The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story creator Ryan Murphy said from the start that this iteration of the anthology series was about the impact of societal homophobia. That’s summed up, quite ironically, in one heartbreaking scene in the finale in which neither Gianni Versace or his killer Andrew Cunanan appear. It’s the moment that Gianni Versace’s (Edgar Ramirez) domestic partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) tells Gianni’s sister Donatalla (Penelope Cruz) that he intends to stay at one of Gianni’s houses as he recovers from his partner’s murder. “The houses belong to the company,” she told him, barely concealing the disdain the real Donatella has acknowledged in press.
They’d been together for decades but that didn’t matter to his partner’s Catholic family. He didn’t even get acknowledged in the funeral service, but was sent packing in his time of mourning, which is just one of the f***d-up type of situations marriage equality activists fought to remedy with same-sex marriage. Until the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage in 2015, countless LGBT/queer people knew this same kind of sting: being barred from the hospital rooms of sick partners; legally barred from going into the homes of deceased partners by family; forbidden visitation of children they helped raise after separation.
In its finale, Versace sewed up its grand message about homophobia — not just the injustice of it, but the costs. Though Versace has all the Ryan Murphy hallmarks — glamour, media, sex, celebrity and a central societal theme, this iteration of American Crime Story had a main message that’s not as overt or accessible as The People v OJ Simpson’s statements on race, class, celebrity and male privilege. Instead, Versace whispered its point throughout its intoxicating making-of-a murderer story. Anti-gay bias has been woven into the fabric of America’s institutions, and it showed: discrimination does more than just hurt feelings, and the harm it inflicts isn’t limited to just the gay community. Versace revealed the prejudice, ignorance and fear — particularly in government agencies that are supposed to help citizens — that created the circumstances that allowed Andrew to kill five people.
“It’s my most personal work,” Murphy told TV Guide in January. He affirmed that the story was indeed his form of activism. “I was very adamant about doing this because I came of age during this period. I understood the era: the violence of it, the threat of it. When I started, some of the executives were incredibly homophobic and said jaw-dropping things to me. I think people still marginalize gay creators and gay people. I still feel it.”
Questions, more so than answers, help conceive how fully the poisonous prejudice seeped into society. How much time and money and potential did Americans waste on recruiting, feeding, clothing, and training people like Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), who’d leave the Navy because of his sexual orientation? What did American institutions lose by shaming them into hiding or leaving the armed forces, rather than protecting them? Would Marilyn Miglin’s (Judith Light) husband and children still have their patriarch Lee Miglin if detectives hadn’t let silly cliches — like the “love triangle” theory floated when Andrew and David went missing — inform their work? Might the FBI have caught Andrew sooner if agents had engaged the gay community as Detective Lori Wieder (Dascha Polanco) urged from the beginning rather than ignoring the deaths of, as Ronnie (Max Greenfield) put it, “a bunch of nobody gays?” How many lives are put in jeopardy, or worse, when someone like the drifter who bludgeoned Lincoln Aston gets off by invoking the gay panic defense? What greatness could Andrew’s talents have produced had he not been filled with shame and self-loathing all his life and told he was inherently sick for being gay? What’s really changed in the 20 years since?
A lot, but Versace hints that the pop culture achievements of our newly gay-friendly zeitgeist — the Drag Races and the Love, Simons and Ryan Murphy himself — are tenuous, thin advancements inside a system that’s still biased. After all, Gianni Versace was beloved by the media, the wealthy coastal elites who bought his clothes and the A-list celebrities who came to his shows, but his coming out still put the entire business at risk. His partner only got a portion of what he was due because he’d have had zero power in court. Versace is a paean to one of the greatest artists the world ever knew, but it also tallies the destruction of prejudice that has yet to be fully rooted out. That’s why Murphy, who will also debut Pose and Boys in the Band on Broadway this year, fought to tell this story and others like it, and it’s why he’s committed to hiring more directors who are female, people of color, queer, or intersections of the above. “All these projects are about asking one question,” he said. “Have we really come far enough? I think the answer is no.”
The season that began with a bang went out with a whimper. After tense moments and a thrilling chase across the country with a trail of murder victims, we finally see Andrew Cunanan scared and alone on a houseboat in Miami, before he puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger.
There was so much this show got right – nuances in Cunanan’s many relationships, little details during the murder scenes – yet so much was made up, especially conversations after both participants were deceased. Even though Cunanan’s transition from flamboyant school boy to murderous sociopath was clearly traced, especially in last week’s episode, there are still huge chunks missing.
A steady theme throughout the entire show has been that Versace’s murder was seen as a gay-on-gay crime, and wasn’t taken seriously by law enforcement. Lee Miglin’s widow goes so far as to ask the FBI what they’ve been doing during the two months that Cunanan was on the run. Ronnie, the junkie from Cunanan’s flop house, tells them Cunanan’s been hiding in plain sight – he wants to be found. Clearly, big things were overlooked.
Naturally, questions remain. Did Cunanan really know Lee Miglin? Was David Madson wholly innocent? Why did Cunanan target Versace? Was he just an obsessed fan, or was there more to the relationship? Cunanan’s murder spree, up to that point, included two possible ex-lovers, a close friend and an unlucky bystander with a car that Cunanan needed. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, that since most of the people killed were close to Cunanan, he was also close to Versace? Andrew’s livelihood was all about collecting sugar daddies – could Versace have been another one?
We know Antonio and Versace enjoyed an open relationship at times. We also know that Antonio was cast out of the family upon Versace’s death. Could Antonio have hidden their relationship with Cunanan to avoid the wrath of Donatella, who would surely blame him? Or did Versace have a relationship with Cunanan that he kept hidden from Antonio? Because of the sexual orientation of the murderer and his victims, there has to be more to the story that the police chose to ignore.
Andrew seemed like a mystery at first, but we finally discovered that he had a lot of friends, a misguided family who loved him and even godchildren who wanted him to come home. He was never a mystery – he lived loudly. This season took a mugshot and transformed it into a living, breathing man with feelings, hopes, dreams, failures and mistakes. He was humanized, but never exonerated. It’s too bad we’ll never know the entire story.
Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) killed himself in Wednesday’s operatic, devastating season finale of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. But you might have missed it.
The second season of FX and Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology was a darkly gorgeous series, as it followed spree killer Cunanan in reverse chronological order, starting with his infamous murder of fashion designer Versace and spinning backward to his disturbing childhood. Then the last episode finally cycled back to the July 15, 1997 death of Versace, after which Cunanan evaded police capture for a few days until he was discovered and ultimately killed himself.
