Remember the very bizarre, very tragic and sad story of artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan who both committed suicide ? (She died of an overdose thought to be suicide, but never proved concretely, and a distraught Blake took his own life by swimming in the Atlantic near Rockaway beach until he drowned).
Blake made the pixelated visuals for both Beck’s Sea Change cover, the album’s “Round the Bend” video and created the hallucinogenic dream sequence visuals for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love.”
Though the couple weren’t actually Scientology members, they claimed that L. Ron Hubbard’s religion was harassing and following them up until the time of their deaths. Then the story started involve L.A. junkshop singer Beck, a Scientologist who apparently wanted to leave the religious sect, at least according to an article in Newsweek that alleged Beck had told Duncan this information and knowing this info put her at risk.
Apparently the bizarre story is ongoing and now a new Vanity Fair article in the January issue bares bares e-mails written by Duncan alleging Beck pulled out of her beloved movie project, “Alice Underground” and implying that doing so made her distraught and suicidal.
“Beck and I met repeatedly to discuss the film,” Duncan wrote to a friend in early 2003.
But Duncan said the Los Angeles-based Beck backed out, fearing that his Scientologist handlers wouldn’t like the movie, Vanity Fair reported.
“[Beck] really, really tried to get away . . . [by] using going to NY to be in ‘Alice Underground,’ ” Duncan e-mailed a friend in late 2006.”He told me he wanted to leave the cult desperately, and this what they do when someone knows that.”
Beck is denying all of it. “That’s ridiculous. Totally false. We never met to discuss the film,” Beck said. “I did explain to her I wasn’t looking to act right then, and with the album, tour schedule, and a baby on the way, it wouldn’t be feasible.”
This story keeps getting weirder and weirder.
