The Beck, Theresa Duncan/Jeremy Blake story continues to evolve and somehow get even more bizarre and even a little scary (if Scientologists creep you out).
In short, Duncan and Blake were two artists that died this past summer (both alleged suicides) and shortly before their deaths, they claimed that the Church of Scientology were harassing and following them. In a very recent Vanity Fair article, Duncan claimed she had information that L.A. songwriter Beck wanted to leave Scientology and this info put her life at risk.
She also claimed that Beck was to star in her film project “Alice Underground” which allegedly has something to do with the “Alice In Wonderland” story.
“Beck and I met repeatedly to discuss the film,” Duncan wrote to a friend in early 2003 according to the VF piece. Beck countered and denied it all (more on that on our original story).
“We never met to discuss doing her film,” Beck e-mailed Vanity Fair. “I did read her script eventually.” But he said he never agreed to be in her movie.
Duncan also alleged that Beck wanted to desperately leave Scientology and he of course totally denied this.”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.” The film project then fell apart and Duncan was distraught (she believed the Church of Scientology had intimidated Beck to renounce participating in the movie).
However, and this is the most recent twist, blogger Emmanuel Richards has a good memory and he is pointing out a 2003 Italian interview that states quite the opposite. The piece, roughly translated, talks about Beck set to embark on his first film project and the fact that John Waters had wanted him to act in an earlier project, but the timing wasn’t right.
Emmanuel writes: “my 2003 blog archive, which has a mention of a Beck interview for the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera, in which he says that he’s about to shoot a movie inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It sounds a lot like the Theresa Duncan movie that he doesn’t remember today as an advanced project. Is Beck’s memory a tad scrambled?”
From the 2003 interview:
What about [your debut] movie? “It will be full of energy and full of characters: some kind of Alice in Wonderland set in the 70s. 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.”
Sounds like Duncan’s idea, no?
According to the Vulture blog the controversy is ongoing.
Blog SoMA reports that the Vanity Fair article’s original author, John Connolly, was pulled off the story, and it was given to Sales, who’s the ex-wife of Father Frank Morales, a friend to Duncan and Blake who was there when Duncan’s body was discovered in her East Village apartment.
Man, this is a weird-ass and surreal story.