This season of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace wasn’t The People Vs. OJ Simpson by any stretch. Where OJ was procedural and followed the trial that led to one of the most controversial rulings of the 20th century, Versace was abstract: it played with timelines, focused less on the designer than on his killer (Andrew Cunanan), and took a long time to unpack exactly what lead to Cunanan’s 1997 killing spree.
Which, if you read Maureen Orth’s book the series is based on, did a pretty good job unpacking that complicated material. Nothing about Cunanan’s life made sense. He was a liar, an elitist, and a boy bred to be a man with a deep-rooted sense of entitlement. He lived many lives, morphing into who he believed would evoke power and status and the things he felt he deserved. His family life was fractured, and his parents raised him to believe he was better than everybody else. His trajectory was almost as convoluted as the series itself because it’s hard to piece together the life of a person who lacked a sense of self (and whose backstory changed with every person he was aligned with). He was a mess whose implosion took decades. And that’s why I liked this season of American Crime Story so much.
When we think about true crime series, we’re usually taken in by the ones that move quickly, sensationalize the murders in question, and zero in on the most gruesome and invasive aspects part of an investigation. (Mainly, what we’re normally not privy to.) We like a clean narrative, attention paid to timelines and what led-up to the murder, and then we like to examine the lives and minds of the killers themselves. Often, victims are deprived of their own stories — our knowledge of them is usually limited to a photo or a name or a number. And that makes a story seem “clean”: we follow a killer, we see what they do, we keep feelings to the sidelines, and we learn what (or what doesn’t) happen to the accused following their arrest.
But The Assassination of Gianni Versace was nothing like that. It gave us fragmented insights into victims’ lives, it tried to piece together Cunanan’s evolution from a tragic boy to a dangerous man via timelines and incidences, it used emotion to fuel murder scenes and forced us to reconcile with how terrible Cunanan’s crimes were. It even ended with a variable: Orth’s account of Andrew’s last days are embedded with footnotes and disclaimers that many of his last hours are assumed; that we don’t really know what happened. And the series reflects this: it isn’t tidy, it isn’t clean, it isn’t easy to follow or understand, it’s threaded with feelings and senses of dread and confusion. It’s as messy as Andrew Cunanan and his fucked-up, tragic, and terrible legacy. It’s a true crime series that feels most like a true crime. With, you know, incredible performances.
And maybe that isn’t for everyone. Maybe you were hoping for more footage of Gianni Versace or a perspective from the detectives trying to piece Cunanan’s crimes together. Maybe you like a procedural or cold, hard facts, or an ending tied up with a bow like a neat little package. But endings in tragedies are never tied up. They are always fighting with you as they try to untie themselves, threatening to spill out and expose the mayhem and horror and grief and upset and questions that come with someone driving across America and killing people because they felt like it. That is what true crime really is. Which is why I think Ryan Murphy’s take on this specific one did such a god job trying to show us so many terrible things.
That, and casting Darren Criss as someone so magnetic and manipulative and without any regard for human life was inspired. I never want to hear anybody sing “Gloria” again.
Tag: march 2018
This Is The “American Crime Story” Finale’s Explanation For The Versace Murder
There’s a moment in the The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story premiere that has stuck in my brain like a stray popcorn kernel since the very beginning of the season. In the “The Man Who Would Be Vogue” scene in question, future murderer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) and future murder victim Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) flirt on the stage of the San Francisco opera house in October 1990, seven years before the killing that would inspire the limited series’ name. Considering how lovely the dreamlike date is, it was always impossible to understand how thatmeeting could lead to the bloody tragedy awaiting both characters.
The Crime Story season 2 finale essentially puts Cunanan through hell as he hides out from police in a Miami houseboat following his titular assassination. When police finally enter the house to apprehend Andrew, he commits suicide by gunshot wound to the head. As the spree killer pulls the trigger, we hear him say in voiceover, “I’m so happy right now,” a direct call-back to his “Would Be Vogue” conversation with Gianni. Then, we’re transported back to that warmly lit date nearly a decade prior to see the rest of Cunanan and Versace’s on-stage encounter.
Although this meeting seems to close happily in “Would Be Vogue,” the same can’t be said about the true ending. After hearing Versace’s kind words about Cunanan — “You’re handsome. Clever. I’m sure you’re going to be someone very special one day,” he tells him in the series premiere — the younger man decides to ask for something in “Alone.” After all, Cunanan is nothing if not an opportunist in the American Crime Story world. Emboldened by Versace’s support, Cunanan explains no one ever really recognized he was as special as he found himself to be… until the designer finally “truly believed him.”
After listening to Cunanan talk about writing a book, Versace seems to legitimately think his new friend could be a successful author. “It’s not about persuading people that you’re going to do something great. It’s about doing it. You have to finish your novel,” he tells Cunanan. But, Cunanan has other plans with the designer in front of him. “Maybe I could assist you, or be your protege?” he asks. Versace isn’t looking for an assistant, no matter how much Cunanan talks about “destiny.”
All of a sudden, Versace seems to realize he just might be getting used by this young, handsome stranger. So, he rejects him on all fronts. No, he’s not going to hire Cunanan, and he dodges the 20-something-year-old when he tries to kiss him. Versace kindly says he won’t kiss Cunanan because he doesn’t want him to “question” the evening, but he’s simply not interested after the job request. That’s why he turns down Cunanan’s invitation for another date the next night. In fact, he doesn’t want to see him for the rest of his time in San Francisco. “Another night, another stage,” Versace tells Cunanan before walking off into the darkness of the opera house, leaving the younger man dejected and alone behind him. Immediately, all the lights go off around Cunanan.
In one moment, Cunanan could see all the fame, money, and love from a celebrated man he ever desired laid out in front of him. In the next second, those dreams were dashed; simply because Versace didn’t see “destiny” was calling.
These many layers of turmoil are sandwiched between Cunanan’s suicide and our first and only look at his body before cops take the bloody corpse away. Crime Story suggests the opera scene is both Cunanan’s last thought and the moment that started the entire tragedy of The Assassination Of Gianni Versace. Narratively, it explains why Cunanan repeatedly said he easily could have been Versace or that Versace took his rightful future away from him. Because, in Cunanan’s mind, Versace did ruin his life that fateful October night.
While the emotional car wreck that was the opera date explains Versace’s murder in the context of American Crime Story, it’s less clear if that already dreamlike scene happened in real life. The Versace family has long claimed the late designer never met the real-life Cunanan, but those in the San Francisco LGBTQ+ scene of the ‘90s do not agree. As Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth wrote in Vulgar Favors, her investigative book about the Versace murder, which ACS season 2 to is based on, multiple witnesses claim Cunanan and Versace did meet at Bay Area nightclub Colossus in October 1990. Versace reportedly approached Cuanan, who was with a friend, at the club, they spoke for a few minutes, and then Cunanan left to return to the dance floor.
