In a cocoon of their making

Duncan and Blake fell in love when he began creating art for her discs. An animated mockumentary they collaborated on with artist Karen Kilimnik, "The History of Glamour," was accepted into the prestigious 2000 Whitney Biennial. And in Hollywood, some agents and producers referred to Duncan, attempting to mount her first feature film, "Alice Underground," as "the female Michel Gondry" for her intricate visual style.

"It's disappointing the film didn't happen," said producer Anthony Bregman, who tried to get Duncan's movie made, "because it would have revealed the real depth of her talent."

Blake was a pioneering art star whose lush digital paintings blurred boundaries between animation, film and computer art. His work is in the permanent collections of museums including Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was in three Whitney Biennials.

The artist created a hallucinogenic dream sequence for writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's 2002 romantic comedy "Punch-Drunk Love" and collaborated with Nashville poet-rocker Dave Berman of the band Silver Jews on a 2005 film, "Sodium Fox." Binstock recalls the artist as a "visionary" whose art connected digital media to painterly tradition. "You could experience a video as you would a painting. It's poetic, abstract, very rich work," he said.

But several former friends and colleagues also describe a darker side of Blake and Duncan.

Bradford Schlei, head of production for Muse Productions, optioned the rights to George Pelicanos' "Nick's Trip" that was to have been Blake's feature film directing debut. The project stalled just before a deal with Paramount Vantage was being negotiated, however, when Blake accused Schlei's then girlfriend and the project's screenwriter of being Scientologists. (Schlei says neither he nor the other two are affiliated with the church.)

"It was complete and utter craziness," Schlei said. "Theresa sent around e-mails, delusional things. They'd say, 'You're a Scientologist, your girlfriend's a Scientologist, we don't want to be involved with you.'

"The thing that ended our relationship was when Jeremy said [my girlfriend] was trying to ruin Theresa's reputation. None of this ever had to do with Jeremy. It was always about Theresa and her film career." Several other sources confirmed Schlei's account, recalling that Duncan's e-mails grew wilder toward the end of her life.