After a title card reading “July 16, 1997,” fade up on the trompe l’oeil clouds painted on the ceiling of the bedroom of Gianni Versace. The camera drops down to the man himself, lying in bed first thing in the morning and contemplating said clouds while Albinoni’s “Adagio in G Minor” begins on the soundtrack – an eminently clockable choice due to its ubiquity, but perhaps more appropriate than usual to accompany the story of the murder of a creative genius by a grifting striver, given its provenance.
Gianni rises and dons velvet slippers with the Versace seal on them. The camera follows him through his baroquely appointed home as he selects a pink bathrobe with a frieze pattern at the collar, to match the gold silk pajamas with the frieze pattern at the waist, and heads out to his balcony to enjoy the morning sun and survey his domain.
On the beach – not far away, it’s implied, but of course worlds away at the same time – Andrew Cunanan sits at the water’s edge, amid clumps of washed-ashore seaweed. He takes Caroline Seebohm’s The Man Who Would Be Vogue: The Life And Times Of Conde Nast from his grubby backpack and turns it to the camera so we get it (drink!), then takes out a gun and regards it, then stuffs both items back in the pack and broods at what looks like a healing burn mark on his left thigh before wandering into the water and screaming at it…screaming with all his might, but barely audible against the legendary piece of music and the roar of the implacable sea. Just in case you were wondering if the motif of Cunanan’s unfulfilled need to feel important weren’t in play from the moment we see him.
Gianni takes pills already laid out for him on a tray. We see the prescription bottles, but not what the pills are or are for, which I note for a reason, but we’ll get back to it; in the meantime, Gianni has descended through the house to the atrium, where casually liveried staff wait for him with perfectly correct posture. Taking the orange juice that one butler is holding on a silver salver, Gianni gives them a cheery “good morning,” and most of them bow. Sipping his juice, he heads into the pool area, which, like the rest of the house, looks like something out of Petronius (but before it gets too nutty with the live birds cooked into pastry shells).
By contrast, Cunanan is breakfasting on Jolt and blearily giving the leathery old gents in banana hammocks on the beach promenade the side-eye.
A servant brings Gianni a covered tray of fresh fruit. Gianni fondly rubs his arm when the breakfast is unveiled. I note this because here and in the scene just prior, there’s an apparent divergence between how Gianni thinks of or treats his household staff and how they’ve been instructed to behave; maybe nothing significant, but it caught my attention.
Gianni, dressed, heads out, blowing kisses to his be-tennis-whites-ed companion Antonio D’Amico and tenderly patting Antonio’s hitting partner as he passes him. When a tourist couple asks him for an autograph, he politely declines…
…as Cunanan dashes into a grotsky bathroom off the beach and hurls into a revolting toilet that, were he not already nauseated, would probably get the job done on its own. He slumps against the side of the stall and stares dully at the homophobic graffito left on the opposite wall.
Not exactly American Vandal-level work there, Miami bigots. Cunanan splashes water on his face and tries to pull it together…
…while Gianni greets a friend at the news café, then orders up a whole whack of magazines, including Vanity Fair, which he calls “Diana.” Aw.
He’s tooling home when Cunanan, seemingly almost coincidentally passing by across the street, spots him, starts, and fumbles the gun out of his bag. As Gianni is taking his time figuring out his keys, Cunanan stalks across the street, gun extended, and starts firing. Doves startle up all around Gianni, who turns and grunts, “No.” Another gunshot smashes us into the title card.
Cunanan, wearing an open shirt and grey briefs, lurks at a bedroom door, then lets himself in and creepers over to the bed, where a man and woman are asleep. (They are Phil and Elizabeth Cote; Elizabeth is described in contemporary coverage of the crime as one of Cunanan’s “patrons,” which would answer – sort of – Tara Ariano’s and my questions about their relationship from our recent The Blotter Presents conversation about the show. Maureen Orth, who wrote the book on which this season is at least loosely based, Cunanan had known Elizabeth since middle school and was godfather to the Cotes’ daughter; I haven’t read the book yet, but you can find more in this Vanity Fair article.) He tugs at himself while looking at them with an unsettlingly opaque expression, but before that goes any further, Elizabeth half-wakes to see him looming there, so Cunanan switches gears: “Guess who I met?” He leaps into bed in between them as Elizabeth wails, “Andrew!” With great fanfare, he announces, “Gianni Versace!” and Elizabeth gasps and demands that he tell her everything while Phil clambers out of bed with a “this fucking guy” expression on his face. It’s not entirely clear at the beginning of the scene when this takes place, but the next title card reads…
“October 1990,” so let’s assume shortly after that. We’re in San Francisco, following Cunanan down the stairs into a gay club to the strains of “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.” He greets a redheaded friend, and they cut through the dance floor in slo-mo so the audience has more time to appreciate the care taken by Wardrobe with the leather harnesses and mesh t-shirts. The friend gets them into the VIP area, and Cunanan hasn’t gotten more than a few steps inside when he’s ensorcelled by the sight of Gianni, deep in conversation on a banquet; you can practically hear him getting starfuck wood. He leans forward and over-accents, “Signore Versace. Buona sera.” Gianni and his seatmates give Cunanan the “asshole says what” look, so Red is obliged to lean down and note that it’s his friend, Andrew. Cunanan gets a dismissive “hi” before Gianni returns to his conversation, so he tries again: “It’s good to see you in San Francisco.” Gianni:
Again he tries to return to his friends, but Cunanan is chastened only for a second before saying grandly that he’s excited to see the opera Gianni is doing the costumes for, that it’s time a contemporary designer did that work. Impatiently, Gianni cuts him off: “Have we met before?” Taking a beat that, if you were looking for it, would give him away, Cunanan says yes, at a garden party at Gianni’s “residence” in Lago di Como. He gives just enough detail to imply that he’s actually been there, and adds, “You were most gracious, of course…I remember, but for you to remember is very flattering.” Who knows if this exchange actually took place, but it’s flawless writing of this kind of con regardless: so-called specifics, likely available to anyone with a VF subscription; assumed intimacy, which is a gamble with VIPs but will make most marks accept that it exists regardless of social station, because the first instinct is seldom to think you’re being lied to; obsequiousness that relies on the social contract to be, if not appreciated, then at least acknowledged.
It doesn’t get Cunanan as far as he’d like here, though, as Gianni gives him a perfunctory “Lago di Como; that must be it, yes,” and returns to his discussion. Cunanan sets his jaw, and Darren Criss does a wonderful job of showing us Cunanan’s wheels turning as he refocuses his fury at Gianni not immediately inviting him into the charmed circle based on his beauty and wit, and tries to find another in. It’s uncomfortable to watch, but also a master class in portraying predatory behavior that, in the beginning of its cycle, can register as merely pathetic and awkward. Cunanan hurries to say that his mother’s parents are from Italy, from the south, and blares the family name: “Maybe you know them?” Hard to say if we’re meant to see this as a saddish blunder – if Lake Como were any further north, it would be in Switzerland, and there are 55 million people in Italy – but, despite my initial assumption that Cunanan just borrowed the name of an Italian football star who had just featured in the ‘90 World Cup, “Schillaci” is in fact his mother’s maiden name and it does get Gianni’s attention, albeit in the form of a somewhat concerned expression. Cunanan quickly blathers that his mother feels a “strong connection” to Italy but she’s never visited: “Can you believe that? An Italian-American that’s never even seen her own country?” Gianni shoots his seatmates a look and confirms, not entirely interestedly, that she’s never gone to Italy; Cunanan takes the opening, sitting down and confiding that he thinks she wants to keep Italy “in her mind as this perfect place,” and of course he’s talking about himself, his own idealizing of situations and estrangement from his true self – provided you believe a sociopath can have a self, versus, in the words of Cloeckley, a finely-tuned reflex machine built to mimic human responses.
Gianni sends the guy next to him off for a refill and semi-gestures for Cunanan to take the empty seat, asking where Cunanan’s mother’s parents were born. “Palermo,” Cunanan says, scrambling into the seat and imperiously telling Red that he’ll have whatever Gianni’s having. Red sort of rolls his eyes and goes to get Cunanan a club soda.
