To borrow a conceit from Community, we’re living in the darkest timeline. Pick a day and chances are there will be another dystopian-sounding news story. From unsettling meetings with North Korea to reports of children being forcibly removed from their families by our government, 2018 has proven to be a horror show… And the best television of the year has captured that. So far this year’s best shows have been about a serial killer (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story), a dictatorship that imprisons and rapes women (The Handmaid’s Tale), and deeply warped race relations (Atlanta and Dear White People). 2018 has been great for television, and horrible for everyone’s mental health.
An early use of the term comes from a 2014 post on the blogging site Tumblr, which discusses a pink-and-blue-washed scene in the BBC’s Sherlock and speculates about the hidden desires of Dr John Watson.
A more recent, and commonly discussed, example of bisexual lighting can be seen in the San Junipero episode of the Netflix show Black Mirror.
The Emmy Award-winning episode follows the development of a relationship between two bisexual female characters.
Many point out that these colours mirror those of the bisexual pride flag, and suggest the lighting design is a direct reference to the symbol.
@BUILDseriesLDN: .@tomrobsmith writer of the incredible @BBCTwo @ACSFX series ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ joins us on @buildseriesldn tomorrow. 🕵️ Get FREE audience tickets ➡️(link: http://applausestore.com/book-build-2018) applausestore.com/book-build-2018 or tune in tomorrow at 12:30pm GMT #ACSVersace
It was even harder to let go of “ACS: Versace.” The finale was extraordinary, full of pathos, yearning and darkness. We’ll say again, Darren Criss deserves all the awards for his tour de force performance as serial killer Andrew Cunanan. The range of his portrayal is sheer magnificence, particularly in the gutting last two episodes, where Cunanan’s relationship with his fabulist father is revealed, as are his final days trapped on a houseboat eating dog food until he takes his own life. Matt Bomer made his directorial debut with episode eight, which details Cunanan’s relationship with his sexually abusive and emotionally suffocating father.
Judith Light’s performance as Marilyn Miglin, widow of Cunanan’s real estate tycoon victim Lee Miglin, was one of several standout performances by guest stars. The Tony- and Emmy-winning actress took what was a small role and turned it into a template: Her Marilyn Miglin was every woman ever married to a closeted gay man, and through her performance we see the turmoil created by internalized homophobia. She adored her husband. Discovering his sexual orientation in the way she did, through his grisly murder, shattered her world, but she kept it together. Marilyn Miglin provides the coda in the finale.
Other riveting performances include Edgar Ramirez’ Versace, a warm, unprepossessing man with few pretensions, given his fame and wealth. He was always the boy from Calabria, his mother’s son, cutting out patterns in their dining room. Ramirez’ Versace gave voice to the gay 80s and 90s, the complexity of coming out famous and also living with HIV. It was an understated performance that was pitch-perfect and made us love Versace right from the intense opening scene in the first episode to the very end.
Ricky Martin as Versace’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico felt real and deeply emotional. Martin played D’Amico as the sexy, younger lover of Versace who was nevertheless devoted to the designer. Martin would bring other men home for threesomes that Versace appeared to engage in reluctantly until he finally said no more. Then D’Amico said he would give up all other men because his love for Versace came first.
All of which made the way Donatella (Penelope Cruz) cut D’Amico off both personally and financially after Versace’s murder particularly cruel. When the priest at Versace’s funeral never mentions D’Amico, his pain is palpable. His suicide attempt in the final episode is searing.
Every scene in this lush, rococo tale of a murdering fabulist and his victims is visually sumptuous, whether set indoors or out. The Miami sky is always on the verge of storming by day, while the skyline by night is supersaturated color and incredibly alluring.
“ACS: Versace” was Murphy’s least-watched series, which is hard to fathom. So if you were one of the many who never saw it, binge all nine episodes over a long weekend. It will leave you aching.
Who are the main musical artists you listened to during your formative years? What music tastes have you developed most recently on the job?
