In this week’s episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, appropriately entitled “Descent,” we get a glimpse of just how low Andrew Cunanan could get before he went on his infamous killing spree, which we’ve seen play out in reverse order over the course of the previous five episodes.
But there are no big shocking moments in this installment. No bloody murders, not even any taping up old men and coming extremely close to suffocating them to death. No, here we meet an Andrew Cunanan who has not yet become a killer, though his lies are as numerous and see-through as ever. He is living in La Jolla, California, a suburb of San Diego, in a mansion with an older gentleman named Norma. They haven’t had sex in a while, and Andrew is basically accepted as an “employee” of the man, but there are other arrangements there. We open on Andrew’s birthday party Norman is throwing him. But the only thing Andrew wants this year is David.
He makes a huge deal out of pretending that the mansion is his own and not some older rich guy’s. He even convinces Jeff to bring him a gift, and provides the gift Jeff is to give him (it’s faux brand shoes he rolls his eyes at). He does this because, as he explains to Jeff, he wants to SEEM loved. The point being, he is not concerned with whether he actually is or not.
However, when David, the man who we know Andrew will eventually murder, shows up he immediately treats Andrew like any old friend–NOT a potential love interest. This is troubling for Andrew. Even worse is David and Jeff, the other man we will see Andrew kill, seem to be actually hitting it off. David makes a comment about where he is going to sleep while he’s there, implying he is not going to be sleeping with Andrew. This is not good. SIDENOTE: A third of Andrew’s future victims are here as Lee Miglin, the Chicago architect makes an appearance.
On top of all this, Andrew took advantage of his sweet old man benefactor Norman a bit too much and apparently he had had enough. When Andrew demands more of everything to stay with him–more money, clothes, to be written into the will–Norman reveals he hired a private investigator to look into Andrew’s past, and he found that Andrew has been lying about having billionaire parents in New York and just about everything else. He worked at a drug store, dropped out of school, and comes from a poor background. Andrew storms out thinking Norman will cave and stop him. But he doesn’t.
Andrew invites David out again for a special trip to Los Angeles, where he will get to pretend that he lives this lavish lifestyle. They stay in a five star hotel. He tosses his keys to the valet like they do in the movies. But David tells him that he agreed to come on this trip to feel out once and for all whether there was anything there between he and Andrew, and he has determined there is not. Why? Because he doesn’t know who Andrew really is. He gives him an opportunity to be real with him and Andrew just continues to lie. David leaves.
This is where Andrew kind of spirals off the deep end. By now he has lost Norman, David, he’s mailed Jeff’s dad a post card in order to either scare him or illicit his coming out to his parents. He lives in a seedy place and starts using crystal meth. In a drugged out haze he envisions an encounter with Gianni Versace himself. Andrew asks him what the difference is between him and Gianni, and Gianni replies “I am loved.”
Finally he retreats home to his mother and we get a small glimpse of why he is the way he is. In an extremely creepy scene involving his mother giving him a sponge bath, she rambles on, not even listening to her son speak. She is not well. Having nothing and no one, and feeling compelled to keep lying and give himself the life he always wanted without working for it, we now see how he set down this path to the eventual murder outside Gianni’s home we saw in the very first episode.
The problem is, it’s hard to have any sympathy for Andrew Cunanan after seeing him so brutally kill and tell vile lie after vile lie. There are still four episodes left in the season and if we are done going backwards, I am left wondering where do we go from here? Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin are hurting for some screen time! But if we suddenly shift to focus on those characters, at this point it may feel like a completely different series. We shall see.
Tag: the tracking board
AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
This week’s episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace looked like it was going to buck the recent trend of going backwards in time to see what Versace murderer Andrew Cunanan was up to before he got to Miami Beach. It opened in Milan in 1995, with Versace himself (still very much alive then) arguing with his sister Donatella about his decision to give an interview with an American publication in which he will reveal he is gay. His lover (and assistant) Antonio D’Amico is present as well.
This is the first time we have seen these characters in a number of weeks, as the previous few episodes focused entirely on Andrew’s backstory. So it was a pleasure to see them pop up here. It is a curious decision to put names like Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin on the bench, so I was fully anticipating an episode devoted in full to the story of Versace’s coming out.
Nope. Totally wrong. After the cold open in which Versace and Donatella have a heated exchange over what his coming out might mean for the company, we flash back to a few days before Jeff Trail is murdered in Minneapolis (brutally with a hammer by Andrew Cunanan, which we saw last week). Cunanan is on the phone with a credit card company representative trying to convince them to let him put one last charge on his card: a flight to Minneapolis, where he assures them he will be able to make his debt right.
Meanwhile in Minneapolis, we see that Jeff is working a factory job. A coworker who he lunches with starts prying about Jeff’s past military experience. Jeff tells him he was an Officer and his friend wonders why he would leave that gig to come work here. Jeff is gets fired up pretty quickly, screaming at the man “It was MY choice!” He really makes a scene. As we know, especially from the title of the episode “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Jeff has most likely been dishonorably discharged from the military for being homosexual.
Soon Andrew is arriving in town, and Jeff and the fellow future Andrew victim David are at the airport to greet him. It’s clear that neither one of them wants much to do with Cunanan at this point, but Jeff speaks about a time where Andrew saved him, and so for old time’s sake is willing to put him up for a couple days. Andrew is all smiles of course, but it’s an eerie feeling the viewer gets realizing that within days this smiling man will be the end of both people there to welcome him.
The episode has its ups and downs in that we know where all this is leading. At times this makes it a little more dull than the last few episodes. At times it adds to the tension. We knew last week that Andrew had taken Jeff’s gun from his apartment without his permission, and the night he kills Jeff, Jeff comes to David’s apartment to retrieve the gun. So this week we see a scene in which Andrew goes through Jeff’s things. I’m not sure we needed to.