Back at the Cote…uh, cote, Cunanan is talking up how exclusive the club is and its “strict policy” on not approaching celebrities, which he would “never do, by the way…uch, so tacky.” As Phil is rolling his eyes, Cunanan says “this agreeable-looking man” came up and introduced himself as Versace. “I say to him, honey, if you’re Versace, I’m Coco Chanel.” Remember that phrasing. Elizabeth is all “oh no you di’in’t,” but he says he did, and it was embarrassing when Gianni “established himself as, y’know. Versace.”
Phil is continuing to make “girl, please” faces as Cunanan, helping himself to breakfastry, says grandly that he’s not a fan of Versace’s clothes – “so…bright, it’s too much” – and Elizabeth has to mouth “stop it” at her husband as Cunanan proposes that “Armani designs clothes for wives, I think Versace designs clothes for sluts and don’t you look at me like that.” Remember that phrasing, too. Cunanan hops up on the counter with his cereal and snots, “Please, I know the score. Lecherous fagon the prowl.” Phil didn’t know Versace was gay, because apparently Phil is Amish, and Elizabeth scolds Cunanan for the slur. He snots through a mouthful of cereal, “What are we supposed to call them?”, adding that “homosexual” sounds too scientific, and anyway, he’s totally fine with it, which is why he agreed to a date with Versace. The Cotes exchange another “ohhhh-kay” look – apparently, they don’t know he’s gay either, although he’s been using the queenliest locutions outside Buckingham Palace during the entire scene, so maybe they’ve just agreed between them not to call him on his BS? It’s not like that wasn’t a running theme with his friends in his actual life – as Cunanan is rinsing out his cereal bowl and waxing lofty about Capriccio being a “minor work,” and Elizabeth confirms that Cunanan accepted. “My dear, sweet Lizzie,” Cunanan says, sounding almost angry with her, of course he said yes.
It’s at this point that I’d decide the fun was over and change the locks if I were Lizzie, but hindsight is etc.
Cunanan, Cunanan’s ridiculous spectacles,
his friend, and the friend’s wretched color-block sweater are walking in the Berkeley faculty courtyard as Cunanan relays this same tale to the friend. “But is it real?” the friend blunts hilariously. Cunanan’s like, uhhhhhh, and the friend notes that the other day he heard Cunanan say he was half-Jewish. “Well, that’s…complicated!” It isn’t, Friend says. “You were an altar boy. We spoke about…what happened to you.” What does it matter what I said, Cunanan snorts. It matters, Friend protests. Only if they know it isn’t true, Cunanan says. “But you know,” Friend points out. Hurt, Cunanan says he thought Friend would be happy about it. Happy about a date with Versace?, Friend incredulouses: “You can’t even tell people you’re gay!” Cunanan babbles that he does so tell people, all the time, but Friend interrupts, “You tell gay people you’re gay, and straight people you’re straight.” Busted, Cunanan quickly recovers with, “I tell people what they need to hear.” He starts to walk off, but the friend doesn’t know how he’s supposed to act: “Do I pretend to know the person you’re pretending to be? I can’t keep up! Every time I feel like I’m getting close to you you say you’re someone else.” He takes Cunanan’s hand, saying he knows he’s not impressive, but he’s nice, smart, and kind. Cunanan is utterly unmoved by this – in fact, almost disgusted – and pulls his hand away, thenmakes eye contact to swear up and down that he really does have a date with Gianni Versace, honest ‘n’ truly. Friend gives up: “I’m pleased for you.” “Good,” Cunanan smugs.
Cunanan studies Gianni’s various residences, in magazines laid out with compulsive neatness on the carpet. He gets up to survey the sad Cosby-sweater and worn-jeans contents of his closet…
…then goes shopping in Phil’s closet instead, naked.
Gianni does a fitting for one of the singers and talks about how the most important part of a dress is the look on the wearer’s face, and how he learned that from his mother, who had a little dress shop in Calabri. As he talks about how his clothes “will serve you,” the singer relaxes and starts to look happier with her gown.
Elizabeth comes home to find Cunanan helping himself to Phil’s clothes as Lisa Stansfield echoes through the house. She and her giant 1990 belt buckle lean in the closet doorway and snap, “You should have asked.” Cunanan doesn’t acknowledge this until he can arrange his face in a suitably pitiable way, then doesn’t apologize, just grunts, “I have nothing.” As he knew she would, she softens: “You look very nice.” He was going for “impressive.” Elizabeth fastens what looks like a gold Rolex onto Cunanan’s wrist to help with that as he unconvincingly objects, then murmurs, “I love you.” “You are rrrridiculous,” she tells him, maternally, but he’s pleased with what he sees in the mirror.
The opera. Men in tuxedoes give Cunanan the eye, either because he’s an out-of-place striver who’s not in a tux or because they think he’s hot. Not in that poly-barf necktie, he isn’t. Still, he’s feeling himself, and nicks a pair of opera glasses another attendee left on the bar. He’s using them to look at the audience, mostly, though when a cutie across the room makes binocul-eye contact, Cunanan drops the glasses pointedly. Pan over the soloist to Cunanan, watching something raptly – possibly Gianni, whom we cut to next, watching his dress anxiously – and then back to Cunanan, performatively dabbing his eyes and then looking around at his opulent surroundings.
Gianni opens champagne after the opera while Cunanan wanders the stage, touching the harp and various cut-glass props like a child, then stepping into the spotlight and somberly bowing, eyes closed. Gianni, amused: “Did you enjoy it?” Cunanan loved it; it inspired him. They clink glasses as Gianni asks if Cunanan is creative. “Yes, very much,” Cunanan says, which is kind of an off answer, but as we’re about to see, he is, in his way; he delivers a monologue about picking pineapples on his father’s plantation, and how his father was in the military and used to fly Imelda Marcos’s plane, and now runs his businesses from abroad with a young boyfriend as a chauffeur (his father was Filipino and did leave the family; everything else is a lie). He’s going to write a novel about it! Gianni doesn’t seem entirely to believe this rehearsed-sounding aria of try-hard, but is at least amused by it. Then they talk about family; it’s everything to Gianni, who made his first dress for Donatella: “Maybe every dress I make is for her.” “That makes me want to cry,” Cunanan says. It makes Gianni smile, so Cunanan hastily adjusts with, “Yes, that too of course.” Gianni talks about the logo of his company, that it comes from his childhood, and his hope that people will get to know him through his clothes. Maybe people will get to know Cunanan through his novel in that same way. A strange observation from a man who barely knows Cunanan; I mean, not that this scene even took place, really, but it just lands as something the writers wanted to accomplish with the scene and isn’t organic.
Anyway, Cunanan wonders if he shouldn’t have a more “literary” pseudonym like “DeSilva” – one of Cunanan’s pseudonyms IRL – but Gianni says no, he should be proud of his name. But Cunanan’s already moved on to enthusing that “when” a movie is made of his novel, Gianni has to “do the clothes.” Did Gianni know Imelda had three thousand pairs of shoes? Everyone knows this, but Gianni merely flirts that he doesn’t design shoes…but he could try, for Cunanan’s movie. Cunanan, enthralled: “I am so happy right now.” He should be, Gianni coos; he’s handsome, clever – here he plucks a stray eyelash from Cunanan’s cheekbone – and he’ll be someone really special one day. Cunanan blows the lash, timed with a gunshot on the soundtrack…
…and we’re back to the day of the murder. Antonio hears the shots from inside. Outside, Cunanan cocks his head Starman-ily at the dove he’s accidentally shot, twitching in its death throes, and Gianni’s fingers also twitching in that same way. A God’s-eye shot of Gianni’s blood pooling beneath his head cuts to Antonio’s hitting partner coming out the front gate and giving chase to Cunanan, who runs for a while and then stops and draws down on the hitting partner to back him off. Antonio bellows for help.
A patrol car pulls up. Antonio begs for an ambulance while looky-loos gather across the street.
