Sook-Yin Lee on adapting Paying For It — her ex's bestselling graphic memoir about sex work

25:14Sook-Yin Lee: Why she adapted her ex’s memoir about paying for sex

The story behind Sook-Yin Lee's new film, Paying For It, is complex, to say the least. "It was a very difficult puzzle to solve," Lee tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "It took me years."

Firstly, the movie is autofictional, drawing from Lee's own memories, but it's also an adaptation of her ex-boyfriend's book of the same name. Paying For It is based on the bestselling graphic memoir by acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, whom Lee is still close friends with. In the book, Brown shares his experience of hiring sex workers after what Lee calls the "catalytic moment" when she asked if they could open up their relationship.

"I loved it," Lee says about her first time reading Brown's memoir. "I'm a big fan of Chester. He had been working in autobiography before, so I was like, 'Yay! I made it into one of his comics.' And then I was like, 'Oh, this is complicated. Oh, jeez.'"

The Vancouver-born Lee rose to fame as a MuchMusic VJ in the '90s before hosting the CBC Radio program Definitely Not the Opera, and transitioning to a successful career as a musician, actor and filmmaker.

As a young person in Vancouver, she says many of her friends were renegotiating their romantic relationships beyond a monogamous arrangement. When she landed the gig at MuchMusic and moved to Toronto, she started meeting interesting new people and "developing crushes." But her introverted boyfriend was on a different trajectory.

In 1996, they opted to open up their relationship rather than break up. Lee began dating other people and Brown remained celibate for three years. It wasn't until 1999 that he started exploring the option of paying for sex.

"The book is really myopically from his perspective," Lee says. "He had the wherewithal to treat the sex workers that he visited with respect, and he was an excellent tipper. Like he is an example of the best client you could be…. He also witnessed the lack of labour rights that sex workers have to contend with in their life."

In the book's lengthy appendices, Brown advocates for the rights of sex workers and argues for the decriminalization of sex work. He also draws a parallel between sex work advocacy and the fight for queer liberation. While these ideas deeply resonated with Lee, she knew her movie had to be entertaining, so she spent years thinking about how to adapt that part of the story into a compelling three-act structure.

"I wanted to, in the movie, bring the sex workers to life," she says. "I needed to figure out how to address the most important aspects of his argument, but then also couch it within compelling characters — flawed people who go through transformations.

"I wanted to tell a good story that was true and tender. I'm interested in relationships. I didn't want to bash people over the head with a politic. I wanted to be able to present questions and have people debate amongst themselves about what they think relationships constitute, if there's wiggle room in their own lives [and] what they think of paying for sex."

The full interview with Sook-Yin Lee is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. She also discusses her early work as a MuchMusic VJ, and how she struggled to deal with the slow cultural shift from alternative music to boy bands. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Sook-Yin Lee produced by Lise Hosein.