A friend of the spree killer, Steven Gomer, also told Orth he once saw Cunanan in a tuxedo and he claimed he had just come from seeing Capriccio “with Gianni Versace,” Vanity Fair reports. It’s worth pointing out that the ACS opera date follows a Capriccio performance in San Francisco where Andrew is dressed in quite a dapper manner. Although there are no details of what supposedly happened that evening between Versace and the man who would one day kill him, it seems that lynchpin of a Crime Story scene was built around this small detail.
This Is The “American Crime Story” Finale’s Explanation For The Versace Murder
‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale
Serial killer Andrew Cunanan met his grizzly end in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story finale Wednesday night, but it was more of a fizzle than a bang for star Darren Criss’s final scene.
Eight days after Cunanan murdered famed fashion designer Gianni Versace—and two months after Cunanan murdered his fourth victim— police finally cornered the killer on a Miami houseboat. Rather than face capture, Cunanan puts the gun that killed Versace in his mouth and pulls the trigger.
The episode imagines Cunanan’s final days hiding out on that houseboat, while also bringing back many of the series’ guest stars: Judith Light as widow Marilyn Miglin, Annaleigh Ashford as Cunanan’s childhood friend Elizabeth, Max Greenfield as Cunanan’s HIV-positive friend Ronnie, and Jon Jon Briones and Joanna P. Adler as Cunanan’s father and mother.
Series writer Tom Rob Smith (who also created the British drama London Spy) adapted this real-life event, and the rest of the series, from journalist Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors. He spoke to Newsweek about working on the series and what liberties he took in interpreting Cunanan.
What do hope fans take away from the finale of The Assassination of Gianni Versace?
It works as a retrospective on loss. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of about this series. Marilyn Miglin, brilliantly played by Judith Light, says in the finale, “I’m so proud of Lee.” There’s that sense that all of these victims—not just Versace—were great. A crime story is about a sense of loss, about people being ripped from the world, about that hole they leave behind. That line, and this finale, crystalized that sense of sadness and loss beautifully.
It was almost moving to have Andrew reface so many of these people he hurt before his suicide. But it was hard to tell if he was feeling regret or just fear for his own life.
It’s been presented that Andrew is relishing in his notoriety thus far. But for someone who had all his potential, intelligence and impressive education, isn’t it also possible that he felt a deep sense of disgust at what he had done? This is not someone who spent his life being horrible to people, he was always trying to charm and impress them—he paid for dinners and tried to win people over. In those final days on that houseboat, there was a sense of great shame, I think. That’s our interpretation.
When you say that, is that what you imagine the actual, real Cunanan felt at that moment? Or do you see the show’s Cunanan as just a character, inspired but separate from the real killler?
In the end, I think you have to accept that it’s an interpretation. But you’re drawing on what there is. People have said, “Oh no, he committed suicide because he was trying to outwit the police.” I’m like, “He shot himself in his boxer shorts on a bed.” I don’t know how anyone would think that was a grand ending. The houseboat was in a state of horrendous decay—that space was a manifestation of what his life had become. He did die the day after Versace’s funeral, so he almost certainly watched Versace’s funeral on TV. I think he would have looked at that and seen a man who is adored, who has the most extraordinary funerals in Milan, while Andrew is in this hellish, sweaty physical decay, despised by the world.
Lots of killers go to trial—they quite enjoy it, in their own way, they enjoy putting the victim’s families through the trial, as part of their sickness. Very few of them commit suicide. So I think, whatever Andrew might have told himself, there must have been some deep sense of shame that he didn’t want to face in a courtroom. He didn’t want to have his crimes read out to him.
What details did you add to his final hours for the show, to help support that interpretation of Andrew?
Obviously, we don’t know what he watched. We just know what was on and we know that there was a TV [in the houseboat]. We do know that the Versace magazines were there, and we know that there was nothing left to eat in that houseboat. We know that he had absolutely no money. He had no way of getting any food and he was trapped. There’s that sense of the world bearing down on him. His dad claimed that he called him.
Really?
Yes, his dad claimed to Maureen Orth in Vulgar Favors that he called him—the exact claim is that Andrew called him to talk about the film rights. Of course, his dad could be lying. We certainly don’t know that Andrew asked his dad to come get him. But I didn’t make up the name of the movie title, A Name to Remembered By. The dad really did say that. But [Andrew] shooting the TV set isn’t true. We put that in because we wanted to get across that the sixth person that Andrew would have gone for next [to kill] would have been his dad.
Modesto Cunanan is a fascinating character, both in the show and real life. Did you guys ever find out what happened to the real person?
We don’t know, and actually we really tried to find that out. We don’t think he’s in America; we think he might not be alive anymore. It’s very hard to find someone. But I know that Fox did do research on that and didn’t come back with anything.
What we know about the real man is that that he gave Andrew the master bedroom, and that he then came in to use the closet. So he set up an excuse to go into there. To my mind, that was immediately a red flag. We also know from Maureen’s research that Andrew’s lie in Episode 1—“Oh my dad used to drive around with a chauffeur, and he was having an affair with the chauffeur”—that’s a real lie from Andrew. I always think that lies are very revealing. I remember first reading that and thinking, “That’s a strange lie.” That’s one of those interesting things about going backwards— you get that lie in Episode 1, and you think it’s just Andrew being crazy. When you get to Episode 8, you’re like, “Wait a minute. What was behind that lie?”
The show makes very explicit—especially in the finale—that one of the reasons the FBI took so long to catch Cunanan was a lack of connections in the gay community and a disregard for gay lives. That felt like a statement on the homophobia of the authorities in the ‘90s.
There’s a couple of things I’d say. This is not a story where it’s about the homophobic cop that doesn’t catch anyone. I think the most homophobic person in this story is Andrew Cunanan himself. He is just this horrific homophobic bully to Lee Miglin. He’s using everything he understands about shame and disgrace against his victims. And with David, he’s trying to trap him into to staying with him by saying, “The police will never believe you, they hate you.”
Many things he says have truth in them, and in Miami it was a fiasco. I don’t know why they didn’t put the flyers up, I don’t what was going on there. Other cities they were better—I think they were better in New York and San Francisco, and I think the various gay communities there were better connected to the police. But catching people is tricky, and people make mistakes without have a racist, sexist or homophobic agenda behind it. People just screw up.
But when an officer refuses to go into a gay club to put a flyer up, that is a real issue. And when Andrew was just walking around Miami—the diner where he ate was just directly opposite the police station. I do think you can say that Versace should not have died.
Given the title of the series, I think some fans were surprised that the show ended up being more Andrew Cunanan’s story than Versace’s.
