Tag: vulture
ACS: Versace’s Darren Criss on Playing a Serial Killer and Passing As White
“Yo, man, Darren,” Darren Criss says by way of introduction at the Television Critics Association tour in Pasadena, where he was doing press for his show, American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, back in January. Despite the title, Criss is the real lead of the FX crime anthology as Andrew Cunanan, the serial killer who murdered at least five people, ending with the famed Italian designer in 1997. It’s a drastic role reversal for Criss, who was best known as the shiny, bright-eyed crooner of the Warblers in Ryan Murphy’s high-school-musical show Glee, and it’s a challenge he relishes. We spoke about how playing Cunanan challenges the limits of empathy, creating false guises, and whether he identifies as Asian-American.
Andrew Cunanan must be a fascinating character to play because he was a changeling. He always wanted to create different personas, different backstories. Is that something that resonated with you as an actor?
Well, first of all, we all do it to different extremes. He’s at the extremist end of that spectrum, but we all curate our lives within the realms of acceptable protocol. You’re a different person to your parents than you are to your lover, to your teachers, to your authorities, to your colleagues. His was much more heightened and followed more sociopathic tendencies because he could. It was possible. You couldn’t get away with that now. Social media and everything, Andrew Silva in one place, Andrew Cunanan in another. You’d be called out relatively quickly. Another thing I think is important to remember, and this is coming as a cis straight guy talking about this, but what’s so interesting about his multiple identities is that it was sort of inadvertently encouraged by the gay community which has traditionally dealt with multiple identities.
Or secret lives.
Secret identities, secret lives. But that’s part of the journey of a young gay man or a gay woman, and how you can reidentify yourself through your life. That’s a big part of how to relate to each other and how to support each other. And so, when you have that also being a part of his world, where suddenly, he can be this person or that person, and another person and another person, and they understand why and they say, “Oh, you know, that’s Andrew.” He would play up his sexuality when convenient or downplay it when it was dangerous, which was something a lot of people around him could relate to., and wouldn’t call him out on because this is something they’re also dealing with. We’re getting to a different point here. You were talking about relating to this as an actor.
As an actor, I compartmentalize things. I can put this person in this box, and that one, and it doesn’t affect my life. And in a way that’s sort of sociopathic behavior. People go, “Does it come home with you?” And I go, “No, of course not.” If it did, I wouldn’t be an actor. I can check out. It’s not part of me. It’s somewhere else. And then you go, “Geez, what else does Darren do this for?” But it’s true. And that’s something Andrew could do.
What else does Darren do that for?
I don’t know! Probably suppressing other things I don’t want to think or talk about. Who knows, it’s something we all do. But I’m in the business of empathy. That is my job. I’m in the business of finding as many common denominators with myself to another person, which is probably the biggest difference between me and Andrew. Whereas I try and be like other people and see the best in people, Andrew was other people, because he hated himself and didn’t want to be who he was. So, even though we were putting on the same masks, we had very different reasons for doing it.
ACS: Versace’s Darren Criss on Playing a Serial Killer and Passing As White
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 8
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are the results of our dogged research into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode eight, “Creator/Destroyer.”
What They Got Right
Andrew’s father
Modesto “Pete” Cunanan was no angel. The Navy vet-turned-stockbroker and father of four did, according to court records, embezzle a couple hundred thousand dollars, ditch his family, and flee to the Philippines. He even briefly returned to the U.S. after Andrew’s death to seemingly capitalize on his notoriety. There’s less evidence to support the story that he swindled an elderly woman named Vera out of her savings, invoking the ire of her burly grandson, but the FBI was definitely onto him, and by 1988, he was outta there. At least until he returned nine years later and attempted to capitalize on his son’s notoriety.Andrew as the favorite child
We’ve already confirmed that Cunanan lorded over his family’s master bedroom, but what about his father demonstrating outright preferential treatment relative to his three siblings? Look no further than the testimony of his brother Christopher and sister Elena, who both remarked on Andrew’s favored status in a 1997 ABC interviewwith Diane Sawyer. They even verify that he was gifted with a Nissan 300ZX from dad — though Modesto purchasing it years in advance appears to be a touch of, well, driver’s license.The high-school yearbook
There’s no way to know if Andrew told off a homophobic jock before unbuttoning his top and loosening his tie, but his yearbook spread did absolutely feature him more or less shirtless and beaming. And his much-dissected senior quote did invoke Louis XV and read, “Après moi, le deluge,” or “After me, the flood.” There is, however, some discrepancy in accounts of his superlative that year. Maureen Orth and the New York Daily News, among others, reported it then as “Least Likely to Be Forgotten,” while most current coverage asserts it was “Most Likely to Be Remembered.” And Newsweek claimed that Andrew was voted “Most Likely Not to Be Forgotten.” Less up for interpretation is his eventual status as one of the FBI’s Most Wanted.What They Took Liberties With
Gianni’s mother
“Creator/Destroyer” would have it that Gianni’s dressmaker matriarch, Francesca, identified his gift for design while he was still a boy and defied anyone who steered him from his passion for fashion. That’s a bit ideal, even in Gianni’s memory. During a 1994 interviewwith Charlie Rose, Versace told an anecdote about how, even in his teen years, his main aspiration was to compose music like Burt Bacharach or Gershwin. However, he continues, “My mother say, ‘No, you stay with me.’ Something was in my blood, in my family.” He was certainly not spiteful, but to say he only had one goal all his life and that his mother championed whatever his whims would be a slight exaggeration.Andrew and Elizabeth’s meet-cute
Elizabeth Cote was indeed Andrew’s friend, she did anoint him godfather to his kids, and even videotaped a plea for him to cease his killing jag. But by Orth’s own account, the pair met in junior high, not at a high-school kegger. Not to mention, reporting by then-Sun Sentinel journalist and current Miami Herald staffer Luisa Yanez — who has contributed her insights on and off to this column all season — notes that Andrew wore that fabulous red jumpsuit to his prom, as opposed to some local rager. Though interestingly, Yanez and her co-author Sergio Bustos also second what “Creator/Destroyer” puts forth about Cunanan having already had at least one older male benefactor by his senior year.Andrew’s bedtime reading
We were unable to uncover any evidence that Modesto lullabied Andrew with passages from The Art of Conversation. The most widely read tome with that title wasn’t actually released until 2008, while other publications with the same title, like Peter Burke’s more academic reference, weren’t yet in circulation when Andrew was a youth. Let’s assume Art of Conversation was a stand-in, for whatever reason, for Dale Carnegie’s touchstone How to Win Friends and Influence People. Ultimately, we get it: Art of Conversation is the kind of book his dad would model his personality on and try to instill lessons from in his prized protégé.Modesto molesting Andrew
