Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
DGA QUARTERLY 47 pathic monster. And the other story is the way [Cunanan's early murders] were written off as gay-on-gay crimes. The police maybe weren't equipped to figure out what was happening and maybe didn't take it as seriously as they could have." Minahan understands the tightrope walk that demands a balance between plausible fiction and hard-boiled evidence. "We're dra- matists," he says. "We have a sense of what these people's voices are, the things they were interested in, the hurts they had. You try to dramatize all of that around circumstances and events that you know actually happened. With Versace, I felt an obligation to honor these characters and tell the story as best we could in the way that we reimagined it." In making Assassination, one of the key challenges was dramatizing moments that could have been wit- nessed only by killer and victim. The writer Tom Rob Smith has al- luded to "tiny points of truth" and trying to "connect the tissue be- tween them," such as the created conversations between Cunanan and Lee Miglin (played by Mike Farrell) when they were alone in the Chicago businessman's apartment the night he was murdered. Episodes directed by Minahan feature extensive private dia- logue between Cunanan and architect David Madson. Minahan says, "Through Maureen Orth's research and our own research, we tried to put ourselves in Andrew Cunanan's shoes and figure out Daniel Minahan, standing left, directed episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace that focused squarely on murderer Andrew Cunanan, and had an exact replica made of the houseboat Cunanan hid in; director Lesli Linka Glatter, above, says she discovered in tackling The Menendez Murders that "things are not what they appear to be." or try to imagine what might have happened when Cunanan took David hostage and went on the road before he murdered him." Minahan worked with Criss to shape a subtext for the actor's chilling performance. "Andrew was a fantasist, but he believes all those lies," Minahan says. "Rather than have Darren play them as CONTINUED ON PAGE 74 PHOTOS: (TOP & BOTTOM) JUSTIN LUBIN/NBC; (MIDDLE) PHOTOFEST