I was sent Maureen’s book two years ago, and I was always adapting this book. The Versace story is not a crime story—his life story is a success story. And in Maureen’s book, [Versace’s] only really in the story at the end. One of the things we talked about is that we really want to bring him to the fore, because he’s such an interesting counterpoint to Andrew. I don’t think you can just say Andrew was a product of society. Andrew was his own creation. He was beaten by things other people overcame. Andrew was lazy, vain and entitled. Yes, he did encounter enormous prejudice, but so did Versace, and Versace overcame those things. So when you look at it that way, it became a very interesting counterpoint. That was the genesis of the story. But I can understand why people thought it was going to be a biopic.
The real Versace family publicly condemned the show and the book as “a work of fiction.” Have you heard anything else from them since it’s been airing?
No, only the initial statement, which is the same statement they brought out at the publication of the book. One of the advantages of not doing a Versace-intensive biopic is that you can concentrate on what was amazing about that family. You don’t really need to get into the other gossipy stuff about relationships or drugs. None of that is relevant to this story. It’s just about saying what was amazing about Donatella and her relationship with Gianni because that’s what we’re counterpointing against Andrew.
In the end, it’s just a story about two families. You’re comparing them. That’s what I really love about Episode 8. I don’t know anything about how [the real Versace family] feels, but the show is really a celebration of Gianni Versace as an artist.
‘Assassination of Gianni Versace’ writer on interpreting the real Andrew Cunanan for the finale
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Writer Tom Rob Smith, on Making Meaning From Pain
“This is what crime is,” said Tom Rob Smith, the writer behind “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the second season of FX’s anthology true-crime drama “American Crime Story.” “Crime is people being ripped from the world.” He was talking just hours ahead of the mournful finale of a challenging season that told the story of Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer who in 1997 murdered the fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami Beach. By the end of his nightmare journey, Mr. Cunanan had ripped away six men’s lives, including his own.
Across nine episodes, that journey took viewers along a counterintuitive path, beginning with Versace’s death and working mostly backward in time, through the murders of four other men and deep into the killer’s troubled childhood in San Diego. It was exceedingly painful to watch at times, but to Mr. Smith, the pain was the point. “I know there are gaps in the story where we’ve had to imagine what happened,” he said in a phone conversation on Wednesday. “But I think we’re actually very close to the fundamental truth: Andrew destroyed a great many lives.”
Following are edited and spoiler-filled excerpts from that conversation, in which Mr. Smith talked about his work on the difficult and disturbing series, as well as the opportunity it gave him to explore what made those lives worth living and their loss so tragic.
I’ve seen critics talk about how hard it is to tune into a story this painful, week in and week out. Since this was your first true-crime project, was that obstacle to audience identification and enjoyment something you wrestled with?
One of the reasons we take the story backward is because we want to make the victims the heart of the piece, and they’re amazing people. Andrew was targeting people who had things that he did not, whether that be love, financial success, or moral success. I feel very privileged to have read about Versace. I think he’s underwritten about, underexplored, a remarkable figure.
The same with Donatella [Donatella Versace, Gianni’s sister and business partner]. They were an incredible couple. Lee Miglin is an extraordinary figure. The greatness that he achieves is from tenacity: As the youngest kid of seven or eight, he arrived in Chicago knowing no one, and he worked his way up. He was the American dream. David [David Madson, a Minneapolis-based architect] was this incredible young man, full of love and looking for love. And Jeff [Jeff Trail, a gay former naval officer] struggling with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell … I felt very lucky to tell their stories. I found them very moving and very celebratory.
Andrew, on the other hand, who is the central character …
It’s true that when you get to their deaths, Andrew is this despicable figure. But if you go further back, it’s hard not to find things about young Andrew that are impressive. He was out to people when he was — how old was he, 17? He was this Oscar Wilde-like wit who would, when confronted by homophobic bullies in school, look at them and bounce it straight back at them. I mean, I could never have done that in school. I just didn’t have it. There was an act of bravery in that. And he was a good friend to many people. He would pay for things. He would be there when they needed him.
There’s that loss of potential. You feel that on the victims’ side — these people were ripped from the world and they were achieving so much — and you feel it also with Andrew. Why couldn’t he have converted his intellect and his consideration for other people into something great? What happened there?
You don’t want to reduce an actual human being to an avatar of impersonal forces at work in the world, but Andrew is in one sense the weaponization of all the obstacles that have been placed in all those people’s way by homophobia. Even at Versace’s funeral, the priest performing the ceremony refuses to take his partner’s hand in comfort.
Yeah. All of that is real. We’ve got the footage of the priest pulling his hand away from Antonio. That’s not an inference — we can see it. That priest knew he was on camera, knew he was in front of thousands of people, knew he was at the funeral for this man, and still couldn’t control his hatred. He still felt no needto control it. Versace was so successful he managed to overcome that, which was what was so extraordinary about him. But the whole point of Andrew’s personality was that he wanted to impress people, and he’s born into one of the most marginalized groups in society. That paradox — How can you impress someone when they find you disgusting intrinsically before you even open your mouth? — that’s the conundrum of Andrew.
I think it’s tricky. The most homophobic person in this story is Andrew, by far. When he becomes this killer, he becomes a horrific homophobic bully. It’s like he’s soaked up everything and unleashes it on Lee and Versace. He’s like, “I’m going to shame you. You’ve achieved success and I’m going to rip it down, both through physical destruction, but also through the act of scrutiny and having the world look down upon you.”
Even when he was younger and acting as a welcoming figure in the gay community, he was pushing his racial identity as an Asian American to the side. That’s a stark contrast.
You know, he kind of did both. He wanted to change his name from Cunanan to DeSilva so he could say he’s Portuguese rather than from the Philippines. Then he was saying he was Israeli. So yeah, he would push the racial thing to one side. But the sexual thing is interesting, if you look at the way his life tracks. He can’t deal with anyone who might be critical. If he met someone who was homophobic and he wanted to be friends, he would say that he was straight, or that he had a wife and a daughter. He would play the audience. Eventually he went into an audience of these older men that he didn’t have to play to, because he was instantly impressive. He was younger and witty and clever and appreciated. Once he lost that audience, he hit rock bottom.
There’s this moment we never managed to get into the show which I’ve always thought captured something about Andrew. He was at a party when his descent was really accelerating, and no one was paying attention to him; in fact, someone had already reprimanded him for being really annoying. He just went over to this table and set fire to a napkin. He needed people to run over and notice him.
To get to the core of a person as protean as Andrew, I suppose you have to identify the desire that makes him shape-shift in the first place.
On his own, he was very sad and very alone. There were often moments when he said that. If you caught him when he wasn’t high and he wasn’t pretending, he said: “I’m alone and I’m depressed. I haven’t achieved anything and I’m miserable.” He wasn’t stupid. He could see himself in those moments.
