the performances were all fantastic and the cinematography was top-notch as always. It will be interesting to see where the next installment in this season ventures into and if it will continue to increase the tension and have enough of a backstory to fulfill the season’s mandate – although so far, the show is on track to do so.
A Random Killing Rating: 8.5 / 10
@Nicola_Lambo: #ThursdayThoughts Celebrating a #tv appearance on @ACSFX last night! What a fantastic experience all around, from start to finish! Can’t wait to catch it! #PlanA #actorslife #DreamBigWorkHard #createthelifeofyourdreams #createluck
American Crime Story Review: A Random Killing
This week’s review takes a look at the latest episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “A Random Killing.” Spoilers follow.
The Victims
It’s May 1997, and the murder of Gianni Versace is is still three months away. Versace may still be alive in the timeframe of this episode, but he’s absent here – off somewhere living his life, still blissfully unaware that Andrew Cunanan is weeks away from destroying it all.
It’s fitting that since episode 3, “A Random Killing,” is the first Versace-less episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, it’s also the first episode of the season that feels drastically different. As this show continues to tick backwards, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, the timeline shifts, altering itself, ever-changing. Gone are the brightly-lit beaches and pastel colored buildings of Miami Beach. In its place are the affluent suburbs of Chicago, where Cunanan has brought his own brand of destruction.
“A Random Killing” opens with a chilling, horror-movie-tinged opening sequence in which Home Shopping Network saleswoman Marilyn Miglin returns home from a business trip and quickly discovers something is very wrong. Her husband Lee was supposed to pick her up at the airport – but he never arrived. Marilyn takes a cab home, and the tension builds, and builds, and builds, to a point where it feels as if the episode will burst. Marilyn’s affluent row home seems haunted, or cursed, when she steps through the door. It’s too quiet, too barren. Things that might be perfectly mundane under normal circumstances, like a pint of ice cream left out on a kitchen counter, suddenly take on an ominous feel. Soon, neighbors and police have arrived, and what they discover is enough to make a neighbor let out a blood-curdling scream: Lee Miglin has been brutally murdered.
He’s not the only victim who loses his life at the hands of Andrew Cunanan. Later, we see Cunanan gun down William Reese, a caretaker at a Civil War cemetery. While this act is carried out on the spur of the moment – Andrew shoots Reese almost as an afterthought – the title of the episode indicates only one of these killings is random, and yet when that distinction comes up, it’s applied to the murder of Lee Miglin, not William Reese. The devil is in the details.
“I Could Almost Be”
The Andrew Cunanan at the center of “A Random Killing” is a completely different Cunanan than we’ve seen in previous episodes. At the end of last week’s episode, “Manhunt,” Cunanan’s mask of sanity began to slip as he rattled off a laundry list of all the different phony personalities he’s used throughout his life. Here, the smooth, fast-talking con artist is lying dormant while the cold, calculated predator is on full display. Andrew is on the run here – he later mentions he’s already killed two people very close to him, and later still police mention that a stolen vehicle Andrew was driving was “linked to the homicide of Jeff Trail.” Remember that name.
While we have yet to witness these two previous murders Andrew mentions, it’s clear that he’s unhinged. He’s fleeing for his life, and not really sure where to go. He ends up at the home of the wealthy Lee Miglin, a man who has seemingly be happily married for years, with a grown son – yet he’s also a man who is also hiding a secret.
Secret lives are a big theme of this season of American Crime Story, and just as Andrew has spent his entire life trying to pretend he was someone else, so, too, has Lee Miglin. The episode flashes back a week before his murder, and we see that Lee and his wife Marilyn are, indeed, happily married…yet Lee is struggling. He kneels in the homemade chapel he has tucked away in his large house, and swears to God that he tries, he really tries, to fight his urges. But it’s no use.
