Season one of FX’s “American Crime Story” capitalized on last year’s O.J. craze with a gripping, well-acted depiction of one of the most significant events in American cultural history. Although the assassination of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace is not quite as ingrained in the country’s mind as the Simpson saga, “American Crime Story” tells its story in an ornate, operatic and elegant way, much like the man himself.
The story starts with the titular murder, as Andrew Cunanan (University alum Darren Criss, “Glee”) shoots Versace (Édgar Ramirez, “Zero Dark Thirty”) in front of his Miami mansion. Through a series of flashbacks interlaced with the subsequent FBI investigation, the show pieces together the life of the enigmatic, troubled Cunanan and what led him to commit a crime of passion.
While the stories themselves are intriguing, much like season one, the acting breathes life into characters who have been endlessly analyzed, making the show less of a criminal investigation and more of a deep, powerful drama. Criss’s portrayal of Cunanan paints the picture of a man who lacks any sort of human empathy yet seems to also have a complex set of emotions bubbling at the surface. He is an enthusiastic and effective liar, able to draw the audience into the web of fiction he creates in his mind. Ramirez, on the other hand, portrays Versace as an intensely charismatic man with a true zeal for life, as well as the courage to live as openly gay during a much less progressive time. Even Ricky Martin’s portrayal of Versace’s boyfriend Antonio D’Amico is believable and effective, albeit a one note performance since he displays the same anguished expression every time he appears onscreen. Versace’s sister and eventual ruler of the Versace empire Donatella (Penelope Cruz, “Murder on the Orient Express”), arrives towards the end of the first episode, stylishly clad in black and more ruthlessly pragmatic than her romantic brother.
The opening scene is the episode’s most memorable, with stunning shots of Miami and Versace’s grand, opulent mansion and little dialogue. Strings play in the background, growing more and more tense as Cunanan prepares himself for the deed. Everything, from the details of the mansion to Versace’s dead body, is presented as channeling beauty — ranging from traditional to morbid. Yet one can’t help feeling that unlike season one, the show is choosing to sacrifice substance for style. While some scenes such as Cunanan and Versace’s conversation after an opera viewing are strong, the dialogue at several points feels stilted and cliché, failing to convey the true emotions the characters are feeling. Because of this, quite a few of Criss’s strongest moments come from entirely non-verbal actions, whether it is swimming fully clothed into the sea to let out a primordial scream or painfully trying to imitate human emotion.
The show also does a solid job of contrasting Versace’s unique romanticism and how his vision interacts with the capitalistic nature of the society he lives in. In one scene, he explains that he makes his clothes to make his subjects happy and how every dress he makes follows the first he made for his sister.
“American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is visually gorgeous and shaping up to be an intriguing character study. Hopefully, the series manages to truly analyze the crime and its impact on society, rather than exploit a set of dramatic clichés.
Tag: review
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?
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DR190: Black Mirror and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
In this week’s episode David, John and Kyle discuss David Harbour’s Twitter promises (3:40), Spike TV’s rogue Twitter account (11:45) and the chaos surrounding the accidental Hawaii missile alert text (17:20). We also review all of season four of Black Mirror (28:00). Finally, we review the premiere of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story entitled “The Man Who Would Be Vogue” (46:20).
This episode was originally recorded and released on January 18th on our YouTube channel. You can listen to this show there in a much higher audio quality. To get in touch with us and find out when we are recording follow us on Twitter!
The problem with our TV true crime obsession
Traditionally, TV listings are found towards the back of a newspaper. These days, however, anyone wondering what the next hit series will be is better off looking for the most violent item on the front page.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which premiered in the US this week, is the latest in a seemingly endless new wave of true-crime dramas. Like a recent series of British primetime hits, it taps in to an apparent appetite to relive headline-making cases of the recent past. But unlike our dour docudramas, it does so with unapologetic panache.
