Tag: january 2018

Screener reaction at Gold Derby forums (SPOILERS for which episodes characters appear in)

I have seen six episodes so far.

Penelope Cruz:
Episode 1: Finally arrives on private jet 37 minutes in
Episode 2: Leaves on private jet 10 minutes in, later in flashback
Episode 3: Absent
Episode 4: Absent
Episode 5: Only in opening 4 minutes
Episode 6: Absent

Cruz might end up submitting the second episode because it has her grieving, but it is not a showcase like the third episode for one-off guest Judith Light, the fourth for recurring guest Cody Fern (halfway between Chris Zylka and Domhnall Gleeson) or the fifth for recurring guest Finn Wittrock.  Max Greenfield is unrecognizable in the first two episodes.  Donatella often appears with her brother Santo, played by Javier Bardem doppelgänger Giovanni Cirfiera.

Ricky Martin is also missing in the third, fourth and sixth episodes.  Ramirez is missing in the third and fourth, appears in a dream sequence in the sixth and spends most of the first episode on a gurney.  The point is that this is decidedly Darren Criss’s show, even though the credits in the first two episodes are:

Starring Edgar Ramirez
Darren Criss
Ricky Martin
and Penelope Cruz

The rest of the screeners did not have credits on them, so I am not sure if people are still credited when they do not appear.  Criss is very good, although it is not far off from his performance as Blaine Anderson on Glee.  If Blaine were a serial killer instead of a singing teenager, this would be it.  There is talk in the Call Me by Your Name thread about how gay guys in film are often played by straight guys seemingly playing straight guys who are apparently gay.  Suffice it to say that this is not that.

As for the show itself, it does not live up to The People v. O.J. Simpson or even Bette and Joan.  Cult was more entertaining.  Despite the title, the show follows Andrew Cunanan on his cross-country killing spree.  Is he worthy of such examination though?  He is a compulsive liar, so nothing that he says matters.  It is a bit repetitive over so many episodes.  His victims fit a pattern, but they are all innocent.  It is sad that they randomly got killed, but it is sad when innocent people randomly get killed.  The show is supposedly about the pursuit of the American dream and the failures of institutions and—most effectively conveyed—how being gay in the nineties sucked, but Andrew being a homicidal psychopath transcends all of that as far as I am concerned, two-thirds into the season.

There is some jumping around early on, but for the most part, episodes are ordered reverse-chronologically.  The first eight minutes of the show have almost no dialogue, but the score never stops.  It would be a good reel to submit in cinematography as well.  The premiere is very well directed by Ryan Murphy, but the show is less dynamic after that.  The second episode, directed by the cinematographer, has an excessively warm filter, like when Breaking Bad would go to Mexico.

Why ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Plays Out in Reverse Order

“American Crime Story” fans can’t wait for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” to start — though they’ll have to wait until it ends for the actual beginning of the story. We’ll explain.

The new season of anthology series “ACS” plays out in reverse chronological order, a decision that the producers were asked about Friday at the Television Critics Association press tour.

“This case is famous because of the murder of Versace,” executive producer and writer Tom Rob Smith explained. “The story-telling has to relate to the story itself.”

And that particular high-profile murder took place at the very end of Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) three-month streak of bloodshed back in 1997. Cunanan had killed at least four others before taking Versace’s life, and then ultimately his own.

As “fascinating” as Andrew’s own background might be, Smith continued, the audience “wouldn’t understand the context” had the show started there. After all, the average TV viewers probably wouldn’t know any of the earlier victims.

“We had to go backwards starting with what people know and then move into what they didn’t know,” he said.

Makes sense. Smith then pulled out a parallel between his back-to-front device and the real-life horror Cunanan created.

“[Andrew] understood that if he hadn’t have killed Versace … no attention would have came to this at all, it would have disappeared,” Smith said of the serial killer.

Why ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Plays Out in Reverse Order

dcriss-archive:

[LQ] Actors Darren Criss and Edgar Ramirez of the television show The Assassination of Gianni Versace speak onstage during the FOX/FX Networks portion of the 2018 Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 5, 2018 in Pasadena, California.

Why Ryan Murphy & The ‘American Crime Story’ Team Tackled ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ – TCA

American Crime Story Brad Simpson revealed during the FX session of American Crime Story:The Assassination of Gianni Versace that actor Edgar Ramirez “didn’t give us an immediate ‘Yes’” when it came to playing the title role of the late Italian designer.

“I loved being in a room that’s interesting with an actor and he says come back to me with another script,” said EP Ryan Murphy, “I said ‘What?‘”

Then Murphy stopped twisting Ramirez’s elbow, who was also present at this afternoon’s session.

“I love Edgar’s process, it’s a questioning one. It formed me to go deeper as a director. I remember when I got Edgar to say ‘Yes’, he asked me ‘Why do you want to tell this story?’ I told him that I really understand these characters like Versace, I understand what it is to be hunted. That unlocked something in Edgar. He understood the pain he had to go through (as an actor).”

However, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not all about Versace as it follows serial killer Andrew Cunanan and the victims he disgraced.

“It was the largest FBI fail of all-time,” asserted EP Tom Rob Smith.

“We wanted to explore between Versace and Cunanan the story of a creator, who is an authentic, honest person drawing on his history, heritage and family and creating from the inside out and another person who goes on a path of destruction because he’s on the outside without the work or the talent, and can’t tell the truth about who he is,” said EP Nina Jacobson.

“It was a political murder. This was a person who specifically went out of his way to shame and out people,” said Murphy about Cunanan, “He was having a form of payback for a life he could not live.” In addition to Versace, some of Cunanan’s victims include Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and architect David Madison, who actually was the murderer’s lover.

