Telefon Talking

Leo McGovern interviewed Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv about Charlie Cooper's death for Antigravity. It's a pretty frank interview, and Eustis doesn't pull punches discussing the possibility that Cooper's death was a suicide:

Are you mad at Charlie at all?

Sure. I like to tell myself, to give myself comfort in a very selfish way, that it’s a natural response to something like this. But I can’t really be mad at him because the Medical Examiner, for instance—I’ll tell you this, since everybody is wondering—ruled inconclusively. They couldn’t rule that it was a suicide, because there wasn’t enough evidence to indicate that it actually was. It very well could’ve been an accident and that’s what the Medical Examiner thinks at this time. We get the toxicology report in a week and it’s going to stay between me and his family. If it wasn’t intentional, then I’m a lot sadder, but I’ll take comfort in knowing he wasn’t trying to take an easy way out of life’s problems. But, if it was intentional (which I don’t think it was), then yeah I’m pissed off because it’s a bullshit way of dealing with life’s problems—problems that everybody has: girl problems, money problems. Fuck, everybody has those problems. To despair when you have problems is the height of folly, because despair is only for people who know the end beyond any doubt. If you know for a fact that it’s going to end badly, then you can despair, but nobody ever knows that everything is going to completely fall apart and your life is going to end. For that reason I would be pissed off if the Medical Examiner comes back and rules it a suicide.