Tag: january 2018

American Crime Story Takes on Versace’s Murder

It doesn’t take long for The Assassination of Gianni Versace to get to the point. When the neo-couture designer is shot in the face outside his Miami Beach mansion, perhaps five minutes into the show, one riff-raff-ista snaps a quick Polaroid of his dying body, then begins soliciting business at the top of his voice: “I have the only photo of Versace! The bidding starts at 30 thousand!” A few feet away, tourists are soaking napkins in his puddled blood, then sealing them in plastic bags, artifacts of the True Cross for the 20th century’s most heartfelt religion, the cult of celebrity.

If Federico Fellini had ever visited South Beach, the result might have been something like The Assassination Of Gianni Versace—a long, horrified gaze at the corrupting effect of celebrity, not just on those who possess it, but on the culture in which they dwell. Scarcely a moment this nine-episode miniseries—the second installment of Executive Producer Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology drama—goes by fixing on images of the garish and grotesque: A psycho gay hustler dances around the soon-to-be-corpse of one of his tricks, smothering under a hood of duct tape bound around his head in what he expected to be a playful S&M ritual; wizened old men, pale pork bellies hanging over their speedo bathing trunks, wander the streets, peering into the seedy clubs where writhing bodies are wreathed in clouds of amyl nitrite.

And in scene after scene—the hospital, the morgue, the mortuary—the stiffening cadaver of Versace lies omnipresently by, gaping bullet wound in each cheek, awaiting repair with mortician’s foundation, the final artifice of a life dedicated to the artful concealment of fashion.

The last season of American Crime Story, which retold with stunning acuity the story of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, also focused in part on the corrosive effect of celebrity, but mostly in the context of the criminal justice system.

This time around, Murphy and his screenwriter Tom Rob Smith (who in 2011 was a literary sensation with his Child 44 trilogy of novels about a homicide detective in Stalinist Russia) have taken square aim at celebrity and the cozenage it almost inevitably breeds.

The 1997 Versace murder is a perfect vehicle for their exploration. Both the Italian-born Versace and Andrew Cunanan, the spree killer who shot him, inhabited a sybaritic club world where sex was easy, drugs cheap and image the coin for both. Versace used his status as a fashion icon to attract a steady parade of awed young men to his mansion.

Cunanan, with no real accomplishments to his name (“Nothing, I’ve done nothing my whole life,” he admits in a rare moment of candor) but possessing an excess of easy charm backed by a superlative talent for lying, pursues his own quarry: older men with money and a fearful indisposition to resist Cunanan’s violent streak. A chance encounter between the two in San Francisco is seemingly uneventful, but in time it sets them on an inexorable collision course.

Murphy, as usual, has accumulated an excellent cast, including Penelope Cruz as Versace’s dour sister Donatella, a weathered Ricky Martin as his weary party-boy lover D’Amico, and Judith Light (Amazon’s Transparent) as the tightly wound wife of one of Cunanan’s deeply closeted tricks. And Versace himself is capably played by Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez in his first major English-speaking role after a decade or so of bit parts.

But this show is ultimately the loot in a strong-arm robbery by Darren Criss as the murderous Cunanan. Criss, who played an amiably handsome prep school boy in Murphy’s high-school-musical series Glee, brings a terrifying intensity to his role as the preening, dissembling Cunanan.

Whether he’s befuddling random club acquaintances with blather about his spectacular (and entirely notional) cutting-edge fashion use of crinoline or hacking them to pieces with sharp objects, Criss forges a compulsively watchable chain that locks the camera to himself. His face beams sincerity; his eyes, something more complicated and more compelling, something that makes an acquaintance who has caught Cunanan lying shrug helplessly at his rejoinder: “So?”

Criss is so good that his performance isn’t even undercut by the clumsy decision of Murphy and Smith to embrace the Hollywood’s pseudo-artistic fad for jump-cutting across story lines. Not only is The Assassination of Gianni Versace told backward—the first episode starts with Versace’s murder, the last ends with the designer and his murder struggling with overweening fathers in their childhoods—but it bounces around with flashbacks and flashforwards within individual sequences.

In his O.J. Simpson show, Murphy did a masterful job of clinging to a coherent master narrative while juggling multiple characters and subplots. He’s much less effective here. At times, I wondered if the next scene might open with Sawyer, Jack, and Kate trying to bounce the island further back in time.

