If you haven’t already read Vanity Fair’s intriguing and sad account of the double suicide of artist Jeremy Blake and his longtime girlfriend Theresa Duncan, I highly suggest you check it out. Long story short, Theresa Duncan, who was a successful producer of CD-ROM video games and the writer/director of the film The History of Glamour, inexplicably committed suicide in the summer of 2007. Exactly one week later, Blake, who collaborated with Beck on artwork and music videos for Sea Change, did the same by leaving his clothes/wallet at Rockaway Beach in Queens and walking into the ocean.
Okay, about that headline: Cinematical reports that Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) and Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) are writing a feature film about Blake and Duncan, which is based on VF’s article, “The Golden Suicides.”
Beck’s alleged relationship with the couple is particularly interesting. According to the VF piece and other articles I read while obsessing over this story a while back, Beck was set to star in a film Duncan was making called Alice Underground, but he abruptly bowed out of the project (Beck denies that he was ever set to appear in the film), which some claim inspired a downward spiral of paranoia and conspiracy theories that ultimately contributed to the couple’s tragic deaths.
Will Beck be written into the script, as well? And if so, who will play him?
There are dozens of twists and turns to this story and some of the conspiracy theories might even hold some weight, IMO, so this movie would be pretty hard to screw up. In fact, Duncan’s blog was mysteriously updated twice after her death, so there might be even more of the plot yet to be uncovered.