On July 15, 1997, a man walked up behind Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace as he was entering his South Beach estate and shot him in the head, killing him. This murder introduced the world to the name Andrew Cunanan, a man who sought fame and acceptance so desperately, he was willing to kill for it. Versace wasn’t his only victim. In fact, Andrew’s 4 state murder spree left a trail of bodies and questions behind that still baffle and intrigue investigators. Why did he do it? What made him snap? Was it all avoidable, or was Andrew just born to kill? Join us this week as we examine Cunanan’s life and crimes, from his troubled and turbulent childhood, to the web of lies that he lived as an adult and the victims he left in his wake, we do our best to figure out who Andrew was and what lead him down the darkest path of all. | 5 April 2018
In season 1 of American Crime Story, the trial of OJ Simpson was the star. The heart of season 2 isn’t Versace, but his murderer and how he became one. Andrew’s other victims come to life as living, breathing people — something that is quite commendable.
This complements something that the final episode of season 1 explicitly states. The circumstances surrounding the OJ trial aren’t ancient history. It is as much if not more a part of our culture than ever before.
Both seasons of American Crime Story are well done and executed well, but they are radically different in terms of style.
The biggest difference is American Crime Story season 1 was almost exclusively a legal thriller. The subject was the “trial of the century.” The entire show focuses on the events taking place after the crime has occurred. Season 2 is the exact opposite, focusing on what occurred before or during the crime that begins the story.
The People vs. OJ Simpson also focuses on a larger scale about how the trial affected individuals, both relevant to the case and not. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a deep character study of Andrew Cunanan, his life, and how it resulted in the crime.
Unlike American Crime Story season 1, there is no large cast of famous characters whose motivations, actions, and choices all paved the way for the end result. There is not even the possibility of seeing Andrew inside a courtroom because Cunanan took his own life instead of being taken into custody. In this way, both seasons of ACS are bookends to each other.
One thing both shows have in common is the viewer probably knows what the ending will be. Virtually anyone knows that OJ Simpson was acquitted in the 1994 trial. While less may know that Versace was shot by Andrew Cunanan, who killed himself, it is still open knowledge in public awareness. The whole point of the show is not to focus on what happened, but the how, and most importantly WHY?
Season 2 specifically opens with the murder, and virtually every episode works backward, revealing another layer of what lead to that day in Miami. This is the biggest technical difference between the seasons, as season 1 unfolds in a strictly chronological way — which was how both events unfolded in real-time.
OJ’s trial was covered step by step as it happened. The country first learned of who Andrew was when he killed Versace. As a result, people had to work backward to uncover facts about his life.
A final point is that despite only occurring approximately three years apart, each season seems to inhabit its own universe. The People vs. OJ Simpson has the tone of a sharp courtroom drama. The Assassination of Gianni Versace mimics the atmosphere of a vintage, decadent, passionate thriller.
In several moments, Cunanan has the lifestyle and habits of a smooth talking, high-end escort. Think Richard Gere in American Gigolo. Not only is Cunanan a would-be hustler, but Andrew seems to prostitute his personality as well as his body. He tailors his interests, background, and personality to whomever he is trying to get something from.
Regardless of whether it is parents, friends, employers, whatever; Andrew seems to always be playing a character. The people of the OJ case became instant celebrities. While most of them took this with a grain of salt, Andrew would have dreamed about such notoriety.
But both American Crime Story series takes the viewer on a fascinating journey to uncover what made these crimes not just infamous, but uniquely American crimes.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Spotify playlist | updated to the finale and includes the official soundtrack
Adagio in G Minor • Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life • All Around the World • Capriccio, Op.85 – Letzte Szene: “Kein andres, das mir im Herzen so loht” • Andrew on the Run • Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Act 1: “Oh! quante volte” (Giulietta) • Donatella • Autopsy • All of Them • Gloria • Easy Lover • Back to Life (However Do You Want Me) • You Showed Me • Sposa son disprezzata • I’ve Done Nothing • Idea to Kill • A Little Bit of Ecstasy • Be My Lover • This Is the Right Time • A Certain Sadness • It’s Magic • St. Thomas • Are You Mad? • Pump Up The Jam • Drive • David Murdered • Tick Tock Polka • Attempted Suicide • Fascinated • Sensitivity • I’m Afraid • Interviews • Self Control • Balcony Reception • Get to Know Me • Freedom! ‘90 – Remastered • Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26 • Runaway • Donatella’s Spotlight • String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, Op. 29, D. 804: I. Allegro ma non troppo • Anachronism • Come Giuda • This Is Not for You • Raise the Flag • Hazy Shade of Winter • Touch Me (I Want Your Body) • Whip it • Blue Monday • Modesto on the Run • Vienna • Houseboat • Sailboat Break-In • Calling Modesto • The Man I Love • Nothing Like You • Basilica • Psalm 23: The Lord Is My Shepherd • Person of Interest • Surrounded • Another Stage • Hunt Is Over
*We couldn’t figure out which scenes the tracks “I’m Afraid” and “Nothing Like You” are from and simply put them in order of the soundtrack list. If you have any idea, please drop a line!