[…] Now, I try to be aware of as wide a spectrum of music as possible. I work on many shows set in specific time periods, such as Pose, The Americans, and American Crime Story or that use music from all over the map like Claws, so I’m constantly going down rabbit holes of different times, locations, and genres. Everything from 1970’s Chilean music to late 1980’s house music or early 1980’s dark wave. The research is half the fun. Conversely, shows like Claws, 9-1-1, and the forthcoming series, Reverie on NBC use a good amount of contemporary music, so I’m always keeping my ear out for new music that fits the sound of those. More often than not, my music tastes wind up being shaped by whatever shows I’m listening for at the moment. I guess maybe I’m a “method" music supervisor?
American Crime Story: Versace focuses on the tragic assassination of the iconic Italian fashion designer, Gianni Versace. The show features a scintillating blend of ornate classical music, late 80’s/early 90’s nightclub favorites by Lisa Stansfield and La Bouche, and a dash of jazz. What was the inspiration behind these selections and was it intentional for the music to play such a dominant and telling role in the storytelling?
Ryan Murphy is a huge music fan so music is important to the storytelling in all of his shows. The overall sound of the show is truly his vision and from there, all of us – producers, editors, etc. – collaborate to serve that. In the case of Versace, there were two key tenets that guided the process.
First, on all of the period set shows, authenticity is extremely important. If a scene is set in Fall 1992, we take care not to use songs released after that point. For The People vs. O.J. Simpson, it was very focused on events within a few year span. This season, we are jumping around in time. We travel to 1987 and 1990, 1997 and 1992 (and some years in between). To some degree, we had to show that in the song selections.
Equally, if not more importantly, this season is much more of a “deep dive” into character than the O.J. season. Ryan, along with executive producer, Alexis Martin Woodall sought to approach the music through the lens of Andrew Cunanan, the killer, and his experience of life. Where would go and what music would he be exposed to? What would have been listening to as a child? We thought about what was playing in clubs at that time. We wanted to be accurate as to what was popular back then and put people in the shoes of a younger gay man in California. The fact that most of the songs are highly recognizable also provides a point of connection with the character – a position you may not want to find yourself in with a serial killer. The buoyant “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey plays as Andrew dances while a wealthy older man is in bed nearly suffocating.
In a cameo, Aimee Mann performs “Drive” by The Cars. It was for a moment where David Madson, who we know gets murdered shortly thereafter, decides not to escape in order to comfort a crying Andrew. Even the songs in the clubs like “Be My Lover” by La Bouche or “A Little Bit of Ecstasy” by Jocelyn Enriquez were selected with Andrew’s psyche in mind. Every moment of, “Oh, I love that song!” is immediately followed by, “Oh man, am I relating to this guy?” That’s one of the main questions the show asks: What role did we as a society play in allowing this bright young man with so much potential to murder an icon?
From the start of your career in music supervision until now, what has been your most challenging and game-changing experience working on a film or television show?
[… ]The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story was also a game changer for me. The season was starting as PJ was transitioning into Warner Bros. Records and right off the bat, there were on camera performances. The Aimee Mann appearance mentioned earlier in episode four. Then there was an on-camera polka band in episode five and of course, tons of needle drops in all the episodes. In an apprenticeship industry, there really comes a time to spread your wings. I remember P.J. telling me, “This is what needs to happen. This is your time to level up.” He was 100% right.
“This TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.” That was the view of the Versace family before The Assassination of Gianni Versace aired. The FX series, showing in the UK on BBC2, is one of a recent run of shows to dramatise recent history. It focuses on the designer’s murder, on the steps of his Miami mansion in 1997, taking it as the starting point for a nine-part drama that admits to some storytelling licence. Meanwhile, The Looming Tower, which began on Amazon Prime last week and is based on Lawrence Wright’s book, has reopened controversy about 9/11, and in the US, critics are discussing whether Paramount Network’s drama Waco has too much love for cult leader David Koresh.