Over its nine episodes this winter, Versace has been harrowing to watch unfold. Criss has put in a tour-de-force performance as Cunanan, managing to make the spree killer disturbing, fascinating and even slightly sympathetic as the writers dove into his life and murders. The season had a host of excellent supporting performances, especially from Judith Light, who returned in the finale after first appearing in the third episode as the widow of one of Cunanan’s victims.
So why did the Versace season seem to air in a bubble, never garnering the ratings or buzz that The People vs. O.J. Simpson did just two years ago?
It was always going to be like this.
In 2016, the retelling of the Simpson trial felt especially apt to our modern era, so much so that the FX series was not the only wildly successful portrayal – O.J.: Made in America, an ESPN documentary about his life, went on to win an Oscar. As a country, we were (and still are) grappling with systemic racism, police violence, celebrity politics and all that comes with those subjects.
Versace got political, too, especially in its portrayal of Cunanan and his victims’ experience as gay men in the 1990s, the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. The finale emphasized this, as Ronnie (Max Greenfield), a friend of Cunanan’s, criticized police for ignoring the killer and his victims because they were gay. Another powerful episode showed one of his victims, Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), trying to hide his sexuality as a naval officer. It was powerful stuff, but it just never felt quite as essential as O.J. did.
Although the Versace story was well done, it was about a less well-known crime than O.J., it was more violent and focused more on the killer than the victim whose name was in the title.
The problem with starting a series with a cultural milestone as big as the trial of O.J. Simpson is that the only place to go is down.
July 15, 1997. Andrew Cunanan slo-mos down the just-rained-on sidewalks of Miami Beach, accompanied by Ultravox’s “Vienna.” He passes people in friendly conversation; he passes a pair of beat cops. He comes upon Gianni Versace’s mansion, the sun now shining, and as Midge Ure wails, “It means nothing to me / this means nothing to me,” we see Cunanan draw on and murder Gianni again. Gianni’s fingers twitch again. Cunanan looms into the sun and blocks it out to look down Starman-ishly on Gianni’s body. | 22 March 2018
July 15, 1997. Andrew Cunanan slo-mos down the just-rained-on sidewalks of Miami Beach, accompanied by Ultravox’s “Vienna.” He passes people in friendly conversation; he passes a pair of beat cops. He comes upon Gianni Versace’s mansion, the sun now shining, and as Midge Ure wails, “It means nothing to me / this means nothing to me,” we see Cunanan draw on and murder Gianni again. Gianni’s fingers twitch again. Cunanan looms into the sun and blocks it out to look down Starman-ishly on Gianni’s body.
Later, Cunanan waits to cross the street, smugly watching cop cars scream past him before hustling over to the houseboat on the other side. Looking strangely apprehensive given everything else he’s done with it, he grips the gun barrel and uses the butt to break the houseboat door’s lock, then lets himself in and creeps towards the kitchen in the dark. More confident now that he’s established nobody’s there, he browses the cabinets, then helps himself to a bottle of champagne with an entitled puss on, typically dropping the detritus from the bottle neck onto the floor without a second thought. He switches the countertop TV on to enjoy Dan Rather’s somber report on Gianni’s death, then leaps over the back of a deep white couch to keep watching on the big TV in the living room (flanked, hilariously, by gold sphinxes). He hasn’t quite settled in when the champagne, shaken up by its journey, self-pops on the table and scares the shit out of Cunanan.
He flops back on the couch, laughing at himself, but sits forward again when the broadcast shows side-by-side pictures of Gianni and the prime suspect in Gianni’s murder – himself (Criss, Photoshopped relatively poorly for this production onto one of the real photos often used in the wanted posters). “Oh my god,” he murmurs, not stricken or fearful but almost surprised that it happened at all, much less because of him, then repeats, almost triumphantly, “Oh my god!” As the broadcast continues in VO, Cunanan climbs to the rooftop balcony of the houseboat, a curtain (I think) slung around his neck like a tuxedo scarf, drunk and turned on by his own infamy as he watches helicopters search the streets farther down the shore. He slumps into a lounge chair and swigs champers with a contented smile.
Tampa. Marilyn Miglin is packing her case before a broadcast when there’s a heavy knock at her hotel room door. It’s the FBI. “Is it that man?” she asks, then confirms that her children are safe before letting them inside. The agents explain that they believe Cunanan shot Gianni. Shaken, she sits down, wondering almost to herself, “When will this end?” Then she repeats it, more firmly, before proceeding to clock them for not catching Cunanan in the two months since he murdered her husband – how many more people will die? how much more pain do they think she can take? what has Cunanan been up to all this time? “We don’t know yet,” the lead agent is obliged to admit, as well as that Cunanan “evaded capture” in Miami. Marilyn’s are-you-fucking-kidding-me face
is particularly impressive work from Judith Light given that her fake lashes in this scene have their own congressman, post office, and vegan bakery.
The Republic Of Lashistan is decidedly unimpressed with the agent’s suggestion that, given Tampa’s proximity to Miami, she should leave Florida. (As am I; it’s nearly 300 miles, and whatever else you might say about Cunanan’s state of mind at this point, the idea that he would double back to kill a spouse, whom he would likely find at a television studio, is a non-starter.) A tear rolls down Marilyn’s cheek, but she’s like, incompetent says what? They want her to run, to hide “from him,” but she’s never missed a broadcast and she won’t start today, so they can provide whatever security they want to: on with the show. On the set, Marilyn marches up to the display, chuckling forcedly about her ability to break sales records under pressure. Her co-host gently tells her she’s sorry. “I need it to stop,” Marilyn grits.
The next morning, Cunanan wakes up to a news broadcast describing him as a “male prostitute” serving “an affluent clientele.” He puts on his glasses as the VO continues that he’s articulate, well-dressed, armed and extremely dangerous, and the newest member of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He peers expressionlessly at the Wanted card on the TV screen, then pads into the owner’s walk-in closet to shop for an outfit, settling on an all-yellow number as, in the next room, Marilyn’s voice talks about Lee as “a man who exemplified courage, honor, and dignity.” Cunanan doesn’t seem to hear this as he looks in the mirror, smirking. “We had a fairytale marriage,” Marilyn tells the press, faltering just slightly. “He was…my prince.” I don’t know why it’s here that I find myself thinking about those lost two months between when Cunanan murdered Miglin, then William Reese, and when he fetched up outside La Palazzo Versace and killed Gianni. American Crime Story really hasn’t dealt with them at all, unless you count the Ronnie interlude, which only seemed to last a day or two at the end, and it’s not that I think the show should have tried to fill in that gap, or that anything particularly noteworthy happened, or might have. Perhaps the Orth book has more insight, although my sense is that nobody really knows what Cunanan got up to during that time. But ACS did a great job imagining Cunanan’s time with David Madson after the killing of Jeff Trail, and Darren Criss and others have said that some episodes started out twice as long as what we see on broadcast…I don’t know. If there’s ever a director’s cut of the season, I’ll certainly watch it, whether or not it contains a theory or fantasia on the missing weeks.