On Wednesday night (March 21), the Season 2 finale of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story placed the final puzzle piece in the jigsaw of Andrew Cunanan’s story.
The twisted narrative that spanned his 27 years and pushed further back in time with each new episode ultimately led us right back to where we started in the premiere: to the days after Gianni Versace’s murder. But the feelings toward Cunanan (Darren Criss) that we were left with as he took the life of his final victim — himself — are markedly different than those we felt as we watched him approach the gates of Versace’s (Édgar Ramírez) mansion and murder the celebrated fashion designer in cold blood.
But contrary to our usual feelings toward a central character, it’s not sympathy that we’re feeling. It’s empathy.
“When people say, ‘How can you humanize somebody like this?’ I say because he’s a human being. Everyone is human. Although, unfortunately, he’s famous for horrible things that I am not exonerating him for – they are deplorable and a tragedy and unforgivable,” Darren Criss told MTV News. “I’m not playing a killer; I’m playing a person.”
Starting with the one point of familiarity in Cunanan’s story — Versace’s murder — it felt like the only way forward was to go backwards, building a visual of the spree killer’s history with each episode and introducing us to him as a gay man in the throes of unrequited love, and before that as an escort for older men, and before that as the prized son of an immigrant who tangos with federal law and ultimately flees the country, leaving his family behind.
All the while, we have a constant reminder of who he ultimately becomes as we watch him pick off his five known victims: Jeff Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin, William Reese, and Gianni Versace.
“We start with him as this absolute monster who is doing the worst crimes, and so up front we’re saying, ‘This is who he is.’ And then we’re saying, ‘How’d he become like that?’” writer and executive producer Tom Rob Smith said. “One of the advantages of the backwards narrative is you’re very clearly telling the audience, ‘This is someone who’s done these absolutely terrible things,’ so when you get into that stuff, you’re not trying to say that forgives him. That’s just to say where he comes from.”
Executive producer Brad Simpson agreed, “It doesn’t excuse what Andrew has done, but it explains it.”
This ability to understand a person, regardless of whether they were right or wrong, is empathy in its most pure, unaffected form, and being able to empathize with someone who confidently and consistently makes bad decisions helps us identify those turning points in which they begin to lose their sense of morality. In watching Cunanan’s early missteps, one can’t help but feel that this spiral was “preventable,” said Simpson.
“When you go back to his childhood, you see that this is a kid who wasn’t born to be a murderer. He’s somebody who might’ve been a little unstable, but he was talented. He was somebody you and I might’ve been friends with in high school because he was extroverted and interesting, and something went wrong,” Simpson added. “Here’s a kid who was the product of some sort of bad childhood situation and at some point, somebody could’ve helped him and they didn’t.”
Interwoven in that dialogue is an exploration of LGBTQ culture in the ’90s, a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell seemed more like a blanket rule than a military creed and the AIDS epidemic incited fear and prejudice toward the gay community. Versace navigated that feeling of shame that often comes with rampant homophobia and the lingering effects of it, as told through the dual narratives of Versace and Cunanan, two charismatic men who took drastically different paths.
“It was such a lonely period of time,” described Max Greenfield, who played Ronnie, a struggling HIV positive gay man in Miami and the closest Cunanan had to a friend in the two months before he murdered Versace.
In the finale, Ronnie poignantly stands up for his marginalized sect of society while being questioned by the FBI, asserting that the authorities failed to locate Cunanan because they “were disgusted by him long before he became disgusting.” He evokes the empathy that was built upon throughout the season, adding that Cunanan was never hiding; “he was trying to be seen.”
“One of the things that we’ve talked about is how dangerous it is … when you tell people that their voices don’t matter,” Greenfield said.
“When you do it from such an early age, when you’re sending that message to a young person who then thinks without even being told that their voice doesn’t matter or that they should be ashamed of who they are and ashamed of what they think and what they believe and their voice – it’s heartbreaking, and, really, the result of it can go in any different kind of way. That’s what the story is. It can result in beauty in Gianni Versace’s case, and it can result in real chaos and terror in Cunanan’s case.”