But he could, for example, pretend to be a millionaire while going to a restaurant and pay $500 for a meal. Even if he only had $500 left, for those three hours, everyone at that table would think he was wealthy and successful. Those restaurants became a kind of theater where he could pretend to be a person that he wasn’t. He lived for those moments. When he stopped having those moments, that’s when he killed people.
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: Writer Tom Rob Smith, on Making Meaning From Pain
‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘Alone’ Brings the Story to an End
This week’s American Crime Story review takes a look at the latest (and final) episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Alone.” Spoilers follow.
No Way Out
Time has run out for Andrew Cunanan. After committing one murder after another with ease and seemingly no danger of being caught, Andrew’s luck has finally run out due to his murder of Versace.
The final episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is all about the end. Here is the culmination of it all. The final weary days in the short, destructive life of Andrew Cunanan. There’s no catharsis here. No sense of release. Instead, there’s a sense that if Andrew was given the chance to do it all over again, he’d probably do everything exactly the same.
After weeks of episodes moving backwards, we finally arrive where we started: with Andrew gunning down Versace on the steps of Versace’s Miami mansion. But unlike Andrew’s other murders – which, aside from the murder of Lee Miglin, attracted very little attention – this one is markedly different. Cop cars are everywhere, speeding through the Miami streets at night. News coverage splashes tabloid-like headlines left and right.
Andrew retreats to a seemingly abandoned houseboat and watches the result of his work on multiple TVs. He seems elated at first – even when the news anchors report him as a suspect. He’s famous now; he’s changed the world. He celebrates by popping open a bottle of champagne. Later, he’ll watch Versace’s televised funeral with reverence and even a little pride. Versace’s funeral is filled with celebrities – Princess Diana, Elton John, Naomi Campbell – and they’re all there because of something Andrew did.
The celebration is short lived. When Andrew tries to get out of Miami, he finds roadblocks at every turn. The police are leaving no stone unturned. He’s trapped. With no one left to turn to, Andrew frantically places a call to his father, Modesto.
Modesto, never one to miss an opportunity, has been selling interviews to the press ever since it was revealed Andrew was the killer. When Andrew calls, he assures his son that he’ll come to America and whisk him off to safety. Andrew, who has apparently learned nothing, believes him. He packs up some things and waits, hopeful that his father will be there in 24 hours.
But his father never shows. Instead, Andrew catches Modesto on the news, mugging for the camera, insisting this is all some mix-up because his son isn’t a homosexual, and revealing that he’s talked to Andrew on the phone.
For Andrew, this is the final nail in the coffin. He knows it’s hopeless now. No one is going to come save him. Soon, police have discovered his location and have him surrounded. With nowhere left to turn, Andrew places his gun in his mouth, sparing one last look at his reflection in a mirror before pulling the trigger.
Special
While anyone who happened to read the Wikipedia entry for Andrew Cunanan knew where this was all going, there are still a few surprises in the final episode, “Alone.” For one thing, Judith Light returns as Marilyn Miglin, widow of Andrew’s victim Lee Miglin. Marilyn just happens to be in Miami during these events, filming a new commercial for her latest perfume. She seems to sum up the feelings of everyone involved here when she says that all she wants is for this to be over. She’s sick of having her good name attached to Andrew Cunanan, and she wants nothing more than for people to stop associating her, and her husband, with Andrew and his actions.
Meanwhile, in Milan, Donatella Versace is trying to put things in order following the murder of her brother. She’s still wrought with grief – in an emotional scene, delivered with a real sense of sorrow by Penélope Cruz – Donatella reveals that on the day Versace was murdered, he tried to call her, and she deliberately ignored the call.
Donatella also has to contend with Antonio, who is also grieving. But Antonio’s grief is treated as something secondary, and Donatella isn’t interested in helping him out. Versace’s will left Antonio with a pension of 50 million lira a month for life, and the right to live in any of Versace’s homes. But the properties Versace left actually belonged to the company, not Versace himself. As a result, he’s cut out. He has no home now. In one of the most cringe-worthy scenes in the episode, the priest at Versace’s funeral goes down a line, offering comfort to everyone in Versace’s family, but deliberately skips Antonio. By the time the episode has ended, Antonio has tried to kill himself – but failed.
All of these surviving individuals – Marilyn Miglin, Donatella, Antonio – are searching for some sort of closure. They want to subscribe to the French proverb “What you lose in the fire, you will find amongst the ashes.” But there’s no real closure here. No sense of completion.
Yes, Antonio survives his suicide attempt. But he’s still cut-out of all things Versace. Yes, Donatella inherits her brother’s empire, but her grief is overwhelming. Yes, Marilyn takes comfort in the fact that the man who murdered her husband is now dead, but she’ll still forever be tied to Andrew and his actions. After the dust has settled, we see Marilyn pouring over letters sent in offering condolences. Letters from young men Lee clearly had affairs with. She can take comfort in these condolences, but she also has to contend with the fact that Lee lied to her throughout his entire life.
And what of Andrew Cunanan? Did he have a moment of clarity in those moments before he pulled the trigger and blew his brains all over the wall of a houseboat bedroom? A realization of where he went wrong? A sense of remorse for his actions? According to American Crime Story, the answer is no.
At the moment Andrew kills himself, we flashback to the (possibly fictional) evening Andrew spent with Versace. There, standing on the stage at the opera with Versace, Andrew says he’s been waiting his whole life for someone to tell him he’s special, and that all he’s ever wanted to do is persuade other people that he’s capable of doing something great.
“But it’s not about persuading people that you’re going to do something great,” Versace says. “It’s about doing it.”
Andrew is puzzled by this response – he doesn’t get it. All he wants is for someone to just tell him he’s special without having actually done anything to merit it. He begs to be made Versace’s assistant, but Versace politely turns him down. Versace tells Andrew that one day, he’ll understand. But Andrew never will. He’ll spend the rest of his short, violent life continually trying to prove to everyone that he’s special. And while he will certainly make headlines, he’ll also leave nothing behind worth celebrating.
In the end, “Alone” juxtaposes the locations of the earthly remains of Gianni Versace and Andrew Cunanan. Versace’s ashes are housed in a veritable temple; a shrine to his greatness, located in a picturesque location. Andrew body, meanwhile, is tucked away in some mausoleum somewhere, among rows and rows of other people, forgotten. Just one nearly anonymous body in a sea of thousands.
