S02.E08: Creator/Destroyer

[CeeBeeGee]

5 hours ago, mojoween said:

Ohhh thank you for that!  Les Miz is catnip to me.

He looks so different with a buzz cut, but not any older.  It looks like that clip is seven years old but facial wise he hasn’t changed very much.

One of the articles linked (Vulture, I think) had a link to the shirtless yearbook picture and that was the first time I've ever seen Andrew look like a normal kid.  Most of the other pictures I’ve seen of him were after he killed Gianni and he looked like a strung-out monster. 

After he killed Gianni? Are there many pictures of him (they would have to be selfies) after he killed Gianni?

Spoiler

He killed himself only 8 days later.

Or did you mean from the spring of '97, around the time he was falling apart, leading to the string of murders?

Re: Briones's career playing the Engineer: The Engineer and Modesto have a lot in common.

Businessmen never rob banks
You can sell shit and get thanks
That's what I learned from the Yanks

I'm fed up with small-time hustles
I'm too good to waste my talent for greed
I need room to flex my muscles
In an ocean where the big sharks feed
Make me Yankee, they're my fam'ly
They're selling what people need

What's that I smell in the air
The American dream

...All yours for ten percent down
the American dream!

(I've always loved this show because of this song. Unlike most musical theater geeks, I prefer Miss Saigon to Les Miz.)

[mojoween]

Oh, no I meant the pictures that were in the paper immediately after Gianni was killed. The mug shots and such.

[Wilbur Whateley]

Interestingly, according to an interview with Darren Criss I heard, there is apparently no extant video of Andrew Cunanan. (I suspect there probably is some home video - from graduation at least - that's out there somewhere, but obviously the holders either destroyed it or are keeping it private.)  Sort of ironic considering his lust for fame. 

He lived and died just before that would become completely inconceivable,  I think.

[Florinaldo]

6 hours ago, mojoween said:

Most of the other pictures I’ve seen of him were after he killed Gianni and he looked like a strung-out monster.

Reports are that in his final months, AC lost some of his good looks, gaining weight and looking rough around the edges, probably a consequence of his heavy drug use and bad diet (no more lobster at every meal). You can see that in some of the pictures that look like mug shots but are probably just bad head shots. That's one aspect which they could not fully replicate with the actor who looks pretty much the same throughout the series, except for the hair, softer make-up earlier in the chronology, and baggier clothes during part of his murder spree (but even there they are not consistent).

[lovinbob]

On 3/15/2018 at 9:03 AM, SWLinPHX said:

I understand that to a point and realize that already, but the technique was not like shows that cleverly use flashbacks to explain everything in an artistic way.  This literally was nothing more than just airing the episodes in reverse order.  I mean you could take any miniseries and reverse the episode order and come out just like this; the following episode would explain what they had mentioned in the previous one.  Of course all that's true if you show it in reverse order.

And you could counter your point by saying that everyone would stay tuned to see the climax of how it all led up to the murder of Versace; not that they were so eager to see how Andrew was as a kid.

I don't know, I just don't see good enough reason to warrant this.  I think if I were to show this to someone I would show it episodes 8 to 1, and then finally 9.

I was doubtful about the reverse order but it is working for me now. The Andrew who killed Versace is the man we (the public) know, that story is the one we know. The other murders are stories that have not been told as much. I lived in Chicago when Miglin was killed, and I remember that horror, but I didn't know about Jeff and David, and I didn't remember the other man who was killed on the road. I certainly didn't know anything about his upbringing. So the reverse suspense makes sense to me now.

On 3/17/2018 at 1:50 PM, meep.meep said:

Raising kids, you always encounter the Nature vs. Nuture discussion.  There's a lot to be said for Nature - that what you are is actually hard-wired into your genes.

I tend to agree with this. Certainly, different people from the same family can live wildly different lives (eg, the Cunanan sibs), but I don't really think Andrew's upbringing is what made Andrew a psychopathic spree killer. I do think there was value in showing Modesto's abuse/favoritism of Andrew, and his abusive treatment of his wife, because we see there was sociopathic tendencies in the gene pool. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

3 hours ago, CeeBeeGee said:

I've always loved this show because of this song. Unlike most musical theater geeks, I prefer Miss Saigon to Les Miz.