Cunanan flees into a parking garage, to a red pickup. He jumps in, clutches the wheel, rubs his temples, and emits a very odd – and flawlessly observed by Criss – laugh/yell that seems celebratory, but is punctuated by ricti of terror. As he’s deep-breathing himself under control, sirens take us into commercial.
Miami detectives José Zúñiga and Luke Wheeler (fine: Will Chase) are briefed on the victim as Antonio continues to sob for an ambulance. As they look stricken by the celebrity aspect of the crime, a long-hair in madras shorts and a fanny pack sprints to his car parked nearby to retrieve a Polaroid camera (kids, ask your grandparents).
A blood-spattered Antonio and the house staff watch in horror as Gianni is bundled onto a gurney, his magazines still scattered on the steps, his housekeys still dangling from the lock.
The Polaroid guy gets a shot of Gianni going into the ambulance.
Uniforms get the BOLO for Cunanan – grey shirt, red cap – and spot him in a red shirt on the upper level of the parking structure.
The ambulance pulls up to the hospital, trailed by news crews, and Gianni is rushed inside.
Cops come upon a red-shirted guy whose face we don’t see trying to break into a Ford Taurus, and give chase.
The trauma team hurries Gianni past an African-American doctor, who looks taken aback, for reasons we won’t investigate further until the next episode.
The red-shirt suspect (heh) is tackled; it is not Cunanan. Cunanan, who has paired his red polo with red acid-wash jeans that I actually kind of want, but that are not indicated for staying under the radar after shooting a fashion icon, is fleeing the garage from a different staircase (or is possibly in a different garage entirely).
The trauma team works on Gianni, although based on that upsetting facial wound, there’s probably little point. A nurse cuts off his t-shirt, bisecting the Versace brand symbol on the front. I think I get it.
Outside the estate, Polaroid Dude is starting the bidding of “the only photo of Versace” at thirty grand.
As the worried doctor looks on, the trauma team calls it. They disperse; the last nurse out covers Gianni with a spattered sheet. The camera slowly pans out to take in the mess left behind, the grubby scuffed walls and crooked switchplate in the hallway.
Cunanan grabs a cab as, in the atrium, Antonio is told (I assume) by a security guard that Gianni didn’t make it. The detectives look on, and Det. Zúñiga is shocked to learn from Det. Wheeler that Antonio is Gianni’s boyfriend, like, is it your first day in Miami, Det. Zúñiga? As Antonio weeps, one of the autograph-seekers from earlier ducks under the barrier to soak a page from a Versace Voguespread in the blood on the steps. She and her husband carefully preserve the page in plastic. Consider celebrity culture indicted, show, jeez.
Cunanan heads into a schmancy, glass-brick-tastic hotel and into the restroom, where he gazes at himself in the mirror and splashes water on his face. As he’s leaving, he pauses at the bar to look at TV coverage of the shooting – and to give us a good look at those jeans.
When a woman in front of him covers her mouth in horror, he studies her response with that Starman curious head-cock again, then imitates it, but under his hand, he’s smiling. This really is a fantastic, simultaneously chilling and slappable performance by Darren Criss.
As MPD runs the VIN on the red pickup and finds that it was stolen from a William Reese – in whose murder Cunanan is a listed suspect – the FBI brass are first confusing Gianni Versace with Liberace, then with Jordache, then scrambling to figure out how to make it not their fault that a guy they’ve had on the Most Wanted list for some time killed a headline name. In Miami, Agents Gruber and Evans (a.k.a. Stan from Mad Men) half-walk, half-cringe into the estate. Agent Stan briefs the local detectives on Cunanan; Det. Lori Wieder is particularly unimpressed to hear that the FBI may have known Cunanan was in the area. She’s even less impressed when Agent Stan shows them a trunkful of Most Wanted posters with Cunanan on them as he says Cunanan’s now killed five people. Det. Luke Wheeler asks how many of those fliers actually went out. Agent Stan doesn’t respond. Det. Lori is a bitch about it: “How many have gone out, Agent Evans?” Then she stalks off. Not sure what the implication is here – that they didn’t make the cases a priority because the victims were gay? Wouldn’t surprise me given what we see shortly, but we’ll get to that.
First, a press conference about the shooting, which goes to voice-over as we see the ruined face of Gianni, then a plane door opening, but shot from below so it looks like a morgue drawer opening. Santo and Donatella exit the plane; even in mourning, she’s in full battle regalia, leather suit and heels. Technicians collect evidence from Gianni’s body, and from the dove Cunanan also shot, as the police spokesman describes Cunanan as “armed and extremely dangerous” and Donatella semi-staggers through the glare of flashbulbs and up the bloodstained steps of the estate. She greets the staff, which is again lined up quite formally, with the same warmth her brother had earlier.
Det. Luke is asking clumsily what Antonio’s “involvement” was with Gianni – was he the person who procured dancers and models for Gianni? Antonio looks ill and says he was “his partner, not his pimp.” Det. Luke is like, this is a police investigation, we need to know what’s what and the staff already told me the deal with the extracurriculars, so…what does Antonio mean by “partner,” exactly? “What do I mean?”, Antonio repeats, apparently as puzzled as I am that a Miami detective wouldn’t get it with this, even in 1997, but Det. Luke finally figures out he might get further on his own, and asks Dets. Lori and Zúñiga to excuse them. Gee, hard to believe Antonio doesn’t feel comfortable with Det. Lori there!
And if it looks like she’s giving Antonio a particularly frosty glare there, that’s literally always her face. Anyway, Det. Luke tells Antonio after the others have gone that he’s on Antonio’s side; he’s just trying to get the lay of the land (as it were) (he is classy enough not to use that phrase; I am not). Antonio clarifies that “partner” means “companion,” but Det. Luke is still confused about Antonio’s bringing home “other men…for him?” And would Antonio Do It with them too, with Gianni there? Antonio:
Well, really. I get that the show feels obliged to explain to some viewers that relationships that didn’t obey traditional heteronormative parameters faced an uphill battle vis-à-vis the judgments of society and specifically law enforcement in 1997 (and do still, no doubt, in some places), but I also feel like it’s maybe a little proud of itself for knowing better now, when really it just makes Det. Luke look naïve and unprepared. This continues with Det. Luke asking if sometimes Gianni wouldn’t join in himself…? Antonio cuts a hopeless he’ll-never-get-it side-eye and says it was whatever Gianni wanted. So did these other men “consider themselves Gianni’s partner too?” What’s the difference? “Fifteen years!” Antonio snaps. Det. Luke concedes that that’s “a good length of time,” and asks if Antonio can get him the names. Antonio can find them, yes. Were they paid? Sometimes, but usually “they just fell for him. He was a genius,” Antonio goes on, bereft. “He cast a spell.” Was Antonio paid? “Was I paid! Was I paid to love him!” Det. Luke backs off, saying this is “new to” him – no shit – and he’s just trying to clarify. Antonio responds that he’s trying to help, but he didn’t see the shooter, and before he can summon the strength to answer Det. Luke’s question as to whether one of their seemingly standard tricks might be responsible, Donatella comes into the study. Antonio gets up and, his face collapsing, extends his hand towards her and Santo. She flinches, looks down, and murmurs, “Get him out of here.” So that relationship seems cozy?
It’s possible she meant Det. Luke, as the next shot is the cops filing out the front gates, but inside, as Antonio weeps on the settee, Donatella helps herself to a cigarette from a gold box and sighs, “That’s not what I need from you right now.” She demands to know what Antonio told the police – “about my brother’s life” – while almost unconsciously correcting the position of a Greek bust Det. Luke had futzed with and moved in the previous scene. Nice bit of blocking there. Antonio sighs that they’ll “find out” everything anyway, and she asks what there is to find out, then says, “Nothing was ever asked of you, except to take care of him – and you couldn’t even do that.” She sits next to Santo and tells Antonio he’s not to speak to anyone about Gianni without consulting her first.
Antonio, through tears, regards her with an expression suggesting he was foolish to have hoped for a more compassionate reaction from her; gets up; and slumps out of the room to start washing Gianni’s blood from his arms.