When Lee receives a late-night phone call from Andrew Cunanan, just as Marilyn is about to go out of town, Lee gives in to his urges, and gives Andrew permission to come over. When Andrew arrives, he skips the pleasantrees. He’s not trying to impress Lee, or lure him. Lee, seemingly oblivious to this, embraces Andrew. He wants to be loved by this young man, whom we later learn had worked as a male escort for Lee. “I’m not a fool,” Lee says, “I know it’s not real.” But he wants it to be real. He wants it to be real just as Andrew wants his constant lies about his own success to be real. Andrew senses the weakness in Lee, and like any sociopath, decides to exploit it. There’s a quick moment where Andrew has a gun raised at Lee’s back, ready to cut the elderly man down. Yet he hesitates – not out of sympathy, but rather because he realizes he can draw Lee Miglin’s death out; change it from a quick, cold slaying into a calculated act of torture. He passionately kisses Lee, then says, “You’ve never been kissed like that before, have you?”
Befuddled and under Andrew’s romantic spell, Lee whimpers that Andrew isn’t like the other escorts. “I could almost be a husband,” Andrew says, “or a partner. I could almost be. I really could…almost.”
Almost.
What follows is a horrifying sequence in which Andrew wraps Lee’s head in tape – a call-back to last week’s episode, where Andrew did the same thing with a John. From here, Andrew brutally murders lee, taunting him as he does so, telling the dying man that he’s going to dress his corpse in women’s panties and leave gay porn strewn around his corpse. “I want the world to see the great Lee Miglin is a sissy,” Andrew snarls, then adds: “What terrifies you more: death, or being disgraced?”
It’s a chilling sequence, and if the previous two episodes haven’t already destroyed any sort of empathy you might have for Andrew Cunanan as a character, surely this moment will do the trick (note: Andrew’s actions get even worse in the next two episodes, so be warned).
A Random Killing
I’m still having trouble accepting the backwards narrative of The Assassination of Gianni Versace. As the show unfolds, it becomes increasingly unclear as to why Ryan Murphy and company chose to approach this story this way. Perhaps it’s meant to emulate the way a detective investigating the murder of Versace might uncover the story: starting at the end, and working their way back. Perhaps. Yet this approach remains more distracting than innovative.
What continues to make Versace work, however, are the performances, and the direction. Darren Criss’ work as Cunanan remains stunning, even if Cunanan as a character grows more and more repulsive. Criss’ ability to slip from charming to terrifying is no easy feat, yet the actor handles this, and the other intricacies of the part, masterfully.
This week’s guest stars turn in stellar work as well. Mike Farrell, as the doomed Lee Miglin, is inherently sympathetic, making his murder all the more heart wrenching. Scenes showing Lee struggling to fight his sexual urges are handled deftly by Farrell, and the way the actor reacts to his wife telling him she always enjoys his company, seeming both touched and surprised, is one of the episode’s best moments.
The always-amazing Judith Light, as Lee’s wife Marilyn, gets the bulk of the heavy emotional lifting here, and Light doesn’t fail to disappoint. Moments after Lee’s murder is uncovered, Light’s Marilyn springs into action, taking stock of all the items Andrew stole from the house. She fights to remain strong, yet breaks down ever-so-briefly near the episode’s conclusion. This momentary sign of weakness is quickly replaced by fury. Marilyn makes it abundantly clear that everyone, including the police, whom she has influence over thanks to her wealth, are to treat Lee’s murder as a random killing. She refuses to let anyone claim that Lee knew his murderer, because she doesn’t want her husband’s name dragged through the mud. The personal items, and Lee’s life, are the only things Marilyn says she’ll allow Andrew to steal from her. “He won’t steal my good name,” she says.
There is a question of propriety here. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not a documentary, and as a result, it’s free to play fast and loose with the facts. Yet the real Miglin family still maintains to this day that the murder was random, and that Lee had no connection to his killer. Whether or not it is in good taste for Versace to ignore this is a question the viewer has to ask themselves, and about which they should draw their own conclusions.