Even so, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a formidable piece of work, brilliant in its characterizations and harrowing in its depictions of the amorality of American culture’s dark underside. Cunanan, asked by a barroom pickup who he is, replies with the dark clarity of a bloodline that stretches from Charles Manson back to Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, and beyond: “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

American Crime Story Takes on Versace’s Murder

Andrew Cunanan’s Minnesota victims aren’t forgotten in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

LOS ANGELES – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” references one of the most notorious murders of the past 25 years, but even crime buffs may be thrown by the miniseries’ twist.

It’s not really about Versace.

The focus is squarely on the famed designer’s killer, Andrew Cunanan. Which means executive producer Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith spend more time on the jealous rages that led to the deaths of Minnesotans Jeffrey Trail and David Madson than they do on the fifth and final target of Cunanan’s 1997 killing spree.

“There’s a distinction between the victims,” Smith said. “When Andrew’s life was falling apart, he murdered his closest friend and lover. Once he crossed that line, he then started to kill to pursue ideas. Versace is the culmination of that.”

Two episodes are set in the Twin Cities — the fourth and fifth of the nine-part drama ­that begins Wednesday — but were filmed in and around Los Angeles.

They include visits to a rural Minnesota dive bar (where singer Aimee Mann tackles an acoustic version of the Cars’ “Drive”) and the late lamented Nye’s Polonaise Room, where friends dragged Cunanan one night. Fans of Nye’s will be disappointed to see the Minneapolis restaurant and bar portrayed as a second-story nightclub with a dance floor the size of an airport hangar.

The decision to explore the mind of a murderer gave the storytellers a chance to make a statement about homophobia in the 1990s. Because Cunanan’s first victims were gay, the show suggests that law enforcement responded initially with a shrug rather than shock until the killer gunned down a big name.

One episode is dedicated to Trail’s decision to leave the Navy after a suicide attempt, spurred by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay troops. The Minneapolis Police Department comes across as particularly flat-footed and disinterested in diving deep. The series essentially argues that Versace’s murder outside his Miami Beach mansion could have been averted if investigators had pursued the Cunanan case more aggressively.

“Versace’s death is political,” said producer Nina Jacobson. “It was the neglect, the isolation, the sort of otherness in how the police handled the murder of gay men. This was ultimately a death that didn’t have to happen. Some of our anger informed us.”

The reverse-chronological approach of the series is bound to throw viewers, especially after a nearly wordless, expertly choreographed opening, directed by Murphy, that features Versace’s final moments following a morning stroll to retrieve fashion magazines from a Miami Beach newsstand.

There’s also a red herring in the casting of Penélope Cruz as Donatella Versace. Other than showing off a gruff Italian accent, the Oscar winner isn’t given much to do. The production team clearly spent megabucks re-creating Versace’s studios in Italy, but so little time is spent on the lavish set that it’s like stopping at a fancy restaurant for an appetizer.

“The obsession with Gianni Versace and the dance between the creator and the destroyer is the spine, the fabric, of what held this together,” said producer Brad Simpson, who also worked on the previous “Crime” installment, “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” which won the Emmy for best miniseries. “But we felt it was really important along this journey to not only tell this story of Versace and what he meant, but use that to tell the story of David Madson and Jeff Trail and the other victims.”

They considered putting Cunanan’s name in the title of the series, as Maureen Orth did in her book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History,” the primary source for the screenplay. “We decided that, ultimately, it was elevating him to a place we didn’t want to put him in,” Simpson said.

The emphasis on Cunanan over Versace (played by Edgar Ramírez, best known for portraying a terrorist leader in 2010’s “Carlos”) and his longtime lover Antonio D’Amico (pop star Ricky Martin) puts the pressure on actor Darren Criss, who made his name as a happy-go-lucky teen singer on the 2009-15 Murphy series “Glee.” His Broadway credentials are utilized in “Versace” only when Cunanan dances shirtless while torturing sexual partners during S&M sessions or sings along to “Pump Up the Jam” on the car radio while a deathly nervous Madson sweats in the passenger seat.

Criss didn’t take the role home with him. “I know a lot of people who jump into these things, and it really consumes their whole lives,” he said. “I think what saved me is that Andrew compartmentalized so many things in his life: emotions, people, experiences. He was able to dissociate and, likewise, I was able to dissociate. As an actor, it’s your job to find as many common denominators between you and the person you are playing, however good or bad. The differences are few in number, but high in content. Those differences made it OK for me to step away from it because I was doing things on set so far away from myself at home.”