But he hears Donatella and Santo going down the hall to another meeting area, so he follows them. Donatella makes eye contact with him, then closes the heavy doors against Antonio without a word. Inside, they’re meeting with men I assume are lawyers or board members, and Donatella begins by saying it’s crazy to talk about business right now. She seems to be hoping they’ll contradict or whatever-you-think-best her, but they just stare at her, so she finishes dabbing her eyes and gets down to it: her brother is dead, and the press and the police will “rake through” his life and bring up “every rumor, every indiscretion” – to find the killer, but to judge Gianni, too. “First people weep, then they whisper.” She goes on to extol Gianni’s rise from a small Milanese shop with a single rack of clothes to “all this,” adding that he was “a creator, he was a collector – he was a genius” – and his company meant everything to him. As long as the company is alive, her brother is alive: “I will not allow that man, that…nobody, to kill my brother twice.”
A family spokesperson announces that nobody in the family knew or had any contact with Cunanan, footage Pawn Star Cathy Moriarty freezes when she sees his mugshot on TV. At her pawn shop, she tells Dets. Zúñiga and Bitchface that she did everything by the book when he came in with the gold coin: got his ID, handed in the paperwork to Miami PD, the works (this system did and does exist in order to flag stolen goods, but Miami hadn’t computerized theirs as of ’97, which means Cunanan was cocky enough to get himself caught hocking stolen property, but the paperwork hadn’t been processed yet – in case you’re wondering why we’re seeing this). Bitchface stalks outside and says into her radio that they have an address on Cunanan, and can anyone do this job besides her? That last part may have been silent.
Donatella expositions to us and some bankers that Gianni was excited to be the first Italian designer on both the Milanese stock exchange and the NYSE; it’s why he was in the U.S., to sign the papers with Morgan Stanley. Santo notes that Gianni would have wanted them to go ahead with the IPO, and if they don’t, they can’t try again for many years, but Donatella isn’t hearing it; listing the company means putting it in the hands of strangers, and “now is not the time for strangers; now is the time for family.” Santo makes a “why’d you pretend to ask me, then” face that I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a bunch. Donatella tells the banker types to tell Morgan Stanley that they’ll remain a privately held company – “a family company.” She goes to the balcony of the pool area and looks out, surveying what is now her domain much as Gianni did in the beginning of the episode.
Metro-Dade SWAT descends on the address Cunanan gave Cathy Moriarty. This event isn’t quite exciting enough for the locals to put pants on
but the music agrees it’s pretty intense as SWAT and the detectives charge up to a room in a grimy no-tell, boot open the door, flash-bang whoever’s inside, and find…not Cunanan, but Deputy Leo from Veronica Mars, nearly unrecognizably the worse for wear and denying that he knows Cunanan.
Cunanan himself, attired in all shades of yellow and a pair of Versace shades, stops at a newsstand to admire his handiwork on the front pages of newspapers around the world. The counter man stacks them up for him: “All of them?” Cunanan smirks. “All of them.”
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, on FX, opens with the act itself. We see the designer Gianni Versace leaving his Miami Beach mansion by the front gate to buy some magazines at a café down the street. We see the preppy-looking murderer, Andrew Cunanan, watching from a park across the street and then approaching the designer as he returns to the front steps. We see the gun, the look of bewilderment and horror on Versace’s face, and then the narrative of July 15, 1997 is set in motion.
The opening scene was taut enough, and visually accurate enough, to hold my interest. The fact that the producers were able to film inside the mansion (now a hotel) was a bonus. It lent the episode a documentary quality. In August of 1996, I spent a weekend visiting Donatella Versace and her family — husband, Paul Beck, and kids, Allegra and Daniel — at the mansion, for a profile of Donatella in Vanity Fair. So I recognized details of the Spanish-style house — the interior courtyard, the marble dining room where we had lunch and Donatella yakked on the phone with Elton John. Gianni was not there, but we spoke later about his sister and their relationship. And, of course, over the years I saw him during the shows in Milan, and on at least one occasion interviewed him at his palazzo in the Via Gesu.
On the morning of the murder — actually within an hour of it — Vanity Fair began receiving requests from media outlets to interview me about the family. The Donatella piece was in the June issue. At the same time, my colleague Maureen Orth, who had been reporting a story about a gay serial killer and whose book served as the basis for the show, had a hunch that Cunanan was the murderer. I met her in Miami to help with the reporting. Cunanan was still on the loose. It was a strange few days. The fashion industry had never known such a crime — and, as I wrote later, “The murder had thrown a weird light on a world people knew very little about.”
The curious thing about The Assassination of Gianni Versace is that, despite its assured opening, it feels like the people involved did not take the trouble to learn anything about him and his siblings, or their world. Twenty years has not brought more insight into his family dynamics, his sensibility, or into how an extremely creative individual might behave. It’s as though no one really cared to explore these qualities.
Instead, Gianni and his sister (you would hardly know there’s an older brother, Santo) are presented as cardboard figures who symbolize the most clichéd values: power, glamour, celebrity. For instance, the episode asks viewers to believe that Donatella (Penélope Cruz) could put aside her grief on the day of her brother’s murder and arrive via limo at the mansion’s bloodied front gate — before a crowd of news trucks and spectators — as if attending a red-carpet event. There was a back door to the house, but, hey, if she used that, you wouldn’t get to see her scowl and adjust her sunglasses.
Cruz is actually fascinating as Donatella. She totally sounds like her, without the staccato delivery. Ramírez physically resembles Gianni but lacks his authority — you felt Gianni’s presence in a room. And the few scenes that show Gianni at his craft are embarrassingly lame, as most fashion films are. They never properly convey a designer’s hand motions or obsessiveness. (I haven’t seen Phantom Thread, so I’m holding out hope.) Anyway, the guy who once scandalized Milan with his bondage dresses behaved far more decisively — and playfully — than what you see on the screen.
With Cruz, I often had the feeling that she was basing her portrayal on the later Donatella, the hard-boiled Donatella who emerged after Gianni’s death. The woman who I first met in 1996 was much less sure of herself. In a way, Gianni’s enormous talent and drive functioned as a protective shield for her, allowing her to be the little sister who flounced around with her big diamonds. Sure, Donatella was tough, they all screeched like cats at each other, but there was also a vulnerability about her then, and a sweetness. I remember her taking me around the house, showing me Gianni’s private quarters and the guest room where Jack Nicholson once slept. She took everything in stride, like someone who had nothing to lose.
It’s that innocence or naïveté that you don’t see in the show, which is too bad, since it would have contrasted with the horror of Gianni’s murder. Another thing missing is the family’s sense of humor and fun, captured in photographs from the ’80s and ’90s. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy their lives, over-the-top or not, and nothing was more emblematic of that spirit than the vivid fabric prints that decorated the mansion.
But you see almost nothing of that in the series. The mansion might have been the real thing, the scene of the crime, but it’s just a shell.
The best part of Peak TV is how excellent television no longer has to appeal to everyone. Sure, we can discuss giant hits likeThe Walking Dead with total strangers, and Grandma won’t stop talking about Breaking Bad. But increasingly — and often thanks to producer Ryan Murphy — mass audiences are not what the best shows aim for. About 14 people watched last year’s best series (Twin Peaks), and just try bringing up Insecure at a dinner party. We’re not all watching the same great shows anymore, but man, what a time to be a fringe TV viewer.
This is to say that The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the stellar new entry of Murphy’s already perfect series, will be most appreciated by the chicest of bubbles. It’s gaudy, terrifying, campy, tragic, heartfelt, gorgeously filmed … and probably too specific in its milieu to excite a mainstream audience. But if the past 1.3 years taught us anything, it’s that bubbles may not always win elections, but damn is our art better. Definitely comment below if you disagree jk.
“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” was one of the most spellbinding and compelling (and timely!) episodes of television I’ve ever seen, and we should talk about it!
We began with a typical morning in Miami, particularly if you are a wealthy Italian designer at the top of his game in the mid- to late ’90s.
This, friends, was Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez), and between his gilded beach palace and servants in black tennis shorts, we could gather that he was pretty successful. Not so successful that he didn’t eat revolting honeydew melon for breakfast but doing well enough by most standards.