Like the previous two episodes, the direction in “A Random Killing” is the real show-stopper. Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton fills the episode with ominous, low-angles, the camera pointing up, warping the image above. This is an overall horrifying episode, and the first few minutes, with Marilyn wandering around her silent home, give most modern horror movies a run for their money. A real-life friend of the Miglins who went to the Miglin residence after Marilyn came home, later said, “There was a horrible feeling in the house,” and Horder-Payton is able to portray that horrible feeling through the silent, unsettling way the cameras move about the home. That “terrible feeling” starts the episode, and it doesn’t let up until the credits roll. By then, Andrew has murdered one more person, and is on the run. His next stop, as we know from last week’s episode, will be Miami. That’s not our next stop, however. We’ve already been there. We’re going backwards. Next week, we’ll learn the events that lead Andrew to Lee’s doorstep. It won’t be pleasant.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3 Spotlights Andrew Cunanan’s Less Famous Victims
One of the most surprising things about The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is how much time the show is spending not just with Andrew Cunanan, but with his less famous victims. Prior to murdering Versace, Cunanan had already killed four men in a killing spree spanning several states, and this week’s episode (in-keeping with the show’s reverse Cunanan chronology) centers on his third victim, Lee Miglin, and briefly on his fourth, William Reese.
“A Random Killing” commits so thoroughly to fleshing out the character of Miglin (Mike Farrell)—a Chicago real estate tycoon whose ties to Cunanan remain ambiguous to this day—that Gianni Versace and his family don’t appear in the episode at all. Let’s get into five talking points from tonight’s hour.
1. Cunanan’s breath-play antics last week were a callback to his third murder.
Remember the nameless elderly man Cunanan seduced and then very nearly smothered with masking tape in last week’s episode? Of course you do. That startling sequence makes a lot more sense in light of this episode, which takes place several weeks prior and sees Cunanan murdering Miglin in a very similar fashion. In real life, it was never proven whether Miglin and Cunanan knew each other prior to the murder (the FBI considers it likely they did, which the Miglin family staunchly denies), but in the show, Miglin’s depicted as a deeply closeted regular client of Cunanan’s—and a pretty heartbreaking character in his own right.
2. Cunanan’s self-loathing emerges in his cruelty to Miglin.
Though the murder itself was brutal—a police officer notes that every one of Miglin’s ribs was broken—it’s the viciousness of Cunanan’s words that really stand out in this episode. Despite knowing theirs is purely a business relationship, Miglin seems quietly besotted with Cunanan, who in turns seems repulsed. Miglin is touchingly eager to tell Cunanan about his plans to build a 125-story tower (the tallest in the world) in Chicago and name it The Sky Needle. “I’ve wanted to share this with you for a long time,” he tells Cunanan, who all but sneers in his face, mocking both Miglin’s ambitions and his clear emotional investment in their relationship.
Later, when Cunanan brutally kills Miglin and leaves his body to be found in a deliberately humiliating fashion—wearing women’s underwear and surrounded by gay porn—I was reminded of the scene early in Episode 1, when Cunanan claims to be straight and casually throws out the F-word (“I mean, what are we supposed to call them? Homosexuals sounds so scientific.”) He doesn’t just want Miglin dead—he wants him outed and humiliated, remembered as “a pansy.” There’s so much internalized homophobia in Cunanan, and it almost feels like Miglin seals his fate when he admits to having real feelings for him—moments before Cunanan calmly confesses that he’s already “killed two people who were very close to me.”
3. The tower conversation tells you everything you need to know about Cunanan’s worldview.
Miglin is excited about the Sky Needle because he imagines families visiting together and children thrilled to ascend the tallest tower in the world. Cunanan, though, hones in on the fact that the hypothetical tower would loom over the Sears Tower, “so you can look down on the Sears Tower Observation Deck.” To Cunanan, there’s nothing more powerful than the idea of looking down on people.
The contrast between these two worldviews really comes into focus, though, when Miglin describes his fantasy of being able to visit his tower and “just roam among people, unannounced. They wouldn’t know who I was!” But the notion of being anonymous is so galling to Cunanan that he flies into a sudden rage, affronted by Miglin’s insistence that the tower is not about him. “Of course it’s about you—it’s the Lee Miglin Tower!” To Cunanan, there is no value in building anything for any reason other than putting your name on it.
4. Did a local radio station really scupper the Illinois police’s investigation of Cunanan?
Miglin is an immensely powerful figure in the community, and as such the police are all over this case, managing to track Cunanan for some time using the car phone in the Lexus he stole from Miglin. But when a local radio station runs a news item giving that information away, Cunanan is able to ditch the car—claiming his fourth victim in the process—and evade justice for another two months.
