Tag: recap

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 2: The Great Creator

Like the 2001 film “Memento,” the second season of “American Crime Story” unfolds in reverse chronological order: Each episode recounts events preceding those of the episode before.

So here we are in Episode 2, just before the murderous rampage of Andrew Cunanan reaches its climax. We learn of his sadism: A chilling bedroom scene involving duct tape, scissors and a would-be sugar daddy contains a sublime mix of comedy and terror. We learn of his lies: He tells absurd yarns more easily and smoothly than most people tell the truth. We learn of his jealousies: He seems more interested in the accomplishments of the men he stalks than in notching any accomplishments of his own.

What we have yet to learn is what this all adds up to — what makes Cunanan distinctive from any other serial killer, other than his lively intelligence and large vocabulary — or the answer to, in my view, the crucial question: Did Cunanan’s experience as a gay man in the ’80s and ’90s inform his violent psychopathy? And if so, why and how?

Perhaps I’m too interested in causation — I’m a newsman, keep in mind — but isn’t that what we want to know? If sexuality winds up being to “Versace” what race was to “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the first season of “American Crime Story,” we will need a framework for understanding its role in the crime. There are still seven episodes to go, so I’m hoping that what right now are tantalizing but scattered hints cohere into a whole.

To its credit, the episode does make clear that law enforcement was reticent, if not downright homophobic, about using the gay community to find Cunanan, who was wanted for four killings before he murdered Versace. An F.B.I. agent insists that their target is an expert predator targeting wealthier, closeted older gay men and unlikely to frequent clubs. Lori Wieder (Dascha Polanco), a Miami Beach police detective, urges investigators to canvas the South Beach clubs with fliers and pleas for the public’s help, but she is overruled.

Cunanan emerges as a truly terrifying figure in this episode, thanks to the strong performance by Darren Criss (“Glee”), whose emotional range is put to effective use. He steals license plates in a Walmart parking lot and breaks into a deranged smile when a little girl stares at him in suspicion. He switches the radio station when a newscaster says he is wanted for the murder of Lee Miglin — a victim we haven’t yet met — and manically sings along to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria.” He checks into a seedy South Beach hotel and smooth-talks the receptionist. Scoping out the Versace mansion, he comes face to face with a life-size medallion of Medusa, the mythical Gorgon whose image Versace adopted as a logo, on the front gate. It’s an even match; Cunanan is scary as hell.

I’m struck by his verbosity — has any serial killer ever had so much to say? His monologues reflect an eye for detail and, of course, a penchant for self-promotion, even delusion.

“I need to make my way in the world,” he tells the hotel receptionist, explaining his interest in being mentored by the Italian designer. “I think Mr. Versace will find my conversation very excellent. I would say, ‘Sir, nothing is more inspiring to me than that one outfit that Carla Bruni wore. It was a skirt of crinoline, like a giant floral handkerchief fastened with a gold belt and daringly mismatched with a denim shirt.’”

He lies with abandon, not caring whether his fabrications are even remotely plausible. Befriending a drifter — Ron (Max Greenfield), a fellow gay man who is hanging out at the hotel — Cunanan discusses with him the loved ones they’ve lost to AIDS and other tragedies. Even the most personal statements seem hard to believe, as when he insists that he “lost the best friend and the love of my life” — both that very year.

He tells Ron that he and Versace met in San Francisco and that the two were once an item and that Versace had proposed — almost certainly a lie. He gushes about Versace’s talent: “The man invented his own fabrics. When they told him what he wanted wasn’t possible, he just created it himself.”

He adds: “I don’t see something nice. I see the man behind it. A great creator. A man I could have been.”

Ron asks: “Or been with?”

Later, as if to complete the occupational tour d’horizon we’ve been on, he tells a young man named Brad (what else?) at a noisy gay dance club that he’s a serial killer, the only definite truth he’s uttered thus far.

When Brad looks confused, Cunanan spins again, in a monologue so wondrous it deserves reproduction:

This Whitmanesque survey of economic possibility took my breath away. What if this young, handsome, eloquent man had pursued dreams that didn’t involve duct tape and scissors? Such a pity.

The other story in this episode is of Versace’s final weeks, focused in particular on his relationships with his longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico, and his sister and muse, Donatella. Played by a sultry, terrific Penélope Cruz, she worries — unnecessarily we are told — that her brother’s brand needs refreshing, lest it be overtaken by new designers like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.

Of greater emotional consequence is Donatella’s stabilizing influence on her brother and on his partner, whom she scorns for not demonstrating greater fidelity or a willingness to start a family. Whether it’s because of her chiding or a premonition of imminent doom or simply the result of getting older, D’Amico relents. “I want to marry you,” he tells Versace. The designer is skeptical.

“You can say it in the morning,” he asks. “But can you say it in the evening?”

Earlier in the episode, the couple visit a hospital — Versace in the celebrity semi-disguise of a hoodie and sunglasses — where two AIDS patients, emaciated and deathly ill, can be seen. Lifesaving “cocktails” of antiretroviral therapies had become available, lifting the death sentence the epidemic had imposed on a generation of gay men. Versace, who takes a blood test, recalls that before Donatella was born, he lost an older sister, Tina, to peritonitis.

“Until that moment, I always believed that if you get sick you can also get better,” he says.

The episode doesn’t explicitly state that Versace was HIV-positive, as the journalist Maureen Orth contended in her book “Vulgar Favors,” on which this television series is loosely based. The implication is certainly strong. But from a dramatic perspective, it’s not important what his illness was — what matters is that the prospect of premature death hung over these men, who grappled with questions of loyalty, commitment and family, years before same-sex marriage seemed possible, much less became the law of the land. It’s poignant and well worth pondering how Versace’s genius and relationships might have evolved had his life not been cut short at age 50.

Fragments:

• Race has so far been a subsidiary theme, but for brief references to Cunanan’s Asian heritage. (His father was Filipino.) But there’s a telling moment when Cunanan is at a pizzeria and an employee, who has seen the most-wanted poster, goes to the back and dials 911. “Is he black or white?” the dispatcher asks the pizza worker, who is himself black and looks confused. “White guy — he killed four white guys,” the worker pleads. As if any greater urgency were needed.

• A post-mortem scene — in which Versace’s body is lovingly dressed by his sister before cremation — is arguably this episode’s most elegant. His ashes are scooped into an ornate metal box, which flies back to Italy with Donatella. Impeccably tasteful.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Episode 2: The Great Creator

American Crime Story begins to paint a portrait of a killer

“Manhunt” B-“

“Manhunt,” like the pilot episode, jumps back and forth in time and between characters, an approach that I’m still not sure totally works. Versace is still alive (save for a brief moment in the cold open that takes place after his death) and Andrew is on the run for a different murder: Lee Miglin. Yet “Manhunt” doesn’t, as I expected it to, then jump back to introduce us to Lee and everything that happened there. (That, presumably, will be in a later episode.) It just takes us to Andrew’s arrival in Miami.

What “Manhunt” does do quite successfully is plunge further into Andrew’s world, a blend of fact and fiction. It’s fascinating and disturbing (the best blend of Ryan Murphy’s strengths) the more we see how skilled Andrew is atlying, whether he’s breezing through a story about being a “fashion student” who wants to meet Versace or when he’s confidently telling new friend Ronnie all about how Versace proposed to Andrew. It didn’t work out, Andrew says with the casualness of a less-important conversation, but they’re still friends. His fictional relationship with Versace is so strong that Andrew becomes defensive, insisting that the more someone knows Versace, the more they’ll love his clothes. To Andrew, Versace is “a great creator—a man I could have been.” He doesn’t want to elaborate. (And that’s to say nothing of the mini-monologue Andrew gives a dancing partner at the end of the episode, able to confidently say he’s a banker, a spy, a propane salesman, etc. all in one breath.)