Much more interesting is the stuff with Jeff. We get a full backstory to this character, going back to when he was stationed on a ship in San Diego and decided to intervene when some of his fellow soldiers were beating another one to death for being gay. It’s a courageous act, but it is the very act that he later comes to regret. That sets off a chain of events that eventually leads to his death. People begin suspecting that he may, in fact, be gay. When he hears a fellow soldier who turned out to be gay cut a deal with the higher-ups to reveal everyone else he knew to be gay, but he would only be identifying them by their tattoos, Jeff sneaks away and literally tries to cut the tattoo on his leg off his body. It’s excruciating but speaks to his desperation.
Sadly, Jeff tries to hang himself. When he can’t do it, he heads to a gay bar for the first time ever. That’s where he meets the charming Andrew Cunanan. In the most interesting scene, we see Andrew lift Jeff’s spirits and we’re happy for him. But we also know that one day Andrew is going to bludgeon him to death with a hammer. Eventually, due to his meeting with Andrew, Jeff gets the courage to go on camera (though his face is not revealed) and speak about his time as a homosexual man in the military. He painfully laments how he regrets the greatest thing he ever did: saving that man from being beaten to death. This interview is paralleled by Versace’s own interview where he comes out of the closet; one with tentative pride and one with utter shame.
This is really what this series is all about. It’s zoomed in on specific character stories that speak to what was going on in America and the world at the time. That’s what The People Vs. O.J. did so well, and what I was worried this second season would fall flat with. But I stand corrected. These are important stories and interesting ones. And the show just keeps getting better.
TB gives it an A
AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “House By the Lake”
With its fourth episode, entitled “House By the Lake,” this season of American Crime Story is really starting to take shape for me. Off the bat, I was expecting it to go like this: a murder involving a high profile figure happens, a media hoopla ensues, followed by a trial where we get a little more into the head of the accused while simultaneously forcing us to take a look at how we were as a society and culture at the time, the end. That’s more or less how The People Vs. O.J. Simpson went. But I did not know the story around The Assassination of Gianni Versace. I never heard the name Andrew Cunanan before this. And so when the first three episodes were not what I expected them to be, I was a little thrown.
It is apparent now that this series, though we have the bulk of the season still ahead of us, will be most memorably about the killer Andrew Cunanan, and what led him to commit these atrocities. Everyone else thus far has taken a back seat. The last two episodes did not even feature Gianni, his love Antonio D’Amico, or his sister Donatella (played by Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz respectively, who you would think other networks besides FX would fret over putting on the bench for weeks at a time). Last week’s episode was another jump back in time before the murder of Gianni Versace, which we saw in episode one, that time focusing on the murder of Chicago architect and closeted homosexual Lee Miglin. This week we go back in time not long before those events to Minneapolis, where Cunanan was staying with his boyfriend David Madson (Cody Fern).
It is another eerie opener. We now have a sense of what a simultaneous loose canon and calculating monster Andrew Cunanon can be so almost every scene, every line he delivers, is filled with tension. Nobody is safe around him (that is, if you’re like me and don’t recall the actual events). Living in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, David just lands a big job over the phone and is excited to share with Andrew. Andrew is not so pleased. He’s invited their mutual friend Jeff Trail up to the apartment, which David isn’t happy about. He’s about to get a whole lot less happy.
When Andrew brings Jeff up to the apartment, Andrew immediately besieges him and beats him to a bloody death with a hammer. David sit in shock. If you’re the type that yells at the screen, you would probably do a lot of hollering at David this episode. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t call the police (well, he does once, but hangs up when Andrew passively threatens him with a gun). And that’s exactly why this episode stands out from almost any of the series to date, especially season one. We don’t have any record of what went down between David and Andrew. Why didn’t he run? The writers have to piece things together, and can only go off assumptions, whereas almost every corner of People Vs. O.J had been well laid out for them.
We know that Andrew and David stayed in David’s apartment for two days after the murder of Jeff. We know that they were seen walking David’s dog together the day before they ran off, leaving Jeff’s body wrapped in a rug in the apartment. We do not know for certain whether David was an accomplice or a sort of prisoner of Andrew’s. The writers decide to play him as innocent, too afraid of Andrew to make any big moves, eventually coming along for the ride with him to Chicago to see Lee.
But it’s in this vagueness the writers find some time to insert interesting character studies, even if they are just conjecture. David later in the episode questions if he ran with Andrew because he was afraid of him, because he wanted to avoid jail time, or… was it because he was afraid what the world would inevitably find out about him, i.e. his homosexuality? What does this say about how hostile we were (perhaps still are) as a society towards gays when a man would rather go on the run with a murderer than come out of the closet and face us?
Through an effective series of flashbacks to when David was younger in which he interacts with his blue-collar father, the writers and Fern create a character that feels real and that we are sad to see go by the end. We knew it was coming because we know that David is not present with Cunanan in Chicago when he meets with Lee. In the end, he tries to get away and Cunanan executes him, leaving him in a field off an interstate highway. Another tragic, senseless death under Andrew’s belt.
Next week I assume we will flash back earlier than Minneapolis, though I also understand if the writers take us back to the present to show us what is going on with the Versaces post-death. But I am really digging this criminal profile of Cunanan and how they are unfolding it. I almost would be okay with the rest of the episodes were just surrounding him (Darren Criss is killing it, in more way than one). But I finally get what they are doing and am completely on board after being hesitant the first few weeks.
AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “A Random Killing”
There are a lot more crimes in FX’s American Crime Story than there were last season. The series previously explored the killing of his Nicole Brown Simpson, and largely centered on the moving pieces surrounding the murder investigation and the trial. The season largely played with the fact that to this day, people are not 100% certain if O.J. Simpson was in fact guilty of that murder (I mean, c’mon, he did it). This season in contrast shows us exactly who did it right off the bat in the first few minutes of the premiere. We know who did it, where, when, and how… But we don’t know why.
And that’s what Ryan Murphy and the show’s other creators seem to be hanging this season, about the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace, on entirely. We never got flashbacks in season one (except for one Kardashian one, an odd choice) but here we are with each new episode thus far jumping around in time, showing us exactly what Andrew Cunanan did leading up to his infamous shooting outside the Versace home in Miami Beach.