Anyway: back to what is covered. Cunanan heads out in his sunny ensemble, complete with yellow ball cap, and reads the L.A. Times coverage of Gianni’s murder while waiting for an unsuspecting driver to drop her keys into an easily heistable purse, which she does. He tails her to an outdoor café and lifts the bag easily, walking past a wanted poster with himself on it in the café window and helping himself to her Mercedes. He’s listening to, and giggling delightedly at, radio coverage bemoaning the instinct to blame the murder of a prominent Italian on the Mafia when he’s forced to stop for a police checkpoint. When it’s clear the cops are taking more than a cursory glance at the cars ahead of him, Cunanan U-turns it on outta there, cursing. He’s parked on a side street, perusing a map, when an older guy comes out from between two houses and says Cunanan looks lost. He is; does the older guy know any way off the island besides the causeways? They seem really crowded. Older Guy sighs that every road off the island has police checkpoints at the moment. Riiiight, right, Cunanan acts: “Andrew Cunanan. It’s terrible, I hope they catch him.” Bold move. Older Guy asks, “What’s your name, young man?” Cunanan gives the Kurt DuMars alias, then bustles as casually as he can manage back into the front seat, thanking Older Guy for his help. Older Guy watches him go.
Cunanan, in a snit, parks the Benz under one of the causeways, pitches the keys into the water, and bellows in frustration.
Back in San Diego, Mary Ann Cunanan is hunched under a blanket she’s draped over the TV, I guess to hide her smoking, although she doesn’t seem to have cared about that before? In any case, the effect is of a twisted ritual of prayer, especially with the saints candles and crosses on the same table.
She’s creepily stroking the TV screen when there’s a knock on the door. It’s the cops. She unfastens the chain slowly, then opens the door to clasp one officer’s shoulder and ask, “Have you killed my son?”
Cunanan, limping back to the houseboat, comes across a wanted poster altered to show him with lipstick, and with lipstick and a blonde wig.
Back at the houseboat, he peels off his shirt and slings it over a chair, then guzzles a Coke and continues to marinate in the coverage of his misdeeds.
What’s more American than Coca-Cola and gun violence. Sigh. He’s admiring the wanted posters of himself he’s apparently collected when the coverage changes to footage of Mary Ann getting taken out of her apartment under the same blanket as before. She deer-in-headlightses at the jostling news crews and photo flashes before she’s eased into the back of a cruiser. Cunanan watches, taken aback.
At the Normandy, Detectives Lori and George roust Ronnie, accusing him of lying to them about knowing Cunanan – he stayed there, and he and Ronnie were friends. Ronnie lies again that Cunanan told him his name was Kurt, and he only just now saw Cunanan on the news; he was totally just going to call them. Det. George is like, cute; you can come with us. As he’s led out of his room, Ronnie grumps to Det. Lori, “We weren’t friends.”
In an interrogation room, Det. Lori continues to nope Ronnie’s version of events, saying Cunanan had been hiding in Miami for two months. Ronnie snorts that he wasn’t hiding, “he was partying,” and Lori’s like, great. Where? She lists a few gay clubs, and Ronnie snarks that ohhh, okay, “the only lez on the force” must have been looking for Cunanan. Lori pulls one of her patented “bye bitch” faces
as Ronnie sarcastically muses that the other cops, they didn’t care so much about finding Cunanan when he’d only killed a handful of “no-name gays.” Why might that be? George snaps that they have over 400 people looking for him, and Ronnie’s like, yeah, now you do, now that he’s offed a celebrity. There’s a little more salty back-and-forth, with Ronnie not having Lori’s bluff that he’s an accessory to murder and George not having Ronnie’s contention that they don’t really care about catching Cunanan, before George asks if he never mentioned Versace. Ronnie takes a swig of coffee and says he did nothing but, then muses that “we all” talked about Versace, about what it must be like to be so rich and powerful “that it doesn’t matter that you’re gay.” He adds that “you were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting,” which is true, and a good line, but like the rest of this speech not super-credible despite Max Greenfield’s estimable efforts. Ronnie goes on that George et al. would prefer “them” to stay in the shadows, “and most of us, we oblige.” People like him just drift away…get sick, nobody cares…"but Andrew was vain.“ He wanted to be heard, wanted people to feel his pain, "wanted you to know about being born…a lie.” Lori flinches a little, possibly at the clumsiness of this writing compared with the subtler work we’ve gotten the rest of the season, as Ronnie concludes that Andrew isn’t hiding. “He’s trying to be seen.”
Well, metaphorically. Literally, he’s trying to get out of town, but his next effort – breaking onto a boat at the marina in the hopes of sneaking out of Miami by sea – is stymied when a dock “neighbor,” mistaking him for the owner, comes onboard looking for “Guillermo.” He’s in the head, gun cocked, as the neighbor comes below decks calling for Guillermo, and when she pushes on the door and it’s pushed forcefully closed in response, she knows something’s hinky and hurries away. He exhales, then grabs his gear and bails, hopping from bow to bow as he tries to get out of the marina.
Which he does manage to do, and by the time he returns to the houseboat, the neighbor is leading Dets. Lori and Luke to the boat he tried to take, as he sees through a pair of binoculars. No time to feel truly trapped yet, though, as he can hear Lizzie Coté delivering a statement on the bedroom TV. She’s addressing herself directly to him and saying she knows he’s not the “despicable” person portrayed in news reports. He sinks to his knees, staring plaintively at her, as she goes on that she knows who he really is and loves him, “unconditionally.” The Cunanan she knows isn’t a violent person. “I know that the most important thing to you in the world is what others think of you,” she adds (emphasis hers); he still has a chance to show everyone else what she “and your godchildren” know. It’s time to end this, “peacefully.” We go to the ad break on Cunanan’s furrowed brow.
When we return, it’s another news show, this one about Jeff Trail and David Madson, the voice-over wondering a little too pruriently, “What did these two men do in their days on the road?” This is an understated dig at the salacious coverage, and investigative judgments, that a so-called gay serial killer received – that, somehow, the possibility that anal intercourse occurred is the most important thing to suggest and the chief aggravating factor in the case – and is completely in line with the tone of the reporting at that time. When I say that Ronnie’s dialogue speaks the truth but lands with a thud, I’m contrasting it with material like this, which is used perfectly whether it’s contemporaneous footage or a bone-dry recreation. The newsmag goes on to interview Madson Sr., who defends his son as a victim, not an accomplice, as Cunanan sits and listens, sweating. It doesn’t take long before Cunanan can’t hear anymore, and begins lunging at the various television sets to turn them off. He stops before switching off the last one, though, to look at a picture of David that’s now onscreen.
