It’s also the title of a new Cinemax drama series, the second show this spring to follow a serial killer case reverse-chronologically. Had Cinemax been able to premiere Rellik timed to its initial launch on BBC One last fall, it would have looked like the tricky progenitor and Tom Rob Smith’s work on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story might have looked like an imitator, but instead American audiences are getting this one reverse-chronologically.
Actually, being able to watch Rellik and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story basically back-to-back is an illuminating look at the advantages and disadvantages of storytellers creating obstacles for themselves in constructing otherwise familiar genre stories. Rellik creators Harry and Jack Williams are no strangers to experimenting with formal complications after The Missing and Liar and they commit much more thoroughly and much more intriguingly to the Memento-like structure over the first five episodes of their six-episode drama. It’s novelist Smith, however, who found a way to make a gimmick structure pay off in terms of character development (even if he just made Andrew Cunnan into a half-Filipino Tom Ripley), while Rellik sells out its gimmick entirely with a finale that’s an exercise only in exposition and flimsy psychological motivation.
[…] What shows like Rellik and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story are doing is acknowledging the entrenchment of crime investigation structure developed over decades of TV procedurals. The extra step that Gianni Versace only sometimes took and that Rellik rarely takes is progressing beyond cleverness into narrative rewards. The title itself reflects a series with an “Aren’t we cute?” indulgence that doesn’t deepen after you’ve said, “Yeah, I get it.”
Last year American Crime Story found critical and popular acclaim under the helm of Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson and Ryan Murphy with account of “The People Vs O J Simpson”. They are back now with season two, which has recently finished its run in the US and midway through its UK stint, to provide us with another account of a uniquely and peculiarly American crime story. This season’s tale recounts the horrific and mysterious assassination of Gianni Versace.
Gianni Versace was shot on the steps of his Miami home on 15 July 1997 by Andrew Cunanan who had in the three months prior murdered four other men. The show examines why Cunanan decided to shoot Versace that day. This question is shrouded in a haze of ambiguity and we will never get an objective answer from the killer himself. However, from second-hand accounts and Maureen Orth’s controversial book on the matter, the show runners piece together a plausible account of Cunanan’s descent into evil. However, this is not the only story that the show tells. In its portrayal of these particular crimes the show exposes certain narratives that governed American society in the ‘90s and arguably still today. Just as “The People Vs O J Simpson” exposed America’s attitudes to race and class, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” examines homophobia, mental illness and our relationship with success and fame. These are issues that are universal yet also particularly American. The show has its faults but the discussions it raises and the exceptional performances of its main cast mean it is still a compelling watch.
The narrative structure of the season is daring and sometimes this is effective and other times it falters. One of the strongest criticisms of this season is that for a show with Gianni Versace in the title, said titular character does not feature as much as you might expect. I myself was disappointed by the absence of the Versaces in many episodes. The sheer fabulous vision and voice of Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace leaves an unfillable void whenever the show leaves their side. The show is far more about Cunanan’s history than it is Versace’s, and it is probable that the title was a decision made for the sole purpose of bringing in more viewers. However, perhaps there is a deeper, less cynical reading of this decision. Even though Versace’s role in the show is relatively small, that name and all it has come to represent is critical in the show. Cunanan is possessed by fame, success and glamour. He clamours after these images of people he ought to be and people he thinks he deserves to be. It also mirrors the reaction of the time. A celebrity being murdered brings the world shuddering to a halt whereas the murder of four unknown gay men barely has us feather the brakes. Fame and image are two notions that still have an immeasurable impact on how we live our lives and thus makes for valuable discussion in this show. Many of the episodes are dedicated to unpicking the tragic ends of Cunanan’s other victims. We are also given an insight into the stories of these people and the challenges that marked their lives independent of their tragic ends.