The episode is quite effectively it’s own contained story, without any of the Versace’s making an appearance, or any of the Miami investigators. It begins with a character we haven’t met you, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light) pushing her perfume on a QVC-type network. After the appearance, she flies back to her home in Chicago and we immediately know something is up when her husband Lee is not there to pick her up. She phones the house from a payphone saying she’s grabbing a gab. When she gets home she noticed that there is an ice cream container open on the counter. She tells some neighbors she knows that something is wrong. Soon the police are there and find Lee’s (Mike Farrell) body in the garage. And all Marilyn can utter is “I knew it.”
We’re flashing back next to not long before Marilyn left to do her TV stint. Marilyn and Lee are at a Jim Edgar for Illinois Governor fundraiser, and Marilyn gives quite an introduction to her husband, calling him not just an example of, but THE American Dream. It’s really quite nice, but at home when it’s the two of them, we get the feeling there is a wedge between them. There is no animosity, but there is no warmth between husband and wife either. When Andrew calls to tell Lee he’s in town, we know where this is heading.
When Marilyn leaves for another TV appearance, Lee is left to his own devices. He has a sort of prayer room in his basement, where he lights candles, gets on his knees, and prays to Jesus. “I try,” he says, tearfully. Maybe he does, but soon there’s a knock on the door and he’s fixing his collar in a mirror. “Andrew,” he greets the young man, and brings him in for a warm embrace. Lee feeds him and asks if he can stay the night, closing the curtains. Whatever qualms he had before Andrew arrived seem to have gone out the window. Lee flaunts his blueprints for the Sky Needle, soon to be the tallest building in Chicago. As he’s doting over them, Andrew raises a gun behind his back. He puts it down before Lee turns around again, though.
Soon they’re arguing over what Lee should call this building of his; Andrew wants Lee to name it after himself, but Lee insists it’s not about him. Andrew gets cross and asks, why did you ask me here to talk about this? “We don’t have to talk,” Lee replies. Not long after that, Andrew has him in the garage (where we know his body ends up), binding and gagging his face like we’ve seen him do to other older wealthy gentlemen in past episode, only this time leaving Lee’s nostrils free to breathe. But before we know it Andrew has Lee on the ground, comes close to chocking him, then smashes Lee’s nose and admits that he has already killed two people. And that when they find his body, he will be wearing ladies panties and surrounded by gay porn. He wants the world to see that the “great Lee Miglin is a sissy.”
So perhaps THIS is a key to the “why” behind Cunanan’s atrocities. He wanted to shine a light on high-profile closeted homosexuals? But then how does that square with what he did to Versace, who was openly homosexual?
“You know, disgrace isn’t that bad… once you settle into it,” Andrew tells Lee just before killing him with a bag of concrete mix, in one of the most chilling moments of either seasons.
From here the investigation gets underway. Superintendent Rodriguez takes the case, assuring Marilyn they will catch whoever did this. The Chicago PD and the Feds are able to ping the car phone of Lee Miglin’s Lexus and track Cunanan’s path. But, despite Rodriguez demanding this stay hush hush, Andrew hears a news broadcast on the radio as he’s driving about the authorities being able to track him through the car phone. He immediately pulls off the road and yanks the car phone out of the vehicle. In a panic to switch vehicles, he ends up following a man with a truck and murdering him senselessly to steal it. How did that fit into Andrew’s plan to out closeted gay men? At the end of the episode, as we know because he needs to be free to murder Gianni, Andrew is still at large and we have no real questions answered. Perhaps we’re not going to get a clear “why” by the end of the season, just like we still don’t know 100% if O.J. killed his wife. Perhaps the question in and of itself is the point.
Up-and-Comer of the Month: “Versace” Star Cody Fern on the Controversial FX Series and Wanting to Play Marilyn Manson
If you’ve been watching The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story like I told you to, then you’ve heard of David Madson, the young architect who Andrew Cunanan considered the love of his life. While you’ll learn more about Madson in forthcoming episodes, it’s time to meet the Australian actor who plays him — Cody Fern, who is the Tracking Board’s Up-and-Comer of the Month this January.
Fern goes toe-to-toe with Darren Criss in Versace, and he has big things brewing in Hollywood. The rising star hails from a small town in Western Australia, where he grew up as the first person in his family to attend university. Despite his modest upbringing in a remote part of the country where few people forge careers in the arts, Fern went on to play the lead onstage in Romeo and Juliet, and he also starred in the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of War Horse.
Fern won Australia in Film’s Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2014, but his breakout feature role didn’t come until last year’s The Tribes of Palos Verdes, which unfortunately got caught up in Relativity’s bankruptcy and fell victim to the company’s downfall. Still, Fern didn’t let that setback hold him back, as he also starred in the award-winning short film The Last Time I Saw Richard, and helped director Bart Layton workshop his latest Sundance hit American Animals at the Sundance Director’s Lab.
When we spoke in mid-January, Fern had only seen one episode of Versace, but he had started getting positive feedback from journalists. He’ll watch American Crime Story unfold in tandem with audiences, who should pay attention to his impressive performance. Our chat runs the gamut and includes Fern’s take on why Andrew Cunanan killed Gianni Versace, so enjoy!
What sparked your passion for acting and made you decide to get into this crazy business?