As with the Lizzie presser, and with Mary Ann as she watched footage of him, it’s as though they’re there with him, speaking to him. It’s the only companionship he can really manage, an idea of it, a picture of it that he can turn off. And when Madson Sr. says his son is a good man – was a good man – that’s just what Cunanan does, kicking at the off switch to silence a version of life and manhood he can’t access.
Later, he sits on the beach, alone, listening to the hectic sounds of nightlife on the boardwalk, before returning to the now-emptied fridge at the houseboat. He goes through the trash and makes sure he’s gotten every last blob of yogurt from a discarded cup, then spots some dog food. The attempt fails, as he can’t hold down a single spoonful before horking it back up, onto the wanted posters on the counter. He’s scraping his tongue with a paper towel (which he then throws on the floor, where he’s also left the upended garbage) when Marilyn Miglin’s segment comes on the home-shopping channel he’s got on. Marilyn tells a sweet story about the perfume she’s hawking, about how she wanted to go back in time and give her mother one of the luxuries she couldn’t afford, working so hard after Marilyn’s father died and putting every penny towards their room and board. Cunanan pulls up a chair and stares at the screen, ensorcelled by Marilyn’s tale of her wonderful dad and his early death, of her wishing she could go back in time and give her mother this thing she made…"as a way of saying how special you are.“
Now Cunanan’s at a pay phone, calling Modesto. A cousin brings Modesto the cordless; Modesto, an array of articles about his son on his desk, wonders how much he should charge for an interview "this time,” and looks horrified to hear who’s actually on the phone. The second he hears Modesto’s voice, Cunanan starts bawling like a child.
Modesto reminds him that “men don’t cry, remember?” Cunanan tries to ignore this, sobbing that he’s in trouble; he needs Modesto to come get him. Modesto says without hesitation that he’ll fly right over, and to hell with the charges still pending against him. Cunanan tells Modesto where he is in Miami. Modesto repeats that he’s coming, and when he does, “I will find you. And I will hug you. And I will hold you in my arms, like I used to. And it will all be okay.” Cunanan leans his head against the top of the pay phone wistfully, then asks, “You promise?” Of course Modesto promises! Cunanan is to pack some clothes and get ready to go as soon as Modesto arrives. The operator breaks in to ask for more money, and Cunanan, nodding, so eager to believe his salvation is nigh, burbles that he’s out of time. Modesto says again that he’ll be there soon.
Cunanan puts a cassette in and packs: clothes, books, a French passport. Not sure what the music is – sounds like Gershwin; could be Debussy; let me know in the comments, as Shazam didn’t come through for me here – but whatever the case, Cunanan is dreamy and hopeful as he lies in bed, watching the water’s reflection play with the fan on the ceiling, then as he puts his backpack and a stolen garment bag by the houseboat’s front door the next morning, and settles in next to them to read.
That night. No Modesto. Cunanan checks the water; he checks the entrance; nothing. Coming back in the house, he hears Modesto – giving a TV interview in which he first and foremost denies that his son is gay, then brags about Cunanan evading the cops, then claims they’ve discussed the rights to Cunanan’s story and Modesto is acting as the broker for those rights. As he’s blathering about the life-story title that Cunanan and Modesto agreed upon – “A Name To Be Remembered By” – Cunanan goes from pained to angry to just…dark.
That title is really bad, almost as bad as Modesto is a parent/person, and Cunanan shoots the living-room TV rather than listen to Modesto BSing that the charges keeping him out of the U.S. “are bogus,” or any other of Modesto’s horseshit that probably smells a lot like Cunanan’s own, even to him. And while I’m up, man has Darren Criss killed it in this role.
July 22, the day of Gianni’s funeral. Waiting uncomfortably in a salon, Donatella grouses to Antonio that Gianni should be alive, that “if everybody had done their job,” he would be. Antonio takes a beat, then tells her he heard the shots, and he knew – because his heart stopped. Donatella looks down, briefly shamed in her attempt to put Gianni’s death on Antonio, as he goes on that he knows her heart is broken too, but she and Santo have each other. Antonio had Gianni, only Gianni. Donatella doesn’t apologize or return the sentiment, just asks what he’ll do now. Antonio sighs that he’ll stay in Lake Como; as Donatella knows, Gianni set it up so Antonio could stay in “one of the houses,” and he just wants to stay close to Gianni. Donatella frowns, but is clearly not quite unhappy to inform Antonio that Gianni no longer owns any of the houses – he “spent too much money,” so the company had to take control of all the properties. The board of Versace now governs them. Antonio regards her with a dull “this bitch” stare until she finally meets his eye again, pulls a “…what?” face, and tells him to go to Lake Como and recuperate for a while. “And after that?” Antonio grunts. She non-answers that today is the day to say goodbye, and then both of them will start a new life. This expert “now isn’t the time”-ing is too much for Antonio, whose eyes fill with tears as he says he guesses that’s it, then; Donatella can just throw him aside like a piece of trash. Ricky Martin loses control of the accent, regrettably, as he pleadingly says he loved Gianni, Gianni was his life, and suddenly he doesn’t matter? Donatella’s look is hard to read, but I suspect she’s thinking, “Not ‘suddenly’ for me, no,” as Antonio says he has no home, no rights, nothing. She comes back toward him, saying firmly that the houses and the finances are controlled by the board. “You have a say,” he presses, but he’s not getting shit. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for all of us!” She leaves the room in tears, not one of which is for Antonio.
The houseboat. Cunanan is kicking back with a can of dog food on the kitchen floor. Still the trash is scattered about. A huge roach scuttles across the floor, no doubt attracted to the sty-ish conditions currently prevailing, and Cunanan traps it under his drinking glass and picks it up to examine it as it sits on his palm under the glass. Little too pointed as survivor symbology goes, but Cunanan’s soon enough distracted by footage of Gianni’s memorial service, and all the glittery guests in their mourning attire. He hauls a huge projection system into the living room so he can watch it writ large (and because he shot the TV that was in there earlier). He projects it on the great-room wall above the doors, obliging him to look up at it, a supplicant, a worshipper, one of the congregation.
As Cunanan watches Princess Diana and Elton John dabbing at tears, Antonio numbly follows Donatella and the rest of the blood relatives into the family pew. The priest does not mention him along with the other family or loved ones, and snubs him after blessing the others in the pew; at the houseboat, as a boy soprano begins the 23rd Psalm and Antonio rises belatedly with the rest of thatcongregation, Cunanan crosses himself and kneels before the simulcast, singing along and weeping at the lines “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death / I will fear no evil.” Rain sprinkles the floral tributes outside Gianni’s house, and the wanted posters of Cunanan tucked between the mailbox and its flag.