First, there’s Modesto gently taking Andrew by the hand and leading him softly up the stairs to his new room while the children are outside pondering there whereabouts and mom looks concerned. Then, far more bluntly, Modesto looms over Andrew in bed, encouraging him to channel the same silence he bravely mustered after burning his foot on a heater (a story relayed to Orth by Modesto) years back. And then the lights go out. Yikes. We have uncovered nothing to support the implication that Andrew was sexually abused by his father, though shortly after his death, the Washington Post did repeat an unconfirmed report that Andrew — using his DeSilva pseudonym — may have called into a hotline for victims of abuse by Catholic priests. Nor were we able to find anything outside of accusations by Mary Ann Cunanan and Andrew’s godfather, Delfin Labao, in Orth’s book corroborating that Modesto was physically abusive with her (ditto recollections from Pete and Delfin that Mary Ann was hospitalized with postpartum depression).Andrew and Modesto’s Manila showdown
Several sources cited Mary Ann’s divorce filings to confirm that Andrew visited Modesto in the Philippines soon after his father fled the States. Those same sources also quote Mary Ann in the court papers as claiming her boy came back in short order, repulsed by Modesto’s “squalid living conditions.” Their dramatic confrontation, which culminate in the episode with Modesto berating his son as a “sissy boy” and Andrew showing a flash of violent impulse by warding his father away with a kitchen knife, is by all indications pure plotting. Like many of ACS Versace’s more melodramatic asides, this confrontation filled a need, in this case suitably disorienting the character of Andrew to an extent where he’d go adrift in search of love and acceptance, but become triggered by the slightest betrayal.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 8
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash
Editor’s rating: ★★☆☆☆
Here’s the most surprising thing about Gianni Versace: Even at the age of 10 in Calabria, Italy, he apparently spoke fluent English. He and his mother only speak English to each other, as does his Latin teacher at school and the one classmate who calls him a pansy. This must be an especially good school district, since it teaches English so well that Italians would prefer to speak it at home rather than their native tongue.
I’m teasing the show, of course, but how hard would it have been to translate the two scenes of Versace’s childhood into Italian and put in subtitles? Yes, I know we are all lazy and hate to read while we’re watching TV because it makes us look up from crushing unspeakable amounts of candy on our phone screens, but come on.
While we’re talking about unbelievable things, one of the jocks at Andrew’s school called him a “fag” for yelling in line at school picture day, but we’re really supposed to believe that no one would say anything when he shows up to a house party vogueing on the dance floor in a red leather jumpsuit like he’s Michael Jackson in the “Bad” music video? It’s appropriate that the house party was in 1987, because no house parties are as cool, crowded, or well-behaved, except for the ones in John Hughes movies that were coming out around the same time. Oh, and what happened to that nerdy blonde guy who was going to ask Andrew out? He just disappeared, poor guy. He was just like Duckie in Pretty in Pink.
This episode is called “Creator/Destroyer,” but we get much more of the destroyer than we do the creator. It opens with Gianni sketching dresses in his mother’s atelier and her encouraging his love of fashion as a young boy, but she does it with the kind of platitudes that are usually reserved for motivational posters in sad cubicle farms. “You must do what you love, but it takes hard work and practice.” “Success only comes with hard work. And it’s never easy. And that’s why it’s special.” This opening is more like a Lifetime movie than it is a prestige show on an Emmy-winning cable network.
While the language and dialogue are rather silly, the worst part about this entire episode is that it lasts 90 minutes (with commercials). I’m all for cable channels letting their creators experiment with run times, but no one exploits this privilege like Ryan Murphy and his crew. “Creator/Destroyer” is boring, slack, and full of exposition that we didn’t really need.
Yes, there are lots of good parts, but did we need to see Lizzie talking to Andrew on the couch about how they’re both imposters? No. Did we need Andrew and his father saluting over the American flag in the front yard? No. Did we really need all those cringey moments of Andrew getting his yearbook photo taken and then crowing about it to his one friend we previously hadn’t met? No. We’re nearing the home stretch, and this needed to be a lot tighter to be more effective.
But we did learn some interesting things, mostly about Andrew’s father. Both Andrew and his father never felt like they belonged in the all-white, upper-class world to which they aspired, but Modesto (a.k.a. Pete) taught Andrew to fit in. While Versace’s mother taught him about hard work and persistence, Andrew’s father taught him “to remember that you’re special, and when you feel special, success will follow.” Both Andrew and Modesto felt special, but when success didn’t follow, they both got angry and became violent, thieving liars.
The best and most heated scene comes when Andrew finally tracks his father down to Manila after he’s fled the Feds for bilking old ladies out of their pensions. Andrew is crushed that his father’s success was all lies, that the superiority he based his personality on was all a sham. “You’re not upset that I stole, you’re upset that I stopped,” Modesto says. “Now you have to work. You are a sissy kid with a sissy mind.” He then spits on Andrew and tells him to stab his father with a knife to prove that he’s a man.
Maybe that is the essential difference between Andrew and Gianni. The show has taken great pains to paint them almost as equals — very intelligent, artistic, gifted, and bullied for being gay — but Andrew had a father who used his sexuality against him, whereas Gianni’s mother trained him to be a couturier regardless of what she thought it would say about her son.
The oddest thing about this hour, and the series in general, is that it seems to be suggesting this all wasn’t Andrew’s fault. It keeps trying and trying to make us feel sympathy for a man who killed multiple people in cold blood. Here, Andrew has a father who raised him with the wrong values and made him feel better than everyone else, even his long suffering older siblings. His father also taught him that lying and stealing were the only way to get ahead in America. Andrew was given the education and refinement to reach the upper echelons of society, but not the work ethic to make it stick (something that Norman brought up when they fought on the balcony of his house).
Does that mean that Andrew couldn’t help but become who he was, because he was a sensitive gay kid born to the wrong parents and living in a homophobic world? That can’t be the answer because no one forced him to become violent. Killing all of those people was his choice and he needs to be held accountable for that. Yes, the portrait of every killer might be more nuanced than the nightly news would lead us to believe, but there are plenty of people who escape troubled backgrounds without resorting to spree killing, so why couldn’t Andrew? Maybe next week’s finale will do a little bit more to tarnish the image the show has given him so far.