That’s a long story, but I’ll give you the truncated version. I’m one of those people who has known ever since I had conscious thought. I grew up in a very, very, very small town in Western Australia called Southern Cross. It’s about seven hours outside Perth by train, and there was a population of just under 300, so the arts were never really something that [I considered] possible. I’d never been exposed to theater, and I didn’t see my first play until I was 22. I’d always known that I wanted to do it, but I kind of veered off into studying business. I did a degree in commerce, and then I segued into psychology. I thought for a time that I was going to be a therapist, and that could kind of numb, to a certain extent, my desire to be an actor, but I couldn’t get away from it. It continued to pursue me. So I kind of threw it all away at 24, just before my 25th birthday, so like, five years ago, now. I joined “the circus,” and here we are.But I think my passion for it came from… it’s strange, because everyone talks about acting and everyone has their own philosophies on that, but I think for me personally, what I love about film, and what I love about plays, in particular, is getting to see stories that haven’t been told, and angles on stories through the lens of people who may not be as glamorous as most. That’s what really attracted me to it. I used to watch a lot of daytime films, and I used to sneak into arthouse theaters and watch French films, so I kind of fell in love with acting as a form of storytelling. Not just “once upon a time there was this,” but more cut from a deeply psychological level. It just gelled with who I am and what I do and the experiences that I’ve had.
Tell me about the audition process for American Crime Story and how Ryan Murphy discovered you for this role.
That’s an interesting one as well. I was in London at the time, because I’m developing a feature film. I was working with my producers Nancy Grant and Xavier Dolan, and I’d kind of been a little exasperated in LA because I was pursuing very detailed and character-driven stories that were particularly high-end, and I kind of refused as an actor to pursue anything that was kind of boy next door or one-dimensional. I’d been in theater before so I had the opportunity to explore intense stories and characters, and a range of different roles. And when I initially moved to Los Angeles, I was kind of exasperated by the stories being told. I going in for a lot of 16-year-olds. So with this audition, when American Crime Story came through, I kind of took it as an opportunity for a last hurrah before I went off and directed my feature film. It was a strange time because I was kind of mourning the acting that I wasn’t able to do at the same time as investing my creativity into writing and directing and acting in my own feature.So I kind of just gave it my all in the audition. It was kind of like a send-off, like a little goodbye, and then a week later I got a callback. I think I was positive that the role was going to go to somebody in the Ryan Murphy canon, I just never assumed that it was going to be me. And then I met with the writer, Tom Rob Smith, who’s incredible, and the amazing producer Brad Simpson, and we had the callback from there. Ryan was kind of instantly like, “it’s Cody,” and three weeks later I was filming. It’s such intense material, so it was just a real opportunity to dive in. But from his end, I’m not so sure how he came across me. It was a wide casting call, and they were just looking for the right person. I’m just grateful that it was me.
Did you have to read with Darren Criss and Finn Wittrock to see if you guys meshed well together onscreen?
Actually, no, I didn’t read with them. When I first worked with Darren, we were kind of thrown into Jeff’s death. The murder of Jeff Trail, in the apartment. That was the first day of shooting. I hadn’t met Darren before. I’d seen him in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and thought he was brilliant in it, but we didn’t meet each other, no. I think Ryan decided based on the strength of the audition and then went from there, and Finn had already been cast. It was kind of a rolling freight train It just went. That was a particularly intense day of shooting.Let’s talk about the actual show. Do you think that Andrew truly loved David, and if so, why didn’t David love him back? Can you talk about their relationship as far as you saw it?
I did some extensive research and obviously read Maureen’s book, and it’s such a fine piece of investigative journalism. She spoke to the friends and family members of David Madson, and I think their relationship is an anomaly in the life of David Madson, because David was a very kind, very generous, very vanilla guy, by all accounts. He was kind of very boisterous and happy and loving, but at the same time he came from an intensely religious background, so I think the collision into Andrew is an interesting one. I think that they did love each other at one point in time, but David ultimately broke it off with Andrew, because of exactly what plays out in the series. There was a sense of dishonesty that he felt coming from Andrew, and the fact that he was hiding something. He even had communicated to friends that he was afraid of Andrew at one point in time.I think that it’s very clear that Andrew loved David, but I think for David, and I think what the series explores as well, is that Andrew loved the idea of David. He loved the idea of this wholesome man who had a life and who was comfortable and who could give him a sense of stability and real generosity. But I think that David didn’t get honesty from Andrew and that was something that was really difficult for him. Andrew was someone who struggled with the truth. In many accounts, Andrew had spoken to friends of David’s, especially when he was going out to see David and Jeff, and referred back to the fact that David is the love of his life, and he told many of his friends that. The proposal to David was a particular shock, I think.
What the series explores which is really interesting is this love gone wrong, and the story between David and Andrew in the series is really a love story. It’s about missed connections and missed opportunities, and I think it leaves it up to the audience to decide whether or not it comes down to Andrew’s psychopathic tendencies or his inability to face the truth. It’s an interesting relationship, it’s very rich with complication, but by all accounts, yes, David as the love of Andrew’s life, it’s just that David felt the need for something more truthful.
And now for The Big Question: Why do you think Cunanan killed Versace?
From my perception, which I think is very much in line with Ryan’s, Andrew was a man who really craved attention, who really craved validation and craved to be magnificent in the eyes of others, so much so that he would go to extreme lengths to be somewhat famous. Versace was somebody who represented everything that Andrew wasn’t. He was somebody who was willing to work, and very hard, for what he believed in, and what he was passionate about, whereas Andrew kind of lived off the backs of others. He used and manipulated all these men to get his way. I think Versace took his level of genius and gave it back to the world, whereas Andrew always felt that the world owed him something.So I think that the death of Versace, and the time that Versace was going through during that period, really synced up with Andrew in terms of Andrew’s downfall and Versace’s rise. Versace certainly was a truth-teller at that point in time, one of the most revolutionary truth-tellers, and when he came out in The Advocate magazine it was a huge deal. Andrew, although out in some circles, initially lived a very closeted life, and he told people what they needed to hear. So I think Versace’s level of truth threatened Andrew’s, and I think that Andrew was ultimately tipped over the edge and owed something that Versace had, and so he felt the need to take it, or at least to take it down.
What has been the biggest pinch-me moment of your career so far?