Cunanan buzzes his hair short, like a penitent, while elsewhere, a caretaker (I assume?) tells someone on the phone that he’ll take care of it and writes down the houseboat’s address. Not sure if he’s responding to a complaint about the bugs or what, but he grabs some keys and a gun holster and heads out. Cunanan is napping next to a magazine with a Versace ad on the back when he hears the caretaker let himself in, the broken lock falling clean out of its housing. The caretaker creeps in gun-first, calling, “Is anybody here?” The only voices come from the TV, still on in the living room. “I am armed!” the caretaker calls. Cunanan appears in the hallway upstairs, also armed, and withdraws behind a wall, then fires a shot into the ceiling. The caretaker’s not about sticking around, and tuck-and-rolls out of there.
Det. Luke is having a smoke when the police radio comes on with an “occupied burglary” call for all units. He and Det. Lori head over. SWAT gears up and moves out. Cunanan comes downstairs to hear a breaking-news update on “the siege at Indian Creek,” which is a siege of…him. As the anchor describes the perimeter set up by the FBI and Miami police, Cunanan, coated in sweat, gawps at the screen.
After the commercial, more news reports. The cockroach, still under the drinking glass, is now dead. Cunanan sits primly on the couch in his underpants, watching the chopper shots of the houseboat from the outside, and the rattling of a close pass of a helicopter right overhead seems to make him only curious, not afraid – but when the phone starts ringing, and the hostage negotiator outside gets on a bullhorn and tells him they only want to talk, he starts freaking out for real. The team leader outside, flanked by Dets. Luke and Lori, tells everyone to hold positions, as we see sniper set-ups, news vans behind the perimeter, and the houseboat and its fountain looking very small.
In the Philippines, Modesto crouches, childlike, in front of his TV as a newscaster notes that efforts to draw Cunanan out have failed. Cunanan locks himself in the bedroom, panting, and turns to see his younger self on the bed. If any recent narrative could hope to get away with this pasteurized processed trope food, it’s ACS, but when you co-host a Beverly Hills, 90210 podcast, all you can think about is Dylan and his gooberama inner child at his father’s funeral.
I know it’s unfair to ACS, this reference, but you can see why it’s tough for me to take this visual cliché seriously. It’s nicely acted by both Darren Criss and Edouard Holdener – with the TV calling Cunanan “a known gigolo; a man who loved the spotlight,” Li’l Cunanan looks pleased with the attention, regardless of its origin; Grownanan is staring at his younger self with a mixture of confusion and fear, with perhaps a bit of relief mixed in – but we certainly did get it without this provol-onsense. The broadcast talks about Cunanan’s schoolmates voting him Most Likely To Be Remembered, and Grownanan beams at his boy self,
but when the broadcast returns to the police tape around the houseboat, Li’l Cunanan vanishes, and a light goes out in Cunanan. He’s utterly alone; he doesn’t even have himself. There’s no there there.
Outside, it’s decided that if Cunanan were going to come out, he would have. “Cut the power,” the team leader says. The TV goes off inside, and the fans. The SWAT team sends a handful of smoke bombs in ahead of themselves, and breaks the door down. Cunanan scootches up to the headboard and sits in that prim way of his, officiously removing his glasses. He cocks the gun and puts it in his mouth, far back, his lips not an inch from the trigger. He’s wearing no expression, but something makes him look over at himself in the mirrored sliding doors beside the bed. I took a screenshot of the moment, which is profoundly unsettling along a number of axes – the deadness of the eyes, the way the barrel of the gun pushes his face out of shape, the visual nod to fellatio and the Möbius of self-loathing and despair then implied, in this case, at this time; the grotesqueness of this last thing Cunanan saw, which was himself – but it felt wrong to use it. Not to mention that Cunanan in fact shot himself in the temple, but in any case, let’s leave it at Cunanan finally killing himself while staring into the camera and the bang coinciding with a smash cut to Cunanan and Gianni’s night at the opera, Cunanan saying in voice-over, “I’m so happy right now.”
Gianni is taking his leave of Cunanan. He chucks him flirtily on the chin and starts to make his way down the stairs from the stage when Cunanan asks, “What if – you had a dream your whole life that you were someone special? But no one believed it…not really.” Gianni looks at him with compassion as Cunanan goes on about persuading people he’d do something great. Gianni tells him gently that it’s not about the persuading people; it’s about the doing of that great something. Cunanan should finish his novel. “Or something else!” Cunanan Manson-lampses. “Do you think I could be a designer?” Gianni’s like, uhhhhh, so Cunanan adds that he knows “literally everything there is to know about fashion.” Maybe he could assist Gianni, or be his protégé? Gianni isn’t looking for that, but Cunanan feels that his being there, “like this, with you,” is destiny. Can’t Gianni feel it? When an answer isn’t forthcoming, Cunanan tries to kiss him, and is put aside – sweetly, as Gianni strokes Cunanan’s cheekbone and says it’s not that he isn’t attractive; he’s a “very interesting young man.” But he wanted Cunanan to take inspiration, nourishment from the opera, and if they kiss, it’s not about that anymore. Cunanan is still selling, offering dinner the next night, club-hopping…Gianni can’t, he’s too busy with work before he leaves town. “Another night. Another stage. Yes?” Cunanan is almost physically crushed by this courteous rejection as Gianni heads down into the orchestra pit, and the lights go out on Cunanan with a pointed thrunk.
Dets. Lori and Luke ID Cunanan’s body. Luke asks if he’s what Lori expected. “He’s just a boy,” she says. Cunanan’s body is loaded into a medical examiner’s van, and Lori watches sadly.
Marilyn Miglin is packing up from her broadcast when she’s informed by the FBI agents that Cunanan has taken his own life. “Good,” she says. “It’s over.” But it isn’t, quite; her co-host comes upon her reading letters from viewers, letters about Lee and his acts of generosity towards them, paying their bills, career mentoring. Lee never told her “about any of it. Why…didn’t he ever tell me?” Without waiting for an answer, because she doesn’t want to think too closely on Lee’s things not told, Marilyn says she answers all the letters, and tells the authors Lee is alive in their correspondence. She beams at a photo of him on her dressing-room vanity, adding that she’s so very proud of him.
Lake Como. Santo stares out at the water, then goes in to tell Donatella the lawyers have come. Before the meeting, she has to confess to Santo that, the day Gianni died, he called her about a show she was putting together in Rome, and he had a lot of questions, and she got annoyed that he didn’t trust her judgment – so when he called back a half hour later, she didn’t answer. She begins to ugly-cry. The Albinoni from the first episode of the season begins.
Antonio pours a bunch of pills onto a plate and looks at them sadly.