The season is also an exploration of homophobia in the ‘90s and a troubling picture is painted that draws parallels with today. Antonio, Versace’s partner, is subjected to many violations and microaggressions throughout the season. It is a nuanced portrayal of a homophobic society that is not necessarily explicitly egregious to gay men but does so much to deny them equal rights that they are left floating in an ether knowing that there are no safety nets beneath them. One of the most harrowing concepts to come to terms with in the season is that Antonio’s grief is never validated and so he has a crucial part of his personhood slowly chipped away by the people around him.
As well as encapsulating pertinent issues of the time and forcing us to reflect on their relevance today, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” also boasts some amazing cinematography and a brilliant soundtrack. Dreamlike sequences with saturated colours help to convey visually the subjectivity of Cunanan’s narrative. The musical choices help to immerse the viewer in the time period and play into the sometimes melodramatic tones of the season. The narrative arc is ambitious. Beginning and ending with Cunanan’s final crime and in the in-between taking us all the way back to his childhood and back again. Branching off from this are the stories of Cunanan’s victims and their families. At times this vision does not pay off and certain important moments lose their power; however, this weaving allows the show to encompass more issues that make it America’s crime story and not just Cunanan’s. It is also refreshing to see a show break away from formulaic ways of storytelling.
“American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” provides us much to unpack in its nine episodes and each is well-crafted with excellent performances. The show presents itself as an object for reflection and it is worthy of our attention.
I believe that for a woman, a dress is a weapon to get what she wants.” So declared Donatella Versace with a power-pout and a toss of her peroxide mane. Sadly, it wasn’t sartorial weapons she needed.
Last night, we reached the seventh episode of the high-camp docudrama The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (BBC Two), which continues to chart the events that led to the 1997 shooting of Italian designer Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) on the doorstep of his Miami mansion.
In 1992, Versace was diagnosed with a rare form of ear cancer, forcing younger sister Donatella (Penélope Cruz) to take the fashion house’s reins. Almost literally so – a leather-strapped bondage dress became the siblings’ first collaboration. Meanwhile in San Diego, delusional sociopath and budding serial killer Andrew Cunanan (creepy Darren Criss, who, along with Cruz, is the star of this show) conned his way into a lavish new life by targeting wealthy older men.
The first of his targets, architect Lincoln Aston (Todd Waring), ended up savagely beaten to death – a shock scene of gore amid the gloss. The second, silver fox businessman Norman Blachford (Michael Nouri), allowed Cunanan to move into his minimalist mansion. “Oh, if only they could see me now,” murmured Cunanan, taking in the ocean view from a vast glass balcony. “Who?” asked Blachford. “Everyone,” came Cunanan’s chilling reply.
Written by British export Tom Rob Smith, this was a souped-up soap opera, dripping in gaudy bling and unfolding in designer beige interiors. All gilt mirrors, baroque chairs and creamy soft furnishings, it’s styled like a luxury hotel lobby and rollicks along like an afternoon true-crime movie, albeit a well-appointed one. You half-expect Columbo, Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher or Hart to Hart’s millionaire spouses to turn up and solve the impending murder.
There are two episodes of the nine-part series still to come, but thus far a convoluted flashback structure has prevented it from hitting the heights of its predecessor, The People vs OJ Simpson. While the time-hopping approach might fill in the background and motivation, it hardly adds much in the way of forward momentum. The hypnotic horror we saw earlier in the series – episodes three to five were masterful, the next two less so – has given way to middling drama. As a guilty pleasure, though, it’s grim, fascinating and just gripping enough.
The lies continue to slip off Andrew Cunanan’s tongue. He changes his surname, his parentage, his racial identity, his education, his occupation and even his interests more frequently than his socks. He even utilises other people’s memories if he feels it would impress or endear him to someone.
But if you’re wondering why so many apparently intelligent people fell for his fantasies, this episode explains it a little. We see how he cleverly targeted Norman Blachford (who survived Andrew’s killing spree) and how he dazzled David Madson (who did not) with his apparently glamorous lifestyle. Darren Criss is equally dazzling as Cunanan.