“Manhunt” also introduces one of the major real-life controversies surrounding The Assassination of Gianni Versace: the fashion designer’s health. In Vulgar Favors, author and Vanity Fair reporter Maureen Orth alleges that Gianni Versace was HIV-positive and that she was told this, on the record (some people also believe this is why Versace’s body was cremated and rushed out of the country so quickly). Versace’s family denies it but Orth still stands by it. Assassination includes this in the cold open which flashes back to a sick Versace, accompanied by Antonio, getting blood tests and treatment in a hospital. Perhaps to give themselves some leeway, the episode doesn’t say it’s specifically HIV (Donatella did say Versace beat cancer six months before his death) but it’s more than implied.

HIV was heavily looming over the culture at the time so it’s necessary here—Ronnie is HIV-positive, and explains how he once thought he had only one month to live—but whether or not Assassination needed to include it specifically with regard to Versace’s unconfirmed status is certainly another question, especially as it feels a bit shoehorned into the cold open. But it does work in the conversation between Ronnie and Andrew: Ronnie is immediately open and talks with an underlying sadness; Andrew lies about how he lost both the “love of my life” and his best friend to the disease, both in one year. There is nothing Andrew won’t lie about in order to fit in, or in order to capitalize on people’s emotions and sympathy to make sure they remain on his side. (The earlier scene where he’s practicing “I don’t want to be a pain” for something as simple as switching his hotel room is telling, too. He wants to make sure he remains in the hotel clerk’s good graces—just in case.)

As for other series-long thematic elements at play, “Manhunt” brings up two in one scene: being closeted (which popped up last week, too) and BDSM. Andrew, in dire need of cash, picks up a businessman he meets on a beach—a man who readily admits “I can be submissive”—and goes back to his hotel. It’s vaguely reminiscent of both junior-league American Psycho and Murphy’s campier American Horror Story elements as Andrew wraps the man’s entire head in tape and listens to him struggle while dancing around in a speedo, all scored to “Easy Lover.” Jump to afterward and the man is visibly shaken from the encounter, quietly urging room service to come back in thirty minutes, and keeping his distance while Andrew enjoys some surf and turf.

As soon as Andrew leaves, the man bolts the door and calls 911 … but he ends up not reporting anything. From the ring he slips back on his finger, the assumption is that he’s closeted and married to a woman—and if he reports anything, he’ll likely be outed. It’s an uncomfortable scene for a number of reasons, and one surface-level reading—that the limitations of being closeted helped Andrew continue for so long—doesn’t feel right. (As for the BDSM factor, well, truthfully I can’t speak to how it will play out in the long run with this season, but Orth’s emphasis on linking Andrew’s interest in BDSM pornography/activities to his murder spree was often frustrating to read in a way that made me deeply uneasy, but hopefully it’s done better here.)

Distilling “Manhunt” into one short recap is annoyingly hard, because it was telling so many stories at once, and some better than others. There’s the investigation and how agents claimed Andrew was a “predatory escort” who targets “closeted, older, wealthy” gay men, and assumed he’d be in Ft. Lauderdale rather than Miami, thus not allowing Detective Lori Weider to warn bar owners/community leaders in Miami (or to put up flyers, which the pawn shop employee would have definitely had hanging on her wall). There is Versace and Donatella’s backstage conversation which didn’t hit as well as it could, maybe because it was trying too hard to link back to his alleged illness or to hammer home what Andrew took away from the world (though that is necessary to reiterate!). However, Versace and Antonio’s conversations in which Antonio says that he wants just Versace, not the other men, were all lovely to watch and felt more natural. Ronnie and Andrew’s drug moments were just disquieting enough—Andrew’s abrupt taped-up shower was chilling—and Max Greenfield portrays Ronnie with incredible depth.

Mostly, I keep thinking about timeline. It doesn’t yet feel effective, but it is interesting that it mirrors how we often learn about serial killers: We hear their names, we learn about their murders, and then—if we choose to keep digging—we read their personal details (any relationships, mental illnesses, drug or alcohol abuse, etc.). Finally, if we stick around, we might learn a bit about the victims themselves. And that, too, is something that I keep thinking about while watching: How much time will Assassination dedicate to the victims? Hopefully, more than most true crime series, especially as it keeps unfolding backwards.

  • Seriously, there are about fifty other things I’d like to yell about if I had the space. Dascha Polanco—an obvious standout on Orange Is The New Black—is putting out an effortlessly lowkey performance, and I hope she becomes an ACS mainstay.
  • The restaurant employee calling 911 on Andrew, but being unable to remember his name, and the police getting there just a bit too late reads so much like fiction but it’s not! One thing about the Versace/Cunanan case that I am utterly fascinated by is how many super-close calls there were, and how often Andrew escaped unscathed.
  • OK, one final thing: the soundtrack is superb.

American Crime Story begins to paint a portrait of a killer

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Welcome to Miami

We gave it an A-

This week’s episode begins like we’re seeing a bizarro-universe version of last week’s: Versace is in a hospital again, but this time he’s standing, looking at the bodies of two gaunt men in beds, while holding Antonio’s hand. At first glance, a viewer might mistake the sick bodies for theirs.

He’s getting treated for something, but the show is intentionally vague on what that something is. The Versace family has always maintained that Gianni Versace was HIV negative, and suffered from ear cancer in the final ears of his life, but the obvious implication here is AIDS — as a gay man living at the height of the epidemic, Versace would have been at risk, and the doctor’s comments about new possibilities with regards to treatment seems to line up. Artistically, it makes sense: It provides a counterbalance to Cunanan, who will emphatically deny being “sick” to Ronnie later in the episode. But vagueness is the best choice of all, mirroring the conversation and speculation that followed Versace in real life.

Versace returns home from the hospital to lounge on a gilded daybed in the center of a room, looking like Marat in the tub, with his sister sitting over him. “What is Versace without you?” she asks. “It is you,” he replies. The scene dissolves from tableau to familial drama: Donatella blames Antonio for Versace’s illness, or for failing to protect him (again, this subtext works better with the implication of AIDS. How was Antonio supposed to protect him from ear cancer?). Antonio asks for basic respect but Donatella balks. He gave her brother neither children nor safety. “If you had given him anything I would have given you respect, but you have given him nothing,” she says. Versace pleads for all three of them to be a family, but things seem prickly at best.

We are transported to the house after Versace’s death, with Donatella watching people place their offerings at the gate. “He is gone, Antonio. There is no need for us to pretend anymore.”

The mortician begins his work of making Versace look as near to his living photograph as possible. Donatella arrives to see his body, bringing a suit for him. She tenderly tightens his tie in the coffin and fixes his cufflinks. He looks perfect, almost living, and then he is cremated. All of that beautiful effort is turned to ashes, and put in a gold box to go back to Italy on a plane with Donatella.

Meanwhile, it’s 1996 again, and Cunanan drives a red pickup truck to Walmart, where he changes the license plate in the parking lot and smiles at a little girl staring at him before driving away. From the radio, we hear that he’s a suspect for the death of Lee Miglin (who had been Cunanan’s third victim), which confirms what we probably suspected: This is before the assassination of Versace. Cunanan, singing along to “Gloria” in the car, screaming out the window, dancing in his seat, is gleefully driving to Miami.

