There’s been a murder and a crowd has gathered at the doorstep of the Versace mansion. Cops, emergency-care nurses, journalists, passersby, tourists clicking pictures. One onlooker runs over to the corpse, dips a page she’s torn off a glossy in the pool of blood – Gianni Versace’s blood – and quickly seals this ‘souvenir’ in a zip-lock bag.
You’ll realise pretty quickly that the second installment of American Crime Story doesn’t have all that much to do with Versace or his empire or haute couture. It’s not a courtroom trial either, even if a Ryan Murphy courtroom trial is a whole other animal. What it is, is a sprawling nationwide manhunt for the serial killer who murdered the biggest fashion designer of that era, and four other powerful men before him.
And with the search for Andrew Cunanan, the not-so-charming psychopathic prostitute, comes an inquisition of a homophobic society: The America of the Eighties and Nineties, also the time that the AIDS crisis was at its peak.
Adapted from Maureen Orth’s investigative book, and dismissed by the Versace family as a piece of fiction only, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is riveting TV, a thriller that, while only gathering pace and properly engaging you at end of the second episode, is buoyed by spectacular performances. Edward Ramirez’s Gianni is a gentleman, dignified and generous, driven by the pursuit of beauty; Penelope Cruz’s Donatella molded in granite compared to him, enchanting, persistent, business-minded; Ricky Martin slightly over-doing the heartbroken ‘partner’, but it works. And Darren Criss, magnificent as the beautiful and grotesque Cunanan, oozing charm and becoming whatever people wanted him to be, saying whatever they wanted to hear.
Over nine episodes, the show will show us all five murders, and countless other petty crimes of Cunanan’s. And it’s pretty hard stuff: such as the scene just after Cunanan’s finished with Lee Miglin in the third episode, “A Random Killing”, and appears in the Chicago real-estate tycoon’s kitchen holding a giant hunk of meat, slices off a sliver and practically inhales it. It’s nausea-inducing stuff, but there’s other, more to make you queasy: Like that scene described at the beginning of this piece; Or when suits at the FBI office discussing the murders confuse Versace with Liberace; or when the cop interrogating Antonio D’Amico refuses to ‘comprehend’ what he means by being Gianni’s ‘partner’. Makes you think the ‘assassination’ in the title isn’t just for dramatic effect, after all.
Of course, there’s a lot of attention to detail in re-creating that Nineties atmosphere – the discotheques and La Bouche thumping through sunny, progressive Miami’s streets and Speedo-dotted-beaches and denim cut-off shorts. But who has time for nostalgia when there’s a murderer on the prowl; and a tabloid-hooked society bent on keeping the closet locked?
What is it about Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit “Gloria” that seems to inspire crime in pop culture these days? It’s what Nancy Kerrigan whacker Shane Stant gets down to in I, Tonya before doing said whacking. Then, in the second episode of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace, serial killer Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss) listens to on the radio as he drives to Miami to commit the titular crime, switching off a news report identifying him as the suspect in another killing and smiling as he hears the disco beat and Branigan’s clear voice.
“I think there is something so liberating about that song,” Versace music supervisor Amanda Krieg Thomas tells GQ. “It just has this energy of letting go and leaving it all behind you, just this energy of devil may care.” The “Gloria” moment exemplifies the unsettling spark of the music in the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story franchise. Paired with Mac Quayle’s ominous score, the occasional bursts of anthemic pop root the show in the the period and community it orbits while also rounding out its character study.
“The bigger picture with music that Ryan really wanted to explore is that we’re in Andrew’s mind,” Thomas says. Four episodes in it’s now clear that’s in keeping with the philosophy of the show at large, which functions as a portrait of Andrew and the homophobic society that shaped him and his misdeeds. Versace and his sister Donatella are entirely secondary characters, sometimes entirely absent from the narrative.
Easily the most intriguing cues find Andrew interacting with the music, like when he belts “Gloria” or dances to the Philip Bailey and Phil Collins team-up “Easy Lover” in a Speedo as a man remains trapped on a bed with his face duct-taped. In Wednesday’s episode, Andrew screams Technotronic’s throbbing dance incantation “Pump Up the Jam,” which implores its listener to “get your booty on the floor tonight,” to his nervous hostage and eventual victim David Madson. Writing for Pitchfork, Judy Berman argues that the show “is using music to frame its subject as an explicitly gay variation on the American Psycho archetype.” Laura Branigan is his Huey Lewis. Thomas sees aspiration in the choices. “I don’t mean to be saying that these songs inspire murder, these artists inspire darkness” she says. “It’s more just about what was surrounding him and as he was growing up and wanting this luxurious life and wanting so much more for himself.”
Thomas is a veteran of the Murphy-verse and is even doing double duty on his Fox procedural 9-1-1. As she describes it, the musical ideas often start with Murphy and executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall. The prolific creator, she says, is a fan of artists Branigan and “This Is The Right Time” singer Lisa Stansfield so they were part of the initial conversations. He was also an early advocate for Indeep’s “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life,” which soundtracks Cunanan’s fateful meeting with Gianni Versace in the pilot.
Unlike its predecessor The People vs. O.J. Simpson, Versace spans a broader time frame, yielding more material. Thomas hunted through Billboard charts from the era and sought out playlists people had posted online to figure out what would have been echoing through gay clubs during the era. The goal was to find songs that are recognizable but not too obvious. “Finding that line between huge hits that people have over-heard and then just those songs that make people go: ‘Oh, right that song, what a great song,’” she says. “That was sort of in the pocket that we were going for researching.”