Ever since moving to LA, it’s been like that. I’ve gotten to work with extraordinary people. But I think for sure the biggest pinch-me moment was working with Ryan Murphy. Much is said about Ryan Murphy as a genius and not enough is said about how kind and generous he is, both as a creative and as a human being. The day I found out that I got this I was screaming. I was on the phone with my agent and managers and we were just going wild. I’ve followed Ryan’s work for so long and I’ve loved his work for so long. And I said when I moved to LA, I was hesitant about doing TV at that time because I didn’t want to be locked into a long contract, and so I said if I’m going to do TV, I want to work with Ryan Murphy, and so for that to come true… they say, never meet your idols because they’ll destroy your idea of them, but that’s not true with Ryan. He’s so kind and he’s so generous and he’s so giving and he’s so bloody brilliant, you know. It really, truly has been the biggest pinch-me moment to be involved in his world and his universe, the Ryan Murphy multiverse, is breathtaking. I’m still in shock.Are there any actors who you admire, or whose careers you’d like to emulate?
I’d have to say Cillian Murphy. I think he’s one of the most extraordinary actors that we have today. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and more recently, Peaky Blinders. He’s a powerhouse performer, and I really admire the way he lives his personal life. He’s really about the work. You know who has been on my mind recently? Richard Jenkins, from The Shape of Water. I think he’s such a phenomenal actor. He’s always put in this category of being a character actor, and he’s so phenomenal and specific and precise in the choices that he makes, so I love following his work as well. And there are so many extraordinary actresses, like Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton and what Michelle Williams is doing at the moment. I love actors who are very specific in their work, who are very emotionally connected, and who are unafraid to take risks with either their physical appearances or the roles that they choose.You wrote and directed a short called Pisces, and I know you mentioned that you were prepping a feature. Are you focused on acting right now, or are you looking to press forward with those directing ambitions?
I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. I think that they can run in tandem. Writing and directing certainly takes up a lot of my time, but at the heart of it all, I’m an actor. It is what I love doing the most. I love acting. I love being able to tell stories in that manner, and so I’m very much pursuing acting. I just think that what’s interesting about writing and directing, the power is in your hands. As an actor you’re quite often waiting by the phone waiting and hoping that somebody else, to a certain extent, chooses you, and it’s very difficult, therefore, to continue to keep up your craft, unless you’re in class or doing self-tapes or whatever it happens to be. So I love writing when I have downtime from acting. As with all thing, the cards will fall where they fall, and I was very much going down the line of directing my feature and now I’ve been swept up into acting again, which I’m extraordinarily acting for. I’ll continue to write, definitely, and directing is on the horizon, but for now I’m totally focused on acting. I will say this as well… I think that they all influence and inform each other. If you write and you’re going through the process of rewriting and getting notes and specifying, you start to understand, really understand, what a good script is and what a bad script is and what good writing looks like. You can appreciate what people go through and it helps you as an actor, so I think they all inform each other.I know you have social media accounts, but you’re not very active on social media. Is there a reason for that, or do you just prefer to be a little bit more private and guarded with fans?
I just recently got an Instagram because I certainly don’t want to ignore or turn away from any people who want to engage with the work or have something to say about it, but I’m not a social media person and I never have been. It’s not about being private or being secretive, it’s just a personal choice. I think it consumes so much of people’s lives, and I know that the industry is certainly going a different way, especially with actors, whereby the more fans you have and the greater reach you have, people think that it’ll lead to more work, and it may. But the type of work that comes from me having one million more Instagram followers than somebody else is not the kind of work that I ultimately want to be doing. I just find that I really like personal interactions and stimulating conversations, and I think that while social media can be a great way to stay connected, it’s also a really disconnected version of reality. You’re constantly curating your life for others, and what your life is, and it lends itself to the seeking of opinions and comments, and I think that can be dangerous for some people. It certainly is for me. It’s very depleting for me, because it raises my level of anxiety too high. It’s too tied to validation. And that’s not true of everybody. And I’m not saying anything against social media, I’m just saying something against social media for myself. So we’ll see what happens with the old Instagram. I like being able to post photos and offer my perspective of the world, but I’m not so keen on posting photos of myself. I find being behind a film camera very easy and intimate, and I find being behind a still camera very alarming and anxiety-inducing. I think I enjoy the veil of a character.Do you have a dream role? Is there a part you’re dying to play?
There are so many. There’s such an intricate tapestry of roles out there. I love really complex, three-dimensional roles, and people who are flawed. I think that’s what I loved about David. In this series, we’re examining a victim, but we’re also examining somebody who is examining his own level of complicity in a tragic event. He’s asking himself questions about shame and hiding and repression, and he’s not a device in any way. I’d would really love to sink my teeth into playing Marilyn Manson. He’s such an intelligent and thoughtful and interesting social provoker. I remember when I was younger, watching him on the rise, and no matter what people think about his music, he’s a great conduit for conversation, and he really engages with people on taboo issues. I love that about him, and I think his personal life is super interesting, in how he chooses to represent himself and engage with the world. Look, I love his music. For me, as a teenager, he represented such an era of rebellion and refusal and rage. I love all of that. I think it’s something that’s ingrained in me, especially as a teenager, and he was able to really reach into that and expose it.What’s next for you?
I’m actually not allowed to say. I have a couple of big announcements to follow, but I’ll get in trouble. I’m sure you’ll be hearing very soon. I’m just super thrilled to watch Versace with everybody. This is all so new to me, in terms of this moment in time. People haven’t been exposed to my work very heavily yet, especially the public, so I’m really excited about that. I’m just thrilled to see what the response is going to be.
AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “Manhunt”
One thing that sets the second season of American Crime Story apart from its predecessor is that, while People vs. O.J. was told entirely linearly, The Assassination of Gianni Versace hops back and forth in time quite a bit, and also plays with the audience’s expectations. It can be confusing, but I think to a certain extent that is intentional. It sets the tone well at least for the second episode, entitled “Manhunt,” which is very centered on the enigmatic serial killer and murderer of Versace, Andrew Cunanan. Andrew’s own thoughts seem scattered and confusing, though he is able to masterfully charm people into giving him what he wants; whether it’s a room with a view of the ocean or just some plain old attention.
