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American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, ‘The Man Who Would Be Vogue’

The first episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace soon comes to the matter of Versace’s (Edgar Ramírez) death and following it, the question of Andrew Cunanan’s (Darren Criss) motives . We jump back and forth from that event to Andrew ‘s prior encounter with the fashion mogul, taking place five years earlier in San Francisco. Versace ends up asking Andrew to attend an opera Versace himself is costuming. During this time with Versace at the opera house, Andrew tells the designer that he is writing a novel, inspired by his own ‘crazy’ family — Andrew wants to be seen by Versace as a creator, as ‘worthy’. Earlier, in another scene, we see the young man with a dozen or more magazines laid out on the floor, absorbing them all. We are to take from this Andrew has been studying his mark — getting to know Versace before he knows him. Andrew is supremely, preternaturally skilled at seeing inside of those around him, knowing what to appeal to and how to do it. It is akin to watching a predator stalking prey, whilst they remain completely unaware of the danger they are in. The opera that brings to two together is Andrew Strauss’s ‘Capriccio’, the word meaning, ‘a painting or other work of art representing a fantasy or a mixture of real and imaginary features.’ The part shown is the overture, the capstone to the last opera Strauss composed before his death.

During the overture, Andrew shows true emotion (meaning it is occurs naturally, rather than a manufactured facet of who Andrew is at the time), crying openly and struggling to control himself. Capriccio is staged as an opera within an opera, a story within a story. We will see the stories within this huge opera and tragic spectacle of Versace’s death, just as with the O.J. Simpson trial and attendant show by the same creators. One of the final scenes of the opera sees a Countess — torn between two men — asking her own reflection in the mirror, “Is there anything that isn’t trivial?” Truly asking, ‘Does anything really matter?’ It is a question Andrew will have to ask himself, once his artificial selves fall away, leaving him alone to confront himself. What has this life of grandiose lies and deceit left him with, who is he really?

The first five minutes of episode one spends time juxtaposing Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace. Versace is a man who has everything: a house emblazoned and adorned with his own creations, with staff and a partner and people around him. Everyone recognises him on the street, he has friends — he has a life. Andrew Cunanan is an isolated figure on a huge beach, ill, coming apart; he has no one and nothing. As we come to see, everything about him is a falsehood, a concoction and a lie. He is a different person for every audience. He has no trouble, admitting this to a friend ( or rather, someone who believes himself to be Andrew’s friend); he only tells people what they need to hear. What he doesn’t say — the truthful heart of the matter — is that he lies to get what he wants from people:  respect, recognition, and to satisfy more material needs. The crux is that Andrew doesn’t see them as lies, because he truly is becoming another person. To him, there is the exterior person and if they are standing before you, they must exist, ergo, it is not a lie. This is not to say that Andrew is absolved morally of his outrageous, manipulative lies, it is more to show that he could easily lose himself amid the myriad personalities he creates for himself. Then, after the inevitable collapse of so much fiction, all Andrew is left with is his real self.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace could be said, in large part, to be looking at who Andrew really is. Is he simply a serial killer, deprived of empathy by nature? A conman who has lost himself somewhere inside the stories and personalities of his own creation? Or, is he someone looking for something that he himself doesn’t understand? The truth may be lying somewhere scattered among all of these questions. During their talk at the opera house, Versace says he hopes people will get to know him by wearing his clothes, to understand him. He tells Andrew ‘People will get to know you a little bit when they read your book,’. This is one of the linchpin lines of the episode. It is telling us explicitly that we are engaged in a study of Andrew, that we might “get to know him a little bit”. Except it is not a book that Andrew authors, but something terrible. A character like Andrew — a person like Andrew Cunanan, whose motives and actions remain opaque to this day — can seem to us like an inscrutable cipher. Their actions are so reprehensible as to make understanding them seem impossible, and to attempt to do so repugnant to our sensibilities. Yet, we still try to do it, and The Assassination of Gianni Versace is another attempt to deconstruct something huge and to find its essence — to find out why.

All of this goes alongside themes of salacious mass media and celebrity culture. One grisly example shows a young man witness to the stricken Versace sprint to his car to retrieve a camera, eager to take a snap of the mortally wounded man. He then stands before assembled media crews, and starts an impromptu auction in the street, mere feet from the crime scene. Another scene sees previously-denied Versace autograph hunters press a Versace magazine Ad into Gianni’s pooled blood. Then, there were the global headlines announcing the fashion giant’s death, the reports and rumours about his private life, his health and potential pre-connection to his eventual killer.