I love them both! In a weird coincidence, they’re both on tour this year so I got tickets to see both shows this fall. I feel like I’ve temporarily fallen into my musical theater past!

Good catch on the parallels between the Engineer and Modesto. I think the main difference is that the Engineer would never stop hustling. He certainly wouldn’t have given up and slunk back to the Philippines to live in a shack like Modesto did. When the Engineer had to flee to Bangkok, he was still hustling! 

[phantom]

Although I thought the episode dragged quite a bit (we get it show, his dad was the OG lying, abusive narcissist) I did find myself thinking about it a lot after watching. The saying that goes like "nature loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger" is on point for Andrew Cunanan. He had some kind of predisposition that became a bomb waiting to go off when mixed with his childhood of being bizarrely worshiped and spoiled while seeing his mother and siblings terrorized or ignored. Internalizing a worldview that there are only aggressors and victims in life and how to become the former and manipulate the latter. That gaslighting is normal behavior and love is conditional. That his father, for all his failings, DID work hard, even if it was working towards scamming people. And that hard work left him hunted by the law, penniless and disgraced. Andrew was going to out-Cunanan his father. Gain more material success and notoriety with far less effort. 

Though I thought the Versace childhood scenes were sweet, it was unnecessary filler in my opinion. Would have been more interested to see GV in early adulthood.

[dubbel zout]

13 minutes ago, phantom said:

That his father, for all his failings, DID work hard, even if it was working towards scamming people. And that hard work left him hunted by the law, penniless and disgraced.

Did his father actually work hard? He definitely put a lot of effort into getting that Merrill Lynch job, but he wasn't very successful once there. Was that because he was coasting or because he wasn't good at selling what he was supposed to be selling?

Once he got bounced from Merrill Lynch, it looked to me like Modesto was deliberately scamming people, and the law finally caught up with him. He brought that on himself—it didn't seem like that job was a boiler room. Or if it was, the other brokers were staying within the letter of the law.

Maybe it doesn't matter, since Modesto wasn't telling his family the truth anyway, and what Andrew saw is what his father wanted him to.

[Spike]

On 3/18/2018 at 7:10 PM, jumper sage said:

Then how do you explain grown women screaming at the revival of The Backstreet Boys?  My kid just turned 21 and will still sing along to songs like:  Mmmm Bop, Tubthumping etc.  I can still picture him in his car seat jamming along in the backseat.

My siblings and I love Dionne Warwick whom we listened to and from the Detroit area all the way to Manitoulin Island (shout out to Ontario).  Say a Little Prayer and Do you know the way to San Jose was rocking all the way there and back.  Back in the 60's 70s you had to take a ferry.  Our family would go with a couple of neighbor families and stay at the same cottages every year.  On the ferry we would all sing her songs acapella.  We all now own that same album on CD.

This show really makes me feel bad for the whole Versace family and all the other families impacted by the deadly onslaught.  I do like that we now know who the others were and they are being painted in a very good light.  I only hope the families aren't upset to dredge this all up again.

As we get older nostalgia creeps in, but teens want to be into what is currently hot.  They are into The Jonas Brothers one year and by the next they have moved on.

[jumper sage]

1 hour ago, Spike said:

As we get older nostalgia creeps in, but teens want to be into what is currently hot.  They are into The Jonas Brothers one year and by the next they have moved on.

I completely disagree.

[helenamonster]

23 hours ago, Florinaldo said:

Yes, that's the general understanding about the attitude of US viewers towards subtitles; that reputation might perhaps be a bit exaggerated but subtitled movies do fare less well than dubbed ones in the States. And since this was the opening sequence, the show could have run the risk of having many people tune out because of it.

 

23 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Dubbing drives me crazy because I know the people aren't speaking the dubbed language.

Dubbing is the work of the devil. There's an argument to be made that reading subtitles takes you away from what's happening on screen, but I find audio that doesn't match up with a visual much more distracting.

In college I had to watch a lot of foreign-language films and luckily the digital copies that the library had on file were always subtitled, not dubbed. However with two different foreign-language films required for my classes (one in Spanish, one in German) the copies were distorted and the normal audio didn't match up with the video, plus I had to read the subtitles. It was a nightmare and gave me the worst headache, and I don't even mind subtitles that much--I feel like I forget about them once I get into the movie.