Alone
After a few wishy-washy episodes, “Alone” ends The Assassination of Gianni Versace on a high note (although high note perhaps isn’t the right term for such a depressing episode). Director Gwyneth Horder-Payton captures the sinking feeling washing over Andrew perfectly. In one haunting scene, Andrew is visited by the younger version of himself. The young Andrew watches the TV coverage of the adult Andrew’s deeds, a slight, eerie smile on his face. In another scene, Andrew watches Marilyn Miglin’s infomercial as Horder-Payton has the camera push-in on his blank face, effectively pushing the audience into his headspace.
This season of American Crime Story wasn’t entirely successful. The backwards-moving narrative never quite worked, and resulted in a somewhat uneven season, where the bulk of the action happened very early and left a few episodes spinning their wheels. Yet for all its flaws, The Assassination of Gianni Versace still made for some intriguing, captivating television.
While the backwards narrative didn’t quite gel, it did enable Versace to pull a clever bait-and-switch on the audience. At first, we go in thinking this will be just another true crime saga. But what it really turns into is a compelling character study and also a story of how society treats queer people.
Darren Criss’ portrayal of Andrew Cunanan is exemplary. The actor brought the character to life, and while some of the writing could’ve easily turned Andrew into something close to parody, Criss’ performance walked a tightrope and balanced it all.
Other MVPs of the season: Ricky Martin turned in a surprisingly soulful performance as Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico, particularly in this final episode. The moments where Antonio realizes he’s being cut loose from all things Versace are handled with appropriate panic and confusion by Martin. Penélope Cruz also shines this season, and in this final episode in particular. While there were times when the writing felt as if it was bending over backwards to find ways to insert Donatella into the story, Cruz always managed to play the part with grace and just the appropriate amount of over-dramatic flourishes.
Next up for American Crime Story: a season that tackles the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, featuring Dennis Quaid as George W. Bush. While that may not stand out as your typical “true crime” narrative, it’s going to be fascinating to see how the series tells this story. Just as the first season of American Crime Story used its true crime angle to tell a story about racism in America, and this second season was primarily about the way society treats queer individuals, I’m sure the Katrina season will have its own social message buried within the narrative. We’ll have to wait to see how that plays out.
‘American Crime Story’ Review: ‘Alone’ Brings the Story to an End
It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad
From the finish line of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, this season feels even more muddled in hindsight.
After weeks of unraveling Andrew Cunanan’s motivations backward through time, tracing his pathologies all the way back to childhood, last night’s finale episode brought the story to its only fitting conclusion with Cunanan’s suicide.
The series touched on a variety of potentially interesting topics — from prejudices against the LGBT community to resentment between the haves and have-notes — but none felt nearly as well-developed and clearly articulated as it could. A lot of it has come down to the lack of known details surrounding Cunanan’s killing spree and upbringing. The combination of his penchant for spinning elaborate tales and his desperate death left so many unanswered questions. It gave writers far too much leeway to embellish and rely on some of the usual Ryan Murphy, ham-handed theatrics.
Despite the series’ strong start, much of the luxurious aesthetic fell away instead to shift focus off Versace. The upshot was getting more of Darren Criss’ powerhouse performance, and it was important to shine a light on Cunanan’s other, less well-known victims. The downside was too much time spent making assumptions about Cunanan’s mental state and motivations.
The finale unfollowed with a bit more urgency as authorities drew closer to Cunanan in a tense chase and standoff. Plus, we got another appearance from the incomparable Judith Light as Marilyn Miglin, and any time she’s on screen is a good one.
Let’s recount the events that led to Cunanan’s end in our recap, below.
We begin the conclusion of this story the same way it started: the titular assassination of Gianni Versace.
From those fateful steps, Andrew makes a beeline to a houseboat where he holds up to watch the news coverage.
Lee Miglin’s widow, Marilyn, is in Florida filming for the Home Shopping Network. FBI agents think it’s best for her to leave the area, given their suspicion that Cunanan is still local. She’s frustrated they still haven’t been able to catch him, but, more importantly, she’s never missed a broadcast, and she’s not starting now.
Not that Andrew has plans to stay in town. He steals a car to make a break for it, but police have set up checkpoints at all the major thoroughfares. Frustrated to the point of shouting into the horizon, Andrew gives up escaping by car.
Police turn to Andrew’s mother, but she’s too heartbroken to be of much use to the police. They also track down Ronnie, Andrew’s buddy (played by Max Greenfield in earlier episodes), but he’s not eager to throw his friend under the bus, either. Instead, he opts to deliver a powerful (if not overly dramatic) speech to the authorities about how Andrew disgusted them “before he was disgusting.” It’s an impassioned monologue about their prejudices against gay men; an indictment to society’s blind eye to problems plaguing the LGBT community (including a literal plague) that, despite feeling a little heavy-handed, still resonates today.
Now stuck in the houseboat, Andrew starts running low on supplies. Desperate for food, he turns to the cans of dog food, but he’s hardly able to keep it down. He could not be farther from those free-wheeling nights at the Mandarin Oriental.
As he binges TV coverage, he manages to catch Marilyn shilling her perfume. Marilyn is relaying a story about growing up, and it clearly hits Andrew somewhere deep down. He runs to a pay phone and calls, of all people, his father in Manila. Presumably, the show wants us to believe he was moved by Marilyn’s TV pitch.
His father tells him he’s coming for him and to be ready in 24 hours. Modesto promises to be on the next plane to get him out of there.
Of course, that’s a lie. Andrew catches Modesto on TV bragging about how he’s been in close contact with Andrew and how Andrew has entrusted him to negotiate the film rights to his story. (According to Modesto, the title was to be “A Name to Be Remembered By.”) Modesto also denies that Andrew is nor has he ever been a homosexual. Realizing his father’s not coming, Andrew shoots the TV.
He wheels in a massive projector to watch Versace’s funeral. Now fully resigned to his fate, he eats dog food easily and catches a cockroach under a glass. (“It’s a metaphor, stupid,” the show seems to be telling us.) He watches the grand mass and sings along to the hymn, which is a bit of stretch, even for Ryan Murphy.
The grandiose services are difficult for Versace’s partner, Antonio. First, Donatella tells him that, although Gianni willed him one of the Versace homes on Lake Como, the residences all belong to the company now. Therefore, they weren’t for Gianni to give. Sorry, Antonio! At the services themselves, the priest, unsurprisingly, doesn’t acknowledge Antonio, refusing to even touch his hands as he comforts Gianni’s siblings.
Back in Miami, someone comes to check in on the houseboat Andrew has been crashing in. Andrew is able to scare him off with a warning shot, but it’s too late. The jig is up. He watches as reports come in about his exact location and authorities surrounding the houseboat.
He heads up to the bedroom, seeing an apparition of his childhood self. It all ends like this. Smoke bombs come crashing in the windows and police knock down doors. As they wind their way upstairs, Cunanan puts a pistol in his mouth and kills himself.