The other main plank of the episode pertains to the control of Versace’s legacy — business and personal. His sister – Donatella (Penolope Cruz) and brother Santo (Giovanni Cirfiera) — arrive to exert control over what the public and police find out about their brother. The victim of this is Verace’s long term boyfriend, Antonio (Ricky Martin). He has to face blundering, cold inquiries from a detective, who asks whether Antonio was paid for his relationship with Versace. He faces questions, asked in an offhand manner, that no wife or girlfriend would have to answer. Antonio is forced justify his relationship with Versace — 15 years long — hours after the death of his partner, still covered in his blood. Donatella treats Antonio no better, telling him he is to speak to no one without consulting her first. She shows no care for him in their shared time of grief, viewing him only as a potential embarrassment which must be suppressed.

Matters then immediately turn to business and image. Donatella tells assembled lawyers that they (the press, the public) “judge the killer, yes, but they’ll judge the victim too. First, people weep, then they whisper.’ This is another key line in the episode, summing up the maelstrom of lurid tabloid headlines that followed Versace’s death. Donatella makes it clear that she views the perceived abasement of Versace’s image as akin to killing him twice. Donatella sees herself and assumes the mantle of a bulwark, taking her brother’s empire onto her shoulders. She rejects the forthcoming public offering Versace had arranged for his company, stressing the need to keep it in the hands of family, not strangers.

The episode ends with Andrew, strolling along the Miami beachfront, Versace sunglasses covering his eyes. He views racks of newspapers all bearing the news of Versace’s death, buying a clutch for himself. Andrew smiles as he takes it all in– he has created this. Something he has done created worldwide news, and recognition is finally his. It brings us back to the title of the episode, The Man Who Would be Vogue. This could be seen to be a double-edged play on the title of a book Andrew carries with him. We see him pull a copy out of his bag, alongside his gun. ‘he Man Who Was Vogue is a book about Conde Naste, a publishing magnate who found his fortune and establishing fame with the purchase of Vogue magazine in 1916. Over time, Naste positioned the magazine as a repository for style and elan, making it a byword for the new and the visionary. Andrew, through his actions, becomes a kind of monstrous vogue; his ‘work’ on the cover of every highbrow and lowbrow newspaper, tabloid and magazine. He is wanted nationwide, pursued by the police and FBI. He has finally found a way to create something fame-worthy, via the destruction of others.

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, ‘The Man Who Would Be Vogue’

Murder most fashionable: ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’

Insinuate” is such a delicious word. It is suggestion at its most furtive, a sly whisper, a meaningful nudge. An insinuation stops well short of being direct—direct enough to trigger litigation, at least—yet is pointed enough to assassinate a character. It is something the most omniscient fictional characters throughout the ages have done most artfully, from Iago to Jeeves, bending less aware characters to their will, with but the timing of a cough or a specifically sharpened question mark.

I, for one, have always been fascinated by those who can insinuate themselves into a conversation. This cunning is demonstrated rather strikingly in the first episode of the second season of American Crime Story, titled The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, where would-be killer Andrew Cunanan is introduced to Versace at a crowded nightclub and, through rude but relentless persistence, wangles his way to the designer’s ear. His impudence is startling as he brushes off the man who introduced him to Versace while keenly working his way to the centre, making unwanted conversation and dropping entirely unsolicited details to get noticed. It is obnoxious but effective, and Versace is drawn to the man’s single-minded focus. It’s hard to look away.

That last line could exemplify this new season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, streaming in India on Hotstar. It is an anthology series that looks at one dazzling crime per season. The first season—The People v. O.J. Simpson—was a remarkable true-crime narrative, a cinematic and nuanced telling of a story that continues to beggar credulity even though we all know how it turned out. The new season, based on the book Vulgar Favors by journalist Maureen Orth, is much less brilliant but much more shiny.

It is a baroque production. It is obvious from that gilded Medusa logo that Gianni Versace will be draped in couture and that he will clothe those around him in otherworldly outfits, but this series is entirely about gloss. Even the coffin he lies in positively gleams because of the show’s relentlessly polished aesthetic. We’re told Versace forgave beauty everything, and that’s what this show provides, stylized overture after stylized overture.