Using a fake passport, Cunanan books a room at the Normandy Plaza (where a massive art piece of Marilyn Monroe emphasizes the show’s theme of celebrity and notoriety) and we see another of Cunanan’s easy lies. “Born in Nice. Have you been?” He’s sociopathically smooth, and it’s a credit to Darren Criss that the oil leaks from his words.

Now that he’s made it to Miami, he heads to Versace’s home, only to find the gates locked. And so he’ll wait for his opportunity, buying sunglasses and a hat and a camera from beachside vender, taking dozens of pictures of the houses to set up a creepy serial killer collage back on the hotel wall.

Even before Versace’s death, Cunanan was on the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list, and the FBI came to Miami to inform local police that they’re operating with the assumption that Cunanan is in town or coming soon.

The FBI agents condescendingly rebuff Detective Lori Weider’s (Dascha Polanco) questions. The FBI only has 10 fliers of Cunanan, and they’re not paying attention to the Miami gay scene. “The fliers aren’t a priority for us,” the agent says. (That decision will come back to bite them in the ass when Cunanan uses his real name to pawn a gold coin, and the pawn shop owner will look over at the bulletin board of posters and not see his face.) Weider photocopies a few herself.

Even as a wanted man, Cunanan lives with complete freedom. He talks his way into an oceanfront room with a little practiced speech and befriends the HIV-positive Ronnie (Max Greenfield) who had been hanging around outside. Ronnie’s appeal is clear: Cunanan loves an audience. He talks endlessly about Versace’s fashion and their close friendship, balking only when Ronnie seems skeptical about his obvious lies.

On the beach, Cunanan does what is implied to have become a habit: becoming an escort for wealthy, older men. He finds one and returns to his hotel room, where the man’s suggestion (“I can be submissive”) is all he needs to duct tape around his head, neck, and eyes — and finally, his mouth.

The man begins to struggle. Cunanan turns up the music and flirts with a pair of scissors. “Accept it,” he repeats. “Accept it. Accept it,” chanting it like a mantra, or the chorus of a song. While the man flails for air, Cunanan dances around the room in the show’s most unsettling scene to date.

Finally, Cunanan in his tiny bathing suit straddles the man and raises the pair of scissors above his head. It’s not obvious what he’s going to do. He stabs the man in the face — allowing him to breathe.

The man, alive but still looking very shaken, answers the door for room service in a robe. Cunanan gleefully eats and tells pretty lies about his mother packing his lunch when he was growing up. The man locks the door after Cunanan and puts back on his wedding ring. He calls 911 but hangs up. Cunanan’s greatest ally is the shame men feel about their gay dalliances.

In Versace’s glamorous life, the designer is arguing with Donatella about which models to use for the show. He doesn’t want girls who look too skinny. He prefers girls who look like they enjoy eating, sex, life. What do these models enjoy?

“Front covers,” Donatella answers. She is the business end of the operation, the public face who understands how to stay relevant and get people excited about a brand. Versace designs the beautiful, beautiful clothing — he has a vision. And he executes that vision at the show, ending with a “Versace bride” in a silver mini-dress. Even Donatella gives him a thumbs up from backstage.

His relationship with Antonio is evolving as well. “I don’t want this anymore,” Antonio says about their open, polyamorous lifestyle while Versace is swimming in his pool. “I want you. I want to marry you.”

“You can say it in the morning, but can you say it in the evening?” Versace answers, and swims back to the other end of the pool.

Presumably only a few miles away, Ronnie and Cunanan are cohabiting a room, and Ronnie is beginning to realize how dangerous his new friend really is. While Ronnie talks through the bathroom door about wanting to open a florist kiosk, Cunanan wraps his entire head in duct tape, from the nose up. “Andrew,” Ronnie finally asks. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Cunanan says. “I’ve done nothing my whole life.”

Cunanan pawns a gold coin (stolen, I assume, from the man he duct-taped). The pawn shop woman, who knows enough to be suspicious, asks where he got it. “It’s a remarkable story,” Cunanan says, with his usual grease. We don’t even get to hear it, because we don’t need to. Everything is an easy lie. He is the talented Mr. Ripley without the talent at impressions.

While walking past the Versace house, Cunanan sees a woman with long blond hair trying to get in the front gate, pretending to be Donatella. Versace appears on the balcony. “Baby, I can only handle one Donatella, one is enough!” he calls out, trying to get the woman to leave. “Big kiss for you.”

Cunanan sprints home, thinking this is his shot. He grabs his gun and pulls all of the photos down on the wall before charging back down the hallway.

“We were friends, that was real, right?” Ronnie asks when he sees Cunanan leaving. He knows this is the end. “When someone asks if we were friends,” Cunanan says, “you’ll say no.”

But Versace isn’t home anymore — he goes out to the club with Antonio (who repeats his desire to get married, this time at night). And Cunanan gets a sandwich, where the clerk recognizes him from America’s Most Wanted and calls the police. Of course, by the time the police get there, he’s gone, managing to get to the same club where Versace went (again, just missing him). If only the police had staked out the clubs — this is one of the sites the detective mentioned specifically.

Cunanan doesn’t know Versace is gone yet, and so he frantically scans every face. When someone asks who he is, he rattles off every identity. I’m Andy. I’m a serial killer. I’m a banker. I’m a stockbroker, shareholder, set builder, importer. And then the most important identity: “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.” It’s Cunanan’s desire above all else: to be someone like Versace, someone important, who’s created something incredible. He wants to be remembered, linked to Versace in death if not in life.

Which makes you wonder whom exactly this television show is serving.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ recap: Welcome to Miami

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Easy Lover

Editor’s Rating: ★★★★☆

I don’t know how it’s possible to have two songs stuck in my head at once, but after this episode, both Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover” and Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” are competing for the space between my ears. The idea of Andrew Cunanan singing “Gloria” while wagging his head out of the window like a Labradoodle on the way to the park just seems incredibly reckless, no? How can one possible drive like that? How many crashes do you think Darren Criss got in before they finally got the shot they needed?

Anyway, Cunanan’s insistence on turning the radio station away from the tales of his crime and finding a little bit of escapist beauty is one of the keys to his off-kilter personality. He’s always looking for it, even in the portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the lobby of the disgustingly seedy Normandy Plaza hotel. (Only $29.99 a night! There’s always a vacancy!) He does it again while laying out all of the Versace magazine ads around him on the hotel’s disgusting carpet, and yet again when he recalls Versace’s “proposal” to him while bathing in a public shower on the beach.

Cunanan is obviously destitute and on the run, but that doesn’t stop him from living in his own fantasy world, where everything is fantastic and he is going to walk out of his discount motel and be discovered on the beach and get carted away to a life of fame and luxury. “I don’t see something nice,” he tells his new friend Ronnie about Versace’s clothing. “I see the man behind it. I see a great creator. I see the man I could have been.” That’s the key right there. Andrew thinks that nothing separates him from Versace when everything is what separates them.

With this episode, it becomes clear that the action of the series is moving backward and forward at the same time. While we’re dealing with the aftermath of Versace’s shooting and the hunt to find Cunanan, we’re also seeing Donatella grappling with her brother’s death and her desire to take control of the company. However, we’re also moving backward in both men’s lives, finding out how they intersected on that deadly doorstep by slowly retracing their steps.

For Andrew, we find out that he was hanging out in Miami for about a month, chilling with crackhead Ronnie and turning tricks with old men on the beach. The “Easy Lover” scene is by far the best so far, too: The song is a little bit on the nose for Cunanan’s appointment with a married, older business man from out of town, but that is the camp genius of it. We see Andrew, in his underwear and a blousy open shirt, swanning about while his lover nearly suffocates under a hood of duct tape. Andrew is telling his lover to submit to him; he wants control because he feels so absolutely out of control of the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, Andrew’s friendship with Ronnie is odd. He needs someone who he can impress and who will make him feel superior, but it also seems like he’s grasping for connection anywhere he can find it. Ronnie is happy to oblige. After all, Andrew is attractive, glamorous, carrying drugs, and willing to cut Ronnie in on his escort money for doing nothing at all.