We see a flashback to the (likely completely fabricated) meeting between Andrew and Versace. Andrew is trying all his tricks to seduce his way into Versace’s orbit — intellectually and romantically — but it doesn’t work. Versace instead encourages him to finish his novel, become a designer, do something. He wants to inspire Andrew, to nourish his genius.
Even in this (probably completely made up scenario) both men are blind to the other. On the one hand, Andrew can’t see how he can’t just keep faking it until he makes it. To earn the respect of the people he admires, he’s needs some substance behind all style. Versace can’t understand how not everyone has the opportunity to develop their genius with the support he enjoyed. In another world (a third world, outside reality and this alternate telling), maybe the two of them could have actually learned from one another.
Marilyn Miglin receives word that Andrew is dead and finally seems to be at peace that this is “done.” In her dressing room, she reveals she’s been receiving letters about Lee and all the people whose lives he touched. She doesn’t understand why he never spoke to her about these people — probably out of a mix of humility and maybe hiding some of his alleged homosexual affairs — but she answers each letter thanking them for keeping his legacy alive.
In Italy, Donatella confesses she ignored a call from her brother the day he was killed. She’s heartbroken over the decision, but what she should be worried about is how she treated Antonio. Versace’s lover takes a handful of pills and booze, but is found by the maid. (He survived.)
Gianni’s remains end up on an elaborate altar, surrounded by gilded gold. Andrew’s final resting place is a much less glamorous nestled in a community mausoleum. It’s the ultimate disappointment for Cunanan: Spending the rest of eternity blending in, being ordinary.
It All Comes To An End On ‘Versace: American Crime Story’ Finale: RECAP – Towleroad
‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Review: An Odd Storytelling Technique Turns a Great Show into Just a Good One
Network: FX
Showrunner: Tom Rob Smith
Main Cast: Darren Criss, Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, Ricky Martin
Notable Guest Stars: Finn Wittrock, Judith Light, Aimee Mann
Episode Length: 50-90 Minutes
The following review contains some spoilers
For the show’s second season, American Crime Story decided to go in a different true crime direction, albeit with much more flair. Despite being titled after legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace, the show focused much more on Andrew Cunanan, the man that killed him. By going into Cunanan’s past, we explored the violent road he took that led him to Versace, even if the legendary figure wasn’t all that involved in it. At times, the show felt like a SparkNotes version of what happened in real life, but at other times, it articulately showed a man looking to become famous, even if it meant infamy.
The first episode starts off with a bang (literally) as we see Cunanan kill Versace in front of his Miami Beach home on that fateful day in July 1997. From the first episode onwards, the show moves in a backwards chronological order, going from Versace, his fifth victim, all the way until before Cunanan even kills his first. It’s a storytelling format that has both positives and negatives, and it was easy to have mixed feelings about it.
The first half of the season was where the negatives seemed to appear more. For example, when Andrew kills his first victim, it’s a groundbreaking moment for the character; instead of being a weird person, he’s now a murderer. But you don’t really feel the impact of a moment like this because of the show’s backward format. Prior to his first murder, we’ve already seen him kill four other people, and the scene doesn’t hit maximum shock value as a result. A lesser gripe with this format was also the fact that suspense was lost as episodes went on, due to the fact that we knew what would happen to certain characters once they were introduced.
I mentioned previously that the show felt like a SparkNotes version of what happened in real life, and that was partially true. The show doesn’t really get into Cunanan’s motivations for the murders until almost the last third of the season, and by that point, all of his previous crimes had happened already. And when they were happening in the moment, they more or less felt like recreations of what had been reported, rather than looking for insights and motivations into why Andrew was doing everything. His backstory is crucial to these scenes, and without it, the show packs less of a thematic punch.
Despite the backward storytelling technique having some of these problems, I appreciated its boldness, and I was still engaged with the story, even if characters’ dialogue was shaky at times. I was annoyed throughout that the show wasn’t going in chronological order, but it was still intriguing to see where exactly the show would go back to in terms of chronology.
But easily my biggest problem with the show’s story was the much greater focus on Cunanan rather than Versace. Out of the season’s nine episodes, Versace is only in six of them, and he really only has a great presence in two or three of them. The same also applies to his sister Donatella, and his lover, Antonio D’Amico. There’s several recurring characters that have more screen time than they do, despite the fact that they’re considered the “main cast.” And in the early part of the season, where Versace has his greatest presence, he’s a bit of a mute. But towards the end of the season, pretty much all of his scenes consist of him yelling at Donatella. His inconsistent portrayal and lack of screen time were irritating to say the least. Isn’t the show named after him?
The show’s saving grace is, by far, the performances from the cast. Darren Criss is sublime as Cunanan, injecting the right amount of psycho, humor, and even sympathy into every line and action that he does. The one aspect I loved about Cunanan having such a large presence was watching Criss give the performance of his life every episode; he was never a dull sight to see. The rest of the main cast (Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin) all fared well in their roles, even if the scripts never really gave them a chance to shine. The rest of the recurring cast were all great in their roles as well, with particular shoutouts to Finn Wittrock and Cody Fern as Jeff Trail and David Madson, respectively.
If I were to have made this season of the show, I would have done it in a full chronological order. I admire the decision to go backwards, but it had mixed results that could’ve been done better. The show actually attempts to make the point that, prior to the killings, Cunanan and Versace weren’t all that different. If the show had gone in chronological order, explored more motivations and origins, and infused more of Versace, we could’ve seen more parallels between the two, and it would’ve made for a tighter, more suspenseful season.
In the end, The Assassination of Gianni Versace was an enjoyable season of television, even if it had more style than substance. The storytelling technique had some mixed responses, but you may enjoy it for its unique approach. Rounded out by a cast that’s full of all-star performances, you could do a lot worse than watching this show.
How Does it Compare to Previous Seasons?: This season wasn’t quite as good as The People v. O.J. Simpson, but I don’t feel that it’s a fair comparison. The two are very different shows, and you shouldn’t let that season’s presence interfere with watching this one.
Best Episodes: “The Man Who Would be Vogue,” “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” “Creator/Destroyer”
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is Recommended if You Like: True crime, stylish clothes, and people that are definitely richer than you.
Where to Watch: All episodes can be watched on the FX website with a valid cable login.
Grade: 3.4 out of 5 Versace Dresses
SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Showbuzz Daily
If Ryan Murphy’s goal with the second season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY was to demonstrate the breadth of the show’s anthology branding, not just in subject matter but in style and structure–unlike the relative consistency of his American Horror Story, with its repertory company of writers and stars–well, mission accomplished. Murphy handed the keys of THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE to Tom Rob Smith, previously best known for London Spy, a purported thriller that was much more interested in the sexuality of its characters than in its own plot. Smith, who personally wrote all 9 episodes of Assassination(co-writing one of them) delivered an idiosyncratic rumination on the subject of Versace’s killer Andrew Cunanan that couldn’t have been farther from the provocative but straightforward history of the wildly successful The People Vs. OJ Simpson.