As we noted earlier this year, Aimee Mann—like the members of the Cars, a onetime Bostonian—turned in an arrestingly spare version of “Drive” for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, giving the song a poignancy and directness only suggested by the original.
The music gods are off to a good start for 2018. Aimee Mann wins a Grammy. The Cars get voted into the Rock Hall of Fame. And, combining the two, Mann has covered one of the Cars’ biggest hits: “Drive.”
The Cars recorded “Drive” for 1984’s Heartbeat City, the Mutt Lange-produced album that marked the height of the band’s commercial success. “Drive” is a beautiful soft-rock ballad that was accompanied by a heavy rotation MTV video. Remember Paulina Porizkova crying while marking on the wall?
Mann recorded her cover for the television series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (she also appears in an episode performing “Drive” in a bar). Mann has covered other songs before for tributes or a movie, and most of those efforts only get traction with her loyal fan base. Her take on Three Dog Night’s “One” (a cover of a cover) has broken out wider; she still performs it often on tour.
So what would you expect from a singer-songwriter that covers a dreamy synth song from the 1980s? An acoustic guitar ballad? Ding, ding, ding. Aimee’s stripped-down playing and her unique voice accentuate the melancholy in “Drive.” This simple music plays to Aimee’s strength, and she does not disappoint. The Cars’ original version holds up today 34 years later, so there is a slim chance of improving this classic with a poppy overproduced version; thankfully she went in a different direction.
Give Aimee Mann’s acoustic cover of “Drive” a listen and sing along like you just lost your true love at the school dance.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
BBC Two, 9.00pm
It’s been fascinating to discover the “true” story behind the 1997 murder of fhion designer Gianni Versace in Ryan Murphy’s glitzy drama, which has expertly depicted the inner world of the perpetrator, a Walter Mitty-style serial killer called Andrew Cunanan (a career-defining role for Darren Criss).
This episode, however, has a mid-series lull about it as Cunanan ascends to the higher echelons of gay society, shaping himself meticulously into the posh, preppy eye-candy who saw a sugar daddy (or two) as his way to the top. Elsewhere, the Versace siblings return at last. Gianni (Edgar Ramirez), now in failing health decides to champion his insecure sister Donatella (Penélope Cruz in a frightful wig) and turns her into both designer and muse.
Despite a lack of characters to root for – the Versaces’ moments of vulnerability dissolve into tedious histrionics and are eclipsed by Cunanan’s cold-blooded machinations – it’s all quite a fabulous mix of fashion, high society and brutal murder, with some interesting commentary on homophobia in the Nineties as well. Vicki Power
Judged on chatter alone, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is an immense disappointment. Ratings have been down. Reviews have been mixed. It hasn’t reached the mainstream crossover event-TV status of its predecessor The People Vs OJ Simpson. People have been infuriated that – spoiler alert – in an entire series of television called The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Gianni Versace gets assassinated in the very first scene of the very first episode. Things are looking bad. Not quite True Detective 2 bad, but the consensus is that this did not go the way it should have.
In short, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story needs a defender. Reader, I am that defender. Because the chatter is nonsense. This is an astonishing, bold piece of television. By some distance, it’s the best of the year so far.
Of course it suffers by comparison. The People Vs OJ Simpson was a shameless crowd-pleaser. It was a retelling of The Trial of The Century, a murder case dripping with fame and sex and violence. Every character was a celebrity – many were Kardashians – and every role seemed to be filled by a down-on-their-luck megastar determined to chew every last piece of scenery available as aggressively as possible. Travolta, Schwimmer, Gooding Jr; all going goon-eyed hell-for-leather bananas in every single scene. It was precision-designed to draw eyeballs.
But that’s not what The Assassination of Gianni Versace is. This is a vastly different beast, and its weakest moments come when it overtly tries to ape the Simpson series. The scenes that actually feature the Versace family – played by Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin – are ever so slightly too broad, even without the cognitive dissonance that comes from hearing a Venezuelan, a Spaniard and a Puerto Rican all loosely attempting to hit a convincing Italian accent.