That’s the big question, isn’t it? After his confrontation with his father in Manila, Andrew says, “I will never be like you,” so what turned him into exactly the kind of person that Modesto was? We see it a little bit at the pharmacy, where he’s filling out a job application and the Filipino owner starts asking about his father. Andrew initially lies out of a sense of survival, because he feels like he won’t get the job if the owner knows that his father is a crook. But then his sense of superiority is dinged and he starts telling the owner that his father owns multiple pineapple plantations. It’s the very start of a road that will lead right to Versace’s front door.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Stock Market Crash
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 7, ‘Ascent’
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Yanez was on assignment and unavailable this week (she will return for episode eight), but below is a summary of our independent research into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode seven, “Ascent.”
What They Got Right
Donatella’s dress
Donatella may have creatively emancipated herself from Gianni by 1992, but she made her biggest splash that year by fashioning her brother’s risqué bondage dress. Her arrival at that year’s Vogue anniversary gala was indeed headline news, whether or not one ultimately thought Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington wore modified versions of the provocative piece better. It is also true that critical opinion about Versace’s S&M look was polarized, although in retrospect, it’s clear that — par for Gianni’s career — he was ahead of his time.Gianni grooming Donatella to run Versace
Whether it was due to his illness or simply being a long-term planner, Gianni very much prepped his younger sister to run the label. As a CNN style editor told People nearly 20 years ago, “Before his death, Versace had already begun ceding a bigger role to his sister… He wanted more time to play.” As Donatella recently recalled, the abrupt transition to power following Gianni’s murder was marred by her drug abuse and grief. Although given that the company was valued at more than $1 billion dollars as of 2014, it’s apparent that — as her brother anticipated — she eventually rose to the occasion.The cancer timeline
A slight caveat here: The chronology of Gianni’s reported bout of inner-ear cancer is rather murky. “Ascent” pegs 1992 as the period in which he began suffering unbearable symptoms, and 1993 as when Donatella shared news of his condition with employees. In a 2006 New York interview, she referred obliquely to how the cancer had decimated him during “the last two years of his life” before it went fully into remission, though without a precise moment of diagnosis. Yet a New Yorker feature than ran shortly after Gianni’s death suggests he fell ill in ’96 (though it may have been conflating what Orth’s later reporting alleged was a separate bout with cancer in his cheek around that time). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ran a profile on the Versace business in 2003 that stated Gianni was “stricken with a rare ear cancer in 1995.” Short of obtaining official medical records, we’re inclined to defer to a a 1997 New York Times obit, which not only published that the ear cancer was identified in ‘93, but supported the assertion with a quote from Versace about how ”There were a lot of tests and scans and treatments that were hard.” In turn, that would authenticate ACS’s timeline of his malady as fairly precise.Merrill Lynch in Manila
In this case, it would be apt to credit the Cunanan character with telling the truth, albeit couched in a falsehood about his father resuming successful financial work overseas. When he insists that Merrill Lynch has had offices in Manila in the Philippines since 1957, predating the corporation’s Tokyo HQ, he isn’t fibbing. An informational web page on Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Asia Pacific operations confirms that its “presence in the region dates back to 1957 when we opened offices in the Philippines and then in Japan.” If you’re ever in the area, here’s where you can visit for yourself.Cunanan’s ex-wife
Sort of, at least based on an interview that Miami PD conducted with Andrew’s close friend Steven Nauck. A police-file summary of key Cunanan facts and rumors leads off with the notion that Cunanan “possibly has an ex-wife and child” and “divorced approximately 7-8 years ago.” (Nuack also mentioned an ex-lover named none other than David Gallo.) While dining with Norman and friends after the opera, Cunanan says his ex was named Lizzie, and proceeds to pass around a wallet-size pic of his friend Elizabeth. Since no marriage certificate for the two, nor any confirmation from Cote, has ever surfaced, we can deduce that Nuack was repeating a lie Cunanan spread to many in his orbit — including, perhaps, his ill-fated benefactor Lincoln Aston. (more on him further down).What They Took Liberties With
Mr. Mercado
As discussed last week, all empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that Cunanan worked for a substantial period of time at his local San Diego Thrifty pharmacy. Far as why “Ascent” depicts the location as Mercado Drug Store, whose namesake owner lectures Andrew about wasting his time with glamorous magazines and daydreams, one might assume the show had difficulty securing use of Thrifty’s name and likeness. But that’s not the case, according to executive producer Brad Simpson. “This [Thrifty] franchise was owned by Filipino Americans and was located in an area near San Diego — National City — that has a large Filipino immigrant population,” he wrote in an email. “We did not seek to use the Thrifty name.” Like so many of Cunanan’s own tales, Mr. Mercado is just “a dramatic invention.”The escort service dressing-down
The scene of Andrew being degraded and rejected by a mercenary escort-service owner who “can’t sell a clever Filipino, even one with a big dick” served its purpose, i.e. motivating Cunanan to set out on his own in search of wealthy older men he can seduce. But there’s nothing to verify that such a specifically humiliating encounter occurred. In fact, Orth reported that Cunanan was in the employ of an escort service circa the early ’90s, working in both California and Florida. Contrarily, a cringingly dated Washington Post story subsequent to Cunanan’s death on Andrew and other “trophy boys” puts forth that he was primarily an independent contractor. Either way, the job interview portrayed in “Ascent” appears to be more of a storytelling contrivance than concrete catalyst.Andrew and David’s instant tryst
Once more, “Ascent” takes liberties with Orth’s source material, which concludes its second-hand account of Andrew and David’s San Francisco meet-cute by affirming they had a “nonsexual sleepover.” Given the episode’s explicit themes of gay alienation and the necessity of keeping sexual liaisons a clandestine matter, the images of Cunanan and Madson showering and laying together (presumably) post-coitus may have been a kind of rebuke — a refusal to castrate their intimacy. As for their place of lodging, however, the Mandarin Oriental is more than plausible. According to the FBI, it was one of his favored hotels. All of this presupposes, of course, that Orth’s anonymous eyewitnessto the pair’s supposed first brush is to be believed. Interestingly, at the dinner scene in question, Andrew introduces his friend Eli to David — as in (more than likely) Eli Gould, an attorney pal of Cunanan’s whom Orth claims was present when Andrew allegedly crossed paths with Versace in 1990.Lincoln Aston’s murder