My favorite thing is foreign-language silent films. Silent films are already subtitled by necessity but then you have to subtitle the subtitles if you can't read the language the original subtitles are in. And these are all transferred digitally from old silicone so the original foreign-language subtitles can't be edited out. It's wild.

[phantom]

18 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Did his father actually work hard? He definitely put a lot of effort into getting that Merrill Lynch job, but he wasn't very successful once there. Was that because he was coasting or because he wasn't good at selling what he was supposed to be selling?

Once he got bounced from Merrill Lynch, it looked to me like Modesto was deliberately scamming people, and the law finally caught up with him. He brought that on himself—it didn't seem like that job was a boiler room. Or if it was, the other brokers were staying within the letter of the law.

Maybe it doesn't matter, since Modesto wasn't telling his family the truth anyway, and what Andrew saw is what his father wanted him to.

I saw his dad as a hustler. He was always working to convince everyone he was legit and successful. He had his spiel down pat and could convince some people to fork over money. After Merrill Lynch he still talked his way into other job(s) at a legitimate business. He found ways to own a house, buy a fancy car for a son too young to drive, pay for expensive private school and an enviable wardrobe. Even if these were obtained/maintained fraudulently and it was not an admirable way to spend his time, it took a lot to keep the balls in the air.  Once Andrew realized his dad was a fraud, he could suddenly see Modesto furiously paddling underneath the façade and IMO was disgusted that his dad had put so much energy into a life that crumbled so easily. Andrew found people who would give him what he wanted just for being himself (whatever version of himself he was living at the time). It didn't work so well for Andrew in the end either, but I could see him trying to be a better crook than his dad.

[dubbel zout]

That's exactly it, @phantom. Modesto was a hustler.

[MyPeopleAreNordic]

On 3/20/2018 at 5:38 PM, Chaos Theory said:

Andrew was by far the favorite child.  He was singled out for favorite treatment by both parents but especially Modesto.  He got the master bedroom of the family home and the only television.  He was the only one to go to private school.  

I think the three other kids survived as well as they did because they were ignored.  They did however write a book.  

I was just thinking that one of them should write a book, because I'd read it.

Narcissistic parents usually have one golden child; Andrew was Modesto's.  I think that being the golden child of a narcissist can probably be more damaging long-term than being the scapegoat or being ignored.  It must be difficult for the golden child to build up any kind of resilience, coping skills for adult life, etc that the other children in the family dynamic would have had to develop to cope or survive. (Obviously most golden children don't make the choice as adults to be spree killers or manipulative grifters like Andrew. Those choices were all his own.)

This was actually one of my favorite episodes of this season for a couple of reasons. First, it broke the whole "whatever happened to make this boy grow up to be a murderer" is the fault of the mother/mother-son relationship trope that TV and film use so often.  For once, the dad is arguably the one who is shown as the person to be blamed for "creating" the monster rather than the mother.  (Of course, I'm co-signing everything people here have said that Andrew is the one who is 100% at fault despite his childhood; many people have overcome much worse and not murdered anyone. I'm just saying that TV/film often try to find something that the mother did to "cause" their kid to end up they way they did and I was glad to see that boring trope challenged here.)

Second, I think the dialogue in this episode was some of the best in this season and Jon Jon Briones acting was fantastic.  His acting brought out an even better performance in Darren Cris (IMO) and they were just really great together on screen. 

Edited March 22, 2018 by MyPeopleAreNordic

[Surrealist]

1 hour ago, MyPeopleAreNordic said:

Narcissistic parents usually have one golden child; Andrew was Modesto's.  I think that being the golden child of a narcissist can probably be more damaging long-term than being the scapegoat or being ignored.  It must be difficult for the golden child to build up any kind of resilience, coping skills for adult life, etc that the other children in the family dynamic would have had to develop to cope or survive. (Obviously most golden children don't make the choice as adults to be spree killers or manipulative grifters like Andrew. Those choices were all his own.)

 

As many have said, Andrew's siblings probably booked it out of the house as quickly as they could, after graduating from high school.

