giorgioarmani: Model @sarasampaio, Alessandra Ambrosio @CamillaBelle @RickyMartin247 @DarrenCriss and Colin Farrell at the #GiorgioArmani event to support the Shape Of Water film on the eve of @TheAcademy Awards #Oscars2018
Ever since I saw the publicity stills for American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, my heart has been in my mouth. It wasn’t just the transformation of the gorgeous Penelope Cruz into the curious plastic blowfish that is Donatella Versace, snapped snout to dolphin snout with two oiled Versace codpieces. Or the uncanny resemblance of Edgar Ramirez to Versace himself, a fashion designer who always felt closer to a mid-level football manager than anyone would have liked. It was because this was the best I believed television could ever be: epic, ambitious, lavish, dark and slow.
I don’t mind admitting that a full nine episodes of beautifully directed zebra print is unlikely to get a bad review from me. Each frame is a tiny crime scene in itself: day diamonds, tight shorts, walnut-lined lavs, “crisis” leather wear and — worst of all — sunglasses at night.
There’s Ricky Martin, brilliantly cast as Versace’s boyfriend, dressed, ostensibly, in the same outfit as the staff. In one long opening shot in the first episode, Versace slips out of bed, eases out of his silky pink dressing gown, goes out to pick up some magazines, only to return to the steps of the mansion, where he’s shot dead. All I could think was: imagine dying in those hideous chino shorts.
As it is, neither Versace nor Donatella is anything to write home about. Ramirez is earnest, crooning, an extra from a terrible Californian wine advertisement. He confirms my long-held suspicion that fashion designers should never, ever say anything. (“My hope is that people will get to know me by wearing my clothes,” he lisps.) Frankly, it’s a relief when he’s shot.
And oh, darling Pene. You’d have thought that, not being able to do an English accent, let alone an Italian one, she might have refused wardrobe’s offer of a dental prosthetic to make her lips look bigger. But no. As Donatella might herself say: more eez more. Cruz, mouth duly stuffed, is incomprehensible. Every single word is swallowed by her fish lips.
By far the most interesting character is Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). It says everything about the tone of American Crime Story that a half-Filipino, half-Sicilian hustler-drifter who killed five men and spent eight days on the run before committing suicide is the hero of the piece. He’s 1990s handsome, impossibly characterless, like JFK Jr or Roger Federer. Arriving in South Beach, he is so wholesome and Seinfeldy, he looks as if he might poo — sorry, poop — marshmallows.
Criss, a former star of — joy — Glee, moves effortlessly from lost little rich boy to “predatory escort”. He describes looks from fashion shows with the same intensity as Patrick “American Psycho” Bateman talking music. He has the otterish sheen of a lifestyle criminal.
The series is from the same people who did The People v OJ Simpson, another sprawling autopsy from the 1990s, the decade crime stopped being crime and became — how shall I put it? — more an opt-in/opt-out entertainment choice. Both series unravel the events in satisfying detail, although you don’t learn anything you wouldn’t be able to pick up from US Weekly.
What you do learn is that America has a unique relationship with wrongdoing, in which it’s never easy to tell whether the real criminals are the murderers, the police or us. Towards the end of the first episode, a man is shown touting the only Polaroid of the bleeding designer for $30,000. American Crime Story says more about our consumption of crime than it does about anything else.
I was interested to read that Cunanan had copies of several books in the fleapit hotel where he planned his attacks. One of these books was, and — deep breath, because links as golden as this don’t present themselves every week — Kenneth Clark’s The Romantic Rebellion, a large picture book about 13 Romantic artists.
It was one of the most talked about series of last year – and now the follow up to Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The People v. OJ is here.
The true crime anthology has returned to the small screen with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
The nine-episode second season is based on the novel Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History by Maureen Orth.
And, more than a month after it began in North America, the series kicked off this week on the BBC Two.
This time, the focus is on the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss).
The all-star cast is rounded out with Penélope Cruz playing the fiercely protective Donatella Versace and Ricky Marin playing Gianni’s partner, Antonio D’Amico.
So, as the series continues, here are four reasons to watch American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
Darren Criss
While the show may be about Gianni Versace in name, the bulk of the season ends up following Criss’ Andrew Cunanan, focusing on everything from early life to his previous murderers – including how he managed to dodge the authorities for months.
And the Glee star definitely delivers.
In a performance that is equal parts American Psycho and American Horror Story, the 31-year-old manages to show how Cunanan faked his way through life, spinning some fairly impressive lies about his past, while still hinting at the loneliness underneath the facade.