A la the escort-service scene, Andrew looking on as Kevin Bond bashes Lincoln’s head with a stone obelisk (that part is, gruesomely, accurate) does what it needs to: earmarking the first instance when Cunanan is riveted by bloodlust. But did he actually observe the killing, nevermind cover for Bond, a deranged loner who was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years? Firstly, per the testimony of Aston’s friend James Michael Hays, Aston met his future assailant at a club called Caliph, not Flicks. Although more broadly speaking, The Advocate and others reported accounts that Cunanan and Aston were intimate with each other, but also — along with Norman — immersed in a secretive gay social club known as Gamma Mu. This conflicts, however, with Cunanan’s friend Nuack telling Miami PD he was unaware of Andrew and Lincoln being more than platonic. In any event, we came up empty in our efforts to find a shred of documentation that Andrew watched in horror and then calm collectedness as Bond committed his savage act. Regardless, he was still on course to replicate it at David Madson’s apartment exactly two years later.Andrew’s assault of his own mom
Did Cunanan get so fed up with his mother’s clinginess that he slammed her into and fractured her shoulder blade? As “Ascent” would have it, he did just witness a brutal murder, awakening his latent, violent tendencies. And it all fits Orth’s narrative, which attributes detail of the incident to quotes from Mary Ann’s parish priest. It’s a sensational scene, but one with no additional corroborative evidence. What’s undeniable is the damage Cunanan caused his doting mother in the wake of killing five men, and the far-from-globe-trotting circumstances he left her to get by in on her own.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 7, ‘Ascent’
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: Getting the Belt
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
I’ll just say it: This was my least favorite episode of the series so far. First of all, it looks so cheap. Versace’s Milan office looks like it was hastily assembled from a bunch of plywood and a rough coat of paint by four guys named Ted who do all the sets for regional productions of Brigadoon. And the dress that Donatella wears to the Vogue anniversary party? The original dress was dainty, chic, and had just a touch of the S&M about it. The one in “Ascent” looks like it was made out of a bunch of clearance belts that a someone in the wardrobe department scooped up at Marshall’s. This is probably because Gianni later throws a fit and chops it to bits, but also because the production couldn’t get access to the Versace archives. Still, everything that isn’t shot on location looks straight out of a Lifetime movie.
The real reason why this episode is boring is due to the show’s structure of telling the story backwards. Initially, this was a very interesting and original way for the series to play out, but now we’re so deep into it that we’ve intuited everything that we didn’t already know. We already knew that Andrew met David for one great night in San Francisco, took him to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental, and fell in love with him. Does it matter that he met him by calling him over at a fancy restaurant because he thought David was lonely? Not really. Do we need to see them getting busy in the shower? No, but I’m never going to tell attractive people to have less sex and be less naked on my television screen.
We also already knew that Andrew was working in a pharmacy in San Diego and that his mother was crazy and needy. Did we need to know that his mother thought she was going to travel around the world with him as he “assisted Signore Versace?” No. Did we need to know that he insisted she buy Häagen-Dazs and when she bought the cheap generic ice cream that comes in a tub so big that it has its own handle, he threw it on the ground in a fit of pique? Not really, even though it sure is fun to watch.
We also already knew that he stalked his sugar daddy Norman and convinced him to build a life for them both in San Diego. Do we need to know that it was at the La Jolla playhouse? Not really. Do we need to know that he was first with Norman’s friend Lincoln Aston, who was murdered by a piece of trade that he picked up at a local bar for hustlers? Actually, yeah, we do need to know that.
The few bright spots in the episode are the surprising details that we didn’t know at all. Lincoln being beaten to death by someone who had a case of “gay panic” actually happened (here’s a great article about it), but whether or not Andrew witnessed the crime and didn’t report it is up to interpretation. It certainly helps Andrew get what he wants, and it happened through violence and deceit, which seems to be Andrew’s M.O. But while Andrew and Norman say that they can get murdered and people get away with it, Lincoln’s killer went to prison for 15 years, so that seems a little blown out of proportion.
Lincoln’s murder and that conversation do set the tone for the gay community that Andrew was living in at the time. With the rise of AIDS and homophobia at its height, he was living in a time where fear and violence seeped into everything about the gay community, sometimes when they least expect it, like when Lincoln brought that man home. No wonder it managed to warp Andrew into thinking that was the only way he could get ahead. It was almost as if he was taking revenge for the way straight people were treating gay people, except his crimes were against those wouldn’t (or couldn’t) love him the way he wanted.
Another surprising and humiliating moment is when Andrew goes to the escort agency and the madam tells him that she can’t sell an Asian with a bad attitude, “even if he does have a big dick.” We already knew Andrew worked as an escort, but this scene reveals how hard it was for him to be seen as worthy, even as a sex worker. It also shows how he learned to manufacture his own identity and where those details came from — saying he was Portuguese rather than Filipino, for example.
The one bonus of the scene between Andrew and David at the hotel is that David tells Andrew the story of his friend Leah: She was always getting picked on, so David promised to build her a house that they could live in together. Andrew then takes that same story, embellishes and exaggerates the details, and uses it to sell Norman on a move from Phoenix to San Diego. It is a nice glimpse into how Andrew is always connecting the dots, grabbing the things that make him feel emotion and adjusting them to manipulate other people.
But even that’s something we’ve seen plenty of times on this show. As the story starts to come close to its end — or in this case, the beginning — it’s reaching a sort of anti-climax.
So, yeah, I found this chapter of the Versace story dreadfully boring and a total rehash. It also lacked the glamour and opulence of the first episode, when we got to see Gianni lolling around his villa in all of those very expensive fabrics. A lot of people have called for more Versace in this show that bears his name, but cutting their story out of this already bloated episode might have been what it needed to move along more briskly.
It’s just so much of the same. We already knew that Donatella was always going to be in charge of the business after Gianni was gone. We learn that the plans were put in motion before his assassination, but still, the plan was the plan. Maybe some of Dontella’s anger and resentment for her brother and his partner comes from thinking that she’d be in charge. She had that yanked away from her, only to have it return in such a tragic and unexpected way.
The one good thing about knowing the ending before the beginning is that it offers instances of dramatic irony. For instance, the only good part of Gianni and Donatella’s storyline is learning that, at one point, Diego actually stood up for Gianni’s sister. Sure, she would eventually come to despise him (and lock him out of the company), but initially he was her champion.