Their scenes are rendered even flabbier by the fact that they butt up against a bone-tight horrorshow. Because The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t really about Gianni Versace. It’s about his killer, Andrew Cunanan, and the gut-churning tilt-a-whirl of his mid-90s murder spree.
The show’s entire mid-section barely features Versace at all, and it counts among some of the most gripping television in recent memory. Tracking back through Cunanan’s murders, episodes blast through genres with a breathtakingly confident swagger. The murder of Lee Miglin is shot and paced like a horror movie, full of lurching unease and escalating dread. David Madson’s death is a claustrophobic thriller that feels tragically inevitable right from the very first frame. And the episode about Jeff Trail’s murder is just a thing of towering majesty. It manages to simultaneously move the story along, draw a graceful one-off character arc and dish out the most stingingly furious rebuke to the US military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy I have ever seen. It was stunning and heartbreaking, and if there’s a better episode of television broadcast this year, I will be genuinely staggered.
Holding all these disparate tones together is a mesmerising central performance by Darren Criss. A former Glee star in danger of being lost to the world of cartoon voiceovers, Criss is horrifyingly convincing as Cunanan. He’s needy and manipulative and utterly empty; a blank that slowly draws you in to your doom. I’m watching the series at BBC pace, so I don’t know whether or not the wheels will fall off in the weeks to come, but for now it has the look of a star-making performance. Criss deserves to be huge because of this role. He cannot win enough awards for it.
American Crime Story’s producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson have previously said that their show exists to tell stories that say something “bigger and deeper and more disturbing about America”. So far, that’s exactly what The Assassination of Gianni Versace has been. It’s dark and complex and tragic, and it deserves a much better reception than the one it received. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on something special.
On March 21st, a Wednesday night, 1.2 million people across the United States huddled around television screens and laptop monitors to witness the bittersweet denouement of FX’s true crime anthology series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which stars Penélope Cruz, Darren Criss, Édgar Ramírez and Ricky Martin. The show, which operatically back-pedals through serial killer Andrew Cunanan’s (Criss) untempered orgy of violence, delivered one last exhibitionist image in “Alone,” its ninth and final episode: Cunanan, swaying on a two-story houseboat in Miami Beach, places his gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. And so, in the blink of an eye, a fleeting series that recalled the senseless killings and fruitless FBI pursuit of murderer Andrew Cunanan drew to a lurid close. But what didn’t pass on for me, as a true crime purist, was the burning question the prestige of this genre never fails to invoke:
IS IT INHERENTLY WRONG FOR SHOWS LIKE AMERICAN CRIME STORY TO REANIMATE REAL PEOPLE, ONLY TO SLAUGHTER THEM FOR THE SAKE OF PROFIT AND ENTERTAINMENT?
When it comes to the seductive nature of the true crime species, criticism regarding the validity of factual representation is inevitable. But it’s an especially prickly situation when those appearing in the retelling are still alive: Michael Oher felt infantilized by his character in The Blind Side; Lil’ Kim thought Notorious painted her as a shallow nymphomaniac; psychologist Philip Zimbardo was wholly unimpressed with the 2002 release of The Experiment. (“It makes Stanford and me and psychology look bad.”) And just days into the inaugural month of January, less than two weeks before the premiere of Versace: ACS, the Versace joined this exasperated lineage, making their own concerns public: “The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace,” a representative explained in a statement. “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.” The unrelenting series is predicated on the “fact-based reporting” of journalist Maureen Orth‘s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.
The formality of the Versace family’s statement was a façade professionally absent of emotion — months earlier, Versace’s lover, Antonio d’Amico, fiercely expressed his anxieties about the show’s premise: “So much has been fictionalized. Unfortunately, Gianni died. Unfortunately, this guy killed him. Unfortunately, it happened: but now, let it drop,” he pled.