Apparently, this happened in real life, too. Here’s how it went down, according to Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair article “The Killer’s Trail” (her book Vulgar Favors is the source material for this season of American Crime Story):
An activated car phone in [Miglin’s] Lexus was used three times the following week in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia police confirmed a news report of the attempted phone calls, angering Chisago County sheriff Randall Schwegman, who told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Everyone who was working on [the case] was outraged. Once he heard that, he’d have been a fool to use a phone after that.”
5. William Reese is the only victim not to have an episode to himself.
But he does get a death scene that’s surprisingly affective for its brevity. Unlike Cunanan’s other victims, there was no apparent personal connection between Cunanan and Reese, and investigators concluded he was killed solely for his truck. After giving Cunanan his keys, Reese calmly and politely begs for his life before being shot execution-style in the back of the head.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 3 Spotlights Andrew Cunanan’s Less Famous Victims
American Crime Story S02E03 (A Random Killing)
Book title: South Beach Stories (1993) by Gianni and Donatella Versace
This is not the original book, published by Leonardo Arte, but an excellent copy
https://ia601505.us.archive.org/30/items/PPY1756347573/PPY1756347573.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://acsversace-news.tumblr.com/post/170383744909/audio_player_iframe/acsversace-news/tumblr_p3harqw1s31wcyxsb?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fia601505.us.archive.org%2F30%2Fitems%2FPPY1756347573%2FPPY1756347573.mp3
“A Random Killing” with Judith Light
Joanna Robinson and Richard Lawson discuss the third of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which focuses on the murder of Lee Miglin and is the first episode to not feature Versace. This week’s featured interview is two time Tony winning actress Judith Light who discusses playing Marilyn Miglin for a single episode.
https://ia601501.us.archive.org/8/items/PPY5606748316/PPY5606748316.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://acsversace-news.tumblr.com/post/170383456248/audio_player_iframe/acsversace-news/tumblr_p3haav42AN1wcyxsb?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fia601501.us.archive.org%2F8%2Fitems%2FPPY5606748316%2FPPY5606748316.mp3
American Crime Story S02.E03: A Random Killing
Sarah D. Bunting’s old-school recap would like to avoid ‘hamming it up’ wordplay here, but as American Crime Storyinvestigates Lee Miglin’s demise, it does make some melodramatic choices.
Streaming Hasn’t Changed TV Conversation, It’s Killed It
It doesn’t take much for one to get lost in the illusion of a Miami winter, its promises, its hopes. In mid-January, I fled bone-frigid New York, spending a handful of days on South Beach, willfully prey to its neon revelry. Miami is similar to NYC in its lust for lavish, intemperate promotion. Among the most raucous advertisements I came across during my trip—which included an aerial banner touting “Migos Tonight” at nightclub LIV—were the ones for the TV show American Crime Story, the Ryan Murphy-produced, FX anthology miniseries that seized the nation’s attention with its first season, 2016’s The People vs. OJ Simpson.
Its just-debuted new season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, centers on the rise and industry-rattling death of the Italian-born fashion maven who spent much of his adult life in Miami, before his murder there in 1997. Analogous to The People vs. OJ Simpson, which garnered unanimous praise for the depth of its character nuance and thematic layering, the Versace cast is rich with veteran and rookie talent; there’s Penelope Cruz as the heartbroken and hell-bent Donatella, Darren Criss as boyish killer Andrew Cunanan, and Edgar Ramirez as the venerated, genius designer.
But recreating a TV sensation is not an exact science, especially in the face of drastically shifting media consumption. Two years ago, American Crime Story premiered with polarizing force and sustained momentum through its 10-episode run, but even that precedent couldn’t guarantee Versace’s cultural dominance. Despite its overindulgent promotion in Miami and elsewhere, the season’s first episode brought in less than half of People vs. OJ’s 2016 debut. More than ratings, though, it’s the noticeable absence of conversation around the show that stands in starkest contrast to its predecessor. Though only three episodes into the season, Versace has failed to captivate and stun the viewing public in ways that once characterized the TV watching experience.