It’s a very stylish – and very stylised – account of the serial killer Andrew Cunanan’s life, told in reverse, from his apparently motiveless 1997 murder of the Italian fashion designer Versace back to his troubled early years. The Versace family have branded it “a work of fiction”. It’s a compliment, though they didn’t intend it as one. This anthology series (which last year won nine Emmys and two Golden Globes for its retelling of the O J Simpson trial) puts good storytelling first. American Crime Story’s creator, Ryan Murphy, is also responsible for Glee. His métier is gorgeous, meticulously crafted trash, with a side order of stunt casting: here pop singer Ricky Martin plays Versace’s bereaved boyfriend Antonio.
Given Murphy’s reputation, the emotional depth of American Crime Story has come as a surprise to some critics. But Murphy has never been shallow. Beneath the kitsch, his dramas have always had an understanding of what pop culture can teach us about ourselves. O J Simpson’s trial has taken on different resonances over the decades – as proven by a scene in American Crime Story’s first series, in which OJ’s lawyer Robert Kardashian lectures his daughter Kim on the dark side of fame. Similarly, just as OJ offered interesting observations about race and celebrity, the Versace drama has pertinent things to say about gay identity.
Viewing the past from an ironic distance, Murphy’s bold approach places his true-crime dramas leagues ahead of his British peers’ efforts. The contrast will become unignorable when the show’s second series arrives on BBC Two next month – and, despite all their hand-wringing earnestness, it’s the British shows that feel more exploitative.
One of the big differences is timing: both series of American Crime Story are about events that took place 20 years ago. When a tragedy is too fresh in people’s memories, however, any irreverent, experimental retelling risks accusations of insensitivity. As a result, British filmmakers covering more recent crimes have found themselves hamstrung by convention – but even then, the speed with which they are ready to translate real-life suffering into primetime drama has necessarily felt a bit queasy.
In the space of just four months last year, British viewers suffered through The Moorside (about the 2008 disappearance of Shannon Matthews), Little Boy Blue (about the 2007 murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones) and Three Girls, broadcast just five years on from the Rochdale sex-trafficking trial that inspired it. (The first two, incidentally, were both written by Jeff Pope, who has become the recognised leader of the genre)
Each show took a similarly down-the-line approach to narrative, and presented the suffering of Northern working-class families in washed-out greys, pushing the audience towards helpless anger at the slow-moving, ineffectual authorities. Each show had similarly doleful performances, earning the same raves from critics. None attempted anything that couldn’t have been achieved better by a documentary.
The other option, of course, is to create dramas that cut straight to the issues, without exploiting real people’s stories to do it. In 2016, the excellent National Treasure – following a fictional Seventies TV star hit by sex abuse allegations – turned the quagmire of Operation Yewtree into art, raising questions a straightforward factual account never could.
But our myopic, ripped-from-the-headlines docudramas are often too close to their subject to offer either documentary insight or dramatic depth.
Nevertheless don’t expect the true-crime trend to abate. Next up from the BBC is The Barking Murders, a three-part drama about the East London rapist and serial killer Stephen Port, who targeted victims on gay dating apps. It will arrive less than two years on from his conviction – let’s hope it is not another case of “too much, too soon”.
“ACS: The Assassination of Gianni Versace”, Episode 1 – Blog – The Film Experience
The first installment of American Crime Story made such a deep dent in culture by taking the O.J. Simpson murder trial, a case that was heavily imprinted in popular consciousness, and used it to analyze issues of race, sexism, and tabloid culture that still resonate today.
The second season focuses on, as the title establishes, the assassination of famed designer Gianni Versace in 1997 (shortly after the O.J. case) by serial killer Andrew Cunanan. And if the first episode is any indication of what the season as a whole will attempt, it will both broaden and narrow the cultural conversations that the first season tackled.
On the premiere episode, we get a first look into the mind of a murderer, the house of an icon, and the jet of a queen…
Episode 1 “The Man Who Would Be Vogue”
The premiere opens with Gianni Versace’s morning routine on the day of his murder. We follow him through the halls and patios of an overbearingly sumptuous mansion, in an exquisite tracking shot that indicates that excess is an everyday part of this man.Then we see Andrew Cunanan played by a never-better Darren Criss who will inevitably and deservedly going to be showered with awards on the fall. He’s contemplating, executing, and ultimately relishing the act of murdering Versace right on his front porch.
