Tag: march 2018

Attitude.co.uk | Ricky Martin talks marriage, American Crime Story and facing up to his sexuality

He might be winning plaudits for his role as Gianni Versace’s former partner Antonio D’Amico in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, but for Ricky Martin, every part on Ryan Murphy’s hit drama series feels personal.

In a world-exclusive interview in Attitude’s May Issue – available to download, in shops from Thursday (March 29) and with a second special cover featuring Kylie Minogue – the Puerto Rican actor and pop icon admits the story of a globally-renowned star living his life secrecy hit seriously close to home.

Ricky, who ended years of speculation about his sexuality when he came out as gay in 2010, admits he recognised from personal experience the oppressive atmosphere of homophobia that bubbles not far beneath the surface of American Crime Story: Versace.

“The level of injustice that we as a community were dealing with back then was heavy. I played every role before I even started working on this project,” the 46-year-old ‘Livin’ Las Vida Loca’ singer says.

“I was a closeted gay man who was making my partners hide. I had relationships with other men who were in the closet and I had other relationships with men who were not in the closet but because of me went back into the closet.

"And so I’m re-living everything that I did.”

Martin, who is father to 9-year-old twins Matteo and Valentino and married his partner, Swedish artist Jwan Yosef, in a secret ceremony last year, goes on to reveal tat it wasn’t just his romantic relationships which suffered because of his struffle to accept his sexuality.

“I submitted myself to my career completely. I didn’t open doors to new relationships, and I’m not talking about romantic relationships, I’m talking about any relationship, because I didn’t want people to know me too much,” he explains.

“I wouldn’t even sit down and have a cool relationship with amazing producers or great film directors because I was afraid that if they spent more than two hours sitting with me they would know my nature.

"I wasted so much energy trying to manipulate my sexuality.”

Attitude.co.uk | Ricky Martin talks marriage, American Crime Story and facing up to his sexuality

Assassination of Gianni Versace: Darren Criss drama sparks meltdown with horrific twist

The series, currently airing on BBC Two, has had viewers gripped for five episodes but tonight it seemed some struggled to watch the harrowing scenes.

Fans will remember that last week’s instalment saw psychopath Andrew (played by Darren Criss) kill both Jeffrey (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern).

But tonight’s episode drew everything together with the backstory on Jeff and his tough time suffering as a gay man in the US Navy.

What’s more, the story is all the more heartbreaking because Andrew hadn’t acted on his murderous tendencies until he reached the end of his tether with his first love.

Yet what really shocked viewers was the tragic truth of Jeff’s treatment in the military.

Hiding his own sexuality, Jeff was forced to witness another gay colleague get badly beaten but he managed to save him just in time.

It meant that Jeff was outed however, and as his own pain became too hard to deal with, the character tried to commit suicide.

Unable to go through with it, it appeared that Andrew was his saviour when they met in a local gay bar.

After striking up a conversation, Andrew helped Jeff through his struggles in the Navy but he couldn’t have been prepared for what was to come from their new friendship.

Viewers were more concerned with the difficult scenes in tonight’s episode, as some claimed they were too much to watch.

Taking to Twitter, fans came together to share their feelings.

One person wrote: “This behaviour was only 23 years ago. Dear god. x #ACSVersace.”

“Oh s**t no no no no #ACSVersace,” another shocked fan said.

A third agreed: “This is so awful and heartbreaking #ACSVersace.”

While a fourth shared: “I can’t watch! All this violence and murder and for some reason him cutting his tattoo off is a step too far for me #TheAssassinationOfGianniVersace #ACSVersace.”

Fans continued to lament over the character’s heart-wrenching story, as one said: “Jeff’s story is honestly heartbreaking and he deserved better from life. #ACSVersace.”

“Poor Jeff. Poor anyone being treated like this #ACSVersace,” another upset fan wrote.

Meanwhile viewers continued to praise the show’s writers as one person added: “American Crime Story is absolutely brilliant. Oh and @FinnWittrock is amazing #ACSVersace.”

Assassination of Gianni Versace: Darren Criss drama sparks meltdown with horrific twist

Amanda Krieg Thomas

Who are the main musical artists you listened to during your formative years? What music tastes have you developed most recently on the job?