The fashion
It wouldn’t be a show about Versace without at least some out-of-this world fashion. Among them? Some of the pieces from his final fashion show.
The family reportedly did not lend the show any of the vintage pieces during the filming process, branding the series a “work of fiction”.
But the costume department managed to re-create eight looks from Atelier Versace’s fall 1997 show in Paris – each more beautiful than the last.
The (off the show) drama
Before the series even began in North America, the Assassination of Gianni Versace was already found itself caught up in controversy.
The Versace family claimed that the show is “a work of fiction”, and the book that it is based on “is full of gossip and speculation”.
But FX, the channel airing the programme, insisted that they would “stand by the meticulous reporting of Ms. Orth.”
It leaves you with more questions than answers
We get the ‘what happened’ fairly early on in the series (the assassination of Versace on the steps of his Miami mansion), but a huge part of American Crime Story’s second season is also all about the ‘why’.
The show bounces through different years on the timeline, chronicling everything from the aftermath of Versace’s death to the lives of each of Cunanan’s other victims.
And, at least halfway through the season, viewers are left with more questions than they had when they began – and not quite enough answers.
Labels are the most powerful force in fashion. Gianni Versace, the innovative Italian designer who was gunned down outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, built one of the industry’s most evocative brands, becoming almost as famous as the Hollywood princesses and real-life royals who wore his frocks. His celebrity made him a vast fortune, but also a big target.
Versace’s killer was Andrew Cunanan, a fame-hungry fantasist and predatory gigolo with a drug habit. Cunanan had sex with men — sometimes for money, sometimes for pleasure — but hated being categorised as gay. Convinced of his creative genius, he resented his anonymity. When the world failed to reward his self-proclaimed brilliance with wealth and eminence, he opted to make a name for himself by shooting a star. Labels can also be a powerful force outside fashion.
Closeted homosexuality and dyed-in-the-wool homophobia are the central wardrobe malfunctions explored by The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the second tale from Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story.
Like its predecessor, The People v OJ Simpson, the story is presented as a lightning flash over a darkened landscape, illuminating otherwise hidden features of the culture. On this score, however, the Versace show is disappointing. Racial politics, the trademark of the Simpson trial, is suitable for examination from multiple perspectives. The courtroom procedural format also provides inherent structure. But here, storyline and thematic concerns are more splintered. The giddy whirl of the Miami fashion scene is not a rich environment for thought-provoking drama, and many of the scenes are padded out with campy comedic knockabout.
Despite its title, the show is more about the assassin than the assassinated. Cunanan (played with convincing shiftiness by Darren Criss) had already slain four men before he set his gunsights on Versace. He was on the FBI’s most-wanted list — but a spree killer merely bumping off gay people was evidently a low priority for law enforcement.
Having shot the designer, Cunanan evaded capture for eight days, eventually killing himself. The derring-do of his cop evasion is chronicled at length, while his earlier life is recounted through flashbacks. It’s a framing of the story, with Cunanan centre stage, that glorifies the killer, lavishing him with the attention he craved.
Stealing the show: Darren Criss dazzles as the villain in The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Edgar Ramirez brings subtlety to his performance as Versace, but the character is little more than a collection of histrionic fashionista tics. There are moments when Versace is depicted as a rare voice of reason amid the luvvie babble and whinnying clothes horses. He’s aghast at the skeletal skinniness of supermodels, bored by the solipsism of his socialite fans. Mostly, he’s a whimpering diva, in thrall to delusions of grandeur about the artistic and social importance of his overpriced schmutter.
There’s a similarly cartoonish quality about all of the protagonists in the Versace universe. Penelope Cruz hams it up as an operatically heartbroken Donatella, the ball-busting sister who takes over the family business and narrative. Ricky Martin does fine lip-quivering as Antonio, Versace’s long-term boyfriend. Entertaining though these turns are, they seem to belong to a corny daytime soap rather than the gritty sociopolitical drama to which the series aspires.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is at its best when it steers clear of the fashion set altogether. The stories of the men Cunanan killed before Versace are told in standalone episodes, offering sharp insight into the complexities of gay life in the 1990s — an era when tolerance of “alternative lifestyles” was preached more often than practised.
Cunanan was a product of social repression and a parasite who fed off it. Ashamed of his sexuality, he preyed on the shame of other gay men. His primary targets for blackmail were older guys, preferably with wives, families and lots to lose. Versace’s name is the VIP tag that helped get this series made, but these quieter, less celebrated tragedies are at its heart. Clever use of a designer label.