Opening with the murder is an indication that the series, much like in its first season, will not be focusing on the act itself, but rather on the players around it, and the culture that allowed it to happen. Gianni Versace was not the first murder Andrew Cunanan committed, and it was not the final chapter of his story. The series will delve both into the events that led him to commit that murder, and what happened afterwards.
This will be an exploration of Andrew Cunanan, who Darren Criss embodies with overbearing charisma, ambition, wide-eyed naiveté, and the right amount of flickering darkness to make us raise an eyebrow. We see that all throughout his life he has looked from the outside longing to belong, and that his magnetic personality and natural ability to lie through his teeth have carried him through.
In another superbly executed tracking shot, Andrew walks through a gay club with a friend, lusting not only after the boys around him, but this style of life. He meets Versace and insinuates himself into his life, landing a date at the opera he’s producing. He’s a serial liar, and to us it is evident, but you desperately want to believe him.
But this is also about the other players around him: the cops that are investigating Versace’s murder and are full of prejudices around his lifestyle. His lover and partner, Antonio D’Amico (played with impressive grace by Ricky Martin), who has to pick him up from the steps and spend the entire evening covered in his blood.
And it’s also about Gianni’s sister, Donatella, who is given perhaps the greatest television entrance in years: out of a jet into a limousine through the mansion, where, without a word, she’s swallowing her grief. And the moment Penelope Cruz finally speaks with that perfect accent, a couple of octaves down, we know Donatella means business.
She needs to keep the family company a family company, and will do whatever it takes to keep her brother’s legacy alive. It doesn’t seem Donatella will be much in the spotlight throughout the show, but Penelope iz making the best with her time, chewing every single piece of gold-coated scenery.
Whereas The People vs. OJ explored issues of racism and misogyny that reverberated in the present more than ever, Gianni Versace seems to be wanting to tackle both the homophobia and the celebration of gay culture that allowed these murders to happen. The majority of the players were gay themselves, and their relationship with that identity deeply influenced the case, either emotionally (with Ricky Martin’s character), strategically (all of Cunanan’s victims followed a very specific pattern), or legally (the Miami PD relationship with the local gay community was complicated, to say the least)
We’ll see exactly what statement the show frames around the murder as it develops, but the pilot doesn’t shy away from letting us know that identity politics will play a huge role in this; and that, yes, they are also still relevant.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is perhaps a bit more scattered than its predecessor, but it also seems to enjoy itself a bit more. The show could develop into a lavish drama about passion and murder, or be an intricate exploration of broken minds and gay culture, or a combination of both. But wherever it takes us, I was in from the first moment Edgar Ramirez descended his spiral case in a silk bathrobe.
“ACS: The Assassination of Gianni Versace”, Episode 1 – Blog – The Film Experience
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T & Lo discuss the ongoing cultural shift in Hollywood, examining the reactions to the Aziz Ansari story and how the wider #MeToo movement is changing the conversation. Plus, the “Heathers” remake and how it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the original film, which leads to a wider discussion on remakes, reboots and sequels, with thoughts on “Blade Runner 2049” thrown in. Finally, they review the 1st episode of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” and how it depicts the assault on gay culture that followed his death.
*Starts at 37:45 on full podcast
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.
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: S02E01: The Man Who Would Be Vogue
AN IMPRESSIVE PREMIERE SETS THE SCENE FOR A VERY DIFFERENT CRIME
How do you follow the crime of the century? That’s the question Ryan Murphy and FX must have been asking after the monumental success of American Crime Story’s first season. Brushing off charges of exploitation and insensitivity, The People v O.J. Simpson was a surprisingly detailed and compassionate tale with the racial politics of the early 90s and 2016, and how they mirrored each other through the filter of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. It topped many best of year lists, won a ton of awards, and briefly put Cuba Gooding Jr on the map again. The question must be asked again: how do you follow it?
The Assassination of Gianni Versace has a lot to live up to, and by the basis of The Man Who Would be Vogue it’s safe to say that Ryan Murphy has another hit on his hands. In many ways, season two of American Crime Story is completely different than season one. Sure, there are lots of similarities: it’s 90s setting, the crime featuring a number of famous faces, actors from Ryan Murphy’s previous projects, but The Assassination of Gianni Versace has a completely different feel than its predecessor.