I'm guessing the siblings knew full well that their father was an asshole and that Andrew was his Golden Boy. They probably kept their heads down, worked their way through school without drawing too much attention for themselves, until they could make their escape. They kept to themselves for the most part and were spared the bullshit.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Surrealist

[SWLinPHX]

On 3/21/2018 at 10:01 AM, lovinbob said:

I was doubtful about the reverse order but it is working for me now. The Andrew who killed Versace is the man we (the public) know, that story is the one we know. The other murders are stories that have not been told as much. I lived in Chicago when Miglin was killed, and I remember that horror, but I didn't know about Jeff and David, and I didn't remember the other man who was killed on the road. I certainly didn't know anything about his upbringing. So the reverse suspense makes sense to me now.

I tend to agree with this. Certainly, different people from the same family can live wildly different lives (eg, the Cunanan sibs), but I don't really think Andrew's upbringing is what made Andrew a psychopathic spree killer. I do think there was value in showing Modesto's abuse/favoritism of Andrew, and his abusive treatment of his wife, because we see there was sociopathic tendencies in the gene pool. 

Yes, but let me ask you this:  Did you see anything about how this was filmed or shot or transitional effects used that it was deliberately intended to be shown in reverse order?  Did you notice any technique that wouldn't make sense if you showed them exactly as they are but in chronological order?  I still say it was no different than taking any miniseries ever made and reversing the episode order (except for the final one, which is back to present day).

[Florinaldo]

14 minutes ago, SWLinPHX said:

Yes, but let me ask you this:  Did you see anything about how this was filmed or shot or transitional effects used that it was deliberately intended to be shown in reverse order?  Did you notice any technique that wouldn't make sense if you showed them exactly as they are but in chronological order?  I still say it was no different than taking any miniseries ever made and reversing the episode order (except for the final one, which is back to present day).

The way they told the story was the way they conceptualized it. First to get the big celebrity murder out of the way and then to start exploring in reverse the events that led up to it. They did not need big "effects" or "techniques", except for chopping up the chronology in some episodes. If they had shown the story in classical chronological order, the response by the viewer would have been vastly different I believe, because it would have been a case of waiting for the murder to occur and seeing a killer grow up from an atypical childhood, but still being a sympathetic youth, to becoming a violent killer. They would have gotten the same reception even if the story had started by the murder and then switched to a big straight flashback.

Telling the story the way they did played on the viewer's responses in a way the standard chronology would not have done. They had to structure the story and make narrative choices that were consistent with their overall concept. Taking a script not designed to that end and simply showing it in reverse would not have worked the same way because it would not have been designed accordingly, unless some major tinkering with the editing was performed and not all scripts would allow for such restructuring.

[lovinbob]

11 hours ago, SWLinPHX said:

Yes, but let me ask you this:  Did you see anything about how this was filmed or shot or transitional effects used that it was deliberately intended to be shown in reverse order?  Did you notice any technique that wouldn't make sense if you showed them exactly as they are but in chronological order?  I still say it was no different than taking any miniseries ever made and reversing the episode order (except for the final one, which is back to present day).

I don't really know but for me it doesn't matter. I appreciate this fairly straightforward but creative and original presentation of the material. I have gotten really exhausted by the now overused device of flashing back, flashing forward, holding back information, etc. (used in shows like How to Get Away with Murder, and The Affair, to name just a couple). For me that has ceased being effective. I don't know if they set out to tell the story in reverse order or if, after the footage was shot, they decided to go backwards, but as I said, it was compelling to me.

Edited March 23, 2018 by lovinbob

[Bruinsfan]

On 3/18/2018 at 9:34 AM, Florinaldo said:

However I think that there can be definite predispositions in us, dictated by biology and genetics, which vary from people even in the same family and contribute to shaping one's personality and decisions, in conjunction with education and rearing. Which would explain why in one group of siblings provided with the same general environment growing up and the same educational resources, one can grow up to be a very talented artist while others can't draw a stick figure to save their lives; or why a sister can be proficient in science while her brother can barely remember the difference bewteen an electron and a proton.