By this point Versace was so famous that obese, pale Midwesterners would wait outside his home begging for him to autograph old issues of Vogue. Now THAT is fame.
A few blocks away at the beach, a young man named Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) was just finishing up screaming at the ocean. He had a big day ahead of him. He was ready to MURDER.
And in a wordless, artfully directed, heartbreaking sequence, Cunanan ran up and shot Versace right there on his front steps. Several times. In the face. In other words, this ended up being not that great of a morning for him. Probably a Top 5 worst morning, if we’re being honest.
We then flashed back to the first time Cunanan met Versace, at a gay dance club in San Francisco. Right off the bat (which is a baseball term and therefore probably not relevant to this scene), we learned that Cunanan’s ambitions to hang out with a famous man were outshined only by his ability to lie and exaggerate the details of his own life. Despite Versace’s initial reluctance to talk to this weirdo nobody, he was eventually intrigued by Cunanan’s claims of Italian heritage and other rich-boy jazz. Cunanan was IN.
Except we then saw Cunanan replay the evening’s events to the skeptical straight couple he’d been living with, omitting certain details like how it’d been in a gay club (Cunanan was posing as straight to his roommates) and making it sound like Versace was picking HIM up. But I loved when the roommate dude looked at his wife and they rolled their eyes knowingly. Cunanan clearly loved to spin fanciful yarns, but it was also clear his friends were no longer believing his wild tales.
Like his college friend over here, who called him out for lying to everybody about not only his sexuality but also his ethnicity and social class. Except what he SHOULD have called Cunanan out for was his glasses that attached to only the bridge of his nose. What kind of Bond villain was Andrew Cunanan trying to dress as? Anyway, regardless of all this, he was verifiably invited to the opera that Versace had designed gowns for, and that meant he needed to HUSTLE if he wanted Versace to believe that he was knowledgable and worldly.
I am honestly not sure what those papery rectangle stacks are, but they appear to have “words” on them and in this case Andrew Cunanan was reading them? I don’t know, ask an old person. (I’m 57.)
But yeah, Versace seemed to be the only person in the world NOT skeptical of this young, handsome liar. After the opera, as Cunanan literally basked in the spotlight while onstage, he told tales of growing up on Indonesian plantations and a Bentley-driving gay father. Perhaps Versace could tell this dude was making things up, but he seemed intrigued by the improv. Cheers to con artistry!
One of the less-reported details of Versace’s murder was the fact that he wasn’t the only victim. Well, there had been at least four other victims before this, but there was another victim in this incident. That white dove! A white dove was murdered right alongside Gianni Versace, and that is the only thing that made this tragedy even sadder. Well, also the fact that Versace’s shoes fell off.
And then, in detail more graphic than any of us asked for, we watched as paramedics and doctors attempted to save a bullet-riddled Versace’s life. [Spoiler] They did not.
The sequences detailing the aftermath were visually clever and wrenching, from watching the surgeons peel off their gloves and exit the room, leaving Versace’s body alone … to the autograph seekers who literally sopped up blood from his front steps in order to create a souvenir to sell. But my very favorite was the woman who arrived at the scene in full couture and began to WERK behind the news lady.
Say what you will about her lack of propriety, but that lady had star quality.
For his part Andrew Cunanan seemed downright giddy with what he’d done, stalking through town spying on TVs and smiling at newspaper headlines. These were not the reactions of a remorseful, sympathetic person, and you can quote me on that.
Then somehow the episode got even BETTER? Because this was when Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) showed up to mourn, accuse, and succeed her brother in his business dealings, all with a barely understandable Italian accent. Seriously, Penélope Cruz is truly next-level. Hope she likes Emmys.
Speaking of incredible: Did you guys know Ricky Martin can ACT? As Versace’s live-in boyfriend of 15 years, he sobbed and projected misery like a seasoned Shakespearean actor. Adding to this particular scene’s pathos, we were brutally reminded that in 1997 people were still not comfortable with (or even cognizant of) the existence of gay relationships.
Even though the detectives were looking to investigate a murder, they seemed straight-up flummoxed by the fact that Versace had had male lovers. Worse, Donatella Versace decided that she didn’t want these details in the press, clearly believing that her brother’s homosexuality was a danger to their brand.
Actually, even way, way worse, was the fact that Andrew Cunanan was already a known suspect in other murders, but the police had plainly not done much about it, in part due to his and the victims’ homosexuality. Yep, that was a thing back then. Crimes against gays were frequently back-burnered or ignored altogether. In this scene, a pawn shop owner (played by the majestic Cathy Moriarty) saw Cunanan’s face on TV and then angrily alerted cops the fact that she’d reported him days earlier as having sold something in her shop. Yet the cops did nothing! Ugh, the ’90s were really horrible in certain/most ways.
But enough wallowing in the brutal realities of an unjust world — let’s talk more about Donatella! While obviously in mourning from the still-fresh murder, this episode made very clear that her business sense trumped all. Because Versace the company had been on the verge of going public, she now feared that power over the company would be taken from the family, so she and her other brother decided to keep it private. In my opinion this made for a good move, seeing as Versace is still sort of a thing these days. (Side note: I am not sure whether this miniseries will be reenacting Donatella’s Ice Bucket Challenge video, but here’s hoping there’s at least one episode devoted to it.)
This episode was also full of tons of extremely good and witty visuals, and that’s all credit to Ryan Murphy’s directorial eye. There were a lot of clever and downright beautiful details in this episode, but I loved elderly orange speedo man watching calmly as the Miami SWAT Team descended upon Andrew Cunanan’s hotel room. What was going through his mind? What was he thinking about all this? Hopefully we’ll find out in the next episode.
At the end of this episode Andrew Cunanan remained at large. A particularly filthy-looking Max Greenfield was found holing up in Cunanan’s room, so something tells me we’ll learn more about this guy. Cunanan himself had taken to roaming around Miami in a canary yellow polo shirt and matching hat, while grinning proudly at himself on the front pages of the local papers. It may have been a violent, inglorious, shameful way to achieve it, but this charlatan had really reached the next level.
“The Man Who Would Be Vogue” was quite simply one of the best first episodes of a show I’ve seen in a while. Relying on sweeping visuals over dialogue, and allowing gaudiness to exist beside sincerity, it gripped me right away. While we know this is not a happy story and it doesn’t end particularly well, it does feel as important and timely as ever, much like its predecessor The People v. O.J. Simpson. It remains to be seen whether this season will catch on with viewers and critics like that one did, but either way, it’s hard not to be grateful for something this special.
Two years after the debut of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Ryan Murphy and his team are back with another scripted deep-dive into another infamous true crime of the ‘90s. The murder of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) by narcissistic grifter-turned-drifter Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) is the inciting incident for a series that will explore Versace’s groundbreaking legacy as both a fashion icon and an openly gay star, alongside Cunanan’s mental decline as he becomes increasingly obsessed with Versace and everything he represents.
This was a distinctive and off-kilter opening episode: for one, it’s deliberately unclear for large portions whether what we’re seeing is fact or fiction. Everything Cunanan says—and by extension, everything we see from his perspective—is suspect, because this is a person with no fixed sense of self, who has learned to navigate the world by “telling people what they want to hear.” Though Cunanan is not the narrator of this show, he narrates enough of his own story to make the viewing experience deeply unsettling, and the ugliness at the heart of him makes for a compelling contrast with the beauty of everything else in Versace’s world.
Here are seven talking points from the first episode, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue.”
1) It’s early days, but this may be the most stunning opening to any show in 2018.
I saw the first seven minutes of this episode back in August, and was so genuinely bowled over that I didn’t know what to do with myself afterwards. From the music to the cinematography to the meticulously detailed set (which recreates the interior of Versace’s Miami Beach home), it’s a ravishing, enthralling sequence laced with so much dread, because you know exactly what Versace is walking towards when he strolls back to his house from the cafe. It’s even more impactful when you consider that Versace had been seriously ill shortly before he died (expect to see this explored in a future episode). Every morning he woke up probably felt like a gift.
2) The show pulls a bait-and-switch early on.