One of the most important differences is the cut and dry nature of the crime itself. There is absolutely no ambiguity about who murdered Gianni Versace: that would be serial killer Andrew Cunanan, played by Darren Criss. Also, if you think that season two will have the same structure of the first season, which isn’t unusual if you aren’t familiar with the crime, don’t get your hopes up. There will be no trial, instead there will be what the author of the book this season is based on Maureen Orth called “the largest failed manhunt in U.S. history.”
If the crime seems straightforward, the lead up, and consequences of it are anything but. The Man Who Would be Vogue spends its first ten minutes showing the contrasting circumstances of victim and killer. Ryan Murphy’s camera follows Versace (Edgar Ramirez) through his palatial mansion much like a king wander around his castle. As he makes his way through his morning routine, we are shown the same time frame from Andrew Cunanan’s perspective. It’s here that the contrast becomes so effective. As Versace is calmly waking up for what might be an unremarkable day, Cunanan is on the beach, which is stained red in many places, preparing for the act that will make him as famous as the man he is about to kill.
I didn’t like Glee so I wasn’t that aware of Darren Criss until he started popping up in some predictable places: as a dead hipster in American Horror Story: Hotel, and some unpredictable places: as the Music Meister in the Supergirl/Flash musical crossover. None of these roles prepared me for his magnetic performance as Andrew Cunanan. Clearly the most eye-catching part of this premiere, at least until Penelope Cruz turns up, Criss, along with Murphy, and head writer Tom Robbin Smith, have crafted a captivating sociopath who, if he wasn’t a real person, I would have called a larger than life imitation of Tom Ripley.
With this season placing such importance on circumstances leading to the murder, going as far back as 1990 when Cunanan allegedly met Versace, Criss has to craft a character in which the lengths of his insanity went to make narrative sense. This is harder than you would think as real-life people don’t tend to stick to character architypes, or act in ways that make logical sense within a story. The advantage of Cunanan is that he is constantly inventing himself over and over again in every situation he finds himself in. This is shown effectively through his accounts of that possibly made-up meeting with Versace. We first see it as it supposedly happened: with Cunanan sensing an opening that frequently closes only for him to rip it open again. It’s this persistence, and a story about his family ties to Italy, that helps him connect to Versace enough that the designer invites him to the opera. From here we hear two alternative versions of this story from Cunanan’s point of view that put him in a more cool and favourable light. He’s a pathological liar that creates himself anew over and over again: symbolised by his nearly empty wardrobe and his confession (even if it is superficial) that he has nothing.
The best scene of the episode is a culmination of all of Cunanan’s skills. In a borrowed suit, he improvises a privileged history of himself to put him on somewhat equal footing to Versace. The way Criss moves around the stage is almost comically that of an actor putting on a performance, which is exactly what he is doing. This is complicated further by the niggling thought that this entire scene could be a fiction as well. What is real though, is Cunanan’s crimes, which turn out to be more serious than just Versace.
Apart from the meat of the episode between Ramirez and Criss, The Man Who Would be Vogue has got some season-long plots to set up. It’s here where American Crime Story feels the most familiar. Not only is law enforcement involved, including Miami PD and the FBI, there is also the media, and bystanders that are on hand to hustle for profit or souvenirs.
8/10 – The pieces have been put in place, the big players introduced, and the story set in motion. American Crime Story has figured out how to follow its first season: go bigger.
American Crime Story – The Assassination of Gianni Versace: S02E01: The Man Who Would Be Vogue
https://ia601502.us.archive.org/8/items/PVRMACSS02E01/PVRM_ACS_S02E01.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
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ACS S2E1 – “The Man Who Would Be Vogue”
The People are … on board for “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” The mansion! The slow pan shots! Miami! 1997! It may be too soon to tell if we love it, but one thing’s for sure – It’s a BEAUTIFUL show. Natalie and Maren are reading your feelings about the first episode, dissecting Penelope Cruz’s “Donatella” accent, and breaking down fact from fiction of the murder scene.
ACS news 