So, should we view these shows only as works of fiction? The debate boils down to whether the point of fact-based dramas is to reveal what really happened, or if it is to tell a wider dramatic truth. That’s tricky, because the answer is almost always: both. This means that, callous or unethical as it might seem, it’s sometimes OK for such programmes to ignore complaints about events being reshaped for artistic purposes.
A stark and difficult example was The Secret, ITV’s grim 2016 dramatisation of the murder of Trevor Buchanan and Lesley Howell by their adulterous spouses. The complaints from Lesley Howell’s daughter that her mother had not been portrayed correctly deserved, of course, to be heard – but they didn’t deeply affect the validity of the series. That was all about telling the story of Colin Howell (James Nesbitt), a predatory egotist for whom religion offered justification for pursuing his sexual urges at all costs. Dramatically speaking, it didn’t matter if his victims, who didn’t feature heavily, were not presented with precise accuracy.
In contrast, it did matter that The Curse of Steptoe, a BBC4 biodrama aired in 2008 but then withdrawn from circulation in 2010 after a damning BBC Trust investigation, drew flak from relatives and colleagues of Harry H Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell: among their assertions was that the central point about Brambell and Corbett hating each other and subsequently feeling cursed by Steptoe and Son was false.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s showrunner, Ryan Murphy, is acutely aware of the dangers. His series from last year, Feud: Bette and Joan, was a fabulously gossipy take on a bygone Hollywood era, only slightly marred by the fact that one of the supporting characters, Olivia de Havilland, is still alive and is now suing. That’s annoying for Murphy, but for us, Feud’s smart take on the lonely, bitter showbiz world isn’t diminished. Murphy is brilliant at finding the story beneath the story; the moral that renders exact truth irrelevant.
The Versace story is the second series under Murphy’s American Crime Story banner. The dramatic truth of the first, the Emmy-winning The People vs OJ Simpson, was that the Simpson trial illustrates how modern America’s ravenous 24-hour media and ingrained racism interlocked in the 1990s and are still a twin menace today. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t make as profound a point about society, although a theme develops about how the celebrated designer had a different experience of being gay in the homophobic 20th century US to lonely dropout Andrew Cunanan. It is primarily a chillingly authentic portrait of Cunanan, a fantasist who became a serial killer.
In that sense, the show is roughly in the same category as The Secret. The Versaces’ complaints also feel akin to those made by the Matthews family about The Moorside, BBC1’s 2017 dramatisation of the fake “disappearance” of Yorkshire nine-year-old Shannon Matthews. Her relatives didn’t want the story to be examined afresh and thought they ought to have been consulted, but for viewers there wasn’t a compelling reason to heed them. Similarly, to the extent that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is even about the Versaces, it’s about analysing their effort to maintain and control their public image. Seeking their approval would undermine that.
In any case, New York Magazine’s online culture site Vulture has been fact-checking each episode, with help from a reporter who covered the Cunanan story at the time. The embellishments and elisions they’ve turned up have been no more than an intelligent viewer would expect from a fact-based drama. The genre creates its own unique suspension of disbelief, where what we see is both real, in the sense of being plausible or instructive, and not, because we know that some of it has been invented.
Amazon/Hulu’s political expose The Looming Tower, starring Jeff Daniels as John O’Neill, the FBI agent who tried to bring down Osama bin Laden before he committed a major atrocity, illustrates the point in a different way. Daniels plays a whisky-downing, ursine veteran who is juggling two mistresses and rubs the stuffed shirts in the CIA up the wrong way. He’s too much of a boilerplate flawed/ambiguous hero, in other words. Even if O’Neill really was like that, it doesn’t feel true. The plotting of Bin Laden and his associates, and the field work by US law enforcers trying to break these terror networks, is also too laden with familiar spy-thriller devices to be convincing. Lots of what we see might well have happened, but since The Looming Tower all has the air of contrived fiction, it doesn’t matter, because we don’t feel as if we’re witnessing reality. That’s a very delicate balance, but it’s the one Ryan Murphy has mastered.
Following the success of Ryan Murphy’s critically acclaimed The People v. O.J Simpson, the second instalment of the crime anthology revolves around the assassination of fashion designer, Gianni Versace.