Bodyguards escort Donatella onto a balcony, an umbrella held over her, in slo-mo. At the edge of the balcony, she takes the umbrella without a word and heads towards a small mausoleum at the end of the property.
A metalworker brushes a brass nameplate, and polishes it with a cloth.
Antonio jams all the pills into his mouth and washes them down with wine, which we see from below, reflected in the mirrored tray holding the wineglass.
Donatella lights a candle before a photo of Gianni, under the box holding his cremains.
Antonio holds an item of Gianni’s clothing to his face, then subsides into bed to wait for death.
The cemetery worker takes his bag of tools into a crypt and screws the nameplate – which appears to belong to Cunanan – onto the front of one of the marble cells.
A maid comes upon Antonio on the floor. “No, no no no,” she gasps, shaking him and patting his face. He opens his eyes, and seems destroyed by having survived.
Donatella puts her hand flat on the box, as if to gather power from it. She looks into the etched mirror above the urn, whose design cuts her face into pieces and pulls it out of shape.
A close-up on the nameplate, which is indeed Cunanan’s, pulls away, then down the long silent hall of the crypt. It keeps pulling further back, further back.
Dozens of others interred here, hundreds perhaps, behind featureless marble, with identical nameplates. Cunanan’s gets smaller and smaller. The light at the end of the hallway gets further and further away. And then it’s over, and then it’s gone.
And so is American Crime Story’s second season. It didn’t work for everyone, but despite a couple of occasional quibbles, I liked it a great deal; I admire its ambition and I think that ambition is mostly realized. Fantastic performances all around, and a dimensioned meditation on what is born and what is made, on how much is destroyed when a destroyer is created.
Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me, and for supporting Previously.TV’s Epic Old-School Recaps. I’ll see you in the forums. Ciao, bellas.
Andrew Cunanan walks through Miami Beach toward death as “Vienna” by Ultravox plays on the soundtrack. That New Wave masterpiece is both a celebration and rejection of glamour. Sequentially so, in that vocalist Midge Ure sings of “a man in the dark in a picture frame, so mystic and soulful” and “haunting notes, pizzicato strings, the rhythm is calling,” only to follow up by proclaiming “the image is gone…the feeling is gone…this means nothing to me.” Simultaneously so, in that when he sings “this means nothing to me” the song soars as if nothing has ever meant more to him. Inextricably so, in that it wedges “only you and I” between each declaration of faded emotion and emphatic meaninglessness; in that the title comes from the chorus’s climactic phrase “Ah, Vienna,” a cry of joy and a sigh of loss all at once. The first time that chorus hits in the ninth and final episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Andrew Cunanan assassinates Gianni Versace. The second time, he’s standing in a stranger’s kitchen, rummaging through a fridge in a house he’s burglarized, pulling out a bottle of champagne and fiddling with the foil around the cork. His lonesome toast to himself is not timed to the music. The feeling is gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me, this means nothing to me.
“Alone,” ACS Versace‘s finale, is based almost entirely on such disconnection. Andrew Cunanan becomes a superstar literally overnight and ends his life with a stomach full of dog food and scrounged garbage. His sociopathic, spotlight-hogging father announces that the film of his son’s life is to be titled A Name to Be Remembered By — unnecessary verb, dangling participle and all — while reporters the world over mispronounce his name in increasingly comical ways. Andrew spends his life seeking the approval and affection of mostly older men and ends it after discovering empathy in the form of two women: Lizzie, his old friend, who pleads with him on television to show the world the loving and lovable person she and her children (“your godchildren”) have known all along; and Marilyn Miglin, wife of the man he tortured to death, raised (like Andrew) by a single hardworking mother after her fondly remembered father (like Andrew’s) was no longer there. Marilyn recounts the story of her family and her desire to create a perfume like something her late dad would have given her mom to show her she’s special and loved, and discovers her husband did things like this for strangers all the time without her knowledge. Andrew’s own mother, who wanted nothing more and nothing else but to be close to her son, hides from the world under blankets and jackets now that his presence is inescapable. The police, who Keystone Kop’d their way through a months-long manhunt as bodies piled up (even their wanted posters are preposterously homophobic, misleadingly tarting Andrew up like a drag Joker), deploy a small army of SWAT goons to corner Andrew in the houseboat where he just up and kills himself anyway. The monster they sought is pronounced by the lead investigator who finds his corpse to be “just a boy.” It falls to Ronnie, an HIV-positive junkie absolutely invisible to the straight world and who only knew Andrew under an assumed identity, to tell the FBI this man spent a lifetime in the shadows, in pain, and now wants only to be seen. At the heart of it all, the magic moment Andrew and Gianni shared in that San Francisco opera house long ago was just that — a moment. “It feels like destiny,” the desperate young man told the older genius. “Why, can’t you feel it?” He can’t.
Across the board, the performances — from Darren Criss, Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz, Ricky Martin, Judith Light, Jon Jon Briones, Joanna P. Adler, Annaleigh Ashford, Dascha Polanco, and Max Greenfield, with Criss and Light especially putting in absolutely crushing work — resist grandiose or valedictory choices. None of them see this as a date with destiny at all. The episode’s only false note comes when writer Tom Rob Smith, director Dan Minahan, and showrunner Ryan Murphy insert a vision of Andrew’s younger self in the bedroom where he’ll die. It feels too grand, too full-circle. But then the boy disappears and the man lies back on a stranger’s bed in his boxer shorts, swallows a gun barrel, looks into the mirror at his own sad reflection, and blows his own head off, his own sixth and final victim.
Andrew Cunanan is dead and gone when The Assassination of Gianni Versace, one of the best dramas of the decade, concludes. Its final scenes focus on the family of the title character, not his killer; even this choice is a deliberate disconnection from what’s come before. Estranged though they are, both his sister Donatella and his partner Antonio struggle to connect what they had with what they have now. Donatella, who has coolly presided over Antonio’s excision from his late partner’s estate, sobs, because her brother annoyed her on the day of his murder to the point where she refused to pick up the phone when he called. Antonio has been rejected not only by Donatella but by the priest at Gianni’s funeral mass — where rich and famous friends from Princess Diana to Elton John to Naomi Campbell to Sting were present, but where Antonio himself did not merit a mention as a part of the family, nor a kiss from the cleric, whose institution spent the decade denying the humanity of homosexuals while systematically destroying the humanity of so many children in its charge. Like Andrew, he attempts suicide; unlike Andrew, he is unsuccessful.