Smith adopted the kind of backwards structure mostly familiar from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along and Pinter’s Betrayal (and a famous episode of Seinfeld). After beginning with the events surrounding Cunanan’s murder of Versace, each episode went farther back into Cunanan’s past (and occasionally–seemingly randomly–into Versace’s), until the next-to-last episode reached Cunanan’s childhood. Although Smith didn’t shy away from the grisliness of Cunanan’s murders, as the killer became younger and less dangerous with each hour, the effect was to make Cunanan something of a sympathetic figure, the victim of a terrible childhood dominated by a deceitful, demanding father (with whatever hints of molestation the FX legal department would allow), and then of the life of a gay man in the 1990s.
Or at least that seemed to be the intended effect. The shortcoming of Smith’s approach was that Cunanan, as played by a dogged Darren Criss, wasn’t nearly interesting enough to sustain what must have been well over 10 hours of television once FX’s lax approach to running times was factored in. In each episode, Cunanan told fantasy-driven lies about himself, and lashed out violently, and that pathology wasn’t nearly as fascinating as Smith needed it to be. The colorful supporting cast, which included Edgar Martinez as Versace, Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin as his sister and lover, and Judith Light as the widow of one of Cunanan’s closeted victims, were doled out in bits and pieces, with Criss at the center throughout, unable to provide shadings to Cunanan that weren’t in Smith’s scripts.
With nowhere further back to go in Cunanan’s story but to the womb, tonight’s finale, directed by Daniel Minahan, finally returned to Assassination‘s present tense, but it was mostly yet another showcase for Criss. The episode was titled “Alone,” and much of the time we watched Cunanan watch his own manhunt on television, from actual news footage to a very on-the-nose scripted segment in which Light’s character, in an appearance on a telemarketing channel, seemed to speak directly to Cunanan’s longing to be “special” and to have the approval of his father. By the time Cunanan stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his own head off, the season’s themes were hammered in, with guest star Max Greenfield returning to give a set-piece speech to the police about the difference between rich gay men like Versace and the suffering proletariat, and Martin’s character attempting suicide when his status as Versace’s putative husband was ignored by all at and after the funeral.
Where People vs OJ raised questions not just about race, but gender bias, popular culture, class and the criminal justice system, and did so with consistent wit and a vivid set of characters, Assassination was long-winded and monotonous. (USA’s current Unsolved is a more worthy successor to the People vs OJcrown.) The ratings, while not awful, reflected the difference, heavily down from the series’ first installment.
Next up (maybe): Murphy’s already long-postponed story of Hurricane Katrina, which seems like an even less likely fit for the American Crime Story package. After Assassination, it’s impossible to tell what that one may look like.
‘ACS Versace’ Never Caught On Like ‘O.J.’, Because It Was After Something Darker
Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story ended its second season on Wednesday night, bringing with it the conclusion to The Assassination of Gianni Versace. After a season’s worth of reverse chronology, the series snapped back to the aftermath of Versace’s death at the hands of Cunanan, followed his devastated family — including sister Donatella and lover Antonio — as they prepared to bury him, while also portraying the suddenly-urgent manhunt that (eventually) tracked Cunanan to the house boat he’d been hiding out on. Versace’s star studded funeral preceded Cunanan’s self-inflicted end, closing out the series on a rather operatic note.
So, not to paraphrase Aaron Sorkin to intentionally or anything, but: what kind of season has it been? Quantitatively, The Assassination of Gianni Versace has underperformed relative to the 2016 juggernaut The People vs. O.J. Simpson. This is true in both ratings and reviews. O.J. averaged 3.29 million viewers per episode, while Versace has averaged 1.09 mil; O.J. scored a 96 from Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 on Metacritic, while Versace did slightly worse at 86 and 74, respectively. Moreover, you can just feel it in the conversations, or lack thereof, in the media. The People vs. O.J. Simpson was a phenomenon. The nation was going through a national re-experiencing of the Simpson scandal, with a competing documentary on ESPN countless retrospectives. We followed every cigarette Sarah Paulson lit up as Marcia Clark, remembered every tertiary character as they crossed our screen, and stayed riveted even though we all knew how it would end. That treatment didn’t extend to The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and at least in this viewer’s opinion, it’s not because it was a major drop-off in quality.
Part of it we can chalk up to unavoidable factors. The murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace by serial killer Andrew Cunanan in the summer of 1997 was an infamous piece of tabloid news, but it didn’t come close to approaching the levels of notoriety that the O.J. Simpson trial got. That was a national soap opera that lasted well over a year and incorporated dozens of side characters who we all had tucked away in the recesses of our memories, ready for American Crime Story to unearth them. The Versace murder was not like that. We knew about the victim and the killer, and if you managed to read Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors (upon which Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith based Versace), you knew about a few more. But there were no Kato Kaelins or F. Lee Baileys or Mark Fuhrmans to be found. The People vs. O.J. Simpson was great because it tackled the racial, societal, media, and entertainment angles of the Simpson case and made us all re-examine it through new eyes. But it was popular, in large part, because it let the rapidly fracturing and fragmenting American audience re-experience something we had all watched together. That was not a card that the Versace series could play. (If anything, the closest we got to an O.J.-style sensation in the last year was the Harding/Kerrigan revival that accompanied I, Tonya.)
But I think part of it was also that Versace failed the expectation game for a lot of viewers. In tackling the Versace murder under his American Crime Story banner, Murphy unavoidably promised a certain level of over-the-top camp and kitschiness. For all of O.J.‘s raves and respect from the critical community, it still delivered winking scenes with the Kardashians and Connie Britton as Faye Resnick explaining the finer points of the Brentwood Hello. Versace seemed to be promising something similar just by virtue of its cast, including Glee‘s prep-school heartthrob going against type as Andrew Cunanan and out gay pop hunk Ricky Martin as Versace’s longtime beau. And by casting the role of Donatella — by far the campiest character in this story’s orbit — with Academy Award-winner Penelope Cruz, Murphy seemed to be tacitly promising something at least a little bit gaudy.
Viewers hoping for the operatic, quasi-campy version of The Assassination of Gianni Versace could probably have just watched the first and last episodes and have been satisfied. Those are the episodes that feel most like the kind of show people were expecting. The decadent Versace lifestyle, the soapy intrigue surrounding Donatella and Antonio’s prickly relationship, the did-they-or-didn’t-they recreations of an imagined past encounter between Versace and Cunanan, and ultimately Andrew Cunanan stalking around the perimeter of Gianni Versace’s gilded lifestyle and destroying everything in the process. Smash those two episodes together, watch them like a TV movie, let Penelope Cruz in mourning snatch all your wigs off, and you’ll be good.