There’s an interesting parallel between Ronnie and Versace here: They both thought they were going to die of AIDS and then were revitalized thanks to advances in medication that happened in the ‘90s. Gianni had gotten very ill, an illness that was kept from the public, and Donatella blamed his philandering lover Antonio for bringing men into their life and possibly causing Gianni to contract HIV. “If you would have given him anything, I would have given him respect, but you have given him nothing,” she tells Antonio.

Donatella is also grappling with the knowledge that she isn’t the genius that her brother is. She castigates him for letting designers like John Galliano and Alexander McQueen steal the spotlight from him and pushes him to be more modern. He says his clothes need to come from his emotions. They decide to each dress a few models in his upcoming show and they’ll see how people react. Of course, everyone loves Gianni’s clothes and they merely mumble when Donatella’s models saunter down the runway.

At home, Antonio is trying his best to have his cake and eat twinks’ asses too. We see Antonio romping in bed with several beauties (speaking of beauties, Ricky Martin’s butt!) while Gianni sits nearby and sketches. Antonio thought they were procuring men for them both, but it’s not what Gianni wants anymore. In the morning, Antonio says he wants to marry Gianni, though this was long before marriage equality was even a glimmer in the eye of the Human Rights Campaign. Gianni brilliantly retorts, “You can say that in the morning, but can you say it in the evening?”

That brings us to Twist. Twist is one of the all-time greatest gay dance clubs in the world. It’s still in operation in Miami and almost directly behind where Versace’s house was at the time. It’s a large, sprawling club with multiple dance floors on various levels and a small shack in the courtyard where brawny Latin men in banana hammocks offer lap dances for $20 a pop. God, Twist is major. This episode was not filmed in the real Twist, but it will have to do.

Anyway, Andrew and Gianni almost collide at Twist the night before their fatal encounter. Andrew initially sees Gianni fighting with a drag impersonator of Donatella, then runs home to get his gun to kill the designer while he knows he’s in residence. Instead, Gianni and Antonio take off for Twist to bask in the recognition of being local gay celebrities and maybe bring home a shirtless circuit boy or two. But Antonio doesn’t want them anymore, and they have a moment of affection where he finally declares that he wants Gianni at night too.

Cunanan heads to Twist as well, but they don’t quite meet up. This, as it happens, also shows how the FBI has been screwing up the manhunt for Cunanan because they don’t understand the gay community. When they roll into Miami, the local police tell them that the spots popular with the gay community are Twist and the 12th Street Beach, the two places we’ve seen Andrew hang out. But instead, they want to focus in Fort Lauderdale, thinking that he’ll be looking for older, wealthy gentlemen to take advantage of. If only they had bothered to listen and staked out at Twist and the beach, Cunanan wouldn’t have kept escaping like he did when the guy at the deli recognized him from America’s Most Wanted.

Instead, we see Andrew finally make his way into Twist, where, unable to find Gianni, he loses himself on the dance floor. He’s quickly approached by a handsome young man who asks him what he does. Andrew spews all of his lies, manufacturing all of those gossamer webs that he’s been spinning all at once. Rather than luring this man into his web, it repels him, his insanity driving him away. Then he finally says, “I’m the one least likely to be forgotten.” It is the only true thing he says in the whole episode.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Easy Lover

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Andrew Arrives in Miami

For the second episode of American Crime Story season 2, we’re going back two months to see what Andrew was doing in Miami before killing Gianni Versace, as well as what the FBI WASN’T doing. There are payoffs to things that were set-up in the first episode (the pawn shop and Max Greenfield’s Ronnie) and a lot of set-up for future episodes.

While Cunanan’s disturbing psychology is interesting and gives this episode a fantastic ending, the other storylines seem a little too trite. Gianni Versace continues to be portrayed as a saintly, flawless human being while the show emphasizes how many times his murder could’ve been prevented if not for bad FBI work, gay shame and loud club music.

Gianni’s Health Scare

The episode begins in March 1994 when Gianni visits a hospital and though it’s not made explicit, the implication is that he’s HIV positive and getting treatment. This leads to more details on the rift between Gianni’s sister Donatella and his partner Antonio. She blames him for Gianni’s illness because he sleeps around, but they agree to be civil for Gianni’s sake.

Antonio challenges Donatella by insisting that he’s not a villain and Gianni isn’t a saint. That’s almost laughable, because throughout these first two episodes Gianni Versace is depicted as being quite saintly, a flawless genius who is friendly to everyone and even complains about the models for his runway show being too thin. The show’s portrayal of Gianni Versace is more like the idealistic, romanticized version of him that exists in Andrew Cunanan’s mind.

After the murder in 1997, Gianni’s body is cremated and Donatella flies his remains back to Italy, lamenting the fact that he died like this after what he survived. The whole opening sequence is a little too on-the-nose, a bit sterile and forced as the show takes us through every little detail of the remains being boxed up.

Andrew Comes to Miami

In the episode’s third time jump, we’re in May of 1997, two months before the assassination. Andrew drives south in the red pick-up truck the cops found in the first episode. He hears a news report about how he’s the prime suspect in the murder of Lee Miglin (a tease for next week’s episode). 

Andrew goes to a hotel to get a room and turns on the charm and the lies, using a fake French passport and rambling on about being a fashion student hoping to talk to Gianni Versace. He gets his seedy room and goes right to Versace’s mansion, but the door is locked, naturally. He buys a camera and takes a ton of photos of the mansion, stalking his victim and obsession.

Andrew Makes a Friend

Andrew befriends another guest at the hotel, Ronnie (New Girl’s Max Greenfield), the guy we saw at the end of the premiere who denied knowing Andrew. Ronnie is an HIV positive drug addict who has lived a hard life and is just trying to enjoy his final years.

Andrew continues his habit of being whoever he needs to be with whoever he’s with, claiming he worked for an AIDS charity in California. He also reveals that both his best friend and the love of his life died earlier this year (again, a tease for future episodes).

While taking an outdoor shower after stripping down to skimpy pink briefs, Andrew waxes poetic about how Versace proposed to him, but he declined and they’re still friends. Andrew goes on and on about what a brilliant creator Versace is and how he’s the man that Andrew could’ve been. This is turning into Amadeus, if Salieri wasn’t a rival composer, but just some delusional nut job.

Andrew Makes Some Money

Andrew needs money, so he spies an old man looking at him on the beach and approaches him. They go back to the man’s hotel room and things get very disturbing. The man wants to be submissive, so Andrew wraps his entire head with duct tape, even his eyes and his mouth so the man can’t breathe.

Andrew dances around in his skimpy underwear, ordering the man to accept his helplessness as he struggles to tear off the tape to try and breathe. Once the man finally stops struggling, Andrew jams a pair of scissors into his mouth to make a hole in the tape so he can finally breathe.

In the aftermath, Andrew enjoys some room service as the man seems absolutely terrified for his life. When Andrew leaves the man locks the door and calls 911, but he looks at his wedding ring and doesn’t say anything. The shame of being a closeted homosexual prevents him from reporting Andrew’s clearly psychotic behavior.

With the money he earned, Andrew and Ronnie buy some drugs and get high. Ronnie fantasizes about starting a flower shop together while Andrew wraps his own head in duct tape, an obvious metaphor for his desire to completely obscure who he truly is.