Gianni Versace ends the series as a photo in a shrine where his sister goes to grieve and lament what could have been had she picked up the phone. Donatella is a distorted reflection in glass embellished with the House of Versace’s Medusa head emblem, monstrous in her mourning. Antonio lies cradled in the hands of the help, who save him from his effort to die with the love of his life. Andrew is just a name on a wall in a mausoleum, one of countless others, nothing special. It’s all so unglamorous, so unceremonious, so blunt and short and ugly. The glamour Versace worked all his life to create, that Andrew tried all his life to recreate, has no place here at the end. The image is gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me, this means nothing to me.
HOLLYWOOD—Ryan Murphy is totally a genius when it comes to molding some riveting narrative for the small screen. I mean “Glee” was the freshest dramedy on TV in years, and the limited-series “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was literally must-see TV! Well, Murphy’s latest series, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is a series that has all of America talking and for all the right reasons.
At first I thought it was a murder mystery, but that is not so much the case. Some may have thought it was a series all about the life of slain fashion icon Gianni Versace, but again that is not the case. At first that was something that was a drawback to me, but the audience is introduced to the character of Andrew Cunanan played with perfection by Darren Criss. Look I will be completely honest, if this movie made it to the big screen Criss would be a bonafide contender in the Best Actor Oscar race, however, that is not the case. However, this character is mixed bag of all sorts of chaos and I mean utter chaos America.
With each week since the first episode, the narrative has followed Andrew and his sexual escapades with closeted gays, at the same time, we see this inner evil continuing to fester more and more. This guy was beyond crazy, he was a sociopath who relished in doing what he did. On top of that, he was very calculated and charming. Last week’s penultimate episode really shed light on Andrew’s upbringing and wham it totally makes sense why he behaves the way he behaved and why he acted the way he acted. This kid was treated like a king by his father, while everyone else was left to have the scraps. I mean watching this kid have the biggest room in the house, his father lie and scheme to ensure his son had the absolute best is quite telling.
The finale brought the story back to the authorities hunt to locate Andrew who has evaded their custody up to this point, but the walls are vastly closing in on him. The episode titled, ‘Alone’ kicked off with Andrew walking the streets of Miami on that fateful day where he would fatally shot Gianni, and doing his best to allude authorities he broke into a boathouse and celebrated with a glass of champagne. When he turned on the news realizing that he had made national headlines, he celebrated that much more.
Its apparent Mrs. Miglin, whose husband was one of Andrew’s victims, was not pleased that the authorities weren’t doing much to nab a serial killer whose trail of chaos spawned multiple cities. Knowing his face was plastered over ever newspaper and TV station Andrew did as much as possible to conceal his identity, but he started to freak out realizing escape might be impossible, especially when he learned his mother was being questions by authorities on his whereabouts.
Andrew was ready to murder again after venturing onto a boat, in search for food. My fingers were literally crossed hoping he didn’t murder this woman who was poking around. From a distance he spotted the authorities on the marina. His desperation for food was bad, so bad he resulted to eating dog food, which he immediately vomited. In dire straits, Andrew reached out to his father, who was willing to help his son, but I was surprised he spoke to Andrew as if he had no idea of the crimes his son committed. He slept like a baby after speaking to his father; however, Andrew was later taken aback watching a TV interview with his father, who seemed to be a sellout. Furious, he fired a bullet into the TV. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and it all makes perfect sense know in regards to Andrew’s behavior.
Jesus, this finale is a very slow burn. I was so captivated with the drama surrounding Andrew it didn’t even matter to me that no time was spent focusing on his sister Donatella and Gianni’s lover. It seemed such a strong narrative was built around Andrew that as a viewer you don’t really care as much about those mourning Versace’s demise. Versace’s funeral got underway, which was a moment Andrew couldn’t pass up watching. I wonder if he truly felt sorry or if he was just relishing in all the grief that he caused.
Andrew’s time at that house boat he decided to crash was coming to an end, as the owner came home, and feeling threatened fired shots drawing authorities to his location. Andrew sheltered himself inside a bedroom as authorities made their way into the home. He took the handgun placed it into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Like that an elusive serial killer was no more. Donatella was an emotional mess grappling with guilt that she ignored her brother’s call the morning he was fatally shot. That was just the beginning of more sad news as Gianni’s lover chose to take a ton of pills realizing his love for his partner didn’t resonate with the rest of the world.
I have to say, the ending of the series was not a gut-punching as I had hoped for it to be. It started very strong, but ended on a small whimper. For a series with the name Gianni Versace in the title, the focus was more on Andrew Cunanan and the many lives he ruined as a result of his dastardly behavior.
During the second episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, whose nine-episode run ended last night, came a moment so warm and simple that it felt like an embrace. As Versace (played by Édgar Ramírez) sketched at his desk, his boyfriend Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) tussled on their nearby bed with some guy so hot he didn’t even need the camera’s focus for that to be felt. Antonio got out of bed and asked Versace to join them. Versace said would. “Go play,” he told Antonio. He glanced over at them, and as the camera pulled in for a close-up, his eyes softened and his mouth began to spread into a mild grin. There was no tension, no apparent jealousy or irritation; what was palpable is what those in the polyamorous community might call “compersion,” a sort of anti-jealousy or the pleasure derived from your partner’s pleasure, specifically when the source of that pleasure is someone other than you.
At that moment, I realized this show wasn’t so concerned with spending much time explaining its finer points to its heteronormative viewers—if you didn’t get what was going on there, the levels of joy that open relationships yield at their healthiest/most consensual, that scene was likely lost on you.
It was so refreshing to see a show speak to queer people—namely, gay men and the people who understand them—so directly, so boldly. Even though Versace was built to look back (and then, via its reverse-chronological structure, back and then back some more), I can’t imagine this show being possible before right now. It takes years to build up this kind of confidence.
The story that show runner Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith chose to tell—about serial killer Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree in 1997 that culminated with the titular assassination—turned out to be a goldmine of issues that have faced gay men in the past 20 years, many of them still relevant today. HIV. Coming out. Being outed. Don’t ask don’t tell. Homophobia. Casual homophobia from fellow gay men. Aggressive homophobia from fellow gay men. Racism (specifically anti-Asian). Religion. Gay panic. Suicide. The way you put your life in someone’s hands when you make yourself so vulnerable as to hook up with a stranger in a private setting.
The Show had a sneering, almost punk attitude toward straights, the oblivious brand of whom were often symbolized by cops.
There were appearances from beloved actors Judith Light and Cathy Moriarty (I hesitate to call them gay “icons” but surely to some, they are). There was the knowing thrill of getting to see Ricky Martin play gay in a fictionalized 1997, back when he himself was in the closet (where he remained there for 13 more years). There were not one but two songs by Laura Branigan (in terms of commercial impact versus ardent gay following, Branigan was approximately the Carly Rae Jepsen of her day) featured: “Gloria” and “Self Control.” Ditto that for Lisa Stansfield (less of a gay touchstone than Branigan but no less great): “All Around the World” and “This Is the Right Time.” In fact, if Versace were nothing but its soundtrack, it would have made me feel more seen that most shows—so many of its songs feature on the all-time best-of playlist on my iPhone, obvious choices (Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life,” Ralph Tresvant’s “Sensitivity”) and deep cuts (Deee-Lite’s “Runaway”), alike.