In the sense that Gianni Versace’s name is in the title, but this is really Andrew Cunanan’s show. I suspect some viewers who tuned in expecting to see the detailed story of Versace may be disappointed, but Cunanan is such a mesmerizingly unique character—and Darren Criss is such a revelation in this role—that the focus on him and his mental state is understandable. It is striking, though, that we go a full sixteen minutes before Versace himself has any significant dialogue, or even any screen time outside of that opening sequence.
3) Did Cunanan and Versace really meet?
This remains a hugely controversial point in real life—both whether they even met, and to what extent they knew each other. The episode begins with Cunanan gleefully telling his close friends and reluctant landlords, “Guess who I met? Gianni Versace!” and what we see in the club follows from there, suggesting we’re seeing Cunanan’s deeply unreliable version of events.
In the version we see, Cunanan approaches Versace in the VIP area of a Miami club, and barrels right through the intense social anxiety that I’m feeling by proxy, as Versace repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to give him the brush-off. Cunanan finally gets Versace’s interest, though, with a maybe-true-maybe-not story about his Italian-American mother, and the two begin to bond.
There’s a second layer of unreliability to this, though. We cut from the Cunanan/Versace meeting in the bar to Cunanan telling a entirely different version of the story, wherein Versace approached him and Cunanan scornfully said “If you’re Gianni Versace, I’m Coco Chanel.” So… what is the truth? Presumably it’s the version we saw, but the scene where Versace and Cunanan go to the opera together makes me skeptical on that front too. That scene involved such beautiful, telling dialogue—“That makes me want to cry.” “It makes me smile.”—that I strangely wanted to believe it was true, even though it seems unlikely Versace would have immediately taken to Cunanan in this way.
4) Andrew Cunanan is not so much a chameleon as a shapeshifter.
There’s a Talented Mr. Ripley quality to Cunanan, a social climber who will convincingly transform himself into whatever he needs to be to con whoever he’s with. I say convincingly, but in fact the cracks are beginning to show—the couple he’s living with exchange weary glances as Cunanan rambles about his date with Versace, and he casually tosses off the F-word to make himself appear more heterosexual.
Directly before and after the shooting of Versace, Criss has a series of standout, terrifying, semi-cathartic moments of pure release (screaming maniacally into the ocean looks extremely appealing, unsure what this says about me?) but the beat that really stuck comes right when Versace’s death has been confirmed on the news. A woman standing near Cunanan, watching the same television, puts a hand over her mouth in shock—and Cunanan, mirroring other humans as he’s learned to do, does the same. But while the woman is tearful, Cunanan is hiding what looks like a maniacal smile behind his hand. Full-body shudder.
5) There was a brief nod to the second second of Feud.
Versace buying the Princess Diana issue of Vanity Fair was a tiny moment, but a significant one. Just over a month after Versace’s murder, Diana—one of his friends—would also die an untimely death. That connection aside, this may also be a sly reference to the planned second season of Feud, which will focus on Diana’s tempestuous relationship with her husband Charles.
6) “What will they find out?” “Everything.”
This is presumably a reference to the most controversial part of the series: Versace’s medical history, and specifically his HIV status. As was hinted at when the police came to question Antonio, the series will deal heavily with both Versace’s burden as an openly gay celebrity, and the rampant homophobia of the period, which arguably colored the way in which police investigated Cunanan’s crimes. Donatella (Penelope Cruz) is determined to prevent as much gossip from spreading as possible: “First, people weep,” she notes. “Then they whisper.” Her priority in the wake of her brother’s death is preserving his company, no matter what, because she refuses to let “this man, this nobody” kill Gianni twice. Little does she know this line is the best revenge she could possibly have—along with the Versace family spokesman declaring to the press that they had never met Cunanan—because there’s nothing Andrew Cunanan fears more than being seen as a nobody.
Given how different the second season of American Crime Story is from the first, there’s really no use in comparing them. But I can’t help it (no one can?). The People v. O.J. Simpson was a big deal, initially so popular because of the nostalgia and the appeal of seeing re-creations of the “trial of the century” with John Travolta camping it up as Robert Shapiro, but then so celebrated for its breakout performances. Sterling K. Brown was a relative unknown before the series. Sarah Paulson saw a boost in her career, as well. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t have as well-known a story. Its ensemble isn’t so packed with famous names, with its characters or the actors portraying them. The follow-up series can therefore be surprisingly disparate. But it nevertheless does a good job of pulling us into what it offers.
Even if we can forgive the unfair expectations, though, Ryan Murphy’s latest production is a bit of a bait and switch. The first two episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace promise as much of an operatically tinged biopic about fashion icons Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) as the circumstances of his murder. Ricky Martin is there and impresses as Gianni’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico. These are the promoted stars of the show, and yet they’re not in very much of the ensuing chapters. When they are on screen, they’re incredible and worth the wait, but the irregularity of their involvement is more shocking than any contrast against the O.J. installment of this anthology program. I’ve seen eight of the nine episodes (all that were shared with press in advance), and they’re a mixed bag.
The series might as well be called The Assassin of Gianni Versace because it’s almost completely about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the spree killer who finished out a five-murder run when he shot Gianni in the face outside the fashion designer’s Miami Beach mansion. After depicting the murder in the pilot then continuing with a bouncing-around of time to show a years-earlier meeting between Versace and Cunanan and also some of the police investigation, the series jumps rewinds in chronology with each episode. Watched all together, the structure is reminiscent of the movie Memento. It also plays like each chapter is a prequel to the one that came prior. Villains tend to get such backstories to reveal their fall from innocence to become the evil monster we were originally introduced to. But not in backward spurts.
So we follow in reverse as Cunanan’s other killings are shown. The middle episodes of the series are sort of like standalone vignettes presenting who the victims were and how they met their end. Episode three (“A Random Killing”) is particularly strong as its own thing, mostly thanks to how it plays as a character piece about Marilyn Miglin, wife of the murdered Lee Miglin, and for Judith Light‘s exceptional guest performance in the role. It’s the peak chapter of the show (so far) for me, even if it’s the first instance where we realize The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t going to actually have much Versace in it. And that it’s scarier, gorier, more akin to Murphy’s American Horror Story than the sort of legal drama we saw with The People v. O.J. Simpson. For the next few episodes, these are the tales of a true American psycho.
Spree killers can be interesting, though they aren’t always as compelling as serial killers or one-off murderers. The former lends to psychological character studies, the latter more to whodunits and courtroom procedurals such as the first American Crime Story season. Apologies for the spoiler, but there was no trial for Cunanan, as he took his own life before he could even be apprehended. So instead of moving forward in time and dealing with retroactive explanations and defensive claims in the form of legal proceedings a la The People v. O.J. Simpson, here we get an attempt to connect the dots that may provide some understanding of Cunanan’s bloodshed. Of course, most of what we see is, while not necessarily fictionalized, certainly full of speculation. Many scenes solely involve people not around to provide details.
The series never makes a definite case for the why. We will never know what exactly triggered Cunanan to kill two of his friends, one of his many closeted and married lovers, a random cemetery worker, and a fashion legend whom he may or may not have ever met beforehand. In its best-directed episodes (the Murphy-helmed first, as well as the three by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, including “A Random Killing”) The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t even explicitly spell out everything going on from scene to scene, which is respectably trusting of the intelligence and attention of the audience. The real question explored, as it is in the journalistic and more pointedly titled book it’s based on, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History,” is how did authorities let one of the most wanted men in America elude capture so long that Versace’s slaying could occur.
That inquiry takes this story through a cloud of themes and contexts pertaining to being a gay man in the ’90s. Not unlike The People v. O.J.‘s essential addresses of race and gender as it informed and mattered to the case of O.J. Simpson and the arguments and conduct of the trial, The Assassination of Gianni Versace touches on how homosexuality was viewed and treated at the time and how Cunanan and his victims’ lives were impacted by the difficulties and dangers of both secrecy and disclosure (one episode even focuses on the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), the HIV/AIDS scare and eventual life-saving drug cocktails that arrived mid-decade, and the plethora of stereotypes. But it’s all kind of tricky, as viewers shouldn’t come away focused on the story’s unavoidable alignment with the “depraved homosexual” trope.