[…] Now, I try to be aware of as wide a spectrum of music as possible. I work on many shows set in specific time periods, such as Pose, The Americans, and American Crime Story or that use music from all over the map like Claws, so I’m constantly going down rabbit holes of different times, locations, and genres. Everything from 1970’s Chilean music to late 1980’s house music or early 1980’s dark wave. The research is half the fun. Conversely, shows like Claws, 9-1-1, and the forthcoming series, Reverie on NBC use a good amount of contemporary music, so I’m always keeping my ear out for new music that fits the sound of those. More often than not, my music tastes wind up being shaped by whatever shows I’m listening for at the moment. I guess maybe I’m a “method" music supervisor?

American Crime Story: Versace focuses on the tragic assassination of the iconic Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace. The show features a scintillating blend of ornate classical music, late 80’s/early 90’s nightclub favorites by Lisa Stansfield and La Bouche, and a dash of jazz. What was the inspiration behind these selections and was it intentional for the music to play such a dominant and telling role in the storytelling?

Ryan Murphy is a huge music fan so music is important to the storytelling in all of his shows. The overall sound of the show is truly his vision and from there, all of us – producers, editors, etc. – collaborate to serve that. In the case of Versace, there were two key tenets that guided the process.

First, on all of the period set shows, authenticity is extremely important. If a scene is set in Fall 1992, we take care not to use songs released after that point. For The People vs. O.J. Simpson, it was very focused on events within a few year span. This season, we are jumping around in time. We travel to 1987 and 1990, 1997 and 1992 (and some years in between). To some degree, we had to show that in the song selections.

Equally, if not more importantly, this season is much more of a “deep dive” into character than the O.J. season. Ryan, along with executive producer, Alexis Martin Woodall sought to approach the music through the lens of Andrew Cunanan, the killer, and his experience of life. Where would go and what music would he be exposed to? What would have been listening to as a child? We thought about what was playing in clubs at that time. We wanted to be accurate as to what was popular back then and put people in the shoes of a younger gay man in California. The fact that most of the songs are highly recognizable also provides a point of connection with the character – a position you may not want to find yourself in with a serial killer. The buoyant “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey plays as Andrew dances while a wealthy older man is in bed nearly suffocating.

In a cameo, Aimee Mann performs “Drive” by The Cars. It was for a moment where David Madson, who we know gets murdered shortly thereafter, decides not to escape in order to comfort a crying Andrew. Even the songs in the clubs like “Be My Lover” by La Bouche or “A Little Bit of Ecstasy” by Jocelyn Enriquez were selected with Andrew’s psyche in mind. Every moment of, “Oh, I love that song!” is immediately followed by, “Oh man, am I relating to this guy?” That’s one of the main questions the show asks: What role did we as a society play in allowing this bright young man with so much potential to murder an icon?

From the start of your career in music supervision until now, what has been your most challenging and game-changing experience working on a film or television show?

[… ]The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story was also a game changer for me. The season was starting as PJ was transitioning into Warner Bros. Records and right off the bat, there were on camera performances. The Aimee Mann appearance mentioned earlier in episode four. Then there was an on-camera polka band in episode five and of course, tons of needle drops in all the episodes. In an apprenticeship industry, there really comes a time to spread your wings. I remember P.J. telling me, “This is what needs to happen. This is your time to level up.” He was 100% right.

Amanda Krieg Thomas

Critic’s Notebook: The Blinding Whiteness of Nostalgia TV

But for me, there’s a lot more exciting programming where nostalgia is kept at arm’s reach. In fact, a slew of contemporary series set in the ‘90s — only one of which, incidentally, features a white male protagonist — have proved much better at scratching that scrunchies-and-flannel itch while recalling the Clinton era for what it was. Netflix’s teen dramedy Everything Sucks! initially feels like a ride in a time machine — no other show captures the clothes and lingo of the ’90s so precisely — but the show features a budding black filmmaker and a teenage lesbian as its dual protagonists. That’s also true of the most recent season of American Crime Story, which explores in part the anti-gay sentiment that enabled Gianni Versace killer Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree. The previous season of ACS, The People v. O.J. Simpson, similarly used hindsight to illuminate how race and gender dynamics warped “the trial of the century.” And the 2015 HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, about an anti-desegregation effort in Yonkers and set between 1987 and 1994, evinces no nostalgia at all, and is all the more powerful for its firm unsentimentality.