While this “American Crime Story” decidedly emphasizes the criminal side, Murphy cautions viewers about reading too much into how future franchise installments might play out. The next show in the anthology will look at the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The fourth season will deal with the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“One of the joys for me about this show is that every season will have a different tonality,” Murphy said. “The first season was very much a courtroom potboiler. The second season is a manhunt thriller. The third season really looks at the medical conditions in our country, and global warming, and who decides who gets to live and die. So every season will be different from anything we’ve done before.”

Andrew Cunanan’s Minnesota victims aren’t forgotten in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

The People v. O.J. Simpson was an epic take on the Trial of Last Century, merging complexities of race and gender into a saga of celebrity gone criminal. But the debut iteration of FX’s American Crime Story was a retelling, investigating an incident so famous that it could be the American crime story. To be blunt, it had brand recognition. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t carry the same built-in awareness, even if the title literally contains a brand name. It’s also a trickier work, crisscrossing the country and most of the ’90s. If O.J. was an epic, this is a short-story collection. Some hit, some miss, all share a heartbreaking theme.

The premiere, directed by Ryan Murphy, doesn’t waste time getting to the crime. We see designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) in his gold-coated Miami villa, while nearby a young man named Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) sits on a beach, cradling a pistol and an apocalyptic attitude. There’s a gunshot, then the cameras and a surreal media circus. One onlooker dabs a Versace ad in the designer’s bloodstain, a grotesque style-icon variation on the Shroud of Turin.

The nine-episode series then becomes a story told in reverse, tracking Cunanan and Versace backward from their fatal meeting. Almost every major character is gay, and there is a haunting mood of paranoia, everyone trapped in their respective closets. We meet Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a real estate magnate married to cosmetics empress Marilyn (Judith Light). We get to know David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), young men close enough to Cunanan to know too many of his secrets. Ricky Martin gives a sensitive performance as Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico. They’re all victims of Cunanan, but they’re also victims of an uncaring world. At one point, Antonio’s interrogated by cops more interested in Gianni’s sex life than his brutal death: Another violation, and he hasn’t washed his lover’s blood off his tennis whites. In this not-distant-enough past, so much of gay identity was secret identity. And Cunanan’s rampage occurred because law enforcement agencies didn’t care about gay people. (And they knew it.)

But there’s something flimsy in the foundation. I’m a fan of Criss, who ranks high in our Sacred Council of Darrens (right behind Aronofsky and the First One From Bewitched). But the structure renders Cunanan a bogeyman, and it’s only later in the season that he gets to shade him with real depth. And the portrait of the Versace family feels respectful to the point of hagiography. Ramírez is trapped in a conventional great-man biopic, while Penélope Cruz as sister Donatella mouths fashion-industry bromides like “For a woman, a dress is a weapon.” I love the show’s willingness to explore everyone orbiting Cunanan’s murder spree, but the central characters feel held at a worshipful remove. Oddly, Versace is best when it leaves Versace behind.

Murphy’s FX anthologies comprise a welcome revisionist history of injustice, of what had been accepted truths or simply ignored in the past, from the misogynistic ’60s of Feud: Bette and Joan (and even American Horror Story: Asylum) through the identity-soaked ’90s bloodshed of American Crime Story. Versace is a middling work in this corpus, but the message still shakes you. You want to reach through the TV screen to these men suffering in the shadows and promise them: “It gets better!” Won’t it? B

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

Darren Criss Plays the Happy-Go-Lucky Killer in the Versace TV Drama

dcriss-archive:

Miami — At 6:30 in the morning, Darren Criss was bright-eyed and perky as he bounded out of his South Beach hotel and into a black car. It was the last day of shooting for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Ryan Murphy’s nine-episode follow-up to “The People v. O. J. Simpson.”

Mr. Criss plays the assassin and, the night before, he had been up late shooting a manhunt scene that blocked off a stretch of Collins Avenue, to the chagrin of nightclubbers and Uber drivers.

“That was a very cool rock-star moment,” Mr. Criss said in the car, wearing a ball cap and jeans. He flashed an easygoing grin, the kind that endeared him to legions of young fans of “Glee,” on which he played Blaine Anderson, the preppy, harmonizing love interest of Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel.

His new role on “American Crime Story” (which has its premiere on FX on Jan. 17) couldn’t be less gleeful: Andrew Cunanan, the gay gigolo turned serial killer who shot Mr. Versace in 1997, after killing four other men.