The ultimate instance of dramatic irony, however, comes at the end. Andrew is furnishing Norman’s house and says to him, like the old Carnival Cruise commercial, “If they could see me now.” Norman asks who “they” are. “Everybody,” Andrew says, thinking that he finally played being rich and sophisticated long enough that he achieved it. He actually faked it until he made it. But he’s staring off of the balcony not into a bright future, but a sad fall into drug addiction, obsession, and death.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 6
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are Yanez’s insights — as well as our independent research — into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode six, “Descent.”
What They Got Right
The tension with Norman Blachford’s friends
In “Descent,” one particular friend of Norman’s named David Gallo (and yes, that’s SNL alum Terry Sweeney in a rare onscreen appearance) sizes Andrew up as trouble and corners him for a lecture. In real life, reports emerged as soon as May 1997 — prior to Versace’s death — that some of those close to Blachford had misgivings about Andrew. We couldn’t verify whether Gallo himself was based on a specific person who cornered Andrew at the La Jolla mansion – or if he’s a stand-in for many onlookers’ sentiments – but we’ll score this one in the credible column.The L.A. weekend with David Madson
By all evidence, Andrew did seem to spend a lavish few days in Los Angeles with David not long before he unraveled. “Cunanan would treat people to fancy things like that, and he had done something like that with David,” Yanez recalls. “Friends mentioned that, and I think friends were in on that visit too. That was part of his lifestyle back then.” In fact, one brief section of the FBI’s dossier on Cunanan (see: page 50) confirms he stayed at Hollywood’s famous Chateau Marmont hotel for nearly a week and made many calls to Minneapolis — where Madson lived at the time — during his stay. It’s difficult to prove with total authority that David was with him, although the bill Andrew is shown to have racked up in “Descent” — $2,742.72 — is, according to the FBI investigation, entirely accurate.Cunanan’s time at Flicks
As has been noted in previous fact-checks, the Flicks nightclub in San Diego was one of Andrew’s regular San Diego haunts. In “Descent,” he’s shown, well, descending further into addiction and desperation while buying drugs and boring bartenders at the club. This lines up with Yanez and her colleagues’ reporting back in 1997. “That he had a regular spot was on the radar, and that’s where we got a lot of information,” she says. “From the people that frequented that bar. They knew more of [Cunanan] than anybody else, regulars from that bar.” Yanez acknowledges that any anecdotal accounts were taken “with a grain of salt,” adding, “but then, Cunanan was so hard to get a grasp on. If you knew his real story, it was very different from what these people were saying. We’d start saying things like, ‘According to friends, Cunanan told them that….’ You couldn’t really give a fact as a straight-on fact, because he was such a storyteller and a liar. You had to quantify it and qualify it.”Cunanan’s master bedroom
The one thing Andrew didn’t lie to David about over lobster was his way of finagling privileged accommodations even as a child. In 2009 for the San Diego Reader, a former neighbor and friend posted a fascinating anonymous diary of sorts detailing her relationship with Andrew. In it, she specifically mentions how he occupied the master bedroom in his house. (His mother, Mary Ann, supported this story in a rare 1997 TV interview.) She also recounts how, after the Cunanans scaled down to their Rancho Bernardo apartment, the lone TV was located in Andrew’s room. “He grew up with a sense of entitlement and showed contempt for those more successful than he,” the anonymous acquaintance wrote, echoing the common perception.The drug addiction
Yanez can’t say for certain when, exactly, Andrew was preoccupied with one drug versus another, but concedes that — if anything — his addiction went underreported as part of what fueled his spree. “When we started looking into San Diego, there was talk of the drug use,” she says. “But that’s an interesting point, because I don’t think we considered it enough at the time. We should have given it more input that he was someone with an addiction. At the time, it was ‘a gay guy killing people,’ it wasn’t ‘a gay guy with a drug habit’ … When he gets to Miami Beach, there were sightings of him trying to buy drugs at the clubs.”Thrifty pharmacy
Norman’s investigation into Andrew was spot-on, including Cunanan’s time as a Thrifty pharmacy clerk in San Diego. That’s affirmed in the San Diego Reader blog, the FBI files, and New York Times interviews with police, among other sources. You won’t find that particular storefront there any longer, but if you’re ever in and around Rancho Bernardo, you can still snag some “thrifty” ice cream. At Rite-Aid.What They Took Liberties With
Miglin and Madson in La Jolla
While Yanez found the prospect of Lee Miglin, David Madson, and Jeffrey Trail having crossed paths titillating, she can only offer that she and her peers “never connected that in that way.” Orth’s own reporting on the birthday bash depicted in “Descent” quotes a friend of Trail’s talking about how Andrew persuaded Jeff to wow Norman by saying he was a highway-patrol instructor — not dress up in Naval attire to impress David. The San Diego Reader also published scuttlebutt about Norman having thrown Andrew a lavish beachfront birthday party at his home. No one, however, has seemingly ever implied that Lee Miglin was in attendance, let alone posed for a photo alongside two of Cunanan’s fellow future victims. And when interviewed by the FBI (see: page 104), Norman — despite redactions, it is fairly plain he is the subject — explains that he knew neither Madson nor of any connection between Cunanan and Miglin. If anything, Miglin’s appearance could be foreshadowing further examination of (entirely unproven) rumors that Cunanan was familiar with Lee’s son Duke, then an aspiring actor. Still, we will confess that a photo featuring several unidentified persons and mentioned in page 101 of the very same FBI documents piqued our interest.The final visit with MaryAnn Cunanan
Andrew’s mother was definitely living in less-than-glamorous conditions in her San Diego neighborhood, and most certainly was in denial about her son’s state of mind. In the aforementioned 1997 interview for the TV show Hard Copy, she referred to him as a “saint,” alleged he was executed by the Mafia, and invoked her faith by exclaiming that he was “free in heaven.” But there’s no evidence that points to Andrew having sought solace with MaryAnn for one final, brief stay before snapping and endeavoring on his murder spree. Likewise regarding whether he submitted himself to a maternal sponge bath and berating about his body odor. “I think they hadn’t seen him for a while when he went on his spree,” Yanez says. “They’re trying to make a point there that he’s kind of like her. He’s not what she’s thinking she is, but she’s created this vision that he’s successful and going along with it, kind of like he does.”The break-in at Blachford’s house
Some scenes in The Assassination of Gianni Versace are more transparently for effect than others. It’s not a stretch to imagine Andrew, broke and strung out, banging on Norman’s glass doors after trying to force his way into the home, as Norman threatens to call the police. In truth, per the FBI files (page 100), Norman — once again, despite redactions, it’s clear he is the interview subject here — attests that Andrew never attempted to reconcile and the two would only bump into each other at the occasional social event. And that they last spoke when Cunanan made a conciliatory phone call — from Minneapolis.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 6
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: A Crystal Ball
Editor’s Rating: ★★★★☆
As we learn more about Andrew Cunanan in this episode, I have a very serious question: Is it considered skinny dipping if he’s still wearing goggles? I find it very curious that Andrew swans around this big, expensive home in La Jolla, a wealthy suburb of San Diego, and dives into the pool overlooking the ocean in his birthday suit, but takes time out to put on some reflective goggles that make him look like a figure in a David Hockney painting as he emerges from the water.