Critic’s Notebook: The Blinding Whiteness of Nostalgia TV

Paul Daugherty column: Xavier Nation, say hello to Travis Steele … or Porter Moser?

BECAUSE TV IS MY LIFE … Finished The Assassination of Gianni Versace last night. I went into it thinking it’d be campy and stupid, left it believing it was 10 hours of toob time well spent. The series was more about Versace’s killer, the deadly narcissistic poseur Andrew Cunanan, than about Versace. Which was good, because Cunanan was a wickedly interesting dude.

Paul Daugherty column: Xavier Nation, say hello to Travis Steele … or Porter Moser?

Lee Suckling: Why 2018 is the year of the narcissist

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was the son of a river god who fell in love with his own reflection. Upon realising he couldn’t stop looking at the image of his own beauty, he lost the will to live – and stared at it until death.

I’ve been thinking about narcissism a lot while watching the deeply unsettling American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. The serial killer responsible for Versace’s murder, Andrew Cunanan, was – like Narcissus himself – the epitome of conceited.

But I’m less interested in this guy’s personality than how his brand of narcissism pervades current-day society.

In the book in which ACS: Versace was based on, author Maureen Orth believes that Cunanan exhibited the traits found in classic narcissists. “In effect, they cannot distinguish an image of who they imagine themselves to be and an image of who they really are…” she writes, quoting a psychiatrist. “Narcissists do not function in terms of actual self-image because it is unacceptable to them.”

That sounds all-too-much like everybody in 2018, not just an infamous serial killer from the 1990s.

I’ve begun to wonder how we all became so obsessed with our own image, and why actual self-image has become unacceptable to us. How is it that modern society has become so ashamed of reality that narcissistic fantasy has become the new norm?

We don’t shun narcissists anymore for puffing up their chests more than they should; we encourage them through social media.

The crucial societal change I think we’ve seen in recent years is how nobody gets accused of boasting anymore. I’ve always been a critic of Tall Poppy Syndrome yet what’s happened the world over is the other extreme. Rather than cut people down, we’ve started to let them grow higher than they ever should have.

I don’t post to Instagram myself because I don’t really like sharing personal photos – if you’re a reader of my columns, you’ll know I share enough about my own life as it is – but I have an account.

I’ve been shocked to learn that some of the people I see there (often my actual real-life friends or acquaintances) have followers above the 20,000-30,000 range.

These are software developers and engineers and lawyers from the public sector. People whose physical self-image should be completely irrelevant to their identity.

I look at their social media pages and ask myself how they have amassed such followers, and I’ve only one theory. Narcissism begets narcissism. Narcissists are caught in a vicious selfie-led cycle of upholding your own self-beauty whilst consuming and commenting on the beauty of others.

Such efforts have been packaged as “confidence”, though, not narcissism. This is why we applaud it. Confidence has positive connotations and when we see somebody showing us their “best self”; whether it’s our best friend or a celebrity model, we call them brave. We tell them how strong they are for rising up against the haters.

That latter part isn’t a bad thing – I think the most important thing in a culture of 21st Century, always-on connectivity is being unaffected by one’s cynics. Yet my issue is that the way society encourages rising up is with physical beauty. It’s a bit like that old saying when somebody goes through a relationship break-up: “the best revenge is looking hot”.

Here, we don’t get told that beauty is for the few, we’re told it’s accessible to the many. This is what’s driving our current brand of narcissism. It’s not acceptable to be ugly, or even average. Everybody can improve their own self-image, if not in real life than at least through a selfie lens.

Beauty is less about admiration and more about envy. We all want to be beautiful because everybody else seems to be beautiful. The result here cannot be anything but unachievable expectations and disappointment – the genetic gods simply weren’t that frivolous when it came to physicality.

I won’t kid myself – or you – I care about my physical appearance. Yet I put all my effort and pride into how I present myself in real life. I don’t see the point in creating photographs that make you look better than you really do, only to disappoint when seen in person.

Everyone has heard of Tinder date disasters where the troglodyte at the restaurant is not the babe they sold themselves as.

I’d rather look haggard on a 5.8-inch screen and positively glowing in the flesh. I take pride in looking presentable, but I’m able to distinguish what I have with what I don’t.

I only hope that this is enough to prevent me from falling into Narcissus’s ever-so-easy mythological trap.

Lee Suckling: Why 2018 is the year of the narcissist