The Manhunt

The show offers even more evidence that the FBI really dropped the ball on this investigation. Two months before the murder the FBI comes to Miami under the theory that Andrew , who has already killed four people and is on the 10 Most Wanted List, is heading there. The local detective (Orange Is the New Black’s Dascha Polanco, who we met last week) wants to canvas the gay bars and hand out flyers, but the FBI insists that the flyers aren’t ready and that Andrew’s M.O. is going after older, closeted gay men, so they shouldn’t waste their time on gay clubs.

The detective decides to photocopy the FBI’s flyer herself and hangs one up, but it’s mostly covered by the end of the episode. We also see Andrew going to the pawn shop from the first episode and cashing in a gold coin. The woman is suspicious of him and looks at her bulletin board of wanted posters, but those flyers are still in the FBI dude’s trunk.

These scenes really hammer home the idea that the local detective was a brilliant heroine who probably could’ve prevented Versace’s death if not for the FBI’s total incompetence. This season may be a lot of things, but subtle isn’t one of them.

“Life Is Precious”

A little over a week before the assassination, Versace has a runway show and he complains about how the models are too thin. Donatella criticizes him for not being cutting edge and modern, which is costing them magazine covers. Gianni, however, is simply happy to still be alive. He doesn’t want to make dark and morbid clothes like Donatella wants, he wants to celebrate the joy of life because it’s special.

At night Gianni sketches some new designs while Antonio has sex with another man in their bed right next to him. Antonio asks Gianni to join, but he just tells Antonio to have fun. The next morning Antonio says he doesn’t want to sleep with other guys anymore, he wants to marry Gianni. But Gianni thinks he only says this in the morning, not at night.

The Night Before

On the night before the assassination, Andrew is walking past the Versace mansion and sees Gianni. With proof that he’s there, Andrew rushes back to his hotel to grab his gun and all of his stuff, ready to commit the murder. Andrew runs off, but first he gives Ronnie some money and tells him that if anyone ever asks if they were friends, Ronnie will say “No.”

Andrew grabs some dinner, but the server recognizes him from America’s Most Wanted and calls the cops. In the funniest scene of the episode, this heroic bystander, who is black, describes Andrew as “the white guy who killed four other white guys.” Andrew flees just before the cops arrive.

Also that night, Gianni and Antonio go out to a gay club and Andrew shows up too once he sees that the lights are off in the Versace mansion. However, they don’t cross paths and when the couple leaves, Antonio still insists that he doesn’t want this anymore, he just wants to marry Gianni.

Back at the club, Andrew dances with a guy who asks what he does. “I’m a serial killer,” Andrew says, borrowing a line from American Psycho. The music is too loud so the guy doesn’t hear him.

“I said I’m a banker,” Andrew adds, the start of an epic delusional monologue. “I’m a stockbroker, I’m a shareholder, I’m a paperback writer, I’m a cop, I’m a Naval officer, sometimes I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis, I import pineapples from the Philippines. I’m the person least likely to be forgotten. I’m Andrew Cunanan.” For all of its flaws, that’s a brilliant way to end an episode.

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Recap: Andrew Arrives in Miami

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Addresses Versace’s HIV Status

There are a lot of deliberate ambiguities woven into the storyline of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, most of them related to Andrew Cunanan and the smooth, effortless lies he tells about himself. As I noted last week, it’s often unclear whether what we’re seeing is a) what actually happened in reality, b) what actually happened in the show’s fictionalized version of reality, or c) Cunanan’s self-aggrandizing, unreliable version of events. But the season’s second episode opens with a discussion of what has become the most controversial fact vs. fiction element of the show: Versace’s HIV status.

The Versace family has released a pair of statements denouncing the show as ““sad and reprehensible” and specifically taken issue with its depiction of a “medical condition.” In the source material for the series—the book Vulgar Favors, by Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth—it is reported that Versace was HIV positive at the time of his death, which the Versace family has always denied.

With that context established, let’s get into five talking points from tonight’s episode ‘Manhunt.’ Plus, keep track of this season of American Crime Story with this timeline of Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree.

1) According to the series, Versace had already come close to death—and miraculously cheated it—shortly before he was murdered.

“After everything he survived… to be killed like this?” Donatella says, quietly heartbroken, after we’ve seen flashbacks to Versace seeking treatment at a hospital, hiding behind sunglasses until a nurse reassures him, “there are no journalists here.” Though the terms HIV and AIDS are never used, the implication is clear: Versace has a condition which requires a cocktail of drugs, and he is determined to keep it secret at all costs. He’s become too sick to work, or even walk at a normal pace, and confesses to Antonio that he’s becoming bitter as a result.

2) The story of Andrew Cunanan’s rampage is being told in reverse.

This won’t remain strictly the case throughout the series, but last week depicted Cunanan killing Versace, and this week takes us back roughly two months to the day he first arrived in Miami to stalk Versace. At this point, Cunanan had already killed four people, landed a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and stole the red pickup truck he’s driving from his fourth victim, William Reese. On the subject of which… let’s talk about that singing scene.

Cunanan is utterly elated in the wake of all this bloodshed, and Darren Criss’s pure manic energy throughout this episode is breathtaking. As he cheerfully drives through South Carolina towards Florida, he turns on the car radio and flips right past a station that mentions his name as a suspect in the murder of Lee Miglin. He lands, instead, on a station playing Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” a peppy disco fave whose lyrics are actually deeply disturbing if you listen closely:

Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?
Gloria, don’t you think you’re fallin’?
If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody callin’?

Can’t imagine why Cunanan would sing along to this with such gusto!

3) Versace’s illness brings out long-buried tensions between Donatella and Antonio.

In the aftermath of Versace’s death last week, it was clear that these two do not see eye to eye. This week—between Versace’s illness and the company’s struggle to stay relevant in a changing fashion landscape—exacerbates their differences. Antonio claims Donatella has never been supportive of his relationship with Gianni, despite how long they’ve been together, while Donatella clearly feels that Antonio has never been a real partner to her brother. “You’ve given him nothing,” she spits—not stability, not respect, not children—and though she doesn’t say this explicitly, it’s clear she blames Antonio for Versace’s inferred illness, in light of their proclivity for three-ways. I wish I were more engaged by Versace’s relationship with Antonio, but their scenes together feel strangely lifeless to me, and I think it’s because Ricky Martin is miscast in this role.

4) “We were friends. That was real, right?” “When someone asks you if we were friends, you’ll say no.”

It almost seemed like Cunanan might have made a friend in Ronnie, the wiry Miami Beach local played by New Girl’s Max Greenfield—if Cunanan were capable of feeling anything for anyone, which is highly debatable at this point in the story. The above dialogue exchange is heartbreaking because Ronnie is so vulnerable, but it’s actually one of Cunanan’s few honest moments: he knows, at this point, that he’s living on borrowed time and is going to be caught, and that Ronnie will eventually deny knowing him for his own good.

But that’s not the only moment where Cunanan is unexpectedly honest with Ronnie. Maybe he doesn’t consider Ronnie to be important or influential, so the stakes are low. When Cunanan’s just come back from an outing—which involved seducing, terrorizing and nearly suffocating an elderly man with masking tape—a justifiably nervous Ronnie asks a wide-eyed, jittery Cunanan "What did you do?” Cunanan’s reply: “Nothing. I did nothing. I’ve done nothing my whole life. That’s the truth.” That is the truth, and it might be the last time we hear it from Cunanan.

5) Watching Cunanan slip from one false identity to the next—sometimes within a single sentence—is dazzling.