As an adopted kid, I find it interesting that while my strongest talent (that I earn my living with) is one neither of my parents possess even a hint of, my actual personality is extremely similar to that of my mother, whom I've spent more time in the company of than my father or anyone else. I can see things like talents, potential intelligence, and general disposition being primarily genetic, but I think a LOT of how people react to their environment and treat others is learned behavior based on what they see modeled for them by the adults in their lives.

[Spike]

On 3/21/2018 at 6:27 PM, jumper sage said:

I completely disagree.

That’s the great thing about message boards.  

[aradia22]

I did like Gianni's mom. But what's the age difference between him and Donatella? Where was she?

Again, I don't like how just because you can see a pattern of learned behavior from Modesto to Andrew, it seems to be offering an excuse for his behavior. The suits, the specialness, the storytelling, the aggression... The implication of incest/sexual abuse really tipped the scales. I feel like the way they tied in that older man it also felt like they were conflating his loneliness and his issues with relationships with his being gay which isn't true. 

Also, is that how it actually happened? It seemed like Modesto was just one step ahead of the FBI like this was Ferris Bueller or something. Wouldn't they have been at his job and his house? Why was no one covering the back entrance? Or checking for Andrew's car? Or, more importantly, checking at the airport before he was able to get on a plane to Manila. 

I also kept wondering what happened to Andrew's siblings present day and why none of them were in contact with their mom.

[aradia22]

Quote

Did his father actually work hard? He definitely put a lot of effort into getting that Merrill Lynch job, but he wasn't very successful once there. Was that because he was coasting or because he wasn't good at selling what he was supposed to be selling?

Assuming the show would tell us if it wasn't true, he did spent seven or eight years in the Navy (?). My interpretation of it is that he did manage to admirably hustle from humble origins in the Philippines to try and achieve the American Dream. And he did get through night school and training himself to fit in and talk a good game. But after that he couldn't measure up. It's interesting that the career he went for was stockbroker (of course, it was the 80's). I'm not saying he had to open a Thrifty pharmacy but he could have gone into real estate or engineering or some other relatively lucrative job. Because even with an Ivy League degree, playing the stock market is a combination of guessing and gambling. Even if he wasn't outright stealing, no one can guarantee that you'll always make money. Real estate, insurance salesman, car salesman... there are other jobs that are about talking a good game where you don't have to pretend you can guarantee results for something very much out of your control.

[Chaos Theory]

The Versace childhood scene was only ten minutes or so but it showed quite well a huge difference between Cunanan and Gianni.  Gianni’s mother loved him without condition.   It was a short scene but a necessary one since the show has in a way been comparing the two.

If there was more scenes of young Gianni I would see the point of having them speak Italian.  But for a few scenes in a single episode it would be a huge expenditure hiring a team to write the scene in Italian and then get Italian speakers.  And then people would be upset if the accent wasn’t correct or the sentence structure was wrong.  For a ten minute scene it a bigger lose/lose then it should be.

[helenamonster]

On 8/14/2018 at 11:59 PM, aradia22 said:

But what's the age difference between him and Donatella? Where was she?

I also kept wondering what happened to Andrew's siblings present day and why none of them were in contact with their mom.

Per Wikipedia Gianni was born in '46 and Donatella was born in '55, so they were 9 years apart. It was hard to tell exactly how old Gianni was in the flashback but Donatella either wasn't born yet or was a baby/toddler.

It seems like the other Cunanan children bounced when they got the chance and never looked back. The mother was definitely a victim of Modesto's abusive, controlling behavior as well, but it can be hard for children who grow up in that environment--where they are constantly shoved to the side in favor of just one of them--to resent the other parent for not doing a better job of sticking up for them. As an adult who had perfectly normal parents I think it's easy for me to say they should cut the mom some slack, but it's hard to be objective/rational about this sort of thing when you live it. 

16 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

If there was more scenes of young Gianni I would see the point of having them speak Italian.  But for a few scenes in a single episode it would be a huge expenditure hiring a team to write the scene in Italian and then get Italian speakers.  And then people would be upset if the accent wasn’t correct or the sentence structure was wrong.  For a ten minute scene it a bigger lose/lose then it should be.

Trust, another FX show that aired this year, had huge chunks of some episodes in Italian. I don't think hiring native Italian actors is that difficult, nor is hiring maybe one bilingual Italian/English writer to do those scenes.