Without its clarifying finale, the aims of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace were almost as hard to unpack as the lies of its protagonist, serial killer and pathological fabulist Andrew Cunanan. That might, in fact, be exactly the point. The series I once criticized for its roaming point of view ended by lying as freely and charmingly as its dancing villain. In so doing, it forged an unlikely and uncomfortable alliance with Cunanan himself.
It’s no secret that, as a series, Versace mixed truth with half-truths and lies almost as much as Cunanan did. Vulture has run a great fact-checking column for each episode that itemizes the liberties the show takes with the truth. The question, to my mind, was how to interpret those departures. When showrunner Tom Rob Smith swapped in an entire ham (with a knife sticking out of it) for the famous ham sandwich Cunanan left behind at the Miglin residence (after having brutally murdering the owner), it seemed clear to me that once we understood that substitution — that blindingly literal instance of the show “hamming it up” — we’d understand a lot of what the series was doing.
What it’s doing, it turns out, is experimenting with narrative identification. And identification is a lot of what this show was actually about: not gender identification, not sexual identification, but empathic identification: who gets it and who doesn’t. Back in 1997, while gauging local reaction to the murders in the area where Cunanan lived and studied, Matthew Lickona reported the following exchange between his wife — who asked about the response in La Jolla — and a La Jolla resident:
“No, he’s from Hillcrest,” he corrected her. “That’s where all the gays are. Nobody in this town is concerned about him at all, because we don’t identify with him.” [The San Diego Reader]
Versace makes you identify with him. It dispenses with that craven, manufactured distinction. It condemns the American indifference to gay deaths around which much of the series is structured. And, however much it sympathizes with his victims (and it does), the series also insists on respecting Cunanan’s fervid need for attention even as it ostensibly disciplines it. One of the facts Versace quotes most about Cunanan was that he was voted (depending on the source) “Most Likely to be Remembered” or “Least Likely to be Forgotten” in high school. The series ends by focusing in on a plaque bearing Cunanan’s name. It turns out to be on a vault in a mausoleum — this feels, then, explicitly like an act of remembrance. But as the camera slowly pans out to show more and more other vaults, the effect becomes punitive: The series seems to focus on the stern, equalizing near-anonymity death finally confers.
If that feels like a finger-wagging lesson, the show inverts that once again. The moral should be “Cunanan, who wanted only to be remembered, failed.” Except, of course, that he didn’t fail: The series itself amounts to a massive act of remembrance. The show explicitly named for Versace was actually about Cunanan. If fame was his goal, he lives on, unchastened.
That lesson about mortality, in other words, feels like exactly the kind of empty wisdom Cunanan (or his abusive, charismatic father, Modesto) might impart.
I’ve made no secret of the ethical questions I’ve had about this series, which has presented as fact things that aren’t even remotely confirmed, including the claim that Cunanan and Lee Miglin were sexually involved and the suggestion that Cunanan was molested by his father, Modesto. These are big truths to bend for dramatic effect, and the series did so without a wink or a tremor — just as Cunanan did.
But if the point was to replicate rather than condemn Cunanan’s curious modus operandi, it was a singular success. Paste Magazine’s Matt Brennan was the first to pick up on the show’s investment in forcing this connection to the villain.
It confronts us — scratch that, it confronted me — with a startling implication: That in the suburban upbringing, the shame, the dissembling, the desperate desire not to be a faggot, I might resemble the murderer more than I do the object of his obsession. [Paste Magazine]
Seen this way, the finale parallels Cunanan’s frenzied effort to escape with the show’s own struggle to escape Cunanan’s stranglehold on its narrative sympathies. We watch Cunanan panicking, calling his father, reduced to eating dog food, just as we see the series roving wildly back to its ostensible protagonists: Versace’s sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) and his lover Antonio (Ricky Martin). But instead of resting with those characters (or giving them the final say), it invents wildly and well. Donatella and Antonio have an extremely painful conversation, we suffer with Antonio as he’s marginalized at Versace’s funeral, and we witness his tragic suicide attempt. None of these details seem to be particularly well-supported — they are Cunanan-isms — and the show can’t help but revert to its charismatic antihero at the end. Even in death, he remains the show’s most compelling character.
This is not a true-crime story at all, then. It’s creative nonfiction in its most creative sense: a portrait of a serial liar that chooses, in the end, to lie with him.
