Shane Perdue - Tumblr Posts

This is going to be great! It’s neat to see how Andrew Cunanan has been interpreted over the years.

@musexmoirai and I are doing a series called “Andrew Cunanan in the Media,” comparing the scenes from the movies and the TV show. Here are the introduction scenes for Andrew.

What’s interesting is that the ‘98 film has the “Lago di Como, no?” dialogue that’s the closest to what Maureen Orth reported in Vulgar Favors (her nonfiction book on Andrew Cunanan), the ‘08 film excludes the line, and ACS drastically alters the line.

In the book, Orth reports that Gianni Versace would use the “Lago di Como” line when he wanted to strike up conversation with someone, with the implication being that Versace approached Cunanan. None of the scenes go for this interpretation. The ‘98 film has the right line, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The ‘08 film falls back on easy cliches: Versace is the arrogant celebrity, Cunanan the starstruck fame-hungry striver.

ACS’ scene is the deftest of the three and a tidy bit of characterization. The “Lago di Como” line is repurposed to show how smoothly and opportunistically Cunanan operates - how he looks for openings in the conversation and wedges himself in, how he leverages social niceties to his benefit. We see how important family is to Versace, which will be a theme throughout the season. The scene neatly illustrates how just having conflict doesn’t always equal good drama. Starting Versace and Cunanan off at odds with each other and then having them form a rapport creates a more dynamic scene than having them begin and end on the same antagonistic emotional tenor with no changes in the dynamic throughout.

Andrew Cunanan in the Media → Andrew’s and Gianni’s First Meeting

Poor hapless Jeffrey Trail, hastily introduced to us with no context and then just as speedily (and graphically) dispatched.

ACS at least remedies this by dedicating the next episode to Trail, but the average viewer is likely to be confused by who this random dude is when watching the films. The ‘08 film does include an earlier scene where Cunanan gets upset with Trail for “spreading lies” about him, but it’s still not much to go on. All versions of Trail have an antagonistic relationship with Cunanan, but ACS complicates their dynamic with earlier scenes of affection and camaraderie.

Andrew Cunanan in the Media →  Jeffrey Trail’s murder

*Warning for strong language, homophobic slurs, and graphic violence

What I find interesting here is that, as the warnings show, the movie versions of Cunanan have very verbal outbursts of rage, spitting out expletives and slurs as they carry out the act (with ‘98 Jeff doing some magnificent scenery chewing). ACS Cunanan is a silent killer, the show focusing instead on the sounds of the hammer and Jeff’s suffering mixed in with Prints’ frantic barking. It’s a scarier and more disturbing scene because it relies on the sound mixing to fill our imaginations.

This is the video that really made me want to see the three versions compared. Each David Madson is so different from the other (and none of them are quite true to the real life Madson) that they don’t seem like the same character.

The ‘98 version of Madson seems too old and too practical to be dragged into Cunanan’s murderous bullshit. Real life Madson was 33 to Cunanan’s 27, but the age difference reads even larger here and it’s hard to imagine Cunanan having enough pull over this Madson to manipulate him into compliance, no matter how unwilling.

There’s no unwillingness to be found with ‘08 Madson. He’s unsettlingly quick to coo reassurance and love at an unstable man who has just brutally murdered a friend of his and seems charmed that Cunanan “chose” him. Everyone who tackles telling this particular story finds themselves needing to account for Madson’s actions, since there’s no official record for why Trail’s body was found at his apartment and why neighbors reported seeing him and Cunanan together after Trail’s death, but to make him so eager to aid Cunanan seems like a harsh interpretation considering that the Minneapolis police posthumously cleared him of any wrongdoing in Trail’s murder. ‘08 Cunanan is particularly unlikeable in this scene as he inanely babbles about getting headshots and being too fat after committing bloody murder.

ACS ups the creepiness factor by having Cunanan offer reassurance and comfort to a terrified, speechless Madson - a decision that is more unnerving than any amount of him threatening and cajoling Madson into silence could have been. And Madson is just plain traumatized. Although he doesn’t speak, the cinematography and staging persuades the audience to empathize with Madson.

Andrew Cunanan in the Media →  David’s reaction to Jeff’s murder

There’s a bespectacled psychopath here, and it’s not Andrew Cunanan.

When telling the story of Andrew Cunanan, David Madson has always posed a conundrum. Why did Cunanan take him along? Why did Madson seem willing to go along with Cunanan? (Which may not have actually been the case in real life - there’s some evidence to suggest that he was killed soon after Trail’s death instead of days later). 

Neither the ‘98 film nor the ‘08 film seem particularly keen on examining Madson or Cunanan’s motivations during this time. ‘98 Cunanan appears to turn on Madson for no particular reason. Madson had already surrendered possession of the car and it wouldn’t matter if he told the authorities about Cunanan anyway, since they had already found the duffle bag and Cunanan was their prime suspect. It’s not like there was a clear escalation of Cunanan becoming progressively more annoyed or angry with Madson, since Madson never seemed cowed by him to begin with. 

The ‘08 film completely glosses over what leads up to Madson’s murder and instead opts to show the aftermath. I wonder if that’s because the script had essentially written itself into a corner by having Madson act as an eager accomplice in covering up Trail’s murder. It’s hard to buy that this version of Cunanan would kill off the one person who freely gives him the constant adulation he desires, so the film didn’t even try to offer an explanation. 

ACS leans hard on Cunanan’s twisted romantic feelings for Madson to explain their motivations and their dynamic. This Cunanan knows this Madson enough to know what psychological buttons to push. The show does a lot of work explaining why goodhearted Madson stays with Cunanan for so long. And it teases the audience with the possibility that Cunanan may care enough for Madson to let him go. Though the tone and imagery of the episode is often dreamlike, it deals with the very real idea that it might be the fictions that we tell ourselves that bind us and restrict us. 

Andrew Cunanan in the Media →  David Madson’s murder