The series debuted in the US on FX back in January, and finally arrived on BBC Two in the UK last week.
But while murderous pursuits of serial killer Andrew Cunanan is the focus of the series, the show deals with a whole lot more than a tragic killing spree in 1997.
Here’s four reasons why you need to watch The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
1. Darren Criss plays a sociopath
We never expected to see a Glee character suffocate an elderly man with duct tape before bludgeoning him to death with a brick – but Darren Criss’ portrayal of Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who shot Gianni Versace, is disturbingly captivating.
It’s unfathomable as to how somebody can create a character boasting irresistible charm and intelligence, and juxtapose it with such insincerity and brutality, which makes it hard to watch and even harder not to.
He’s as compelling as a sociopath as he is a choir boy – which will make your moral compass spin all over the place.
2. Gianni Versace and Antonio D’Amico’s open relationship
Édgar Ramírez (Gianni) and Ricky Martin’s (Antonio) open relationship is a fresh representation of the often underrepresented concept of polyamory. But their openness doesn’t devalue their relationship, and the compassion they have for one another.
They are, in other words, the ultimate power couple.
“It’s important that we shed some light on power couples like [Gianni Versace and Antonio D’Amico], even though [D’Amico] was quiet and behind the scenes and he was just there supporting his man for 15 years.
“I also believe there was a level of homophobia going around in his family where he was hiding, even though he says, ‘My relationship was very open and free with Gianni’…”
3. That pink pants scene
If you don’t know what we’re talking about, see the images below and thank us later. As part of his narcissistic character, Darren Criss dances in some tight pink undies, as one of his ‘clients’ lay terrified on the bed- unable to see due to the tape over his eyes.
Besides the obvious appeal, this scene highlights how compelling Criss’ portrayal of a twisted killer really is.
4. Homophobia in 90s Americana
The Assassination of Gianni Versace might not be what you expect.
Amongst the Versace runway, Miami beaches, and Darren Criss well-fitted underwear, the miniseries cleverly explores the consequences of being gay in the 90s. Because beyond the glitz and glam lies the not-so-pretty reality.
Homophobia affects most of the characters in the series. Andrew Cunanan struggles to come to grips with his sexuality and targets in-the-closet homosexuals. Each one of his murders, which are poorly chased up by the police, are acts of internalised homophobia.
In what could be his best role yet, Ricky Martin doesn’t only have to face the grief he feels from the death of his partner, he also has to deal with the implications that this horrific murder and its corresponding investigation has for him as a gay man.
He deals with institutionalised homophobia from the police who investigate him, estrangement from Gianni’s sister Donatella (portrayed by Penélope Cruz), and remains half in the closet when he’s forced to suppress the truth about his sexuality. His performance is bound to leave you teary-eyed.
Later in the season, the real-life stories of closeted business tycoon Lee Miglin, and gay naval officer Jeff Trail – two other of Cunanan’s victims – are explored further, unpacking the rife homophobia in which the LGBTQ community had to operate in in their personal and professional lives.
As American Crime Story Season 2 continues its backward trajectory through time, another strange chapter in its subject’s life will be put under the microscope. Andrew Cunanan’s relationship with Norman Blachford is The Asassination Of Gianni Versace’s next focus, in the Feb. 28 episode, titled “Descent.” For those fans wondering what the show would be about now that the entirety of Cunanan’s allleged cross-country killing spree has been depicted, don’t worry: there’s still plenty of tragic material left in Cunanan’s life to examine in the season’s final four episodes. Spoilers ahead.
What was Andrew Cunanan doing before he flew to Minnesota, murdered Jeff Trail, and abducted David Madson? That’s the subject of “Descent,” which presents the show’s version of Cunanan’s time in San Diego, and his relationship with an older, wealthy man, played by Michael Nouri. Viewers have already gotten to know Cunanan’s habit for lying about his extravagant lifestyle; but for a while those lies were true. Per the episode, he lived large off the dime of Norman Blachford, a retired millionaire in his 60s, and enjoyed all the excesses and privilege that he so envied Gianni Versace for. But how accurate is this plot?