For the first time in a month’s worth of episodes about his victims, American Crime Story returns to an Andrew-centric episode. We’re going further back into the narrative, to the events and actions that led to his string of murders. And as it has been teased all throughout the series, all it takes for a delusional man whose entire identity is built on a bubble of lies to break down, is to pop that bubble…
Episode 6: “Descent” The sixth episode of the series takes place in 1996, one year before the murders. Andrew is living in San Diego in the mansion of gay millionaire Norman Blachford, under the pretenses of being his personal interior designer. Pretenses is all Andrew lives off of; he’s mooching off everything he can from the poor man, who only wants company.
Andrew throws a birthday party for himself, in house that he doesn’t own, with money that is not his, surrounded by people that don’t know him. And yet somehow this is the life that he always envisioned for himself. It’s a game of perception that he needs to keep playing in order to keep the fantasy alive.
Annaleigh Ashford, bubbly and buoyant as ever, returns as Andrew’s best friend Elizabeth, who does not believe that Andrew is living a genuine life with Norman. But he tells her that he won’t stay there for long. He’s now chasing after David (Cody Fern – it still hurts every time to seem him alive and well), a boy he met in San Francisco that now owns his heart. He will be attending the party, and Andrew wants to show him that he is a loved person. As we see through the episode, this is something Andrew desperately wants to believe in, too.
Jeff Trail seems to be his only genuine friend. They are still close after the initial bar encounter we saw last episode. Jeff comes to Andrew’s party, with real feelings of friendship and gratitude that Andrew brushes away in lieu of putting on a charade for David. He implores Jeff to pretend to have a life that goes more with what Andrew has created for his. Everyone around him needs to be part of his games in order for them to work.
Jeff and David meet in this party. Lee Miglin is also there. They all take a picture together. It has to be a creative decision to have all (or at least sixty percent) of Andrew’s victims gathered in the same place, appearing in the same picture. But it translates the theme of Andrew destroying those around him into visual terms.
But, as it has always been with Andrew, he doesn’t have enough. He needs more from Norman; a bigger allowance, first class flights, being named his sole heir. You know, reasonable petitions. And then Norman bursts the first of Andrew’s bubble, and reveals him he has had him investigated. All the stories he has told about himself are false. He’s still willing to keep Andrew around, as long as he makes himself useful. But Andrew doesn’t want to be useful. He doesn’t want to be ordinary. So he decides to leave Norman. Wanting more is slowly destroying him.
Living off the last credit he has left, Andrew invites David to LA under work pretenses. He woos him with fancy hotels, and expensive dinners, and lush gifts. But David cannot take this any longer, and makes him clear that he is not Andrew’s guy; never will be. In his last attempt to connect with him, he tries to ask about his past and his family, but Andrew won’t let go of the invented narratives he tells himself. So David leaves him.
And, as an incredibly aggressive way of asserting his territory with Jeff, Andrew sends a postcard to Jeff’s father, outing him to his family. Jeff confronts him and tells him he is leaving for a job in Minneapolis; the city where David lives. He assures him the two have nothing to do with each other, but Andrew doesn’t buy him. And just like that, Andrew has lost all the people he cared about, or that cared about him. So, as one does, he seeks refuge in a crystal meth from a pyromaniac at a local dive bar.
In one of his highs, we get the only Versace appearance of the episode in the form of a hallucination, a way for Andrew to confront this other person who embodies all of his ideals: the man who has everything he wished and fought for. They are the same person, only Versace got lucky. There is bitterness and deep resentment in Andrew, and the psychotic gears start to turn again.
Andrew hits rock bottom (in this episode, at least, not in his life), when he tries to break into Norman’s home so he can get money to pay for his drugs. Norman calls the cops on him. And then we get a final sequence where, having been stripped of everything, Andrew goes to visit his mother.
This is his real mother, not the thousand different women he has invented to strangers at parties. And we confirm what has been always strongly suggested but never confirmed until now. Andrew came from nothing. He had very humble beginnings, and wishing for more is something practically ingrained in the family emblem. “I am unhappy” he mutters to his mother, a cry for help that does deeply unheard. No one is going to help him anymore.
“Descent” was good in illuminating some aspects of Andrew’s character that has been hinted at before, but never expressly addressed; mainly the fabrications that he tells others (and, as it turns out, himself) in order to keep going. The further we go back into the narrative, the more human the characterization of Andrew is becoming, which is a weirdly amoral line to walk when depicting someone that killed five people.
I don’t know how farther back we will go in future episodes, or when we will pick up the murder narrative. The Versace part of the story is as behind from us as it can be, and the show has now made it explicitly clear that it is not about them, or that particular story, at all. I just hope in the last leg of the season we can start moving forward instead of keep looking back. Just like Andrew, if you look too far back, it’s hard to come back from that.
DarrenCriss: While we didn’t spend a lot of time together at work, we certainly made up for it off-duty. Lotta love and laughs with my new brutha @edgarramirez25
Some assassinations make household names of their gunmen. Kill a president, say, and your name will likely go down in history. Putting bullets in Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy gave John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald eternal infamy, of course. But murder one of the world’s most famous people that doesn’t happen to be in high office and the killer’s not guaranteed the personal interest one might expect.
Who shot Martin Luther King, for instance? Do you know? We had to look it up – it was a man called James Earl Ray. And Ghandi? Nathuram Godse, whoever he is. But just because shooting big names dead doesn’t ensure the world knows your name, that doesn’t mean your story isn’t one worth knowing.
And that’s the premise behind The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the follow up to the critically and publicly-lauded crime drama series of 2016, The People Vs O J Simpson.
Both TV shows hit our screens under the wider banner of American Crime Story, the true crime sister to the increasingly bizarre (and increasingly bad) anthology series, American Horror Story. The creative force behind both Horror and Crime is Ryan Murphy, the showrunner responsible for other wildly successful televisual offerings such as Nip/Tuck and Glee. And, for this maiden episode of Versace, Murphy is behind the camera as well.
We begin on Miami Beach, Florida. It’s the summer of 1997 and an exceptionally rich and flamboyant man wakes up in an opulent beachside mansion, eats breakfast, gets dressed, pops out for a quick walk, returns home and has his brains blown out all over his front step. That man is Gianni Versace, the best-known and most successful fashion designer on Earth.
The man left holding the smoking gun? Andrew Cunahan. See? We told you assassinating famous people doesn’t guarantee fame. That said, by the end of this nine-part FX series, currently running on Wednesday nights on BBC 2, most of us will be pretty well versed in exactly who Andrew Cunahan was.
In fact, we’re going to be very well versed indeed. Only The Assassination of Gianni Versace may feature the Italian designer’s name rather prominently in its title, but this is firmly a series about his murderer and what drove him to gun down Versace in cold blood.
Our assassin, we learn in flashbacks, is less a professional hitman type than an obsessive Tom Ripley-esque character. A pathological liar with compulsive tendencies and a penchant for manipulation and social ascension, Cunahan was, in reality, just a low-level meth dealer and con artist. Until something switched in him and he decided to go on a killing spree that included killing the fashion world’s favourite designer.
Cunahan is played here by Darren Criss, a mostly theatre actor who you may or may not remember as Blaine Anderson in Glee. And, just one episode in, it’s fair to say already that Criss is outstanding in the role. Equally as impressive is the man behind Cunahan’s victim, Zero Dark Thirty and Che actor, Édgar Ramírez. The likeness between Ramírez and Versace is nothing short of incredible. Seriously. It’s actually quite unnerving at times.
The principal cast is filled out by two slightly more famous names. Penélope Cruz nails the accent as Versace’s sister Donatella and Ricky Martin nails the tight white tennis shorts as Versace’s live-in boyfriend, Antonio D’Amico.
The ‘La Vida Loca’ star’s tighty whities and the gaudy golden house the murder takes place outside of are not the only camp things in this opening fifty minutes. There are affected and theatrical elements to almost every scene, as you might expect and even demand from the subject matter and from the man behind Glee. But don’t let the highly camp atmosphere distract you – this is a twisted tale and, as the series evolves, we’re certain to see even more of the crazed psyche and violent mindset of Cunahan.
The series is based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in US History, and points out in the closing credits of episode 1 that while what we’re seeing is very much a true story, some elements are – and will be – dramatised for effect. This is no documentary, but – we’re led to believe – the narrative doesn’t veer greatly from the truth.
There’s a fair amount of exposition in this first outing, as is somewhat required to flesh out some of the background to the story. It’s not always the most subtle, but nor is it hugely clunky or jarring. Subtlety isn’t really the point here, anyway. This was – and remains – a truly sensational story about an assassination that, if the show proves a hit, might just be about to make a certain Andrew Cunahan closer to a household name than ever before.
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