I cannot say enough about the sharp, scary writing for Cunanan, nor about Criss’s flat-out terrifying performance. This is someone who practices in the mirror for everyday conversations and creates entire personas on the spot; when he checks into the beachside motel in Miami, he’s Kurt! He’s from Nice! He’s a fashion student who traveled all this way just for a few words with Versace! To Ronnie, Cunanan effortlessly describes his close personal friendship with Versace; to the elderly man he seduces, he waxes poetic about the lobster and cracked black pepper his mother used to bring to him for school lunches. Is any of this true? Who knows? It’s not even entirely clear that Cunanan knows, or that he cares.

This is all embodied so beautifully in a dizzying final nightclub scene where Cunanan, still high on the thrill of his crimes, is approached by a young man who asks what he does. “I’m a serial killer!” he says gleefully, the club music loud enough to drown out his confession, and then launches into a cheerful verbal breakdown, listing one fake profession after another: he’s a banker! He’s a writer! He imports pineapples from the Philippines—a reference to the story he told Versace last week about his father’s pineapple plantations. But most importantly? “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Addresses Versace’s HIV Status

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is a melodrama for the fake news era

(WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Opening to the unsubtle pangs of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Ryan Murphy casts a gilded pall over Gianni Versace, played in an uncanny resemblance by Edgar Ramírez. We see him laying in bed beneath a heavenly fresco at Casa Casuarina, his Miami compound. In a momentous two-hander sequence, we watch Versace and his killer, Andrew Cunanan, begin their day leading up to Versace’s tragic murder. Versace rises from bed in his Greek-key-waistband boxer shorts and steps into a pair of black velvet Medusa slippers. He swallows a couple of prescription pills and puts on a pink silk robe, before stepping out on his rococo balcony to survey the rollerbladers on Ocean Drive below. The imagery isn’t subtle: he is the king of South Beach. Nearby, fugitive Cunanan (Darren Criss), sits on the beach, the pauper to Versace’s prince. He stares out into the void of dawn, scratching an open wound on his leg. He wades into the ocean fully clothed, and screams. Gianni takes a glass of orange juice from a manservant in his courtyard, while his boyfriend Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) prepares for a tennis lesson. He strolls to a nearby newsstand to pick up copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Andrew downs a JOLT! Cola and shoves a grimy copy of Conde Nast’s biography, The Man Who Was Vogue into his backpack. Inside, we see a handgun.

Everybody knows what happens next.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace marks the second season of Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, following last year’s prizewinning The People Vs. O.J. Simpson. It’s based on Vanity Fair reporter Maureen Orth’s 2000 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History…at least, partially. Chronicling Cunanan’s troubled upbringing in San Diego, California, through his time spent in the Bay Area, and following his killing spree from Minneapolis all the way to the amphetamine motels of Miami Beach, Orth spoke to over 400 corroborating friends, witnesses, and acquaintances of Cunanan’s to craft a spellbinding and disturbing portrait of how a young, bright, closeted gay man became one of the most evasive and least cunning serial killers of the late 20th century. While the Versace family appear at the end of the book and are discussed at various points throughout, they are minor characters in the larger saga, which means much of the show’s research into the Versaces has most likely come from outside sources. (Donatella and the company have released a statement decrying the series as “fiction.”)

The road leading to Versace’s murder was a bloody one, filled with lies and half-truths, fake identities, closet cases, and cover-ups. In April of 1997, Andrew Cunanan murdered his former best friend Jeffrey Trail with a claw hammer. Discovered by another friend, David Madson, Cunanan threatened Madson into becoming his unwilling accomplice, before murdering him and disposing of his body in a lake outside Minneapolis. From there, he went to Chicago and met a 72-year-old real estate mogul, Lee Miglin, whom he killed with a hacksaw and a screwdriver (mercilessly) before stealing his car and randomly selecting a fourth victim, cemetery caretaker William Reese, of New Jersey, in order to swap vehicles yet again. By that point, Cunanan had made the FBI’s Most Wanted List and had inspired all points bulletins across radio and television. But despite the fact that he was hiding in plain sight, authorities bungled the investigation and let him escape time and again.

Families of the victims, some unaware of their loved ones’ homosexuality, refused to believe they’d be involved with Cunanan. Police and F.B.I., clueless about gay culture, ignored leads and witnesses that could have led to his capture. The media sensationalised each crime with homophobic glee, depicting the killings often as sadomasochistic sex rituals gone wrong. Misinformation was rampant. While it will take further viewing to parse the totality of Murphy’s vision, the show’s first episode indulges in these elements of confusion, blurring fantasy and reality to delectable melodramatic effect.

We see Cunanan and Versace on a romantic date, sipping champagne amid candelabras on stage at the opera after a performance. This most certainly never took place, according to Orth’s investigation, but Cunanan did regale many of his friends of meeting the designer at the Colossus gay club on Folsom Street, where Versace and D’Amico would often go. For years, Cunanan would repeat the line “I told him, if you’re Gianni Versace, then I’m Coco Chanel!” – a line he says on the show, to his friend, Liz Coté. Once, a witness named Doug Stubblefield alleged seeing Cunanan in a chauffeured car on Market Street with Versace and the socialite Harry de Wildt, although de Wildt has vehemently denied the account. For 20 years, Versace has maintained that the two never met.

Obsessed with high society and desperate to escape his station in the slums of San Diego’s La Jolla, Cunanan had ambitiously educated himself about art, design, architecture, publishing, and fashion, in order to blend in with the more elite teenagers from the county’s prep schools. Charming and loud, he was known for his pathological lying, which amused and revolted his peers in competitive measure. Later, Cunanan would go by a series of aliases, most notably “Andrew DeSilva,” and find himself drifting from abject poverty, selling stolen drug store merchandise out of his car for extra cash, to the lap of luxury at the expense of his sugar daddies, and back again.

By the time he made it to Miami’s South Beach, with Versace in his sights, Cunanan was an out of shape, broke, meth-addicted prostitute, holed up at the derelict Normandy Plaza Motel. In the role of Cunanan, Darren Criss is sublimely creepy. As the narrative jumps around in time, we see him both at the end of his rope, as well as at the peak of his prowess, before any of the killings unfolded, lying to his friends and cutting a dashing figure in Matsuda sweaters.

It’s a good 40 minutes before Donatella Versace arrives, shown descending from a private jet in the Miami dusk. As Donatella, Penélope Cruz gives a showstopping performance, embodying her subject’s fragility, courage, and style, not to mention the stormy Italian accent that is her signature. Immediately getting down to business (“It’s a bit crazy, no?” she demurs), Donatella delivers the episode’s most captivating monologue: “He was a creator. He was a collector. He was a genius. This company was his life. When he was sad, it made him happy. When he was sick, it kept him alive. And my brother is still alive as long as Versace’s alive. I will not allow that man – that…nobody – to kill my brother twice.“

Murphy’s artistic license with these events – dramatic highlights include Cathy Moriarty as a mouthy pawn shop owner and a swarm of demented extras seizing upon Gianni’s crime scene like fashion vultures – relish the spectacle of Versace’s death as much as the drama of the manhunt. But are the show’s creators glamorising Andrew Cunanan a degree too far? At the close of the episode, Cunana strolls up to Versace’s favorite newsstand to purchase all of the papers with his latest slaying splashed across the front. He’s in clean khakis, a yellow polo shirt, baseball cap, and Versace shades. A far cry from the fiending, homeless, desperate fugitive Cunanan was purported to be in his final days. One can’t help watching and thinking of how much Cunanan would love to see himself dramatised on cable, played by someone with washboard abs and a chiseled jawline. When Criss puts his hand over his mouth, feigning a gasp as his crime is splattered over the network news, his eyes water with ecstasy, making it all the more obvious and deranged.

