| theresa duncan | the golden suicides | jeremy blake | gus van sant | barnsley gardens |

No one who spoke at Blake’s memorial service that evening at the Corcoran said anything about Theresa Duncan. Almost no one mentioned her name. It happened to be her birthday, October 26. No one talked about the dark stories and wild speculation that had emerged after news of the couple’s “double suicide” hit the media. There had been reports they had become “paranoid,” obsessed with conspiracy theories, believing they were being harassed by Scientologists. The Internet filled up with conjecture about government plots and murder. Something about their story seemed to capture the modern imagination, if only because no one knew exactly why two such accomplished and attractive people had chosen to make their exit.

Excerpt Taken From http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/01/suicides200801

Photo: Patrick McMullan, Getty ImagesAlmost besting Morgan Spurlock’s supposed discovery of Osama bin Laden as 2007’s most insane pop-cultural crossover, Vanity Fair is reporting that Beck might have played a tangential role in the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and her boyfriend, Jeremy Blake. In January’s issue, Nancy Jo Sales traces the last steps of the couple leading up to their deaths this past July. According to Sales, Duncan was devastated after the singer reneged on a promise to star in Alice Underground, a film she was directing. “Beck and I met repeatedly to discuss the film,” she e-mailed a friend in 2003. But when he backed out later, she blamed it on his being a Scientologist and claimed members of his church repeatedly harassed her and Blake. The VF story says she complained about late-night hang-up phone calls and weird men staking out the couple’s house.

“We never met to discuss doing her film,” Beck writes in an e-mail to VF, referring to Duncan as “a passing acquaintance.” Weird, though, because Duncan had pictures of herself and Blake enjoying a day at the beach with Beck and his wife, Marissa Ribisi, purportedly taken in 2004. VF even published one of them. Duncan reportedly said that Beck had told her he wanted to leave the Church of Scientology and thought starring in her movie might be a way to do it. “Beck really, really tried to get away…using going to New York to be in Alice Underground…He told me he wanted to leave the cult desperately.” Wrong again, says Beck: “That’s ridiculous. Totally false…Had we been closer and discussed anything as personal as religion, I would have only had positive things to say about Scientology.”But now blogger Emmanuelle Richard points us to a translated 2003 Italian interview with Beck that seems to undermine his credibility a little. Here he is talking excitedly about making his acting debut in a movie that sounds a lot like Duncan’s Alice Underground: “It will be full of energy and full of characters: some kind of Alice in Wonderland set in the seventies. It still doesn’t have a title. The director is a friend of mine, and it will be her directorial debut. But I trust her. We will begin shooting in the fall.”

Excerpt Taken From http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/12/how_well_did_jeremy_blake.html

Fall is in the air yes, dear New York readers, we do have seasons in Los Angeles, but that beachy summer mystery known as Theresa Duncan continues to haunt our imagination.Is she alive and well and working as a prostituteWhy has Duncanologist seaword who, following our lead, exposed Wit’s literary peccadillos vanished into the ether, shuttering the blog and neglecting to answer email from fans Btw, if you really want to read that page, you can here. Has famed Duncanologist Kate Coe of FBLA, who hasn’t posted her keen insights here or elsewhere lately, also lost interest and vanished Will this blogger soon follow suitWas Jeremy Blake really the rear-ending type And if, so can we tell from this conversationI’ll let Dream’s End work on 1-4 and leave 5 for you to solve.

We’re glad the kids over at New York magazine read this blog, but would it kill them to hire a fact checker From the “Comments” page in the September 3-10 issue:David Amsden’s “Conspiracy of Two” August 27, about the suicides of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, fed the army of bloggers who are obsessed with the subject. Most merely wanted it understood that they know more about the case than Amsden does, but he was also chided for depicting New York as a “hostile but ultimately rewarding environment for an artist,” while L.A. is “often the opposite: easy and glittering until you begin to suspect it is all maybe a cruel illusion.” The blog Theresa Duncan Control responded: “This is the kind of shit that makes me wish we could deport every single New Yorker. Let’s start by rounding them up in Santa Monica, where they clog up our sidewalk cafs and steal our rent-controlled apartments.” Yes, we did say that.But our name is Theresa Duncan CENTRAL. You know, like that little patch of grass you guys call CENTRAL ParkWe don’t know who the hell you hyperlinked to, but it’s sure not our site.This really makes us question Amsden’s collective vision/exploding grill story. For all we know some weasel top editor inserted that at the last minute to add color.Yes, we do know more about Theresa Duncan than you do.In the absence of a copy/research department listed on the New York masthead, we blame assistant managing editor Denise Penny. Tell us who’s really at fault Penny, and we’ll take you off our shit list.Seriously though, we love you guys. Just stay the hell off our beaches, okay Rockaway, yes. Zuma, no.

A recent story about Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake in the Independent relies heavily on an interview with Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols, who knew the couple. Theresa liked to tout her rock bona fides on her blog, but check out this Wit post hat tip to Poussin on the Chelsea Hotel:If you doubt the Chelsea’s status as the Haunted Indian Burial Ground of Baby Boomer hipster culture, consider that no significant counterculture has been produced by Western white middle class youth since Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend on this very spot and died of a heroin overdose in Rikers prison in the middle of the East River shortly afterward.Did you catch the error Sid Vicious did not die in prison at all. He died in a Greenwich Village apartment after being sprung from Rikers. Did Duncan not know this Was she just posing a a punk fan or did she carelessly copy this blurb from another source

Excerpt Taken From http://theresaduncancentral.blogspot.com

Topic – Theresa Duncan And Jeremy Blake