The episode begins, however, with Versace himself in 1994 entering a hospital with his lover Antonio. Though it isn’t spoken outright, it is heavily implied that Versace has AIDS. I looked it up, and it was never confirmed that he was in fact HIV positive, though it does seem likely given it was the height of the epidemic at the time and his chosen lifestyle, funneling through partner after partner. Given the news, a tearful Donatella asks him “What is Versace without you?” He replies, “It is you.” Much of the outright conflict in the episode, and the series thus far, comes from Donatella (Penelope Cruz) butting heads with Antonio (Ricky Martin). She blames Antonio for her brother’s condition, and even after he is killed due to something else entirely, Donatella’s heart still does not soften for Gianni’s lover, as much as he tries to convince her to let bygones be bygones.
The series is beautifully shot, as mentioned in the previous review. One particularly pretty scene early in the episode, which involved almost no dialogue, showed Donatella standing before her brother’s open casket, alone in an enormous room. She unzips a bag and actually puts her brother’s suit on for him, tightening his tie while she says goodbye, not with words but with her eyes. All done up and looking sharp, as he would have wanted, the casket is closed and put into a kiln to be turned to ashes. Gianni Versace is then bagged, boxed, and presumably shipped to Italy. All the glitz and glamour comes down to this for all of us.
But beyond that much of the episode belonged to Darren Criss’s Andrew Cunanan. We begin with him driving a red pick-up truck and swapping license plates with another car outside a Wal-Mart. He’s then on the road to Miami and listening to the radio when we hear a news bulletin about him being wanted for the murder of another man, not Versace, so we are suddenly made aware that this is in the past. Cunanan switches the station and blasts “Gloria” singing and screaming outside the car window with euphoria. He soon arrives in Miami Beach.
There he tells his first of many lies in the city, explaining to an old desk woman at the Normandy Plaza that he grew up in Nice, France. He also tells her that while he’s a man of little means now he plans on becoming a fashion designer. He seems to charm her well enough, and is even able to finagle himself into a room with a view of the ocean later, after some practicing in front of a mirror. Now that he’s in Miami, the official stalking of Versace begins. He heads by the designer’s home and tries to open the gate to no avail. He gazes at the second story windows from across the street hoping to get a glimpse of something. But he knows he may have to play the waiting game here.
In the meantime, he makes friends with HIV survivor and fellow gay man Ronnie (Max Greenfield). After some “magic pills” saved his life, Ronnie headed to Miami Beach. There’s he’s basically been doing drugs and prostituting himself, which Andrew quickly takes to. Really, Ronnie just becomes a sounding board for Andrew to continue lying to. He tells Ronnie that Versace had proposed to him, though it didn’t work out. Andrew talks about Versace dreamily saying “That’s the man I could have been.” Ronnie replies “Been WITH.” Andrew nods.
In one extremely uncomfortable scene to watch, Andrew takes a gentleman back to a lavish hotel room. “I can be submissive,” the old man tells him. But suddenly Andrew is wrapping masking tape around the man’s head, eyes, nostrils… and finally mouth. The old man struggles on the bed while Andrew dances flamboyantly, repeating “Accept it.” Finally, the man stops struggling, Andrew holds a pair of scissors over his head, and for a moment we don’t know if he will kill the man or save him. He saves him, stabbing a small hole over his mouth so he can breathe. The man is clearly shaken, but decides to not tell the police about his encounter, probably due to the shame of being homosexual; we see his is also married as he puts a ring back on his finger after their encounter.
Speaking of the police, they and Detective Lori Wieder’s (Dascha Palanco) efforts are barely touched upon this week, other than to make a point that the FBI had dropped the ball, not putting out fliers that would have warned the general public about Cunanan, and certainly would have alerted them after he sold a gold coin to a pawn shop owner in the area. Wieder pushes for these fliers but doesn’t get her way. I suspect we’ll see more of her butting heads with the feds as the manhunt continues. At the end of the episode, after stalking Versace at a nightclub (a place Wieder also pushed police and the feds to stake out for Cunanan) and failing to find him, Andrew orders a tuna sandwich down the street. The man working there recognizes him from America’s Most Wanted and calls the cops. By the time they get there, Andrew is gone again.
I don’t know the full true story and I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I don’t know exactly how long this manhunt goes on. I’m hoping it ends in the next episode, as I fear the cat and mouse game could get old fast.
TB gives it: B+
AMERICAN CRIME STORY Review: “The Man Who Would Be Vogue”
American Crime Story is back with its second season, its first being the fantastic and critically acclaimed The People vs. O.J. Simpson. This time showrunner Ryan Murphy is covering another high profile 90’s murder case in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Looking back at last season, I remember going into it skeptically, thinking it was going to be campy but fun (David Schwimmer as Rob Kardashian? John Travolta as Robert Shapiro?) and ended up quickly realizing that this was beyond camp. It was great, filled with memorable performances (some Emmy winning) and did not just simply recount the events of that time methodically from start to finish; it gave us fresh perspective on these faces involved in the trial that became iconic, and with it good reason to find a new sympathy for them. Even more impressively, this FX series forced us to look back at who we were as a culture and society through our present eyes and see how far we’ve come, even from a time that for many of us does not seem all that long ago (that episode where Marcia Clark got a new haircut and was lambasted by the press, the defense team, and Judge Ito still makes me feel bad feelings inside).
All that to say: whereas I came in to American Crime Story‘s first season with low expectations, I could not have higher expectations now for this one. And perhaps that is why I am off the bat not digging it as much as I did last season. Admittedly, I know less about the Versace murder and the people involved in it than I did about O.J Simpson’s trial. But I am also of the thinking that series can not fairly be judged upon their first episodes so I remain hopeful.