But even if you haven’t followed the limited series, there’s something magical and glamorous about the world of Versacé. It’s a celebrity favorite fashion house (Lady Gaga and J.Lo are huge fans), the clothes are both opulent and gaudy, and it’s just one of those brands that has cultivated a cult following.
While the FX show follows Gianni’s life leading up to his untimely death in 1997, we can’t help but be charmed by the late fashion designer’s sister, Donatella. Penélope Cruz, who plays the fashion mogul, not only draws you in with Donatella’s sense of effortless style, but she makes her presence known.
Labels are the most powerful force in fashion. Gianni Versace, the innovative Italian designer who was gunned down outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, built one of the industry’s most evocative brands, becoming almost as famous as the Hollywood princesses and real-life royals who wore his frocks. His celebrity made him a vast fortune, but also a big target.
Versace’s killer was Andrew Cunanan, a fame-hungry fantasist and predatory gigolo with a drug habit. Cunanan had sex with men — sometimes for money, sometimes for pleasure — but hated being categorised as gay. Convinced of his creative genius, he resented his anonymity. When the world failed to reward his self-proclaimed brilliance with wealth and eminence, he opted to make a name for himself by shooting a star. Labels can also be a powerful force outside fashion.
Closeted homosexuality and dyed-in-the-wool homophobia are the central wardrobe malfunctions explored by The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the second tale from Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story.
Like its predecessor, The People v OJ Simpson, the story is presented as a lightning flash over a darkened landscape, illuminating otherwise hidden features of the culture. On this score, however, the Versace show is disappointing. Racial politics, the trademark of the Simpson trial, is suitable for examination from multiple perspectives. The courtroom procedural format also provides inherent structure. But here, storyline and thematic concerns are more splintered. The giddy whirl of the Miami fashion scene is not a rich environment for thought-provoking drama, and many of the scenes are padded out with campy comedic knockabout.
Despite its title, the show is more about the assassin than the assassinated. Cunanan (played with convincing shiftiness by Darren Criss) had already slain four men before he set his gunsights on Versace. He was on the FBI’s most-wanted list — but a spree killer merely bumping off gay people was evidently a low priority for law enforcement.
Having shot the designer, Cunanan evaded capture for eight days, eventually killing himself. The derring-do of his cop evasion is chronicled at length, while his earlier life is recounted through flashbacks. It’s a framing of the story, with Cunanan centre stage, that glorifies the killer, lavishing him with the attention he craved.
Stealing the show: Darren Criss dazzles as the villain in The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Edgar Ramirez brings subtlety to his performance as Versace, but the character is little more than a collection of histrionic fashionista tics. There are moments when Versace is depicted as a rare voice of reason amid the luvvie babble and whinnying clothes horses. He’s aghast at the skeletal skinniness of supermodels, bored by the solipsism of his socialite fans. Mostly, he’s a whimpering diva, in thrall to delusions of grandeur about the artistic and social importance of his overpriced schmutter.
There’s a similarly cartoonish quality about all of the protagonists in the Versace universe. Penelope Cruz hams it up as an operatically heartbroken Donatella, the ball-busting sister who takes over the family business and narrative. Ricky Martin does fine lip-quivering as Antonio, Versace’s long-term boyfriend. Entertaining though these turns are, they seem to belong to a corny daytime soap rather than the gritty sociopolitical drama to which the series aspires.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace is at its best when it steers clear of the fashion set altogether. The stories of the men Cunanan killed before Versace are told in standalone episodes, offering sharp insight into the complexities of gay life in the 1990s — an era when tolerance of “alternative lifestyles” was preached more often than practised.
Cunanan was a product of social repression and a parasite who fed off it. Ashamed of his sexuality, he preyed on the shame of other gay men. His primary targets for blackmail were older guys, preferably with wives, families and lots to lose. Versace’s name is the VIP tag that helped get this series made, but these quieter, less celebrated tragedies are at its heart. Clever use of a designer label.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Spotify playlist | updated to episode 6
Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, “Albinoni’s Adagio” • Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life • All Around the World • Capriccio, Op.85 – Letzte Szene: “Kein andres, das mir im Herzen so loht” • Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Act 1: “Oh! quante volte” (Giulietta) • Gloria • Easy Lover • Back to Life • You Showed Me • Giacomelli: Merope: “Sposa, son disprezzata” (Merope) • A Little Bit of Ecstasy • Be My Lover • This Is the Right Time • A Certain Sadness • It’s Magic • St. Thomas • Pump Up The Jam • Fascinated • Sensitivity • Self Control • Freedom! ‘90 – Remastered • Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26
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