All joking aside, we all knew this wasn’t Andrew’s house. Instead, it belongs to a wealthy older gay gentleman named Norman. Not only is Norman rich and willing to keep Andrew in the manner in which he’s become accustomed, he’s also rather handsome. And he also hasn’t made Andrew put out in three months, either. This is the easiest salary a rent boy like Andrew has ever drawn.
It’s the day of Andrew’s big birthday party and we learn a number of things very quickly. First of all, he is deeply disliked by Norman’s friends, a set of old queens with the vicious tongues right out of Boys in the Band (now back on Broadway!) because they think that Andrew is only interested in Norman for his money. Gil even reminds Andrew that he is nothing more than Norman’s employee, something that his fragile ego can hardly bear to grapple with.
The other thing we learn is that he’s willing to enlist his closest friends in his lies. He tells his friend Lizzie that she has to help him convince David, who is coming from Minneapolis just for the party, that he can afford this grand house all on his own. When Jeff shows up for the party, seemingly one of Andrew’s only actual friends, Andrew forces him to wear fancier shoes, lie about his job, and even gives him a fake present to pretend be brought. He wants David to think that he has really great friends, even if he has to say, “Versace doesn’t make shoes,” under his breath when Jeff hands him the box. (Wrapped in Tiffany blue, of course.)
Yes, this whole party is just to impress David. Andrew even blows off Lee Miglin, who could have been another giant source of income if he were really sick of Norman, but instead he’s trying to chase his love for David. “He’s a home,” Andrew tells Lizzie about him. “He’s a yard and a family and picking kids up from school. He’s a future and up until now I’ve only dated the past.” The problem is that, as soon as David shows up at the party, he’s giving off major “I’m just not that into you” vibes. He’s flirting with Jeff right in front of Andrew, wondering where he’s going to sleep in the house (because he obviously won’t be sleeping with Andrew), and just generally treating him the way he would any friend.
The funny thing about Andrew is that he doesn’t see how flimsy his lies really are. They’re like a pointillistic painting: From far away it all makes sense, but when you give it even the slightest bit of scrutiny, you realize how it doesn’t all quite fit together. Everyone knows it, including Jeff, Lizzie, David, and certainly Norman. I don’t think Norman really needed to hire an investigator to find out that Andrew isn’t who he says he is, but he did anyway. He finds out that Andrew is poor and lived in a shitty condo, that he dropped out of state school after only one year, and he used to work in a drug store.
What’s amazing is that these people are always trying to save Andrew. Just as David did in Minneapolis, Norman also offers to help him. Andrew approaches Norman and tells him that since he cost him the love of David, he wants more money, a fancy car, and to be written into the will as Norman’s sole heir. Norman says that he will do that, but only if Andrew treats their relationship like a real partnership, not like he’s doing Norman some huge favor. He also offers to keep paying Andrew, set him up at a university, and pay for his degree. It’s a generous offer, but Andrew would rather continue living in his privileged fantasy than actually have to work hard.
Norman asks specifically about that aversion to hard work and earning the luxurious life that he craves. “It’s just so ordinary,” Andrew whines, before smashing the table, walking out on Norman, and going to live in a seedy condo that looks like it’s somewhere very close to the airport. (Why are all the worst places to live always near the airport?)
While he’s there, we learn that Andrew sent a postcard to Jeff’s father trying to out him as some kind of threat. I never entirely understood what this gambit was all about. Is he trying to extort Jeff by saying he’ll out him to his parents? Jeff doesn’t have any money. During this exchange, we also learn that Jeff is moving to Minneapolis, possible to be closer to David.
Andrew freaks out and invites David on a last-minute vacation to Los Angeles, where he says he’s hard at work on a movie. But David sees right through all of Andrew’s lies because Andrew doesn’t behave like an actual rich person. Real rich people never talk about “five-star hotels,” they just go and stay in them. A real rich person would never throw his keys at the valet. That’s just something that people do in movies, like running into the street and shouting, “Taxi!” Andrew is always projecting what he really is, an insecure kid playing rich.
When David shows up, he’s uncomfortable with all of Andrew’s very staged displays of wealth and says he’s not interested in that world. Not only are Andrew’s attempts transparently fake, they’re also not the right way to impress someone like David. He gets one final chance to be authentic when David takes off his jacket and clears the table and asks Andrew to tell him about his real life. Instead, Andrew just manufactures more lies about his parents and his mother bringing him lobster dinners at boarding school. You can see David resign himself to the fact that Andrew will never change. “We had a great time in San Francisco,” David tells Andrew, blowing him off. “One great night. Maybe there was a chance, but … I have a feeling you don’t have many great nights with people. So when you do, it feels life changing.” Even when trying to let him down gently, David is still trying to help. Andrew really does prey on the nicest guys.
After that failure, Andrew gets into injecting crystal and we see how life altering it is. He imagines himself with Versace, but even then Versace doesn’t behave like a real person, he’s just a receptacle for Andrew’s bitching. He says that he’s the most generous person in the world and he’s given everything to the people he loves, but he doesn’t do it out of generosity. He does it so that he’ll have love and acceptance. Andrew never realizes it’s something he can’t buy.
Quickly, we find out where all of his pathology comes from. When Andrew hits rock bottom and runs out of money thanks to his crystal habit, he goes to see his mother in her shabby apartment and she gives him a sponge bath, which is really, really weird. It’s like Bates Motel weird. As his mother launches into a story about running into a woman in the supermarket, we realize that Andrew is just like his mother. She says that family is everything, that she gave it all up for him, that she just wants him to be something great so that she can share in his glory.
In a rare vulnerable moment, Andrew says that he’s unhappy. He wants to be honest with the one person who truly understands him and where he comes from. But his mother doesn’t want to hear it. She wants to believe in the lie that she created. She wants her son to be extraordinary, even if it’s fake. With that, she seals her son’s fate. He gets in his car and heads off to Minneapolis, starting a spree that will eventually lead to the murder we’ve been working backwards from all season.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 5
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology series, titled , explores the titular designer’s brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. We’re walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez — who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinel’s Miami bureau — in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versace’s murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Below are Yanez’s insights — as well as our independent research — into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode five, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
What They Got Right
Cunanan’s animus toward Jeff Trail
“It all begins with Trail,” Yanez asserts. “Whatever Trail did to him or whatever he felt, he really hated him.”Donatella Versace’s media wariness
“She didn’t speak to the media here,” confirms Yanez while reflecting on scenes depicting Donatella’s concerns about bad PR. “We knew that she was around. She was very private. She didn’t make statements.” Yanez isn’t aware of whether Donatella was opposed to her brother being publicly out, though in a recent Vogue interview, she does share that the best advice Gianni ever gave her was, “Be true to yourself.”The public perception of Antonio D’Amico
Yanez says that if Donatella was dismissive of Antonio, she wasn’t alone. She and her colleagues’ perception of him at the time “was not very respectful,” she says. “We saw him like Donatella sees him, as just a boyfriend.”Trail’s CBS interview
It was with Richard Schlesinger for 48 Hours, and he was in silhouette speaking bravely about the military and federal government’s shortsightedness, his Naval officer cap visible in the foreground. In a blog post last year, Schlesinger wrote that Trail’s brutal death left he and his colleagues “stunned and saddened” and feeling a “connection to the horror that Cunanan had created.”The encounter at Flicks
Although the Sun-Sentinel sent reporters to San Diego, Yanez admits that “the bar scene became background” to their coverage of Cunanan. It’s difficult to corroborate the exact time and location of Jeff and Andrew’s first encounter, but Trail’s friend Michael Williams told the San Diego Reader at the time that Andrew was a regular at Flicks nightclub. Flicks’ owner seconded as much to the New York Times.What They Took Liberties With
The Advocate interview
In August 1995, The Advocate did publish an exclusive interview with Gianni authored by Brendan Lemon. Antonio did sit in on the interview, and Gianni wasn’t shy about referencing him as his “companion” of 13 years. The article, cited by Ryan Murphy as inspirational, unabashedly linked the designer to his orientation as a gay man, although it also was upfront about the fact that Gianni had never really “shirked homosexuality.” He and Lemon had in fact sat down to promote Versace’s book, Men Without Ties, and so the depiction of their exchange in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as a platform for his coming out is somewhat romanticized. When Vulture reached out to FX to confirm that this particular Advocate interview inspired the storyline, executive producer Brad Simpson replied in an email, “In 1995, Versace sat with The Advocate. He had Antonio sit in on the interview as depicted in the show. He allowed The Advocate to be open about his homosexuality, identifying Antonio as his companion and collaborator, and allowing himself to be described as ‘out.’” But one detail the show definitely took license with? Antonio’s hair. It was, as Lemon describes, styled as more of an era-familiar Caesar cut.Gianni Versace’s virtuous reputation
Versace was largely regarded as a kind and big-hearted man. But both ACSon the whole and “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in particular portray him as almost preternaturally compassionate and even-keeled. “In the time before [his murder], he kind of became a bad guy on the beach,” recalls Yanez. “When he bought that property, there was an old hotel next door where a lot of low-income people lived. So you had this mansion he built, and next door this fleabag kind of thing. There came a chance to buy that hotel, and he immediately bought it and had everybody evicted, knocked that hotel down, and expanded his mansion. So he became this rich baron. There was a cost of that to other people, his quest for beauty.”Cunanan’s closet collage
Earlier this season, Cunanan’s Normandy Plaza room décor included a slapdash shrine of sorts to Gianni comprised of various Versace clippings. Ditto his San Diego closet in this episode, which is partly covered by a makeshift mural featuring the Advocate piece. Neither Yanez nor anyone else can testify to how Andrew adorned the walls of his final West Coast haunt. She was, however, intimate with how he left his last room at the Normandy, and says, “In fact, [police] went through every detail in that room, and it was mostly fashion magazines and books. We detailed everything in that room, but there was no serial-killer shrine hidden. There was no trace of Versace there, nothing that would say, ‘Oh, he was stalking Versace.’”The Trail family
Like the episode prior, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” opts for a fairly dramatic conclusion, this time overlapping the moment of Trail’s murder with the birth of his niece. But as Jeff’s older sister Candace told People back in 1997, their sister Linda had delivered her baby the day prior. And while Jeff enthuses, “I’m going to enjoy being an uncle so much,” he’d already been: It was Linda’s third child.Cunanan and Madson’s night out
Andrew and David did hit the town two nights before Andrew began his killing spree. And they did dine at popular Minneapolis spot Nye’s, per police. And Nye’s was a legendary polka hall (and piano bar) that was recently revitalized. But police elaborated that after their meal, the pair went dancing at known gay hotspot The Gay 90’s, the same club where — tragically — Trail’s boyfriend Jon waited in vain for Jeff the night he was murdered. And while Maureen Orth’s reporting circa fall ’97 claims that Madson’s friend Monique Salvetti met up with David and Andrew at Nye’s, a Daily News article from earlier that year reports that while Madson was confiding in Salvetti, an anonymous coworker joined the pair Friday evening at a separate café. This somewhat jibes with an Los Angeles Times account tracking the duo’s movements from Caffe Solo to The Gay 90’s, though they place them there on Saturday night, less than 24 hours before Trail’s murder. Meanwhile, both the Star-Tribune and the New York Times support the episode’s version that Cunanan spent Saturday in Trail’s apartment. Then there’s the FBI file, which reports that Salvetti was out with David and Andrew on Friday at Nye’s, and that Madson and Cunanan had dinner the following night at Monte Carlo Restaurant, capped off by dancing at The Gay 90’s before Andrew crashed at Jeff’s place. The only thing all parties agree on is that no one fully anticipated the bloodshed to come.The postcard
Andrew absolutely sent romantic, over-the-top postcards to his lovers. He sent dozens to David Madson, of which his sister kept copies. (The FBI has the originals.) But whether he effectively outed Jeff by mistakenly sending one to his father Stan is, like much of Trail’s life as documented in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” hard to pin down.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Fact-checking Episode 5
The Assassination of Gianni Versace Recap: I’m Coming Out
Editor’s rating: ★★★☆☆
Oh, thank God. Gianni Versace is back, he wears an amazing Versace top while being interviewed by The Advocate, and, as a special bonus, we also get Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace wearing a fitted butterfly blazer and microscopic black skirt. What better outfit to wear when being super mean to your brother and his lover? I would probably let someone treat me as shabbily as Donatella does Antonio as long as she dressed like that.
Those few scenes add splendor to the otherwise dreary and sad world of Andrew Cunanan, where we’ve been living for the past few episodes. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is really about coming out and the two very different experiences of these two very different men. We see Gianni in his great designs and well-lit photo shoot for his Advocate cover, immediately contrasted with Jeff Trail, one of Cunanan’s victims, giving an interview with CBS News about gays in the military where he has his face and voice disguised “like a criminal.”
This illustrates just how difficult and different coming out was for different classes of people in the mid-‘90s. Versace, as a millionaire with a thriving business in a creative field, was allowed to come out without much consequence. (Although the actual Advocate interviewwasn’t exactly as depicted here.) Donatella is worried that celebrities and tastemakers will leave the brand like they did to Perry Ellis when it was discovered that he was dying of AIDS. Her brother retorts, “At least we’ll keep Elton,” meaning the famously out rocker Elton John. (Duh.)
Versace’s coming out is seen as a celebration, something that advances gay rights and gay visibility. It was only possible because he was in fashion, one of the industries where you can’t swing a designer handbag without hitting a friend of Dorothy’s. Not everyone was so lucky to have the financial success and protection that Versace did, and things were a lot harder for them.
Look at how it was for Jeff Trail. He’s forced into the closet so that he can continue to serve his country and be a member of the military. Everyone in his family has served. While coming out might have a bit of an impact on Versace’s multimillion-dollar business, if Trail came out, he’ll lose his job, possibly his family, and everything he holds dear. Coming out isn’t a choice for him, especially after his commanding officer gives him a creepy comic book (seriously, U.S. military? A comic book?) about how he can’t be gay and in the Navy at the same time.
I always say that the closet makes people crazy, and in this case, it leads Jeff to consider severe self-harm. He thinks about cutting out a tattoo on his leg when he hears that a gay man has been caught for cruising on his military base and is going to rat out the tattoos of every enlisted man he’s slept with. First of all, this is a bad idea because it doesn’t work (except as a plot device on Riverdale). Second of all, it’s a bad idea because who the hell wants to carve out their flesh in the shower with a box cutter and some alcohol?
After the comic book incident, Jeff tries to hang himself in the shower rather than come out, but he can’t do it. He’s suffering under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” not only in the military, but also in his own mind. Maybe if he doesn’t talk about it, he seems to decide, he can be just a little bit gay. Even after he’s out of the military, he refuses to come out to his parents despite his sister insisting that he do it. He knows that she has his back, so why can’t he still be true to himself? After being in the military for so many years, the homophobia is coming from inside the house.
I didn’t really like the way the episode played out, however. We see Jeff first through Andrew’s eyes, when he plots a trip to Minneapolis (on American Express’s dime) in a last attempt at having a normal life by marrying David. Thanks to the last episode, we all know how that ends. I’m still fascinated with the series playing out backwardsbecause Andrew’s trip always had an air of failure about it, from the moment he shows up at the airport to a less-than-fuzzy reception from his former friends. Because of what we’ve seen, there is a much more sinister overtone to the proceedings.
What I didn’t like is that we see Jeff talking on tape about saving a man’s life in the military and how he wouldn’t do it again because that is what outed him to his fellow sailors. I feel like that really took away from the magic of seeing him actually save the man, comfort him in the showers, and get caught by that very imposing looking dude with a mustache. (How come the old-school bigots in these things always have a mustache?) If we didn’t know what was coming, it would have had more impact. The same goes for when he finally gives the interview later in the episode. It just seemed like needless repetition. The emotion could have been more intense if we didn’t see Andrew watching that video in the first place and didn’t know exactly what Jeff was going to say.
The relationship between Andrew and Jeff is also very confusing. Andrew definitely saved Jeff the first time he came into a gay bar: He needed someone to show him the ropes, prove to him that being gay wasn’t so awful, and to joke about his name being spelled out in sparklers on the bar. But eventually, Jeff is the only one who sees that Andrew is just spinning a bunch of lies, and that he’s a dangerous sociopath who could cause them all a lot of pain. David, on the other hand, sees Andrew as harmless and wants to help him. He even offers to break his date with the hunk in the leather vest so they can talk, but Andrew can’t abandon his “crazy stories” about starting a new life in San Francisco in order to ask for help. When he does accept David’s offer, it’s only as a pretense so that he can kill both David and Jeff. The crazy stories are stronger than any real connection with a human being.
What confused me was when Andrew and Jeff have their confrontation in Jeff’s sad apartment when he returns home to find Andrew eating Fruit Loops on the floor and his military uniform splayed out on the bed. He confronts Andrew about the story and about sending a postcard to his parents trying to out him. Even though Andrew saved him, Jeff wishes they never met. “The bars, the meals, the men. Everything you gave me means nothing,” he tells Andrew. “I want my life back. My real life, as a soldier.” Jeff equates gay life with Andrew and since Andrew is a person of mirages masking an empty and rotten core, he sees gay life the same way. We would assume that because Andrew was his role model, Jeff thinks it is impossible to live a rewarding and openly gay life. He sees gay values as being about fun times, meaningless sex, designer clothes, and hot go-go boys in star-spangled Speedos. That’s why he rejects both Andrew and gay life and ends up yelling at other veterans in the lunchroom of a shitty factory.
I could buy that, except that Jeff also has David in his life. We get hints that they’re a couple — even though David was obviously seeing other people — so why wouldn’t David be a good role model for Jeff? He’s openly gay, he has a successful career, and he’s a caring person who seems to be about more than just hookups in the back of bars. Shouldn’t Jeff see that he can have a life like David’s? Shouldn’t he know that Andrew is the negative extreme played up by the media and shitty military comic books?
Tragically, he doesn’t. Finn Wittrock does an excellent job showing Jeff’s pain and struggle, just as Darren Criss and Cody Fern have both been spectacular in the past two episodes. It’s going to be a really tough Emmy race if they wind up duking it out with each other. This episode as a whole, however, seems a little bit clunky. It’s just too much of a stretch to knit all of these stories together in a meaningful and emotionally impactful way. Still, the differences between these coming out stories is key to understanding exactly how and why Versace’s death happened, and I’m glad the show is drawing those unique parallels.
ACS news 