A swooping overhead drone shot of “bondi blue” waves and a sun-drenched beach is used to introduce us to Miami, while Laura Branigan’s Gloria—a song with inevitably built-in exclamation marks—plays loud and proud. A station wagon Cunanan steals is fire-engine red to go with his neatly tucked cerulean blue T-shirt, and even the mud spatter on the side of the vehicle looks just right. Forget the mesmerizing lushness of the Versace mansion. Even when the surroundings call for drabness, like the interior of a cheap motel, the pastel shades are pleasantly picked to match shirts and skies, and the relative lack of flash is compensated for with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the wall. Who wants verisimilitude when you can have va-va-voom?

The visuals are colour-corrected beyond Instagram filters, while the cast is unfairly attractive. The most dismal character on the show is blessed with Ricky Martin’s jawline (because the singer plays him), while Darren Criss, as the sociopathic serial killer Cunanan, shakes his hips wavily as he moves, as if he were an expensive handbag hanging off a high-heeled woman. One casting decision says it all: The distinctive-looking Donatella Versace is, flatteringly enough, played by Penelope Cruz.

This approach of sheen over subtlety makes an undoubted grab for the eye, but it is exhausting to constantly look past something this meticulously tailored. It is too designed—and while that may sound like an odd criticism for a show about a designer—that just might be the problem: This particular American Crime Story isn’t about Versace after all. Despite a tender and melancholic Gianni Versace portrayal by the great Édgar Ramírez (you may remember him from the Carlos miniseries), this is a show about the serial killer instead.

Criss is wonderfully supple in the chameleonic role of Cunanan, but this shape-shifting and obsequious artifice is too reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, without quite having the unpredictable edge of that great character. Cunanan juggles masks well, but the show only seems to beat with a human heart when he isn’t around, which isn’t very often. The most affecting scene in the early episodes, for example, comes when Cruz’s Donatella tightens the necktie around her brother’s corpse before breaking down far, far from the cameras.

Orth’s journalism has always been sensational and speculative, and this hastily written source material—combined with Ryan Murphy’s naturally lavish storytelling—feels too lurid to matter. This is a shame because there are telling moments throughout this new season, moments about homosexual heartbreak and gay struggles of the 1990s, which deserve place on a more affecting (and less affected) show.

“I don’t like his clothes,” a man tells Cunanan about Versace. “That’s because you don’t know him,” snaps Cunanan defensively. “I don’t know him,” says the man, “but his stores have windows. I can see his clothes.” Cunanan argues back passionately, saying that only when you are familiar with the artist and his heart can you truly appreciate the clothes and what they mean. The first season of American Crime Story allowed us to know people and made us reflect on their lives and choices. This season shows us their clothes.

Murder most fashionable: ‘The Assassination Of Gianni Versace’

Gianni Versace Is the Beating Heart of the Show About His Death

It was always going to be hard for Ryan Murphy to top American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. The first installment of his true-crime anthology benefited from singularly compelling source material and a talented ensemble cast, weaving them into a season that deftly retold the story of Simpson’s trial and recreated the complicated racial dynamics that informed both the public’s perception of the proceeding and the relationships between its key players. Murphy’s campy aesthetic perfectly lent itself to the tabloid nature of the case, something that goes ditto for the second season, The Assassination of Gianni Versace. But stylistic similarities aside, this new edition is quite a different season of television.

In the opening scenes of People v. O.J., the crime had already been committed, and the ensuing narrative focused on the courtroom drama that unfolded after. Versace begins with the crime, but then moves backward, showing the viewer in more or less reverse chronology the events that led to that moment over a period of days and years. While the late designer’s name is the one in the title, the series is really the story of two men presented in contrast to each other. Édgar Ramírez plays the late Versace as an industrious man consumed by great compassion for his family and life after contracting and recovering from HIV (a diagnosis never confirmed by the Versace family and a point of contention for them with the series). Conversely, Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan (Glee’s Darren Criss, in what will likely be a breakout role) is in love with the idea of a particular kind of life—the opulent, seemingly “perfect” variety Versace embodies—but disappointed by his own reality, lusting after what he believes is his entitlement rather than working to achieve it.