Murphy manages to avoid crossing any lines that could generally offend, I think. Where he doesn’t succeed as well is in the attempt to integrate the Versaces’ story with that of Cunanan. Following the first two episodes, Gianni and Donatella, joined often by Antonio, only sporadically return to the narrative. Initially they’re welcome distractions, but their part in the whole thing becomes inconsistently significant. Weak parallels are made, including one very bad cross-cutting between the nervous coming-out moments of Gianni and another character. Other times it seems like the series is just taking us back to the Versaces randomly now and then because they’re famous persons of interest, there are real events that can be reenacted, and well, Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin are deservedly the primary draw.
As Cunanan, Criss is also pretty phenomenal and this should be a breakout performance for the lesser-known former Glee regular. But the character becomes less interesting over time (especially during a binge-watch, as I experienced them). It’s a tough task to pull off such a mysteriously maniacal charlatan and have him carry a nine-week program so prominently without humanizing the monster too much nor depicting him as an unrealistically heightened caricature. Criss makes it work in spite of the character’s absence of complexity, coming off as a clever yet deranged Clark Kent who never felt loved enough to become a superman with his strengths rather than a villain. Still, the actor is overshadowed by Light and the uncannily perfect Ramirez and often unintelligible but magnificently committed Cruz.
Without seeing the finale, which is being held and which will surely return to the setting of the first two episodes (many viewers will suddenly be reminded after two months that Orange is the New Black‘s Dascha Polenco, as a police detective on the case, once seemed to be one of the stars) I can’t make a call on the series as a whole. But even halfway in it was clear that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is an uneven and sometimes disappointing take on this true-crime story. But as usual with Murphy’s shows, there is enough good to outweigh the bad. They’re mainly watchable for their casting and slew of standout performances — this one even slips Cathy Moriarty in for a bit role and Aimee Mann gets a nice cameo. And the attention to detail in the production design here will make you feel like you’re literally going backwards in time with the narrative.
It’s also worth remembering that these series are never perfect. Even The People v. O.J. Simpson has tons of flaws but might be misremembered as being more substantial than it is if you also saw the documentary O.J.: Made in America around the same time (perhaps all of these true story based anthology shows could use an unaffiliated but complimentary documentary accompaniment). Of course, they also tend to be more fun. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is dark without the camp and levity that fans are likely to anticipate. Whether it will manage to keep most viewers tuning in anyway, I don’t know. But I recommend at least watching the fantastic first three episodes.
And while the premiere wastes no time in showcasing the aforementioned murder, it looks like the subsequent fallout will be the main focus of the series.
Much as the OJ case concentrated on the trial, it appears that what happens after Versace’s murder, will be just as important as everything that comes before it.
If you’re entering this with fresh eyes, there’s a lot thrown at you in the first hour.
While we meet all the necessary players, we don’t get to see much beyond what we may read on a footnote. The one exception being the man behind the murder, Andrew Cunanan.
Played to absolute perfection by Glee alum Darren Criss, Andrew is the villain of this story – no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Switching between the murder and scenes of Andrew years prior, it’s very clear that Andrew is a confused man.
A conversation with a male companion pretty much lays out the kind of man he will be.
Andrew: What does it matter what I say? Friend: What does it matter? Andrew: Yes? Friend: It matters. Andrew: Only if they know it isn’t true. Friend: But you know.
Whether he’s boasting about his father and his riches or his dreams to write a novel, there’s a falseness and arrogance that just comes pouring off of him.
See, we are privy to seeing a glimpse of the real Andrew, a man with an empty closet, living with friends who continuously roll their eyes everytime he begins to tell a long-winded tale.
But the Andrew who boldly introduces himself to the Gianni Versace and scores a celebratory glass of champagne with the famed designer is a phony suck up, whose dastardly charm brings him face to face with the man he would later murder in cold blood.
While the OJ series played out in the courtroom and brought the conversation of race and the justice system to the forefront, this series will definitely delve into what it meant to be gay in the ‘90s and the incompetence in the search for Cunanan prior to Versace’s murder.
It looks like there will also be a peek into the lives of the other Versaces and how Gianni’s death affected not only them but the company he took to such heights.
Darren Criss steals a lot of the screen time in the premiere, but Penelope Cruz, showing up about midway through, makes Donatella Versace into a steely-eyed woman, hellbent on preserving the Versace name.
She also has an icy relationship with Versace’s partner of 15 years.
Nothing was ever asked of you, except to take care of him. You couldn’t even do that.
It’s interesting play to begin the series with the murder and switch between alternating timelines. Sweeping stories of this nature sometimes do better when they are told from a straightforward point of view – a simple point A to point B.
But I’m trusting in the Ryan Murphy magic here. There’s a reason we are seeing things in this order.
Moving forward there will be much to cover, and I think the premiere sets the stage for another engrossing series.
It’s got all of the right ingredients so far. A top-notch cast and a compelling story based on real-life happenings.
From the very first notes of music, Versace is operatic.
It has fantastic sets and locations, and it knows it. It has a justifiable reason for using opera music in primetime, and it flaunts it. The opener is directed by Ryan Murphy, and the most creative shots are loving, unexpected portrayals of the places where these two men, killer and killed, belong. The most revealing moment, and one that speaks to the larger themes of the show, shows barely any of Darren Criss’s face as killer Andrew Cunanan, accompanied by horns that sound more like a klaxon or warning than the brass section of the orchestra.
Even Gianni’s death, and the gut-punchingly grim spectacle that forms around it, is beautiful, as is the twin autopsy of Gianni and the dove that died alongside him. This kind of show is designed to be watching with Wikipedia open in one tab, but true or not, the woman who soaks up Gianni’s blood with an ad for his clothing line (which somehow makes it more beautiful?) pushes the limits on craven American responses to celebrity death.
The first episode of a true-crime limited series (a fast-growing micro-genre unto itself) has two main goals: 1) set up the central crime/mystery to be resolved, and 2)hook the audience enough that they’ll think it’s worth sinking eight or ten hours to find out the answer.
It succeeds at the first, but I’m left unsatisfied with the second.
The present tense of the second season (or “installment,” as FX likes to call it) of this limited series is centered on a manhunt, not a media frenzy masquerading as a trial. That allows the show to take on more of a feel of a thriller, with shades of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Taking Lives. The audience sees the killer – his identity is not obscured – and law enforcement learns his identity within hours of the murder. For Versace, the question is not who did it or how, but rather why. And why, if they knew it was Andrew Cunano and were ready with a trunk full of fliers (that look startlingly close to the real thing) did it take them so long to catch him?
There’s plenty to dig into with those questions, but the episode has to do so much narrative work that it nearly runs out of room to entice us to come back for more. There is so much that’s working here, from the visuals to the performances and the promise of things to come, but it feels sluggish during the oversized runtime, which is closer to an hour than the 44 minutes we’re used to with standard TV dramas.
One of the advantages to Murphy’s American Crime Story is that his flair for melodrama and camp are tempered by the reality that the cases and literally life and death, and his shrewd (though troubled) selection of subjects who naturally call for camp. So much of this installment would be ridiculous literally anywhere else on TV, which might just be Ryan Murphy’s mission statement. Here’s hoping it’s enough to ward off the usual afflictions of his second and third seasons.
Plenty has been said about the debate over ethics in true(ish) crime, but if you’re looking to fall on the right side of the line, it helps to angle your story around larger meaning. Versace has a lot to say about homosexuality and closeting in America, and Murphy’s life experience plays into that in a way he simply couldn’t with the OJ case. Some of Murphy’s best work has been when he tells stories that fundamentally belong to his community. And though to a certain kind of white, cis gay man the story of Bette and Joan might be considered part of their canon, it is fundamentally the story of two women struggling under the pressure to contort their image and personality to compete for the spotlight, and Murphy’s continued failure to properly handle those issues weakened the series.
I’m intrigued by the way the show is handling the many ambiguities inherent in this case. Unlike The People vs OJ, our would-be defendant isn’t famous and has never spoken on the record, so Murphys team and us would-be sleuths are left to imagine many of the key moments.
