Filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee taking on TIFF with Bold and Very-Toronto Story

Chester Brown’s graphic novel Paying For It is a Toronto classic, born in the vibrant 1990s when the city was finding its edge. Sook-Yin Lee, an iconic Toronto artist and former VJ at MuchMusic in that beloved era, was right there with him. Now, she has adapted this provocative comic novel into a film, set to premiere at TIFF this week.

This whole movie is built on relationships. Ian McGettigan [guitarist/singer of Canadian indie rock band Thrush Hermit] is my next door neighbour. I can just open my back window and yell, “Ian, can I use your video?” I wanted, especially in a city that is like so many cities getting gentrified and knocked down and built up in ways that we cannot recognize, I wanted to show there are small pockets of the city that were there in the ’90s that I could draw upon. And they’re beautiful, you know. They’re unconventional spaces, and they’re not the spaces that we normally see, but they really capture a kind of scrappy Toronto that I know and love.

Yes, I shot in my house where the real life events unfolded. I called up my neighbours half a block away, up, you know, up the street. I have two neighbours who live in what was a brothel.

It was enjoyable to look back at that time. Chester was a very formative love relationship for me, and also, my job at MuchMusic was my first legit job after moving from Vancouver to Toronto. So it was fun to revisit and see myself as a younger person.

It feels great. Every movie has its development period, and this one was particularly challenging. I love Chester’s graphic novel. It’s brilliant, and he’s a brilliant storyteller. It’s really a memoir that explores his views on the decriminalization of consensual sex work. It touches on human rights, with parallels to gay rights, POC rights, women’s rights and so on. But adapting it into a movie was complicated.

The graphic novel isn’t a movie in itself. It’s an episodic comic that meanders into various zones and is also a very academic, political exercise. Plus it’s myopically from Chester’s perspective because he was protecting the real-life details of the sex workers he had relationships with. I didn’t want to make a movie that was only from Chester’s perspective. I wanted to broaden the canvas to bring the women, the sex workers, to life and explore more dynamics.

We were in a relationship that, like many, became non-sexual over time. That coincided with me being very young, not being able to get past the four-year mark in my romantic relationships, and just starting my job at MuchMusic. Meanwhile, Chester was a very nerdy, quiet, introverted cartoonist, and I was in the eye of the storm, going to concerts, being very expressive and communicative. I would drag him out to shows, and he’d end up in the corner reading a book. We were on very different trajectories.

There are these political undertones, but I try to tell a good story. You know, a good story is important. All of those ripples are beneath it, under the scaffolding. To me, it’s about relationships.

Well, I’m so happy. You know, the industry, it became progressively harder to get a movie in TIFF. And I was very happy to hear that it got in, and they told me that the program is very special: the platform program. It’s the only Canadian movie in the program, and it highlights films with a bold directorial vision. So I feel so happy to be included in that group.