The series doesn’t stay entirely lodged in Andrew’s brain. This week’s hour turns its attention to David and the fear Andrew instills in him after bludgeoning their mutual friend Jeffrey Trail to death. David’s initial reaction is to call the police; Andrew convinces him he’ll be a suspect because he’s gay. Fleeing, they end up in a dive bar, where a singer played anonymously by Aimee Mann performs a sensitive cover of the Cars’ “Drive.” David attempts to escape, but realizes his efforts might be futile. “The cover of the Cars works so well because it speaks to David and his wondering, who’s going to be there for me and where else do I have in this movement?” Thomas says. And, as Mann strums, Andrew breaks down.
The producers had always intended the sequence to feature a spin on an ’80s pop song, and Murphy, as a fan of Mann’s, wanted her for the job. Settling on the Cars’ tune was a collaborative effort. “The priority was obviously we wanted something that fit the story and fit the moment but is something that Aimee felt that she could really nail on camera, the acting, singing and everything,” Thomas adds. “That was one of the ones that everybody agreed on.” It’s a mournful companion to “Pump Up The Jam” earlier in the episode, sadly in harmony with the circumstances instead of discordant. “Pump Up The Jam” echoes “Gloria” in its mix of mania and exuberance. When Andrew finds a tune to drive to he almost attacks it. It fuels his escape from his circumstances and himself.
Thomas is aware that Versace wasn’t alone in finding a home for Branigan’s famous interpretation of Umberto Tozzi’s Italian track, and it’s equally at home in I, Tonya’s sonic pastiche. Craig Gillespie, the director of that film, said in an email he chose it because of the “perfect oddness” that manifested when the dopey louts are entranced by it. That phrase applies to its use in Versace too, but there’s something else there. Listen closely and you’ll notice how it is sinister when Andrew, being pursued by law enforcement, sings, “If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody calling?” The lyrics are surprisingly paranoid. Gloria, if you’ll recall, hears voices in her head. Then again, if you don’t think too hard, it’s just infectious. “It called for a song that someone would sing along to,” Thomas says. “Not every song fits that bill and ‘Gloria’ you just want to belt it out.”
The star of the newest American Crime Story talks to GQ about playing a notorious murderer and the subtle ways homophobia led to one of the most notorious killing sprees of our lifetime.
The first thing you notice about American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is that it doesn’t spend much of its time with the famous fashion designer in its title. The second thing you notice is the person the show does follow for most of its run: the man who murdered him. As Andrew Cunanan, the darkly charismatic and deeply disturbed man who killed Gianni Versace, Darren Criss is the unquestionable star of the show. Of course, he wouldn’t blame you for not knowing that from the start. After all, neither did he.
“I knew as much as most people know about it,” Darren Criss tells me during lunch while promoting Versace in New York. “But I’ve spoken to a lot of people… and they said, ‘I didn’t even know he was killed!”
At first, you might not know what to make of Criss’s performance as the notorious murderer. He spends much of the show’s premiere evading capture after having killed one of the most prominent figures in the fashion world and largely getting away with it. As the show stretches back into Cunanan’s history, the overwhelming completeness of Criss’s transformation becomes remarkable. He shifts from sinister gunman to a darkly enchanting boy genius, a guy who belts the lyrics to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as he arrives in Miami to kill Versace, wining and dining victims and cohorts alike with a chilling talent for cycling through whatever emotion or approach will get him what he wants.
It’s a huge shift for the energetic and irrepressibly pleasant actor who became an overnight teen idol for playing Blaine Anderson on Glee—a role that put him in the orbit of Ryan Murphy, who years later, would reach out to Criss with the role that will doubtless cause many Blaine fans great distress.
“Andrew is kind of the stuff of urban legend, especially in the gay community. I had a friend who told me, ‘Oh you’re playing the gay boogeyman?’” Criss tells me. “And I was like, really? This was a guy who was a young man in the ‘90s, and he was like ‘Oh yeah, we would joke about it, like, Oooooo Andrew Cunanan is gonna come get you,’ obviously very irreverently.”
If January’s relentless cold has you feeling like staying in every night, the silver lining is that there is plenty of irresistible TV to consume right now—like the The Bachelor, Black Mirror, and soon enough, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. The cast attended the premiere of the show in Los Angeles yesterday and while none actually wore Versace (the family doesn’t approve), they certainly nodded in that direction with their clothes. Penelope Cruz wore a red velvet number by Stella McCartney that was very high on drama, and the men? Well, they brought just as much going-out flavor to the table. But it worked. Really well, in fact. It’s almost enough to make you want to start going out again. Almost. Here’s what they wore and why we liked it.
Jewel Tones
Edgar Ramirez and Finn Wittrock doubled down on deep, dark, slightly mysterious color, and wisely kept their accessories to a minimum. And they did this in two different, equally sound ways. Ramirez stuck with one color, varying up the hues in his tie and shoes so nothing felt too matchy-matchy. Wittrock, meanwhile, mixed two almost-black tones for the slickest spin on color-blocking ever.
Turtleneck Knits
GQ creative director-at-large Jim Moore will be the first man to tell you: the black turtleneck is the easiest way to upgrade any suit. Here, Matt Bomer shows a sophisticated way to wear the Gianni Versace-approved staple, while Darren Criss turned up the volume with an abstract floral jacket.
Fluid Fabrics
Don’t have the cash for a burgundy suit, or the…gravitas to pull off a black turtleneck? Allow Harris Dickinson (who isn’t in the show but is a style up-and-comer we’ve had our eye on) and Ricky Martin (definitely in the show) to present a third option for looking fly on your next night out: adding some beach-weight fabric to your look. If you’re under 35 make it a breezy printed shirt like Dickinson, if you’re over 45 make it a sophisticated evening scarf like Martin.
ACS news 