According to an article in the San Diego Reader published after the first four murders but before his assassination of Versace, Cunanan met Blachford in Scottsdale, AZ, which is typically filled in the winter with citizens of La Jolla, an affluent San Diego neighborhood. In Maureen Orth’s 1997 Vanity Fair article “The Killer’s Trail” — which would go on to become her 1999 non-fiction book Vulgar Favors, on which Versace is based — she states that Cunanan began accompanying Blachford everywhere under the pretense of being his “decorator.”
Blachford himself was a member of Gamma Mu, an “extremely private fraternity of about 700 very rich, mostly Republican, and often closeted gay men,” as Orth describes. In 1995, Cunanan convinced Blachford to move permanently to La Jolla (citing “allergies he encountered in [Arizona],” according to the Reader), and enjoyed a lavish allowance given to him by his older consort. Orth reported that Blachford gave Cunanan “$2,000 a month, and provided him with a 1996 Infiniti I30T to tool around in.” She added that they traveled to the South of France and Paris in June of 1996 and also to New York City to see shows.
During his time with Blachford, many of the older man’s friends and associates seemed to notice Cunanan’s penchant for spinning elaborate lies — but the young man was charming enough to get away with it. “He was young and attractive, entertaining, good company — what’s not to like?” Orth quoted one acquaintance as saying. But Cunanan was also “sad on two levels: He’s got a lot going for him, I thought. He doesn’t need all this sham. He was also a young man ultimately with no career ambitions in any direction. He pretty much said he was interested in older men for their financial situations. He made no bones about that, and he would say it in front of Norman.”
Eventually not even Blachford’s level of extravagance was enough for Cunanan. The young man moved out of Blachford’s home, complaining to his friend Tom Eads that his patron was “too cheap,” and he was tired of his “nickel-and-diming,” according to Orth’s article. She also reported that Cunanan wanted an even nicer car, to fly first class more often, and to repaint all the rooms in Blachford’s La Jolla home. When he moved out, “Cunanan was astonished that Blachford would let him go,” she wrote.
Ultimately, his separation from Blachford may have been a contributing factor to Cunanan’s subsequent downward spiral. It was after this breakup that Cunanan grew even more obsessed with Jeff Trail, becoming the ex-Navy man’s “constant companion,” according to another article in the San Diego reader published a week after the first.
“I asked Jeff how Andrew was making ends meet after being frozen out by Blachford,” the article quoted Michael Williams, a friend of Trail’s, as remembering. “Jeff said, ‘You know, I think Norman was giving him an allowance for a while, but I know that he’s back to his old profession.’ And I said, ‘Profession? Why? What was his old profession?’ And Jeff said, ‘Oh, well, he sold drugs.’ Cocaine. Crystal meth, ecstasy. And I think that that affected Jeff a lot. I think that if Jeff suspected that, he didn’t want anything to do with it. And there became a huge distance between the two at that point, the end of last year.” Of course, viewers will already know how that strained relationship allegedly ended.
There is one other interesting wrinkle in Cunanan’s story introduced by his relationship with Blachford. According to Orth, the La Jolla house that he convinced Blachford to buy previously belonged to Lincoln Aston, another wealthy elderly friend of Cunanan, who was found bludgeoned to death in his home in 1995 — the same manner of death in which Trail was killed, only this time with a stone obelisk instead of a hammer. Eventually, a young drifter named Kevin Bond pled guilty to the murder, and San Diego police remain “satisfied with his confession,” according to the Reader. But some people have their doubts, including someone who was close to Cunanan.
“I do think it’s a possibility,” Williams told the Reader. “I think it’s very odd that the man was killed in that fashion, and Jeff was killed in that fashion. And Jeff told me Andrew told him he — Andrew — was the one who found [Aston’s] body.” We may never know whether Cunanan had anything to do with this sixth death… but the question itself is yet another reason why Cunanan’s story remains so fascinating 20 years later.
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