That theme—of doing the work—is what separates the series’ titular victim from his killer. The former is shown laboring over his designs, hoping to leave a legacy larger than himself; the latter is an intelligent but indolent loafer who constantly lies to and leaches from the people in his life until they tire of his charm offenses and cut him out. Absent any real-life explanation for his killings, the series presents Cunanan as increasingly isolated by his own actions, obsessed with Versace, and frenzied as he realizes he will never have the life he’s always envisioned for himself. He eventually snaps, setting in motion the cross country killing spree that would end in both Versace’s death and Cunanan’s by his own hand.

Structurally, this dual presentation is undermined by the fact that Cunanan killed four other people before he got to Versace, and so the narrative spends long stretches of time (and one entire episode) without checking in on the designer at all. Tonally, that also means that despite Criss’s exhilarating performance, things get pretty dark, and borderline dour, during a middle stretch of episodes focused almost entirely on the sociopathic murderer. Versace, and especially the characters who inhabit his storyline—his sister Donatella (played robustly, but with great affection, by Penélope Cruz) and long-time partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin, who lends a good deal of emotional heft to an underdeveloped role)—are sorely missed in these sections, as they provide the series with an essential bit of altruism Cunanan inherently lacks.

The Versace family has voiced their disapproval of the series, largely because it is based on journalist Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History, which they’ve called “full of gossip and speculation.” But while there are no doubt scenes in the series that have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes, its treatment of its titular subject and his family is extremely tender. Both Versaces could have easily become caricatures, but on screen, Ramírez and Cruz turn in much more than mere impersonations.

The Versace siblings’ relationship is complex. They have strong disagreements about how to run their company (his sister’s suggestion that they produce a less-daring line of dresses for the masses results in Gianni taking a pair of shears to a design they made together) as well as their personal lives (Donatella and Antonio are not fans of each other, and in real-life she cut him out of her brother’s will). But despite their arguments, Gianni and Donatella are extremely loyal to each other, with the designer constantly encouraging his sister to pursue a higher role in the company and take it over once he has passed away. The total devotion, integrity, and realness inherent to these characters’ interactions with each other make them a joy to watch, and a necessary polarity to Cunanan’s self-absorption.

In the absence of the Versace family, any humanity missing from Cunanan is left to be provided by his other victims. While Finn Wittrock, Cody Fern, and Mike Farrell turn in empathetic performances as victims Jeff Trail, David Madson, and Lee Miglin, respectively, their characters here are mostly explored in relation to only two things: Cunanan and their sexuality. Just as racial dynamics informed People v. O.J., so too does the pervasive homophobia of the ’90s act as a lingering presence over this second season. Trail is a veteran who left the Navy because of the oppressiveness of “don’t ask don’t tell.” Madson is briefly considered a suspect in Trail’s murder at least in part because of his gayness. Cunanan’s third victim, the successful Chicago developer Lee Miglin, is portrayed as a closeted man who employed Cunanan as an escort (Miglin’s family has always maintained the killing was random), and the series implies that had Miglin been able to live openly, he and his killer may have never even crossed paths.

In contrast to O.J., however, these sorts of details rarely directly influence the action on screen. Race was ingrained in the O.J. Simpson case, with Los Angeles’ contentious history of black and white relations affecting the location of the trial, the public’s perception of Simpson’s innocence or guilt, and the appointment of defense attorneys and prosecutors. Versace’s source material isn’t as rich, and as such anyone hoping future iterations of the show will be able to examine larger themes on a micro level the way O.J. did may have to temper their expectations. Homophobia’s omnipresence certainly isn’t seen as a motivating factor for Cunanan, whose sexuality seems to be the one thing he was never very concerned with, or adept at, lying about. Instead, Murphy employs anti-gay bigotry largely for tonal purposes—as a looming, threatening force in the characters’ lives, adding to a sense of inevitable doom that presides over everything.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a worthy, if often grim, successor to American Crime Story’s first season. If nothing else, in its divergent examinations of Versace and Cunanan, it aptly seizes upon what makes glamour so captivating in the first place. It’s not just the ritz and wealth—it’s the sense that there are people out there, surrounded by friends and family, who are living big, loud, exciting lives. It’s the series’ contention that Versace had achieved this—but it was not the “perfect” existence as Cunanan envisioned it. It was messy. There were complications, arguments, and illnesses Versace had to deal with. But that’s just life. Cunanan thought he was being denied what he wanted, but he was actually always avoiding it.

Gianni Versace Is the Beating Heart of the Show About His Death