BunnySkull
Silver Meritorious Patron
Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan at home in LA.
This story has fascinated me ever since their deaths. I had briefly encountered the couple years previously in NYC, and the stories of paranoia and crazy behavior in their final year NEVER made any sense to me. It went contrary to everything, I and others, knew about the couple. As this blog story about them even notes, the smart, urbane, witty, literate writings of Duncan are incredibly hard to contrast to the reports about their erratic and paranoid behavior.
Here is the new post on Gawker about the couple, their suicides, and the scientology connection that has always loomed large over it. (Beck is involved, Jeremy Blake did the artwork for his second album cover. Beck was supposed to star in a movie Teresa was writing and directing and they stated they were going to help Beck leave the cult - that he desperately wanted to get away from Scientology and LA.)
For those not familiar with the story, here is the introduction to it in the Gawker post:
One new tidbit I was not aware of but certainly adds to the Scientology cloud surrounding the story:
1. The story Vanity Fair did about the couple (titled: The Golden Suicides) was in part written (though he had his named removed) by Thomas Connelly, who was revealed by Rathbun and Rinder to be a Scientology plant at Vanity Fair. He was paid by the cult to pump Andrew Morton for info. about his upcoming Tom Cruise bio. He was the first author on the story for VF piece, but later down the road refused an "additional reporting" credit on the story. He was the primary contact and interviewer for several sources in the story - which while it covers the Scientology angle, definitely pushes the idea this was just a sad case of dual-mental illness destroying two lives. (Rather than the cult slowly harassing two people to the point of suicide and insanity.)
2. Another interesting point was that Blake and Duncan became convinced a circle of people at Paramount were working with the Scientology to sabotage them. Of the group named, only Beck was a known Scientologist. However, one of the people named is P.T. Andersen?! Odd, especially when you consider years later his interest in the cult and its history was so strong that he wrote and directed "The Master." (I do not think Andersen is a Scientologist, but I do wonder what he witnessed/was exposed to in LA that possibly troubled or triggered his interest in the subject to the point he made "The Master."?)
Anyway, this is one of those stories that will drive you crazy the more you read about it. If it wasn't for the Scientology angle it might be easy to write off Blake and Duncan as two people slowing giving into a paranoia and suffering from mental illness (as rare as it is for two people to share a mental illness). But I'm sure the same thing could have easily been said about Paulette Cooper if the truth had not been revealed by the documents in the FBI raid that showed the extent the cult went to to drive her crazy, monitor her every move, make her paranoid and frame her for crimes. Scientology just as to long a track record of doing exactly these types of things to just write it off, which is what makes this story so frustrating.
I never give the cult the benefit of the doubt. When Scientology is thrown in the mix we know we probably haven't yet seen the bottom of the barrel when it comes to their abusive behavior and crimes against what it views as its critics, and esp. against people who they think may jeopardize the membership of one of their big celebrities.
I only hope if this story of their deaths keeps getting attention and articles written about it that one day some people from the cult who know something might step forward, in these days of mass defections it seems more and more likely that could happen.
I'm not saying all of Duncan and Blake's accusations or fears were true, but I do think there is something to their stories. I hope one day a cult member or PI involved with investigating or surveilling the couple in LA will open up about what exactly happened and to what extent the cult was involved in harassing and monitoring them. Since cult members tend to live in a bubble and constant hamster wheel of Hill 10's, they may not even realize who Duncan and Blake were, that they are now dead, or what they were involved in was any big deal. Maybe seeing a post about this will job some memories of an ex-OSA member who can shed some light on this tragic couple.
http://blackbag.gawker.com/the-scientology-conspiracy-theory-about-two-artists-go-1691694049
This story has fascinated me ever since their deaths. I had briefly encountered the couple years previously in NYC, and the stories of paranoia and crazy behavior in their final year NEVER made any sense to me. It went contrary to everything, I and others, knew about the couple. As this blog story about them even notes, the smart, urbane, witty, literate writings of Duncan are incredibly hard to contrast to the reports about their erratic and paranoid behavior.
