Vulgar Favors
The Dark Tale of Versace's Murderer
Vulgar Favors is not a new book, but it certainly has a new relevance. Maureen Orth’s investigative tome from 1999 explores the dark and twisted world of Andrew Cunanan, and his killing spree which ended with the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace. Now, Ryan Murphy is using the book as the basis of his upcoming FX series American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
At over 500 pages, Vulgar Favors could quickly go dry if it wasn’t for Orth’s extremely detailed research and exciting narrative. As a veteran magazine writer, the scandalous tone helps propel the reader from Cunanan’s childhood as the little prince of a middle-class family to his fake grandiose identities constructed for the gay enclaves of San Diego and San Francisco to the final psychological collapse that leads to the death of five men.
For better or worse, Orth is lurid in her descriptions. In fact, today some of the depictions of gay life could be seen as, shall we say, regressive. Andrew’s seedy world is depicted like a festering wound: calculated social climbing, drug addiction, extreme vanity, and violent, hardcore sex. Once he lost all control, law enforcement was ill-prepared to deal with someone from such a shrouded and private community of hustlers and addicts. This led to the prolonged manhunt and bizarre news cycle we are now familiar with today.
However, despite its flaws, it certainly is an engrossing portrait of Cunanan. Never sympathetic, but certainly thorough in creating a profile, Orth gives a sense of dimensionality to this disturbed, mysterious man. It makes sense that Ryan Murphy uses this book as the basis for a television series since the episodic telling of this saga is perfectly suited to television. Orth’s original portrait will surely have a new flair and depth when Darren Criss takes over the role of Cunanan in American Crime Story, which is set to premiere on January 17.
If you like the idea of this book, or if you want additional material on the topic, take a look at Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story by Gary Indiana. Also published in 1999, Indiana muses on the material by constructing a book that is half psychologically-thrilling novel and half cold, detached cultural critique. Indiana lays out less facts than Orth, and instead ruminates on Cunanan and the society that surrounded him. The best way to sum up the book is to quote the author himself, when he coldly writes, “America loves a successful sociopath.”