The true crime genre satiates the curiosity and wading boredom of the common Netflix addict. From options from Making a Murderer to The Keepers to The Jinx, an expansive arsenal of TV voyeurism exists at the click of a button. But beyond the climbing viewer tolls and critical acclaims these shows tend to garner (American Crime Story is already an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning series), there are real people off-screen whose lives are being scrutinized and consumed. The death of a person whose family likely still privately grieves at the sound of their name becomes a public spectacle, existing as a vehicle for the profit of television networks. The imagination isn’t strong enough to access or empathize with the emotions of those who are thrust back into an interrupted mourning cycle, reliving the traumas of a loved one’s death.
In May 2016, a woman named Lauren Bradford wrote an agonizing op-ed in The Guardian about the impacts of the true crime genre. Bradford’s father and his mistress killed her mother in 1991; in 2016, a miniseries called The Secret emerged to tell the story — despite the resistance of Bradford and her family. “When media interest goes beyond the reporting of events and is against the wishes of family members, the effects can be as devastating as the murder itself,” she wrote. “People bereaved by murder have no voice. And yet some members of the media industry continue to exploit the murder-bereaved and victims of crime in pursuit of entertainment.” Bradford went on to detail how truths were rewritten and embellished; how she was berated by the social media and PR buildup around the series; how the production company trivially misspelled her deceased mother’s name in her correspondence with them.
Versace: ACS has all the hallmarks of an excellent true crime series, and speaks to overarching themes of homophobia, HIV, drug addiction and, according to producer Ryan Murphy, feminism. But summoning these people at the beginning of an episode only to bloody them by the end, all for the purpose of dramatic entertainment (and the subsequent mountains of profit and critical acclaim) seems, for the most part, inherently voyeuristic and exploitative. In transforming real people into symbols, or vehicles, to explore these greater themes and stories, we strip them of their humanity, whittling them down to fabled characters who live on screen to dance for the viewer on nightly programming. The splendor of a human being, twice erased, is at once compressed, and the difference between their grandiosity and potential monotony becomes a variable solved by the performance of the actor.
People are not chess pieces that can fit into campy, macabre TV dramas. And when the people involved in these portrayals are rearing their heads at the images, it’s important to interrogate to what end these shows exist, and whose interests they are serving. The people on screen no longer belong to their families. Private grief, as Bradford says, becomes public property.
Dramatizations, of course, are both valuable and important. Versace: ACS was particularly excellent, perhaps both in spite of and because of its enthralling darkness (and compelling acting). And beyond ACS, films such as Spotlight and Schindler’s List construct portals into tragedies that have had longstanding impacts and affected generational trauma. But it’s vital to question how healthy our relationships and ultimate consumption of these “stories” are. How do we reconcile our fascination with these shows when the families whose lives have been intruded never gave their authorization?
Gianni Versace was employed as a starting point for a series that intricately moves reverse chronologically through the violent escapades of a serial murderer. And as we roam further away from his death, we almost forget the lingering image of his mangled body, stretched across the lap of his lover like some depraved iteration of Michelangelo’s Pietà. His corpse, by the second episode, becomes a person again, with a cadence that suggests a future without a bloody end. Versace overcomes HIV; he reveals to the world he is gay; his lover abandons his tendency to procure sexual partners for them in favour of monogamy — for a moment, we forget how this all ended. But forgetting is a luxury the Versace family does not have.
On July 15, 1997, a man walked up behind Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace as he was entering his South Beach estate and shot him in the head, killing him. This murder introduced the world to the name Andrew Cunanan, a man who sought fame and acceptance so desperately, he was willing to kill for it. Versace wasn’t his only victim. In fact, Andrew’s 4 state murder spree left a trail of bodies and questions behind that still baffle and intrigue investigators. Why did he do it? What made him snap? Was it all avoidable, or was Andrew just born to kill? Join us this week as we examine Cunanan’s life and crimes, from his troubled and turbulent childhood, to the web of lies that he lived as an adult and the victims he left in his wake, we do our best to figure out who Andrew was and what lead him down the darkest path of all. | 5 April 2018
ACS news 