Last fall, we picked up a story about Gus Van Sant and Bret Easton Ellis teaming up for a film about the suicides of Theresa Duncan and multimedia artist/former Beck collaborator Jeremy Blake three summers ago. Though it was believed that Van Sant was co-writing the script with Ellis at the time, Ellis has now clarified the facts and provided a handful of intriguing details about the project.
At the tail end of a lengthy interview with Vice, Ellis said that Van Sant is producing the film, currently titled The Golden Suicides, but is not officially signed on to direct at this stage. As for the script, Ellis described how both David Amsden’s article in New York Magazine and being “involved with someone crazy” inspired his interest in the story:
[I]t resonated with me in terms of what happens when you’re hooked up with someone who’s losing their mind, but you love them and their world becomes yours.
Ellis says the script takes on Blake’s point of view, rather than Duncan’s, saying the film is “really Jeremy Blake’s journey” and that it is an “incredibly sympathetic portrait of him.”
So how did he get producers onboard for a non-franchise, “doomed romantic” flick?
Literally, this is how it sold with one of the producers, to get financing for it: ‘Who wants to see a movie about two people who kill themselves?’ And then the other producer said, ‘Well, they were hot.’
Check out the full Vice interview for more details from Ellis, and be sure to read the NY Magazine or Vanity Fair articles on Duncan and Blake for a glimpse into their fascinating story.