Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake

Theresa Duncan comes from humble beginnings; her mother was a grocery store clerk and her father worked as a factory drone. Jeremy Blakes’s father died of AIDS when he was 17. Theresa aned Jeremy meet in 1994 admist Washington's punk rock scene. They move to New York City. Theresa gets a job as a receptionist at Magnet Interactive, a CD-ROM company. She pitches an idea to one of the executives, a computer game aimed exclusively at girls. This has never been done before. The idea becomes reality and the final product is lauded by Entertainment Weekly and various gaming magazines. Theresa is famous, while Jeremy starts to make a name for himself as the creator of digital art paintings. Theresa and Jeremy collaborate on an animated film, HISTORY OF GLAMOUR, that is a hit at the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Everybody wants them. Gallery owners and the cultural elite regard them with great interest. They are a brilliant couple. Theresa lands a two-picture deal with Fox Studios in Hollywood and begins shopping her screenplay, ALICE UNDERGROUND, about a rock star who is kidnapped by a gang of teenagers. She claims that musician Beck, a confirmed Scientologist, is very interested in playing the main role. Jeremy is also making a splash in Tinsel Town, creating a dream sequence piece that would be featured in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film PUNCH DRUNK LOVE. His next project is to direct Beck's latest video for MTV. Theresa and Jeremy move to Los Angeles in 2002, staying temporarily at the Chateau Marmont Hotel before settling into a charming bungalow in Venice, California. Theresa is having trouble getting studio executives to produce her movie. She becomes convinced that Scientologists, and Tom Cruise in particular have sabotaged the ALICE UNDERGROUND project. She also believes that Scientologists are spying on them, collaborating with the CIA to have them removed from the country. Jeremy believes her. The phone rings and rings, but when they answer it, nobody is there. Then they find a dead cat on their roof; it is the work of the Scientologists, an omen of things to come. Theresa approaches a neighbor and asks her if she would like to join them in their new club – a club where old men would fuck them up the ass. The neighbor declines. Then Theresa calls another neighbor a whore. Soon the neighbors form a petition to have Theresa and Jeremy evicted from the neighborhood. They return to New York City and, with the help of a radical priest who believes in conspiracy theories, move into a church rectory in the East Village. But they are still being watched. Theresa and Jeremy begin attending church services conducted by the radical priest who claims that the government is covering up what really happened on September 11. Jeremy sends rambling emails to all of his friends, decrying the Scientologists and their collusion with Vice President Dick Cheney. Jeremy writes a 27 page treatise detailing the machinations of the Church of Scientology, listing film director Francis Ford Coppola as being heavily involved in a smear campaign to damage Theresa’s reputation because she wrote a negative review of his daughter’s movie, LOST IN TRANSLATION. The treatise is in preparation for a lawsuit Theresa and Jeremy are going to file against the Church of Scientology. Jeremy sends out more emails explaining these plans and friends grow concerned. Jeremy buys a gun and is interviewed by British television for a special on impresario Malcolm McClaren, of whom Jeremy is doing a portrait. More emails. Theresa and Jeremy begin to shun others they feel are against them or who have betrayed them. During the summer of 2007 Theresa takes a deadly cocktail of Tylenol PM and Benadryl with champagne and successfully kills herself. Her last blog entry is a quote from Kafka. Friends take turns keeping Jeremy company, fearing for his safety. Blake appears calm and emails everyone about his excitement for an upcoming show. The day before he is to leave for Detroit to attend Theresa’s funeral, he walks naked into the Atlantic Ocean off Rockaway Beach in Queens and drowns. In October of 2009 it is revealed on the celebrity blog Perez Hilton that American writer Bret Easton Ellis has been tapped by Hollywood to write a screenplay about the doomed couple, with director Gus Van Zandt attached to the project.

Below: Jeremy Blake’s piece for the film PUNCH DRUNK LOVE