Moving forward, the show intends to go backward in time, tracing Cunanan’s steps toward infamy in step with Versace’s ascendance to fashion royalty. Hopefully we will continue to see themes explored of homophobia in law enforcement, the media’s role in bungling investigations, the gay community’s involvement, the shadow of self-made identity, and the spell of consumerism that leads some people to commit murder. As long as Murphy and the show’s directors continue to pull no punches from the soap opera playbook, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is a melodrama for the fake news era

American Camp Story: Did Versace’s Murderer Really Kill That Dove, Too?

“The world of the heterosexual,” Aunt Ida shudders in John Waters’s justifiably straight-hating magnum opus, Female Trouble, “is a sick and boring life.” American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is not heterosexual programming, thank God, which means it’s neither sick nor boring—only deeply stylized, so that it succeeds in making murder look like the narrative focal point of a perfume commercial. Like all good stories, it begins with a location card reading “Miami Beach, Florida.” Like a number of good films, it has the beach’s signature electric lushness, its too-lurid color: red lights, blue skies, green palms, a candy-pink silk-satin robe.

Ryan Murphy’s latest season of his pop procedural anthology, American Crime Story, covers the 1997 shooting of Versace in nine fifty-minute episodes; and yet so un-boring is the pilot that we see the murder seven minutes in. The twinky killer, Andrew Cunanan, is a fantasist played with a cold and twitchily unreal demeanor by the android-perfect Darren Criss. Introduced as an unreliable narrator, then a Ripley-esque savant at social climbing, he creates two big impressions: one in a scene that shows him covering his mouth in a pantomime of horror when he’s really smiling, and another that’s a bona fide showcase for his ass. He’s closeted around his straight friends, gay around his gay friends, and completely unashamed to say out loud that his objective is to “tell people whatever they need to hear”—a primo marker for a sociopath. By July of 1997, he has killed five people in a span of six months, one of whom is Gianni Versace, and he is a very wanted man.

The timeline leaps from the murder scene to 1990, and the killer’s would-be-courtship of Versace—whom he tells about his plan to write a book, provoking one of the all-time greatest burns on the laziness of writers ever televised: “I wish I had the patience to write a novel, but my mind is always moving"—and then back again. (Whether the two men actually met at all before the shooting has, I ought to say, been subject to debate: last week the writer Maureen Orth, whose book about the killing, Vulgar Favours, is the inspiration for the show, insisted: “There is no doubt in my mind that those two met.” What we see here is that lack of doubt played out for the very best angle; so that what might be erotic, a seduction at the opera, only ratchets up the audience’s dread.) We’re introduced to Penelope Cruz as Donatella circa 1997, stepping off a jet in mourning leather and affecting a faultless accent, less Italian than idiosyncratic Donatella-ese.

Because the Versaces are a family represented by an image drawn from the myths of ancient Greece, it’s fitting that they’re rendered at an also-mythic scale for television: murder, feuds and three-or-more-ways figure heavily immediately. That famed Medusa branding, says Gianni in the pilot, came to pass because as children, he and Donatella “used to play in ancient ruins where we grew up, and one day I saw the Medusa’s head…. I know that many people call it pretentious, but I don’t care. How could my childhood be pretentious?” Versace’s use of the Medusa head has always seemed to me deliciously ironic, since the myth of the Medusa is that she began her life as a beautiful woman, and was turned into a monster to repel men. No Versace woman ever knowingly repelled a man; where fashion in its highest form is these days happy to perform like a Medusa spell—to make the wearer into something hard to see for heterosexual male suitors—Versace is a brand where simple sexuality, the nakedly extrinsic, rules.

The show so far is likewise fascinated with both architectural interiors and personal exteriors, equally baroque. It’s fascinated with Versace’s Greco branding as a visual signifier: of the dead man’s love of glamour, his association with locales that, culturally, read as sultry and as torrid with both words as synonyms for “hot” and “scandalous.” By minute fifty, we know where we’re going but are unsure as to how we’re getting there, except in style.

A final note on certain accuracies and inaccuracies: when Gianni’s shot, we see a dove shot alongside him, so that the white and pretty bird—a single punctuation mark of red, a single flaw—ends up as evidence. How could a death be pretentious? Evidently, far more easily than one might think: the dove was real, a casualty of Cunanan’s first bullet. Less real is the woman who is seen to soak a print Versace ad in blood from the crime scene, making something both so chic and so immoral, so completely ghoulish and indebted to the capitalist status quo, that it can only be completely perfect; there could not be a more elegant or necessary lie.

American Camp Story: Did Versace’s Murderer Really Kill That Dove, Too?

The Assassination of Gianni Versace first impression: After People v OJ, this show is another feather in Ryan Murphy’s hat

The Assassination of Gianni Versace has been long awaited and fans were more than ecstatic when creator Ryan Murphy preponed this to be the second season of American Crime Story instead of the third. The story has elements that capture the voyeuristic nature of the audience. What happens behind closed doors of celebrities and how a failed FBI manhunt led to the murder of the fashion icon Versace make for a compelling TV series.

While in the first season, The People v. O. J. Simpson, we never saw the crime happen but witnessed the aftermath, the speculation and the court case, here we witness the gruesome murder in the first 7 minutes of the premiere episode.

The show starts off by displaying the grandeur of Versace’s Miami mansion, the immense wealth and the innumerable servants showcase the king-like lifestyle that Gianni enjoyed. In his pink bathrobe and servants who are ready with a glass of juice as he descends from the steps of his palatial home, we get a glimpse of the life he led, fearlessly.

While we are getting an introduction of the murder victim, we are also introduced to the murderer, Andrew Cunanan, played by Darren Criss. The closet gay guy, who tells people what they want to hear, admires Versace, just like he admired other powerful men and isn’t shy about lying in order to get what he wants. He makes up stories about his family in the Philippines, his father running off with a farm boy and him writing a book and he tells them without blinking an eye. Darren, also has a striking resemblance to the real Cunanan, which makes the story look more authentic.

The first episode explores the social standing of the LGBT society, the homophobia, the assumption that a gay partner would be a pimp; all these questions come up in the police investigation which only goes out to show that a common man just wasn’t aware of what a same sex relationship looks like.

Cunanan’s motives to murder aren’t pronounced out loud in the first episode but all hints point to the fact that it was the social stigma and his inability to deal with his sexual orientation that led him to commit the heinous act. After the audience is shown the murder scene, the show moves to flashback where we see the apparent first encounter between the murderer and the victim in a San Francisco nightclub. The encounter is awkward at first when Versace tries to brush him off but soon the conversation progresses with heavy sexual undertones. This is where you realise that the murder wasn’t as volatile as it first looked like.

In long sequences without any dialogues and with some classic opera music playing in the background, the series sets the tone, they aren’t going for cheap tricks but instead taking the fancier route. Certain scenes have Ryan Murphy’s signature and those compel you to stick to the series. There’s one where a passerby is auctioning off the only polaroid of Versace’s dead body and one where a fan runs towards the bloodied steps, dips a magazine paper in it and saves it like a souvenir in a plastic bag. This, also heavily focuses on the crazy celebrity fandom that has engrossed America for several years, where even the dead man’s blood is a prized possession.

The show is based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors but the Versace family has declared this as a piece of fiction. Ryan Murphy believes this to be a piece of docu-drama based on real events.

