Tag: may 2018

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Darren Criss on mastering the ‘emotional Tetris’ of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Darren Criss chats with Gold Derby editor Joyce Eng about mastering the ‘emotional Tetris’ of ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace.’ He doesn’t want to humblebrag, but he had a very memorable encounter at the Met Gala earlier this month. He was approached by someone who had just seen his performance as serial killer Andrew Cunanan – and who had no idea of his song-and-dance history as Blaine Anderson on “Glee.”

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

The 12 Best Woke TV Shows Right Now

American Crime Story

Network: FX

Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith had a tough act to follow with the second season of American Crime Story. Veteran biopic writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, had already delivered one of the best seasons of television of all time with their work on The People Vs. OJ Simpson which had been released during the run-up to the election, and when the realities of race and gender in America were a daily conversation.

While the second season of the show didn’t receive the same universal critical acclaim or ratings buzz that the show saw in season one, it was no less affecting as a cultural critique.

If season one, more or less, was about race and gender, season two, more or less, was about the LGBTQ experience and the different roads that Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan, Jeff Trail, and Lee Miglin were forced to take.

By telling all of these different stories, Murphy and Smith ask us to reflect on the gay experience in America, both in terms of how far we’ve come, and in terms of how far we still have to go.

The 12 Best Woke TV Shows Right Now

What’s on TV: American Crime Story, Save Me and more

AMERICAN CRIME STORY: ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE

(Showcase on Foxtel — Thursday, May 24 at 8.30pm; also on iTunes)

After the runaway success of People vs OJ Simpson, Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story series is back with an exceedingly watchable second instalment, this time tackling the murder of designer Gianni Versace.

Gunned down in front of his Miami mansion by a serial killer, the death shocked the world and celebrities including Elton John and Princess Diana attended his funeral in 1997.

But the story of his killer, Andrew Cunanan, is lesser known and that’s what this series is really about. While the marketing has been trumpeting its A-list cast — Penélope Cruz, Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin — most of the show’s nine episodes are focused on Cunanan, played here with incredible depth by Glee star and Murphy alum Darren Criss.

Cunanan, an openly gay man, had already murdered four people by the time he stood outside Versace’s home. A pathological liar with delusions of grandeur, Cunanan’s emotionally tortured soul was emblematic of the “national crime” Murphy captured in the DNA of this series: Shame.

Played out in reverse linearity, the show peels back the layers of Cunanan’s actions and twisted psychology before bringing it back to the climax — it’s an incredibly effective exercise in empathy. It also happens to be some of the most phenomenal TV you’ll see this year. Don’t miss it.

What’s on TV: American Crime Story, Save Me and more

My Friend Dahmer: is it time to stop glamorising the serial killer?

My Friend Dahmer is about as unglamorous a serial-killer movie as you could hope for: it doesn’t even feature any murders (not of humans, at least). Instead, it lays out the warning signs that all was not right with the teenage Jeffrey Dahmer: his unstable parents, his repressed sexuality, his high-school victimisation, his unwholesome interest in anatomy.

And yet, by its very existence, the movie can’t help but glamorise its subject, who went on to variously rape, murder, dismember, violate and cannibalise his 17 male victims. It doesn’t matter if you portray them as damaged souls or psychopaths; you’re still adding to the legend. Faced with this realisation, much of our current serial-killer fare has cast realism aside to embrace the glamour. That was certainly true of Ryan Murphy’s miniseries The Assassination of Gianni Versace, whose glitzy Miami settings, A-list cast and 90s couture made for a more appealing watch than such grubby classics as, say, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Meanwhile, Zac Efron is set to play Ted Bundy in a big-screen thriller that suggests that, with the right breaks, Bundy could have had a fruitful career as a lifeguard. And who knows what Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming Manson flick has in store? He’s described it as “probably the closest to Pulp Fiction that I have done”.

Post-Hannibal Lecter, we prefer our killers cultured, intelligent and presentable, like Dexter, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman or Kevin Spacey in Seven. That dangerous glamour also rubs off on the actors. It never looks bad to have a serial-killer role on your CV, especially if all that’s on it so far are wholesome teen roles. That was the case with Ross Lynch, AKA Young Jeffrey Dahmer, who’s been largely a Disney kid up to now. Versace’s murderer Andrew Cunanan was played by Darren Criss, previously best known for Glee, just as Efron was once indelibly associated with High School Musical.

Which brings us to the best current take on serial killers: David Fincher’s Netflix series Mindhunter, detailing the early history of FBI psychological profiling. Our wide-eyed fed hero, Holden (Jonathan Groff, another Glee graduate), is almost starstruck by the killers he interviews, including Ed Kemper and Richard Speck. He considers Manson the ultimate challenge. But unlike previous serial-killer thrillers, including Fincher’s own Seven and Zodiac, Mindhunter examines the troubling mix of awe and disgust with which we regard these murderers. In the final episode, Holden visits Kemper in hospital. “Why are you here, Holden?” Kemper asks. “I don’t know,” Holden replies. Kemper then hugs him, as he finally realises how totally messed up things have become. We’re right there with him.

My Friend Dahmer: is it time to stop glamorising the serial killer?