Suicide Brings Van Sant and Easton Ellis Together

As Seen on the Web - Thursday October 15, 2009

Double-barrellers to join forces on new drama

Sad times are known to pull people together, and two unlikely candidates - film-maker Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis, united only by their two-part surnames - have been drawn close by a mysterious double suicide which they plan to commit to celluloid.

Inspired by a Vanity Fair article titled The Golden Suicides, the pair will recount the death pact between artist lovers Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake who killed themselves within days of each other in 2007.

Van Sant, having piqued the Academy's interest with his gay-rights biopic Milk, is currently working on morality tale Restless for Columbia Pictures, which will star Tim Burton's new Alice Mia Wasikowska. He will co-write the Golden Suicides project with Easton Ellis - who follows his most recent film outing The Informers, with an adaptation of Lunar Park due in 2011 - but so far neither is attached to direct.

The story of the star-crossed lovers who took the noughties' digital art world by storm, is one fraught with mystery and delusion. Popular within the New York and Californian art scenes, the pair were known for their work on videogames and new-media art-work and they were both riding a wave of success when they died.

Closer inspection of their lives revealed they were beleaguered by money worries and enveloped by a web of paranoia, with the couple believing they were being stalked by Scientologists and that government organisations were conspiring against them.

Read the full Golden Suicides article here.

E.Phillips