The reason is a striking example of what happens when what’s old must be made new: TV has cracked. A symmetry of consumption has given way to a minefield of choice. In the past decade the medium experienced a wolfish expansion. The universalization of streaming platforms brought with it an overabundance of content. The response was near berserk: major networks and cable channels infused respective programming, stuffing screens fat with competing shows, some of top-tier quality—but many more, as critcs have pointed out, that were merely good. The Era of Prestige TV evolved into the Era of Too-Much TV.
TV has cracked. A symmetry of consumption has given way to a minefield of choice.
Naturally, this cultural thickening helped to feed the pulse of social media, accelerating our appetites for everything pop culture. (Twitter fattened as a result, ample proof of how we yearned for issues to discuss and argue over.) Anything we talked about, everything we talked about, felt explosive and urgent—until the next explosive, urgent thing happened.
Our current landscape has undergone an irreversible remaking: content-delivery services and social media have capsized not just how we watch TV, but how we talk about it, too. In an era overflowing with shock and misery and moments of optimism that tug at one’s heart, how we collectively process TV itself can often feel momentless.
Consider The Deuce, HBO’s sleek porn-and-disco-era period piece about sex work and power disruption in 1970s New York City. It’s likely one of the best shows of the last decade. Yet, when it debuted last fall, there was little chatter about David Simon’s latest dramatic feat. It arrived and ended with a whisper. The organizing logic of modern TV consumption simply doesn’t allow for cultural sustenance. That’s not to say there was no critical engagement around The Deuce, or shows of its caliber—ABC’s recently-cancelled American Crime (no relation to American Crime Story) suffered an equivalent fate during its incisive three-season run—only that the genre’s inflation has made it easier to overlook what’s directly in front of you, and sometimes not even hear about a show at all. The noise can be deafening.
On the opposite end is a show like This Is Us, the wildly popular NBC family drama that became the rare pop phenomenon (it averages around 9 million viewers per episode, a triumph in a ratings-starved climate). Online, talk of This Is Us carries with it the semblance of Olympian significance—without fail, I’m told, its import is immediate and special. This occurs each week, one after the other, again and again. It’s not that This Is Us isn’t especially relevant; it’s just that, according to friends or co-workers or online associates, so is Legion and Better Things and Alias Grace and American Vandal and Insecure and Riverdale and Big Little Lies and The Good Place. We believe everything is immediate and special, which means nothing is immediate and special.
When everything carries with it an air of singularity, it can be hard to discern what is of real substance and what is hollow bluster. We’re either talking about so many things we completely miss one, or we’re talking about so many things at once, nothing feels special since we’ve deemed everything special. If everything feels like a moment, worthy of dissection on your favorite website or across your timeline, then its true impact is lost.
TV’s crack hasn’t just been foisted on us—it’s a direct consequence of our own demonstrated wants. One Pew study found that internet TV consumption habits were on the rise among young adults (18-29), and that a majority of them (61%) customarily watch TV via streaming services. The Consumer Technology Association also found that people don’t watch live TV as much as they used to (20% of US households are cable free). People aged 18-34 spend a greater portion (55%) of their video-watching time consuming content after it’s aired on TV, according to the study.
The catch: In exchange for personal convenience, TV providers are beginning to ask for single-brand loyalty. Disney’s internet-distributed streaming service launches next year. With Facebook’s Watch platform, the social behemoth is determined to make TV a centerpiece of its universe. Amazon, Hulu, and Apple TV are expanding their original-programming efforts. Netflix will spend $8 billion on content in 2018, a number that dwarfs most cable networks. We are moving toward a future of Experience Centers—the feed is available to you at all times, the options endless and constant.
How TV is delivered to us is being remade, so how we understand it must be too. For now, it’s a complicated solace. A glut of streaming providers equals a glut of content equals heightened disconnect. Fortunately, TV’s crack has also allowed for more ambitious and true representation. We’re moving in a direction where soon there will be a vision every person can identify with on TV. Perhaps The Deuce didn’t feel as impactful as it should’ve because we’re processing (or not processing) too many things at once, stuck in a perpetual overload of pop culture.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it wasn’t that it lacked punch, maybe there was no need to collectively champion or salivate over The Deuce because we simply don’t need to anymore. It could be that TV’s in the best state it’s ever been. There’s something for everybody—bona fide character depictions, empathetic storylines, relatable themes. The moments have become so normalized that they too have become unrecognizable.
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