Paying For It - Director Sook-Yin Lee

PAYING FOR IT is a live-action adaptation of acclaimed alternative-cartoonist Chester Brown’s best-selling graphic novel. In the late 90s, Chester and Sonny are a long-term, committed, romantic couple. When Sonny wants to redefine their relationship, Chester, an introverted cartoonist, starts sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process. PAYING FOR IT is about love, sex and non-monogamy for adults. It deals with the complicated subject of the exchange for sex-work versus the complications of romantic love. The movie celebrates the vibrant underground comic and zine era through the experiences of cartoonist Chester Brown. PAYING FOR IT was Executive Produced by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus) Our guest on this edition of Cinemafile is director Sook-Yin Lee who goal with the film was to connect the past with the present by bringing together emerging comic actors, performance artists, authors, activists and multimedia creators in front of and behind the camera. About the filmmaker - SOOK-YIN LEE (Writer, Director, Co-Producer) is a Toronto-based filmmaker, musician, actor and broadcaster (CBC, BBC, MuchMusic). She starred in Shortbus, the ground-breaking 2SLGBTQ movie directed by John Cameron Mitchell that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her feature film writer and directorial debut, Year of the Carnivore, starring Cristin Milioti, premiered at TIFF. In 2014, Lee won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by a Lead Dramatic Actress in Jack and went on to write and perform Unsafe for Canadian Stage, which examined questions of censorship and artistic freedom. She won Best Director and Best Picture at the 2018 Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival for Octavio is Dead! --a ghost story starring Sarah Gadon and Rosanna Arquette. Death and Sickness, her feature movie made with Dylan Gamble, streams on CBC Gem. She acts in Darkest Miriam, executive produced by Charlie Kaufman, and is set to release her experimental comedy Rest and Relax. Sook-Yin is a music recording artist and film score composer. She contributed songs to Brandon Cronenberg's horror movies Infinity Pool and Antiviral.