Here is the new post on Gawker about the couple, their suicides, and the scientology connection that has always loomed large over it. (Beck is involved, Jeremy Blake did the artwork for his second album cover. Beck was supposed to star in a movie Teresa was writing and directing and they stated they were going to help Beck leave the cult - that he desperately wanted to get away from Scientology and LA.)
For those not familiar with the story, here is the introduction to it in the Gawker post:
In July 2007, the artists Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan ended their own lives. Both had grown erratic and paranoid in the preceding months, and on the 10th, Blake found his longtime romantic partner dead in their East Village apartment, overdosed on a lethal cocktail of whiskey and Tylenol PM. One week later, he drowned himself in the Atlantic Ocean at Rockaway Beach.
The official story, forwarded in a flurry of media coverage of the so-called "golden suicides," tells of folie à deux—a shared delusion, brought on perhaps by career-related stress and a lot of bourbon and champagne, and manifested in abruptly burned bridges with formerly close friends, bizarre "loyalty oaths," and an increasingly monomaniacal preoccupation with conspiracies, especially those related to the Church of Scientology. But alongside this, there exists a second vague narrative: that the shadowy forces that so captured the imaginations of Duncan and Blake in their final years were not merely a troubling obsession, but an active player in their deaths.
One new tidbit I was not aware of but certainly adds to the Scientology cloud surrounding the story:
1. The story Vanity Fair did about the couple (titled: The Golden Suicides) was in part written (though he had his named removed) by Thomas Connelly, who was revealed by Rathbun and Rinder to be a Scientology plant at Vanity Fair. He was paid by the cult to pump Andrew Morton for info. about his upcoming Tom Cruise bio. He was the first author on the story for VF piece, but later down the road refused an "additional reporting" credit on the story. He was the primary contact and interviewer for several sources in the story - which while it covers the Scientology angle, definitely pushes the idea this was just a sad case of dual-mental illness destroying two lives. (Rather than the cult slowly harassing two people to the point of suicide and insanity.)
2. Another interesting point was that Blake and Duncan became convinced a circle of people at Paramount were working with the Scientology to sabotage them. Of the group named, only Beck was a known Scientologist. However, one of the people named is P.T. Andersen?! Odd, especially when you consider years later his interest in the cult and its history was so strong that he wrote and directed "The Master." (I do not think Andersen is a Scientologist, but I do wonder what he witnessed/was exposed to in LA that possibly troubled or triggered his interest in the subject to the point he made "The Master."?)
Anyway, this is one of those stories that will drive you crazy the more you read about it. If it wasn't for the Scientology angle it might be easy to write off Blake and Duncan as two people slowing giving into a paranoia and suffering from mental illness (as rare as it is for two people to share a mental illness). But I'm sure the same thing could have easily been said about Paulette Cooper if the truth had not been revealed by the documents in the FBI raid that showed the extent the cult went to to drive her crazy, monitor her every move, make her paranoid and frame her for crimes. Scientology just as to long a track record of doing exactly these types of things to just write it off, which is what makes this story so frustrating.
I never give the cult the benefit of the doubt. When Scientology is thrown in the mix we know we probably haven't yet seen the bottom of the barrel when it comes to their abusive behavior and crimes against what it views as its critics, and esp. against people who they think may jeopardize the membership of one of their big celebrities.
I only hope if this story of their deaths keeps getting attention and articles written about it that one day some people from the cult who know something might step forward, in these days of mass defections it seems more and more likely that could happen.
I'm not saying all of Duncan and Blake's accusations or fears were true, but I do think there is something to their stories. I hope one day a cult member or PI involved with investigating or surveilling the couple in LA will open up about what exactly happened and to what extent the cult was involved in harassing and monitoring them. Since cult members tend to live in a bubble and constant hamster wheel of Hill 10's, they may not even realize who Duncan and Blake were, that they are now dead, or what they were involved in was any big deal. Maybe seeing a post about this will job some memories of an ex-OSA member who can shed some light on this tragic couple.
http://blackbag.gawker.com/the-scientology-conspiracy-theory-about-two-artists-go-1691694049