I’m not claiming to be a movie critic in this article -far from it! So we can call what follows scribbles of a movie and series lover….

Imagine my excitement when I heard a series was going to come out combining 3 of my favorite things: a new program, a famous personality, and a serial killer!

I watched The Assassination of Gianni Versace in one night; 9 episodes of binging and munching on popcorn and chocolate. So 9 hours and a bottle of red wine later, it was almost 3 am and I still couldn’t go to bed.

The cast was outstanding; you seriously couldn’t differentiate the real people from the on-screen characters. The acting was out of this world; Penelope makes you cry with her rendition of Donatella Versace and her unconditional love to her brother, Darren Criss gets on your nerves with his perfect portrayal of a sociopath, you can’t but empathize with Ricky Martin acting as Versace’s boyfriend, and to top it off, Edgar Ramirez is the spitting image of Gianni Versace! Also, from my humble knowledge of directing, the staging of the whole series was amazing; it starts with the murder and goes backwards; you would think it could get boring but it still unfolded beautifully and culminated to a wonderful finale.

Yet… something was bugging me. I felt a little bit cheated; the title clearly stated: the assassination of Gianni Versace. But he was definitely not the center of attention of the series; his murderer, Andrew Cunanan, was. Nevertheless, I loved following the serial killer and his character development (but that’s just me, I’m obsessed with serial killers. Others may disagree and feel the title is misleading).

Still bugged, I went over any and every article I could find online to know more about Versace, Cunanan, and the truth behind this story. Apparently, nobody from the Versace family gave approval to the series, nor did they agree on the events portrayed even thought they were based on a widely recognized book. So I got to thinking; everyone who may have known Andrew in his serial killer moments and his reasons behind killing Versace was dead -he killed them-. So how can someone really state what is fact and what is fiction? Turns out the writers based themselves on the assumptions of the book, as well as on some “eye witnesses of back in the day”. This was disappointing, knowing that the first season of American Crime Story related the REAL story of OJ Simpson. Then again, with Versace, it looks like no one will ever know what really happened. So why not assume the killer’s psychology? It honestly was pretty convincing.

Regardless of the accuracy of the series, I could think of 4 very important messages that could be deduced from it:

1. You cannot reach greatness by sitting on your ass; Andrew Cunanan was jealous of every rich, famous and successful man he met, yet he never lifted a finger to accomplish anything; and this obviously stemmed from the adoration of his father who made him think he was king of the world and could get anything he wanted without even asking for it. Moral of the story: parents, your kids aren’t special. Teach them to work hard to actually become something, or else they might turn into psychopaths!
2. Not all the rich and famous are nose-in-the-clouds assholes; Gianni Versace was actually a good and friendly person who came from nothing and worked his way up.
3. Whatever you or I may think of the gay population, it was heartbreaking to watch how they were treated; from a simple humanitarian point of view.
4. The eternal question: serial killers; are they born this way or are they made? You watch their history unfold and you can’t help but wonder, if this or that went differently, would HE have turned out different?

Something to think about… meanwhile, get the series and thank me later; you won’t regret it!