It certainly looks nice, I’ll give it that. We open on a morning in 1997 in Versace’s Miami Beach home that looks like it could be an exact replica of an Italian palazzo. The entire opening before the title is just intercut moments between Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and his eventual killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). Gianni breakfasts surrounded by servants, then walks down the street to pick up some magazines. Andrew sits on a beach holding a book on Conde Nast, glimpsing at a gun in his backpack, and screaming into the ocean. It culminates in Andrew walking right up to Versace as he’s returning to his home and shooting him in the head.
We then flash back to October 1990 and get a glimpse of the first time Andrew and Versace met. At a night club in San Francisco, Andrew pretty much forced himself into Versace’s attention, eventually getting the designer to sit and talk with him. This results in Versace inviting him to the opera, in which he designed all the costumes. Andrew brags to his friends Elizabeth and Phil, who he appears to be living with. They keep shooting skeptical glances at one another. Later, we get that Andrew is a sort of serial liar–he lies about his religion, his sexuality, his past, depending on what company he is currently in the present of. After the opera he and Versace seem to connect even further, but we don’t see anything outwardly romantic, or sexual, happen just yet.
So I imagine much of the series will be flashing back to Andrew’s past to flesh out his and Gianni’s relationship, or at least Andrew’s growing obsession with him. As it turns out, Andrew was already wanted for the potential murders of several other wealthy gay men. By the end of this episode, the authorities still don’t have him. While they are investigating we get to meet Versace’s partner of fifteen years Antonia D’amico. He lived with Versace and made sure he was happy–which included finding him men to sleep with, sometimes paid for. The two were in love and Antonio is devastated and played effectively by… Ricky Martin?! I realized it like halfway through the episode. I haven’t seen him since the mid-2000’s probably. But he does well here, I must say.
And of course, though her role was introduced late in this episode, Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace is sure to steal future episodes. Donatella, the sister of Gianni, is beautiful, stylish, and has just arrived from Italy to deal with the business. Her main concern is making sure that the empire her brother began with one rack of clothes in Milan is preserved. “I will not let him be killed twice,” she says. As I said, I do not know how this all plays out at all. The most I knew about the Versace murder was from an Eminem lyric from 2000. I think it’s good for my viewing experience; I won’t be waiting for landmark moments and will hopefully be surprised with certain turns. As of right now, the first episode lays solid groundwork, but feels just like that–a foundation without even a first floor to admire yet. It remains to be seen whether my high expectations are met.
TB gives it: B+
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” Review: Darren Criss Kills It As Gay Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan
Let’s just get this out of the way upfront, since the comparison is inevitable: The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t quite reach the heights of The People vs. O.J. Simpson. But so what?
The second season of FX’s American Crime Story was never going to be as richly textured as the first, if only because Simpson’s “trial of the century” was so much more significant as a cultural event. The verdict was a defining American moment, the kind where you remember where you were when you heard it. So through no fault of its own, Versace never really stood a chance against its Emmy-winning ACS sibling. And yet, on its own merits, Versace makes for addictive, phenomenal television. I was hooked from the opening scene, in which director Ryan Murphy and series writer Tom Rob Smith dispense with the titular murder, getting it out of the way early before working their way backwards, tracing how this tragic crime came to pass.
Much like how the first season of ACS wasn’t really about O.J. Simpson, neither is the second season really about Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace. Instead, it inverts the first season’s formula and shifts its focus from the courtroom to the crime spree and the man behind it, Andrew Cunanan. This creative choice isn’t necessarily what I was expecting given Versace‘s marketing materials, which from the very start, have trumpeted the casting of Edgar Ramirez as Gianni and Penelope Cruz as Donatella. And yet it proves to be a wise decision, since to be honest, the power struggle within the House of Versace isn’t half as interesting as the walking question mark that is Cunanan.
So let’s talk about the actual star of the show, Darren Criss. I know Criss is a big TV star thanks to Murphy’s earlier hit Glee, and he has two million Twitter followers and he’s a very famous guy. But I’m a professional entertainment consumer and I’d never seen him in anything before (though I almost rented Girl Most Likely once), so as far as I was concerned, he felt completely new to me, as I imagine he will to a lot of people who didn’t watch Glee. I suspect that those who did watch it won’t recognize ‘Blaine’ once they see Criss covered in blood, a crazed look in his empty eyes. He’s simply excellent here as Cunanan, a gay serial killer in the vein of Matt Damon’s talented Mr. Ripley, but of course, this manipulative sociopath with a 147 IQ is hardly a work of fiction. Criss is absolutely chilling here, and there’s a haunting sadness to his carefully calibrated breakout performance. I can’t say enough about Criss’ work, which will force you to look at the actor in a completely different light.
As for Versace, he’s reduced to a supporting character in his own story, not that I’m arguing, given how satisfying all of the Cunanan scenes are. In fact, the episodes that solely focus on Andrew are the best of the bunch, and the Versace thread tends to interrupt their momentum. Ramirez is magnetic as the formidable fashion designer, but he also plays Versace with a certain softness that serves as a nice antidote to Cunanan’s craziness. You really believe Ramirez and Cruz could be siblings when Gianni and Donatella spar over her role in his budding empire. You can see Donatella is tired of living in her brother’s shadow and eager to carve out her own identity within the fashion world, and Gianni sees this as well, offering her up to the cameras in an attempt to placate her ego. Ricky Martin plays the third wheel of this co-dependent relationship, Gianni’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico, and while the pop singer does a fine job, their relationship is just dressing on the Cunanan salad.
The series endeavors to depict Versace and Cunanan as two men on opposite ends of a spectrum. Versace came from nothing and built his life into something of meaning. Cunanan had a reasonably happy childhood, and yet, his life quickly fell apart once he struck out on his own. That parallel is reflected in one of the episode titles, “Creator/Destroyer,” which presents the men as two sides of the same ruthlessly ambitious coin. The difference between them is that while Cunanan desperately wanted to lead the life of luxury that Versace enjoyed and most people only read about in magazines, he wasn’t willing to put in any of the hard work to actually earn it.