Mr. Criss, 30, leaned over and pointed out the window. “See that?” he said. “That’s the houseboat, perfectly recreated.” In Indian Creek, the crew had built a replica of Mr. Cunanan’s final hide-out, where he met his demise after a frenzied eight-day manhunt. The series makes use of several real locations in Miami Beach, most notably the Versace Mansion, the site of the murder, now a boutique hotel.

Keep reading

Darren Criss Plays the Happy-Go-Lucky Killer in the Versace TV Drama

Darren Criss, far from ‘Glee,’ takes darker turn as Gianni Versace’s killer

dcriss-archive:

Darren Criss doesn’t have to worry that he’ll be forever typecast as that cute, preppy singer from Glee.

FX’s limited series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (Wednesday, 10 ET/PT) roughs up that wholesome image.

Versace, a follow-up to last year’s Emmy-winning O.J. Simpson courtroom saga, recounts Cunanan’s 1997 murder spree, which claimed five lives as the 27-year-old traversed the country, ending with the iconic fashion designer outside  his mansion in Miami Beach.

Criss, 30, best known as Warblers singer and Kurt’s lover (and eventual husband) Blaine Anderson on Glee, reunites with executive producer Ryan Murphy on a darker story with a bigger, weightier role.

“I had a great time doing Blaine, (but he) is part of a more ensemble piece,” he says.  “It was nice to be on a bigger playing field with Ryan and to get our hands dirty.”

Murphy said Criss was the first actor he cast for the pivotal role in Versace, based on Maureen Orth’s book, Vulgar Favors. The high-powered cast also includes Oscar winner Penelope Cruz as Versace’s sister, Donatella, and Ricky Martin as his partner, Antonio D’Amico.

Criss acting against his Glee image works well in Versace, executive producer Nina Jacobson says.

People might ask, “How could that (Glee) guy be this guy? (just as) the people who knew Andrew said, ‘How can that guy be this guy?’ “ she says.

Criss has a likability but also an ability to go darker, Jacobson says. “Andrew was not your garden-variety psychopath, torturing animals as a child. He was well-liked, warm, connected to people. To watch his descent and see his humanity but still never excuse his actions, I thought Darren just had that: the glibness, on one hand, and the depth.”

Criss, a San Francisco native who has been playing musical instruments since childhood, likens being part of the troupe Murphy calls on for his various projects to the repertory nature of the American Conservatory Theater, where he was accepted to a youth program.  

Criss says Murphy first mentioned the Cunanan role to him three years ago. 

“Lady Gaga had just been announced to do American Horror Story, and so I remember jokingly saying to him, ‘Well, let me know if you need a wily bellhop to run around.’ I was kind of joking — but not,” says Criss, who appeared in two episodes of that season’s AHS: Hotel. “He said, ‘I’m doing this O.J. (story). It’s more of a courtroom drama and I really want to do a manhunt. I want to do this Versace-Cunanan story. How much do you know about him?‘ ”

Criss felt an obligation to understand the well-educated gay man, whom the series portrays as initially killing out of personal passion but later adopting more political motives. Versace, one of the most prominent openly gay men of that time, was his final victim before he took his own life on a houseboat, a week later.

“It’s my job to be empathetic. If I set out to paint him as a monster, then there’s no point in telling the story. This isn’t a Bond villain,” he says.

Criss shares some surface similarities with Cunanan: Each is from California, has a parent from the Philippines and is college educated. 

With an education, friends, a gift for storytelling (or lying) and no history of social problems, why did Cunanan become a murderer?  

Orth suggested the young man was willing to kill to become famous and that he envied Versace, who had the fame, riches and romantic relationship he desired.

That contrast is emphasized in the Versace, writer Tom Rob Smith told the Television Critics Association. 

“This is a story of two men born in very different circumstances, a lot of similarities, both gay, both understood that they could be destroyed at any point, and how one person navigates that destruction by building this amazing empire and how he protects against homophobia by surrounding himself with money and power and success, and (how) someone else who fails to do that, who is then destroyed.”

Cunanan had disadvantages and setbacks that many others encounter without suffering such “an extreme fall from grace,” Criss says. “There are things that happened with him that would have changed most people and made them think about their lives differently, whereas Andrew, instead of facing reality, continued to cover it up with more lies and more fantasy that would ultimately” lead to tragedy.

Darren Criss, far from ‘Glee,’ takes darker turn as Gianni Versace’s killer