More than any show I’ve ever seen, Versace had a sneering, almost punk attitude toward straights, the oblivious brand of whom were often symbolized by cops. We saw multiple minds blown, grasps on human interaction go limp, as police investigated Cunanan’s murder spree of four gay men: Versace, David Madson (Cody Fern), Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), and Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell). (Cunanan’s fifth victim, William Reese, was believed to be straight, and certainly not targeted for his sexuality.) After D’Amico’s incredulity after a cop inquired as to whether he was paid by Versace for sex or to be his partner, the cop excused himself: “Sorry—this is new to me.” At Trail’s murder scene, one cop spotted a porn DVD left by Cunanan to out him and announced to his partner, “Power Bottoms?”
“The hell is this?” asked the partner, surveying the rest of the toys on the bed, like a bottle of poppers, a ball gag, some duct tape. “It’s a gay thing,” said the first. “So what are we talking about?” “Guy turns up. Maybe they know each other, probably they don’t. They do what they do. All this… extreme stuff. It goes wrong. David ends up in a rug. The other guy runs. Doesn’t steal a thing.”
The show also rather deliberately illustrated that the problem with Versace and D’Amico’s purported open relationship wasn’t in their practice, but judgement from outsiders—symbolized here through Penelope Cruz’s portrayal of Versace’s sister Donatella. She berated D’Amico: “He wasn’t enough for you. This house, this life. You wanted more. More fun, more men.” At least the TV Donatella did—much of the dialogue in the series was speculative, filling in holes where interactions weren’t documented, or perhaps didn’t exist at all.
But Versace’s greatest cultural contribution was the way it contrasted the wide range of interpersonal issues amongst gay men. A masterclass in experiential diversity that could make The Boys in the Band read like one long monologue, Versace contrasted with rigor. It contrasted between Versace’s interview with The Advocate in which he openly and proudly discussed being gay in public, and Trail’s Dateline interview in which he talked about being gay in the military while shrouded in anonymity-preserving shadows. It contrasted between Versace’s sister attempting to dissuade him when he told her about the aforementioned interview, and Trail’s sister encouraging him to come out to his family. It contrasted between the lie Miglin lived as a closeted man married to a woman, and the lies Cunanan lived, which changed at any given moment to suit whoever was listening. It contrasted between the way Versace’s mother instilled in him the value of hard work, and the entitlement Cunanan’s father instilled in him by proclaiming his son innately special.
Versace devoted much of its time to meditating on an issue rarely examined in the mainstream: gay-on-gay crime. Cunanan (played by Darren Criss), who strove to be someone, exhibited tenants of the best little boy in the world theory, but to a murderous extreme. He was, in fact, the worst best little boy in the world, who apparently internalized his father’s idea of exceptionality to the extent that he coveted Versace’s status as a gay man whose power superseded his sexuality, where public acceptance was concerned.
“I think the pathology of Andrew is that he is, without question, the most homophobic character in this story, even though he’s gay,” Smith told Vulture. Like a closeted politician who votes against his people, Cunanan would, per Versace’s retelling, weaponize the vulnerabilities he detected by talking to gay men and being a gay man himself. Norman Blachford, who was 58 in 1994 when he began seeing and then supporting Cunanan, is depicted on the show as having said, “I’ve been living with this my whole life: We fall sick it’s our fault. We’re murdered it’s our fault.” “You can rob us, you can beat us, you can kill us. You’ll get away with it,” responded the show’s Cunanan, projecting empathy while the darkest of lightbulbs went off in his head.
“I want you to know that when they find your body, you will be wearing ladies’ panties,” he told Miglin before killing him. “Surrounded by gay porn. I want the world to see that the great Lee Miglin is a sissy. Soon the whole world will know that the great Lee Miglin, who built Chicago, built it with a limp wrist. The cops will know, the press will know, your wife will know, your children will know, the neighbors will know. Tell me something, Lee: What terrifies you more, death or being disgraced?” An episode later, a step back in time, had Madson admitting he was scared to get into the car with Cunanan after Trail’s murder. He wondered if he was afraid that Cunanan was going to kill him, which he actually did, “or was I afraid of the disgrace? The shame of it all? Is that what I’m running from?” The show, based mostly on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, argued that Cunanan exploited the sort of in-group conversations between gay men that typically foster bonding and relief. The degree of betrayal was astounding.
Last month, an essay on Attitude’s website argued, per its headline, that “Young Queer People Shouldn’t Be Obliged to Care About LBGT History—And That’s the Biggest Sign of Success There Is.” It was so poorly argued and fundamentally myopic that it scanned immediately as trolling, but it was heartening to see enormous response refuting its self-entitled intellectual laziness. Versace was the most graceful counter-argument to this mindset imaginable. In history, there are lessons that we haven’t seemed to learn, patterns yet to be broken. Like a pill hidden in a caramel, it wrapped a bunch of cultural observations in a salacious story. The show linked Cunanan’s ability to hide in plain sight for two months after his initial string of four murders to FBI apathy, if not homophobia, since at the time three out of his four victims were gay men—more recently, the slow response to investigate the deaths of alleged victims of 66-year-old Canadian landscaper Bruce McArthur raised similar concerns of police bigotry.
Cunanan was distorting his persona over a decade before people were curating elements of their lives to present to the world on social media. He was self-absorbed and unabashedly materialistic. He’s an extreme example who went to extreme measures, and like any melodrama worth investing in, Versace used those extremes to comment on a greater truth. Criss’s performance was just swishy enough to stop short of caricature and deranged to the point of ramming its head against the top—the show routinely featured him staring blankly into a space just above the top of the camera, as high-pitched music unraveled to score his mental state.
But Versace was allergic to glamorization, which initially may have seemed counterintuitive for a show that was nominally about fashion. Versace was in the business of breaking facades, of explicating just how toxic those facades could be. Its roughly reverse-chronological structure placed the grand guignol of Versace’s slaying up front, and then worked backward to explain, humanize, salute, and mourn. The Versace family called the show “a work of fiction” prior to its airing, and at the end of every episode ran a disclaimer that read: “This series is inspired by true events and investigative reports. Some events are combined or imagined for dramatic and interpretive purposes. Dialogue is imagined to be consistent with these events.” But the show proved that something need not have happened to be true. Andrew Cunanan’s murders were shocking, but more so was how relevant his story, and those of the lives he destroyed, remains.
ACS news 