“When you plot to kill and expose people, that’s an assassination. And that’s why it was so important for us to include that in the title,” said Murphy. At one point the EPs considered putting Cunanan’s name in the title, but opted against it as they wanted to avoid glamorizing him.

After watching Darren Criss on Glee, viewers will be gobsmacked at the 180 he takes in portraying the slithery Cunanan. What’s affecting the actor is the fact that after 20 years, the real victims both on and off screen in American Crime Story have to relieve it. “That weighs heavily on me,” says the actor. Added series consultant Maureen Orth, whose book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History is the source material for the second season, “I don’t think his (Versace’s) family is excited about the story being told.”

Commenting on the thrulines between the seasons of American Crime Story, Murphy mentioned again how the series will deconstruct major crimes that went beyond its victims and impacted society. Sexism and racism were the themes in The People v. O.J. Simpson which still were pertinent to today. In Versace “the homophobia of the day is topical” mentioned Murphy were as his next iteration of American Crime Story, Katrina tackles the medical conditions and global warming in our country and when they collide “who has the right to decide who lives and dies,” said Murphy.

Said Murphy, “Every season of this show will have a different tonality.”

Why Ryan Murphy & The ‘American Crime Story’ Team Tackled ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’ – TCA

Why title of FX’s Versace series doesn’t call murderer by his name

PASADENA, Calif. — Producers didn’t casually choose the title of the second installment of FX’s crime anthology series: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (Jan. 17, 10 ET/PT).

“It was a political murder,” executive producer Ryan Murphy told the Television Critics Association  Friday. Killer Andrew Cunanan went after gay men “to shame them and out them,” and fashion icon Versace, who was openly gay, was a prime target.

So the title doesn’t include the culprit’s name, because identifying Cunanan would be “elevating him to a place we didn’t want to put him in,” executive producer and writer Tom Rob Smith said. (Versace, his fifth and final victim, is also more well known).

The new season tracks Cunanan (Darren Criss, Glee) on a 1997 cross-country murder spree that resulted in at least five killings, culminating with the shooting of Versace (Edgar Ramirez, Hands of Stone) in Miami’s South Beach.

Penelope Cruz plays Gianni’s famous sister, Donatella, and pop star Ricky Martin plays Gianni’s boyfriend, Antonio D’Amico.

Versace, which FX describes as “inspired by actual events,” is based on Maureen Orth’s book, Vulgar Favors.

Homophobia plays a role in law enforcement’s slow response in pursuing Cunanan, who murdered four others before arriving in Miami, executive producer Nina Jacobson said.

Versace “did not have to die. Cunanan was out clubbing right across the street from the police department” before the shooting, she said.

The first ACS installment, 2016’s The People v. O.J. Simpson, was a big hit for FX, nabbing 10 Emmys.

“Every season of the show will have a different tonality. The first season was very much a courtroom potboiler. The second season is a manhunt thriller,” Murphy said. The delayed Katrina season, originally due before Versace, will focus on a hospital and examine the condition of “medical (care) in our country, global warming, who lives and who dies.”

Why title of FX’s Versace series doesn’t call murderer by his name

‘ACS: Versace’: Darren Criss Explains How He Was Able To Relate To Killer Andrew Cunanan

dcriss-archive:

In an EXCLUSIVE chat with Darren Criss, he tells HollywoodLife how he was able to get into the mindset of Gianni Versace’s murderer, Andrew Cunanan.

Darren Criss, 30, had to find a way to make murderer Andrew Cunanan a relatable being while portraying him for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. When HollywoodLife asked him EXCLUSIVELY at the FX’s presentation for the Television Critics Association how he was able to get into the mindset of “crazy” Andrew, he immediately corrected us by saying, “See that’s the trick right there, I don’t look at him as a crazy person. We do. But I can’t. It’s my job to not think of him that way. It makes it too simple. I guess with any character, anybody, you have to approach everything from common denominators. This is very eyeroll-y actor jabber, but you find the primary colors.”

“The very basic things that aren’t so complicated. We’re all 1’s and 0’s so the first couple 1’s and 0’s are things like, everybody knows what it feels like to want something that you’re not allowed to have, wanting to rise higher than your station,” Darren added, talking to HollywoodLife. “Then you add on the other layers of what was happening in his home life, what was happening in his social economic situation, what was happening with his own sexuality and that kind of adds the other colors. I think you start with the things that you can relate to and then you let the script and the world around you, at least the one that Ryan [Murphy] is curating, to kind of do the rest of the work. It’s not as hard as it would seem. And any time you’re doing things that seem extreme and hard to relate to, these extreme acts of violence, if you go far enough back in the 1’s and 0’s you remind yourself that these acts come from places of pain, places of hurt and places that I can relate to. I don’t relate to the execution of said emotions, but I can relate to the emotions. I’m not saying it makes it easy, by any stretch of the word, but it makes it more accessible.”

HollywoodLife pressed for more information, asking Darren what some of the more relatable aspects of Andrew’s life were for him as a person. “Well, we both went to Catholic school, that’s a big one. There’s like basic things,” Darren shared. “I think we both had a desire to stand out. His was for sort of social gain, mine was because I just didn’t want to be like everybody else. So, they were kind of routed in different places. He did something very interesting where he was the kind of kid they said would put dimes in his penny loafers. To not put pennies. And I thought, ‘Hell yeah, I would have put dimes in my penny loafers!’ Our motivations were different, but I understand the desire to not be ordinary.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premieres on January 17, 2018 on FX.

‘ACS: Versace’: Darren Criss Explains How He Was Able To Relate To Killer Andrew Cunanan