Penelope Cruz comes in the later part of the first episode and plays Versace’s sister, Donatella. Her strong headed attitude makes her look like an ice queen but that is the need of the hour. The emphasis on family and not trusting strangers is repeated many times with suspicious glances to Versace’s long-time partner Antonio D’Amico, played by Ricky Martin. Ricky is stiff and until now hasn’t contributed much to the show, even though he had enough opportunity. Edgar Ramirez’s Versace is fabulous. He’s flamboyant but also sincere, his enigma is believable and enchanting and his scenes with Criss’ Cunanan keep you hooked enough that you don’t want to miss out on a single moment.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is engrossing and we’re looking forward to the remaining eight episodes but we wonder how they will explain the ‘assassination’ in the title.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace first impression: After People v OJ, this show is another feather in Ryan Murphy’s hat

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Welcome back to another season of American Crime Story. Last time we met, I was regaling you with tales of being a youthful college student in my native Los Angeles as OJ Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, and we all fell profoundly and deeply in love with Sterling K. Brown. Today, we reconvene to discuss the murder of Gianni Versace — the 20th anniversary of which was just this last July — at the hands of serial killer and pathological liar Andrew Cunanan, in Miami. I was a youthful Los Angeleno just out of college when this happened, and I do not, therefore, have great personal insight to this specific milieu, beyond being alive and alert in 1997.

I can say, though, that as someone who remembers the summer of 1997 well: It was a weird summer. Versace was gunned down on the steps of his house, and six weeks later, Princess Diana died in a car accident. Mother Theresa died less than a week after that. The Heaven’s Gate mass suicide had happened in March and was still getting a lot of news play (related, we had a giant comet hanging over us that year, which I personally think scrambled people’s brains a little, even though if you asked me the direct question, I would tell you that I don’t believe in that). And I was newly out of college and had no idea what I was doing with my life, which certainly wasn’t globally noteworthy, but made me personally feel strange.

It is so interesting to be watching this story play out and remember the way it unfolded in a time without real internet. The internet existed, but not in the way it does today. If a major fashion designer were murdered on the steps of his house today, I assume we’d all be on Twitter for 72 hours straight. As it was, I mostly found out what was happening by opening the Los Angeles Times (which makes a cameo in this episode, which amused me; surely what most people in Miami were reading was the Miami Herald). Things change so quickly in our lifetimes.

But let’s discuss the episode! I’m not going to recap it blow-by-blow, but instead, thought we could talk about it in general here, before zipping through its amazing sets and wardrobe in the slideshow.

1. My god, EVERYONE is in this: Dascha Polanco! Will Chase! Stan from Mad Men! Schmidt from New Girl! Ricky Martin! Darren Criss, obviously. Penelope Cruz! Annaleigh Ashford, looking so plain-faced that it took me forever to place her! CATHY MORIARTY, popping up for me at basically the same time she popped up for Heather on This Is Us, leading to us wondering what is going on in the universe to lead Cathy Moriarty to appear simultaneously on both of our TVs. (It seems like a good omen.) Judith Light is going to appear later. It’s exciting!

2. Overall, I thought the pilot was very good. I didn’t read any reviews prior to watching it, but I saw a lot of tweets indicating that several TV critics thought it was very different than The People vs. OJ, and people who want what they got from OJ might be taken aback. Personally, I didn’t expect them to be particularly similar, but that is perhaps because I knew I wouldn’t have the same personal connection regardless. I think it was very well-acted — Darren Criss is great; it’s too soon to tell how Penelope Cruz is, as Donatella, but (a) even mediocre Penelope Cruz is probably gonna be pretty good, and (b) Donatella is a tough role to shoulder thanks to SNL.

2b. I did think there was one false note — and I am interested to hear from those of you who lived in Miami and/or followed this more closely than I did about others. When Detective Will Chase is questioning Ricky Martin, Det. Will Chase seems perplexed by the idea that Ricky Martin and Versace are romantic partners whose relationship is sexually non-monogamous. It’s 1997 Miami: There is no way he hasn’t come across that scenario before. I would not have been particularly phased by that at the time if I stumbled across it in the lives of some extremely rich adults, and I was a 22 year old with very little life experience. (I did read a lot of books, though.)

3. The tile in this thing is EXCEPTIONAL.

What did you think? As ever, I also recommend reading the coverage at Vanity Fair, which obviously covered this AT LENGTH when it happened, as Terrible Things Happening To Rich People is right in their wheelhouse.

(PS: There is one slide within that is potentially NSFW.)

And very familiar underpants for anyone who ever read a fashion magazine in the mid-90s. (Also: the ceiling in this bathroom! Amazing! This entire pilot was like, LOOK AT THIS ROOOOM!!)

Something I didn’t know, which I found really interesting, was how close Versace’s house was to the main drag there in Miami. He literally walked out the front gate and was on the street, free to be molested by looky-loos, or, tragically, shot. Obviously, this is the case for famous people in MANY cities in the world – New York, London – but I always think of Miami as being like Los Angeles, in that many if not all of the more overwhelmingly grand homes are set further back from the street. I say this with the expertise of someone who has only flown through the Miami airport and knows it from The Golden Girls, so. You know. Expertise!!

Andrew Cunanun had this in his bag along with his gun and I swear to god I checked this book out of the library once myself. (It is out of print now.)

This mansion has so many frescos. SO MANY. (I enjoy a good mural/fresco, as you know. Basically, I hate a bare wall.)

The floors are ALSO dramatic. Mr Versace was a maximalist and I am here for it.

This is basically like a tiny, Miami Hearst castle.

A little sad foreshadowing here. (Diana wore a lot of Versace; including, if I recall correctly, in the editorial in this issue of VF.)

Raise your hand if you knew a dude who owned this shirt. (I certainly did.) The late 90s were replete with Versace knock-offs for dudes.

I thought it was interesting how much this episode focused on the way Andrew changed his clothing to suit wherever he was going – from borrowing his brother-in-law’s conservative Armani-ish suits for the opera, to literally wearing an ascot and cordoroy blazer to Cal, where he is (preending to be) a student. (He lies a lot, about everything, and people can tell.) 

This poor child, on the other hand, is NOT true to my memory of being part of the UC system in the mid-90s. Sweet summer lover, wander over to a group of kindly girls and let them fix you a bit. You’re in the English department! WE LOVED TO MAKE PEOPLE OVER.  Anyhoods, I hope this sad noodle with the terrible sweater who loves Andrew does not die.

It’s possible I have done this myself and I’m concerned about what that means for me.

I was not going to deny you Darren Criss’s butt, even though he is playing a sociopath.

This gown is quite stunning.

Is it a successful date if there is no harp? Asking for a friend.

I just wanted to note that, so far, Ricky Martin is very good in this part and that, in general, I am ready for Ricky Martin to be very famous again. You young people don’t even know how EXCITING it was when those of us who didn’t know about rocky Martin were introduced to him at the Grammys in 1999, when he sang Cup of Life in leather pants.

Will Chase, however, looks vaguely absurd in these glasses and that stache. He looks like he’s an actor playing an actor playing a cop.

I am here for this, however.

THESE WALLS ARE AMAZING. I CAN’T STOP SCREAMING ABOUT THEM.

I will note that I felt as if some of the blah blah about the Versace business felt a bit tonally out of place in this episode; in a sense, I think it worked well to establish that Donatella is a smart woman in her own right, but I’m not sure if the audience totally cares about stock options at this moment?

Ryan Murphy directed this episode and I forgot how much he loves an overhead shot. (It was well – and very dramatically – directed, because Ryan Murphy is a much better director than he is a writer. I don’t believe he wrote any of these episodes, which bodes well for the show.)

I TOLD YOU Cathy Moriarty would show up!

I know shit is bad right now, Donatella, but you look very glamorous whilst in mourning.

Schmidt, on the other hand, has looked MUCH BETTER.

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace