drunk on dreams
by Douglas Messerli
Tom Rob Smith and Maggie Cohn (writers, based
on the book, Vulgar Favors by Maureen
Orth), Ryan Murphy, Nelson Cragg, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Daniel Minahan, and Matt
Bomer (directors) The Assassination of
Gianni Versace: American Crime Story / 2018
FX series, after their quite excellent American
Crime Story based on the murders connected with O. J. Simpson, soon after
released another fascinating season based on, not so very particularly, despite
its title, on Gianni Versace’s (Édgar Ramírez) murder—but rather on the
activities of his killer, the sociopathic gay man, Andrew Cunanan (Darren
Criss). And despite his terribly violent activities—which ended in the deaths
of five gay men, including David Madson (Cody Fern), the man he loved and
wanted, incredibly in an era in which gay marriage was not possible, to marry
and raise a family—this movie, going and forth between time between nine-1-hour
episodes, actually transforms Cunanan into a kind of tragic would-be Gatsby, a
natural loser in a society that lionizes wealth and what used to be called the
desire for “The American Dream.
Cunanan, unfortunately, despite the advantages his family attempted to
provide him with—an education in a prestigious private school, a master bed-room,
and a college education at the University of California San Diego—was an
outsider from the start. The son of a doting but somewhat psychotically disturbed
Italian mother (Joanna P. Adler) and a smart Philippine father, Modesto (Jon Jon
Briones) who bartered his way into being a stockbroker and preyed on elderly
men and women, and who, finally, was tracked down by the FBI for his corruption—from
the start had no possible entry into the world which he had been taught was his
for the taking.
What
he never perceived, and which makes him detestable, is that the world was not
his for the asking, the fact that he needed to work for it—a lesson that is
reiterated again and again in this film (one of the works its obvious flaws in
its repetitions) by his elderly rich male lover, Norman Blachford (Michael
Nouri), by his friend, and by several others, working endlessly hard to make
their lives meaningful. Andrew, who has dropped out of school, clearly wants it
all without any effort; and when he demands precisely that from Blachford and
is rejected by his requests, he spins out into drugs and a kind of mad terror
that ends in the wealthy elderly gay Lee Miglin’s (Mike Farrell), an ex-Navy
highly decorated officer, Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), and ultimately in Madson’s
deaths. The spurned Cunanan cannot deal with the facts of his own life.
As
I told Howard, while watching the series, it was, as Ford Maddox Ford begins
his famous novel The Good Soldier,
one of the saddest stories I had even read.
Although
you can’t exactly feel sorry for Cunanan. He expects everything to simply be
handed to him—wealth, love, happiness—by those around him; he even gives away
any money he may receive to achieve these goals, including handing over his
paltry earnings from gay prostitution in Miami to a local AID’s victim, and
flying in his would-be Minneapolis lover on a first-class flight to a 4-star
hotel in San Francisco. This is a man who cannot comprehend that money, however
meaningless, comes from true work. As smart as he is, he cannot comprehend that
knowledge is acquired from reading and study. His obsession with Versace and
the fashion world is simply an indication of his cultural emptiness.
Meanwhile, at the Versace palace, things
are not much better. Versace might seem to have it all, a wealthy life, the
love of another young male consort, in this case the handsome Antonio D'Amico (Ricky
Martin), utterly hated by his sister, Donatella (Penélope Cruz), who—except for
the murderer, Cunanan—is perhaps the real villain
of this series. The Versace estate denying most the reality of the work,
claimed that Versace had never had AIDS. Donatella, in real life and on screen
refuses to reveal her brother Gianni’s gay attractions and, even more significantly
resists his attempt to admit to his having become HIV-positive. Even an
interview he is determined to have with the gay magazine The Advocate is a cause for battle.
Her
solution to her brother’s sudden loss of hearing is that he has cancer of the
ear. Her hatred of Antonio is palpable, and forces Gianni to impose a pax Familia so that he might die with
some calm. He tries, moreover, to bring her into the fashion world by
co-designing a dress of her imagination, which is a great success at the shows,
but an utter financial failure given that no one might wish a dress that
expresses their feminine militant desires.
Gay
men, living with older lovers are clearly, in this film, individuals not to be
loved, represented as they are as merely young men who suck the money out of
their lovers. But there is clearly a difference in Tom Rob Smith’s scripts.
Cunanan is all about dependence, while Antonio does truly express affection and
love.
Both
end badly, of course, particularly given the FBI’s and police disinterest in
actually seeking out and finding the true culprit. Even the local Miami detective
realizes when they arrive that they are not truly interested in discovering the
actual murderer. They don’t even have enough copies of Cunanan’s photo to distribute
to the local gay bars. They have little strategy in how to find him. They
stumble through the reality they don’t want to face, leaving hundreds of
obvious clues behind.
At
one point a figure makes it clear when the killer goes missing: “Andrew is not
hiding. He’s trying to be seen.” It is a tragic reality made so very obvious
that you want to cry. Despite his several murders, this man has done the
horrendous deeds simply to bring himself the attention he so desires.
Cunanan’s descent, long in the making, ends in his hide-out in a
temporarily abandoned house boat where he is forced, without access to the
world and with no money, to eat dog food.
As
the police move in, he takes the gun which has killed many of his victims and
pulls the trigger into his own mouth.
When Antonio is told by Donatella that any of the houses he might have
lived in is now the property of the Versace estate, he swallows the dozens of
pills that kill him. Both have been, so unfortunately, “Drunk on Dreams.”
Los
Angeles, April 9, 2019
Reprinted from World Film Review (April 2019).
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