If we’re talking performances, this is Darren Criss’s show and everyone else is just happy to be invited. That’s not to say the others aren’t good – Edgar Ramirez’s Gianni Versace is solid and charming, Penelope Cruz is completely transformed, and I have a feeling the best is yet to come from Ricky Martin – but rather that the script gives him so much to dig into, and he’s the perfect actor to do it. He easily mimics Cunanan’s real life chameleon physicality, and most people are already in disagreement over his sexual orientation.
Donatella is our other heavy hitter, though they held back on her as long as possible. She has an impactful entrance, though I’m mostly impressed at the restraint Murphy showed here, which fits the tone of the moment within the episode perfectly, but is unusual for him.
Penelope Cruz, who is apparently a friend of Donatella’s and has her blessing, has a tall order to serve. First, the voice. Anyone who knows anything about Donatella Versace knows that her distinct looks comes with an equally distinct accent. Cruz has to play it believably, without dipping into caricature or being so true to life that the audience can’t understand her. Second, she finds herself playing the day to day villain for much of this. She’s the one who dislikes the boyfriend that we’ve all fallen in love with after the cops are so rude to him. She’s the one who cancels the IPO. She’s the one with a sizeable reputation preceding her. And yet, Cruz’s Donatella comes across as powerful, stricken, at a lost, and completely unwilling to lose an inch of her brother’s legacy.
Speaking of that cop, though it’s startling to remember that 1997 was 30 years ago, Versace has no intentions of letting us forget that when it comes to gay rights, it might as well have been lightyears. The cop pretending not to know that Gianni and Antonio are partners, what exactly “partners” means, and then trying to comprehend group sex, has got to be the straightest thing imaginable. But Ricky Martin’s performance keeps it from becoming a punchline. His hurt when the cop suggest there’s no difference between a hookup and what he has with Gianni is deeply genuine, and a startling reminder of how few rights same-sex couples had, just a few decades ago.
That is made more stark by Cunanan’s inability to live in his own skin, his seething rage at himself and those who see him for who he is, and the insinuation that he has HIV (fact-checking suggests that while the media thought he had it at the time of his death, the ME’s report says otherwise). Criss and the script play it pretty close to the vest, letting us believe one thing and then another and then catching him in lie after lie, to the point where we question everything about him.
It’s never been a better time to be a serial killer.
Or, rather, a serial killer on screen. Baby-faced former Disney stars like Zac Efron and Ross Lynch step up to play necrophiliacs Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Charles Manson may be dead, but he’ll live on in Quentin Tarantino’s new movie. Are you into maids who may have murdered their employers in the 19th century or are old-school psychopaths more your style? There are shows about both, of course.
Ever since massive cultural events like Serial and The Jinx, pop culture has felt like a nonstop true-crime machine, with an eye turned specifically on revisiting (and sometimes glamorizing) the past. The first season of the Emmy award-winning American Crime Story recreated the O.J. Simpson trial with a contemporary lens: an empathetic focus on prosecutor Marcia Clark and the advent of the 24-hour news cycle. Now, the show takes on the difficult task of revisiting the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and the manhunt that preceded it.
While the show’s second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, may carry the late designer’s presence in the title and its promotional materials—as well as a dramatic pre-premiere controversy over how much of the show is fictionalized—killer Andrew Cunanan is the series’ North Star around which the show’s far-reaching politics and storylines revolve. In fact, you shouldn’t expect the Versace family, despite how fun Penélope Cruz’s Donatella is, to take up much screen time at all. The show begins with Versace’s death and moves backward in time, tracing the steps of 27-year-old Cunanan as he compulsively lied and murdered his way through four states and five men in just a few months.
The choice to use this timeline may seem confusing, but it proves to be the perfect format for preserving Cunanan’s opaque backstory, which viewers are left to question just as any of his skeptical victims and partners had. Darren Criss (Glee) plays Cunanan with an almost addicting charisma and clinginess, giddily worming his way into the lives of wealthy gay men often as an escort and live-in boyfriend. And because of Cunanan’s story and its necessary accessories (luxury hotels, designer clothes, strobe-lit night clubs) this season is certainly aesthetically flashier than its courtroom-confined predecessor. Watching Cunanan dance wildly around a hotel room in a pink speedo to “Easy Lover,” as if he were in a music video and not sadistically torturing a client, you can see why the Versace family was reportedly uneasy about the series.
So Cunanan is the star killer and Gianni Versace may be his star victim, but the show’s best material takes place before their fatal meeting. In addition to Versace we get to know Cunanan’s other victims, naval officer Jeff Trail, architect David Madson, real estate developer Lee Miglin, and for a brief moment William Reese, from whom Cunanan stole a car. We also get to know some of their parents, siblings, pets, wives, and dreams. We see how they grappled with coming out, or not coming out, as gay.
It’s here in these backstories that the show takes most of its creative liberties, understandably connecting the gaps in the story with conversations and murder details we’ll never know, though much of the series does stand up to Maureen Orth’s reporting in Vulgar Favors. But whereas The People vs. O.J. Simpson revisited its crime with a clear focus (on racism, misogyny, a voyeuristic media), the ideas of the Assassination of Gianni Versace are more scatterbrained. The series explores ’90s homophobia and how it affected the way law enforcement scrutinized Cunanan’s victims and bungled his manhunt, plus a brief diversion into Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And with Cunanan, who was half-Filipino, constantly chasing the dream of Versace’s self-made success, there’s also a larger, more muddled story here about the dangers and pressures of the American dream.
But if there’s one thing this season of American Crime Story does depressingly well is award a specificity and humanity to Cunanan’s victims. Because while pop culture may be obsessed with murder, it’s not always concerned with portraying victims as real people with full lives that precede their deaths. We don’t get to know the victims of Richard Speck or Ed Kemper on Mindhunter, or the countless dead girls of CSI and Law and Order, or much about Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman in the first season of ACS. Our contemporary obsession with killers may continue in Assassination of Gianni Versace, but at least so do the lives of victims too.
Loyalty can be an admirable trait in life, but the same is not always true in art. The history of cinema (and television, theater, and most collaborative arts) is littered with projects that coulda-shoulda-woulda been great, save for an actor miscast by a faithful friend (or a well-intentioned parent, sibling, or lover). More disappointing still are filmographies tanked by that kind of professional affection — think of all the great Helena Bonham Carter performances we missed out on while she was busy being the reliable bright spot in the age of lesser Tim Burton.
But now hear this: It can never be said that Ryan Murphy’s loyalty to actors, and theirs to him, has not paid dividends. Jessica Lange won Emmys. Sarah Paulson’s now a household name, which is as it should be. It’s kept the underrated Evan Peters employed, made sure Denis O’Hare continues to kill it, and helped to remind the world that Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett are queens — and all those gifted people made sure that even Murphy’s messiest, most chaotic creations remained eminently watchable, if not entirely sensible or (sometimes) particularly good.
Now it’s going to make a star of Darren Criss, and Darren Criss in turn makes The Assassination of Gianni Versace a piece of can’t-miss television. His isn’t the only great performance in the second go-round of American Crime Story, but it’s the best and also the most surprising. It’s well past time to call it like it is: Ryan Murphy’s single greatest strength as an artist is his work with actors. He can spot them, nurture great performances from them, earn and retain their loyalty, and identify precisely when to throw them into the role most likely to show them at their best. He did it with Lange. He did it with Paulson. And now, he’s doing it with Blaine the Warbler from Glee.
Like most of Murphy’s recent work, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is every inch an ensemble piece, but only the second season of American Horror Story rivals this outing for the sheer, magnetic pull of one character and performance. Criss’ work as spree killer Andrew Cunanan is so good that it’s perhaps fairest to talk about literally everything else first.
Hosts discuss American Crime Story for the episode “The Man Who Would Be Vogue.”
AFTERBUZZ TV — American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace edition, is a weekly “after show” for fans of FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. In this episode hosts Shaka Strong, Juliet Vibert, Russel Ray Silva, and Ronnie Jr. discuss episode 1. | 18 January 2018
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