Ghost of a flea

The movie is really Jeremy Blake’s journey. We meet him before he even knows Theresa Duncan. I really related to Jeremy, and I love his work, and I kind of fell in love with him. The movie is from his point of view. It’s not from her point of view. It is an incredibly sympathetic portrait of him, and I think of her, too. Part of the problem with the original magazine piece is that it’s kind of gossipy and a little salacious at times, and it concentrates on things that I’m not that interested in. But this is a heartfelt script. If anyone is thinking that I’m doing some kind of, like, “Bret Easton Ellis” take on it, like it’s a satire or stand-up, they are completely wrong. It’s a very heartfelt love story.

[Vice] That’s where her theories about a Scientologist plot against her come into it.

[Ellis] The Scientologists. And then she began to build this huge narrative as to why she wasn’t successful in the film industry. I’m haunted by it. I don’t know why it resonated with me so much.

You explained it pretty well. It was the relationship that you’d been having, and your experience with The Informers. That could really put you in a place where the Blake-Duncan story would hit you hard.

And they were hot.

They were hot. Yeah.

Literally, this is how it sold with one of the producers, to get financing for it. “Who wants to see a movie about two people who kill themselves?” And then the other producer said, “Well, they were hot.”

Oh, fuck.

And he said, “Really? Well, where’s the pictures of them? Ah. Yeah.”