But what made The Assassination of Gianni Versace such a special season of television was what came in between those first and last episodes. That was where Murphy and Smith stepped away from the glitz and glamour and celebrity and camp and peered into the darker recesses of Andrew Cunanan’s story. The story that they sketch out, sometimes via firsthand accounts, sometimes via speculation, ultimately tells a sinister but deeply grounded story about he corrosive effects of homophobia. How the closet shames and warps; how institutional homophobia silences gay victims and inadvertently abets their killers; how the twin prisons of masculinity and status can wreak havoc on so many lives. The story in these middle episodes pretty much set aside the likes of Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin so they could tell a story about tortured soldiers, frightened sons, prideful widows, and, yes, the making of a murderer. The result was some of the most restrained work of Murphy’s prolific career. And maybe that was the problem.
You can’t know for sure, of course. Nobody sends in a signed affidavit to the network when they choose not to watch something. But when ratings for Versace began to dip much lower than O.J., I had to wonder about Ryan Murphy’s traditionally robust FX audiences. Whether they were happy to watch Murphy’s queer extravaganzas when they were put into the service of grotesque horror stories and dishy tabloid tales about actresses’ animosities, but backed away when he decided to shine a more sober spotlight on the cruel homophobia of the not-very-distant past. Happy to watch Finn Wittrock camp it up as a queer-coded killer but not as a victim of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell bureaucracy. Andrew Cunanan was a queer killer too, of course, but his killings offered no catharsis nor campy thrill. The killings were sad or brutal or unnecessarily cruel. O.J. Simpson got away with murder, but the circus was still pretty fun to watch. Not as much fun to be had here.
So, again, maybe Versace was never meant to catch fire in the culture the way that O.J. did. Maybe in an alternate universe, the Gianni-and-Donatella Fashion Hour told the story of the building of an empire that was cut down by a queer monster. By deciding to peel back the face of that queer monster and stare into the void inside, Murphy and Smith delivered a show that was much darker, though ironically no less illuminating, that the first American Crime Story season. Here’s hoping that with all the possibilities that suddenly lay before him, Ryan Murphy doesn’t take the relative quiet of season 2 as a reason to stay away from this kind of storytelling.
‘ACS Versace’ Never Caught On Like ‘O.J.’, Because It Was After Something Darker
The biggest liar of The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Without its clarifying finale, the aims of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace were almost as hard to unpack as the lies of its protagonist, serial killer and pathological fabulist Andrew Cunanan. That might, in fact, be exactly the point. The series I once criticized for its roaming point of view ended by lying as freely and charmingly as its dancing villain. In so doing, it forged an unlikely and uncomfortable alliance with Cunanan himself.
It’s no secret that, as a series, Versace mixed truth with half-truths and lies almost as much as Cunanan did. Vulture has run a great fact-checking column for each episode that itemizes the liberties the show takes with the truth. The question, to my mind, was how to interpret those departures. When showrunner Tom Rob Smith swapped in an entire ham (with a knife sticking out of it) for the famous ham sandwich Cunanan left behind at the Miglin residence (after having brutally murdering the owner), it seemed clear to me that once we understood that substitution — that blindingly literal instance of the show “hamming it up” — we’d understand a lot of what the series was doing.
What it’s doing, it turns out, is experimenting with narrative identification. And identification is a lot of what this show was actually about: not gender identification, not sexual identification, but empathic identification: who gets it and who doesn’t. Back in 1997, while gauging local reaction to the murders in the area where Cunanan lived and studied, Matthew Lickona reported the following exchange between his wife — who asked about the response in La Jolla — and a La Jolla resident:
“No, he’s from Hillcrest,” he corrected her. “That’s where all the gays are. Nobody in this town is concerned about him at all, because we don’t identify with him.” [The San Diego Reader]
Versace makes you identify with him. It dispenses with that craven, manufactured distinction. It condemns the American indifference to gay deaths around which much of the series is structured. And, however much it sympathizes with his victims (and it does), the series also insists on respecting Cunanan’s fervid need for attention even as it ostensibly disciplines it. One of the facts Versace quotes most about Cunanan was that he was voted (depending on the source) “Most Likely to be Remembered” or “Least Likely to be Forgotten” in high school. The series ends by focusing in on a plaque bearing Cunanan’s name. It turns out to be on a vault in a mausoleum — this feels, then, explicitly like an act of remembrance. But as the camera slowly pans out to show more and more other vaults, the effect becomes punitive: The series seems to focus on the stern, equalizing near-anonymity death finally confers.
If that feels like a finger-wagging lesson, the show inverts that once again. The moral should be “Cunanan, who wanted only to be remembered, failed.” Except, of course, that he didn’t fail: The series itself amounts to a massive act of remembrance. The show explicitly named for Versace was actually about Cunanan. If fame was his goal, he lives on, unchastened.
That lesson about mortality, in other words, feels like exactly the kind of empty wisdom Cunanan (or his abusive, charismatic father, Modesto) might impart.
I’ve made no secret of the ethical questions I’ve had about this series, which has presented as fact things that aren’t even remotely confirmed, including the claim that Cunanan and Lee Miglin were sexually involved and the suggestion that Cunanan was molested by his father, Modesto. These are big truths to bend for dramatic effect, and the series did so without a wink or a tremor — just as Cunanan did.
But if the point was to replicate rather than condemn Cunanan’s curious modus operandi, it was a singular success. Paste Magazine’s Matt Brennan was the first to pick up on the show’s investment in forcing this connection to the villain.
It confronts us — scratch that, it confronted me — with a startling implication: That in the suburban upbringing, the shame, the dissembling, the desperate desire not to be a faggot, I might resemble the murderer more than I do the object of his obsession. [Paste Magazine]
Seen this way, the finale parallels Cunanan’s frenzied effort to escape with the show’s own struggle to escape Cunanan’s stranglehold on its narrative sympathies. We watch Cunanan panicking, calling his father, reduced to eating dog food, just as we see the series roving wildly back to its ostensible protagonists: Versace’s sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) and his lover Antonio (Ricky Martin). But instead of resting with those characters (or giving them the final say), it invents wildly and well. Donatella and Antonio have an extremely painful conversation, we suffer with Antonio as he’s marginalized at Versace’s funeral, and we witness his tragic suicide attempt. None of these details seem to be particularly well-supported — they are Cunanan-isms — and the show can’t help but revert to its charismatic antihero at the end. Even in death, he remains the show’s most compelling character.
This is not a true-crime story at all, then. It’s creative nonfiction in its most creative sense: a portrait of a serial liar that chooses, in the end, to lie with him.
ACS news 