Cunanan may have been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list prior to the Versace murder, but he didn’t become infamous until he killed the fashion designer, relegating the rest of his victims to “other” status. That’s how they’re initially presented, too, since we don’t get to know what these people meant to Andrew until after we’ve learned he’s killed them, so it’s not until later that we come to understand how and why Cunanan could’ve done what he did. That’s if you can understand the killer’s warped thinking to begin with, given his knack for telling tall tales. The more lies Cunanan tells his friends, the more we realize he’s lying to himself, and he has no idea of who he really is anymore. He has lost his own sense of identity, drifting from one to the next as he zigzags his way across the country towards Versace’s opulent home in South Beach. For Cunanan, the greatest sin is to be boring and forgotten. Told all his life that he’s someone special, he’s stunned when others don’t see it, and Criss plays those moments of rejection quite beautifully.
The fourth episode of the season introduces Cunanan’s former lover, David Madson (hugely talented Australian actor Cody Fern, a real find) and David’s current beau, Jeffrey Trail (AHS alum Finn Wittrock), and you can’t underestimate their roles in this story, as the latter was Andrew’s first victim, the one who launched his multi-state crime spree. Trail gets his own half-episode (pointedly titled “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”) dedicated to the (mis)treatment of gays in the military, and while this statement of a subplot adds some context to how authorities (including the cops chasing Cunanan) regarded homosexuals 25 years ago, it also feels a bit shoehorned in. Like, what does this really have to do with Versace or Cunanan? ACS tries to make that connection, using cultural homophobia to explain law enforcement’s delayed search for Cunanan, but it feels a bit forced, though it’s clearly something that interested Murphy in the first place.
Versace is much more successful when it drills down into who Cunanan is, at least as much as one can, given the fact that the guy was a complete cypher of an human being — a gifted chameleon, if you will. A people pleaser, he could be whatever, and whoever, his friends/lovers/targets wanted him to be. That was his skill, if you will. The ability to adapt to any situation… though he also had a need for control. He cared how things looked to other people, and what they thought of him. Of course, to fully understand a man, you have to know where he comes from, and the series soars when it turns its lens on Andrew’s family, particularly his father, Modesto. Filipino actor Jon Jon Briones is utterly fantastic as Andrew’s father, who doted on his precocious child, whom he considered more special than his other kids. You can also see where Andrew might’ve learned his smooth-talking criminal behavior, as Modesto was a stockbroker who bilked people out of their money and abandoned his family when the feds came calling, fleeing back to the Philippines.
The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent from top to bottom. Mike Farrell and Judith Light are both incredible as slain Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and his wife, Marilyn. When Miglin’s body is discovered, no one has to tell her what happened — she knows right away, her worst fears confirmed. Edouard Holdener also deserves praise as young Andrew, and Max Greenfield is unrecognizable in the second episode, which offers a reminder of what he can do with the right part.
This disturbing character study is based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, and in addition to Murphy, its directors include Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Nelson Cragg, Daniel Minahan (check out his directorial debut Series 7: The Contenders) and Matt Bomer, though costumer designer Lou Eyrich and production designer Judy Becker deserve equal praise for their lavish contributions.
I might as well use this space to address the recent controversy surrounding the series, which according to the Versace family, is unauthorized and full of inaccuracies.
“The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace,” the family said in a statement. “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.”
I completely appreciate why they would be concerned about the series’ depiction of Gianni, and particularly his health, I wouldn’t describe the series as a work of fiction, though I’d acknowledge that surely, there must be small fictions within the show. Still, I didn’t watch FX’s Simpson series like it was Ezra Edelman’s O.J. documentary, and I’m not taking The Assassination of Gianni Versace as gospel, either. Yes, it’s based on a bestselling non-fiction book, but as a regular viewer of crime shows, I’m fully aware that Tom Rob Smith is allowed some degree of artistic license in bringing that book to the small screen.
I imagine that can be hard to comprehend when you’re as close to the story as the Versace family is, but if they take a step back — and I don’t even know if they’ve actually seen the series they’ve been so quick to criticize — they’d see there’s really no reason to be concerned. Gianni is depicted as a strong leader, one aware of his mortality and a better man for it. The producers, and Ramirez especially, treat him with the utmost respect, and once the Versace family sees the full series, I think their biggest issue will be with how the show sort of manipulates the audience into having sympathy for Andrew, more than it will be about the depiction of Gianni, which is generous and loving.
“There’s always this question of when you’re making and writing this kind of material – you feel like you want to support the fundamental truths. And you are going to get some of the details wrong, or you’re going to have to fill in a gap at some point, where you don’t have access to the reality. I think the only way you are allowed to do that is if you’re supporting the bigger truth… I’m sure there are points where they could correct some of the smaller details, but I think the bigger picture is that this is a figure that we’re celebrating and a figure that we all fell in love with,” Smith said at FX’s TCA panel, noting that that ultimately, “the show is full of love for him.”
He isn’t lying, nor is trying to justify why Cunanan killed, as the fact that he was gay is ultimately besides the point. This show is about a guy who wanted what another man had but didn’t have the skills or tools to get it, so he figured the only way to achieve the immortality he craved was by robbing one of his icons of his mortality, thus ensuring both would live forever, together, in the annals of history. I don’t care how much of this actually happened and how much is artistic license on Smith’s part. All I care about is whether or not it’s entertaining, and on that front, Versace delivers.
This is a fascinating story about the making of a serial killer. A murderer finding his voice. It marks Tom Rob Smith as a major writer to watch, and Darren Criss as a force to be reckoned with. He delivers one of the most terrifying serial killer performance since Christian Bale starred in American Psycho, though Cunanan also reminded me, at times, of The Tooth Fairy from Manhunter and the serial killer in Copycat.
“You know, disgrace isn’t that bad, once you’ve settled into it,” Andrew tells one of his victims. Well Andrew Cunanan may go down in infamy as a disgrace, but The Assassination of Gianni Versace is anything but.
TB gives it an A.
ACS news 