March 30, 2025

By Marriska Fernandes

Vancouver-born director, actor, musician, and former MuchMusic VJ Sook-Yin Lee recently earned a Canadian Screen Award nomination for her deeply personal feature Paying for It. The film is as bold and unconventional as its creator. It’s woven from Lee’s own life experiences and the provocative graphic novel by cartoonist Chester Brown, her former partner. Having already made waves with her previous films exploring themes of sexuality and identity, like Year of the Carnivore and Octavio Is Dead, Lee fearlessly tackles the complex world of sex work, love, and relationships.

The film follows the artist who, after his girlfriend suggests an open relationship, explores the world of sex work. His adventure challenges norms about love and intimacy. Dan Beirne plays Brown, and he’s joined by a cast that includes Canadian Screen Award nominee Emily Lê as Lee’s stand-in Sonny and Andrea Werhun as Yulissa, a sex worker who forms a long-term relationship with Brown.

Lee, never one to play it safe, describes the film as “a story that connects to today,” tackling timely questions around sex work, relationships and social norms. “I neither glamorize nor denigrate sex work but view it through the lens of labour,” she asserted, giving voice to a community often marginalized and misrepresented.

I spoke with Lee earlier this year at TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten ceremony, where Paying for It was honoured as one of the best Canadian films for the year. Lee offered a candid look into her creative process, her commitment to social commentary, and her passion for independent cinema.

For your third feature, why was this the story you wanted to tell?

Cartoonist Chester Brown is one of my favourite storytellers. When his graphic novel Paying for It came out in 2011, it resonated with me. I had acted in the LGBTQ movie Shortbus, a formative learning experience, and wrestled with questions of love and intimacy in my first feature film, Year of the Carnivore. In Paying for It, Chester articulated the parallel fight for queer liberation and consensual sex-worker rights. To me, these were connected to labour rights, women’s rights, and human rights. The adaptation took years to write. It was a tricky puzzle. In the movie, I added a bunch of stuff that was not in Chester’s graphic novel, but which I was privy to, since we were a romantic couple during the time the story takes place. The graphic novel and movie are stand-alone perspectives of what happened, according to each of us, after we decided to open up our romantic relationship.

You said this was challenging to adapt: why so?

The last quarter of Chester’s graphic novel features appendices and historic, philosophical, and political notes that are important to his argument for the decriminalization of consensual sex work. I had to figure out a way to incorporate and distill the most important elements of his argument and debate them in a movie through character development, action, relationships, and story arc.

For the first draft, I transcribed the graphic novel verbatim, and neither Chester nor I felt it worked. Movies and comics are different storytelling forms. That first draft was too episodic. Chester visited 23 sex workers in diary entries that did not build to a narrative culmination. Films often follow a three-act structure and concern flawed characters who undergo some kind of transformation. When I said that to Chester, he maintained that he had no flaws, to which I countered, “That’s a flaw!” I set out to ask questions, and explore interesting situations. Rather than leading with politics, my aim was to tell a good story, and give the audience room to consider, debate, and respond to it.

Chester’s graphic novel is rendered in a style that is pragmatic and political, purposefully restrained, and with an emphasis on the logic of his argument. I’m more of a hothead, emotionally expressive, and interested in relationships. All of my movies are complicated love stories. I took the movie in that direction… On my umpteenth reading of the book, I noticed a small detail—that Chester had visited a sex worker on my birthday. That’s when it clicked. A key to unlocking the movie adaptation was to expand the canvas to include our life together: how our relationship continued without us ever “breaking up” as we lived together for years in a tiny eleven-foot wide row house, while pursuing very different approaches to sex, connection, and love. Chester paid for sex while I dated, which is more culturally approved of, but is not without its challenges.

The themes of the film are timelier now as there’s more dialogue. How do you think the film contributes to the conversation around sex work and how would you like to steer the conversation forward?

There are many themes in Paying for It, bubbling under the surface of a sweet and tender love story. I didn’t want to make a nostalgic movie stuck in the past, but a story that connects to today. Questions around sex work, relationships, commercialization, and gentrification resonate now more than ever. There are many kinds of sex work experiences. Paying for It reflects Chester’s point of view. He is an ideal client who tips well and treats sex workers with appreciation and respect. I hope that clients who watch or read Paying for It follow his lead.  In the movie, sex and nakedness are a matter of fact, as engaging as eating a meal or taking a bath. I neither glamorize nor denigrate sex work but view it through the lens of labour. I convey that not all sex workers are victimized and not all clients are vile.  In my research, I interviewed Valerie Scott, who was one of three sex worker rights advocates who successfully struck down anti-prostitution laws, provincially and nationally, in the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013. It turned out to be a hollow victory when the conservative government immediately enacted a new law that criminalizes paying for sex. That’s where it stands now. Under our current laws, clients are criminalized for paying for sex, and rights and protections are withheld from consensual sex workers, who are treated as sub-humans and put in harm’s way.

Back when Chester published his book, advocating for the decriminalization of consensual sex work was taboo. Today, in every major city in North America, sex worker advocacy organizations support sex workers, and now the laws need to catch up. Progress and regress seem to be up against each other. Many of the rights and freedoms we fought hard for and now enjoy and perhaps take for granted are being stripped away. We need to fight for those rights and take better care of one another. Movies like Anora and Paying for It scratch the surface of an expansive and exciting genre of filmmaking. I look forward to sex workers and their clients telling their own stories. In matters of intimacy, connection, and relationships, Paying for It encourages a message of openness, love, and respect, which is very much needed at this time.

I love that we see Andrea Werhun and she also consulted for Anora. Can you talk about that and working with her?

For the sex worker roles, I cast non-actors with a nuanced understanding of sex work, lobbying ACTRA, the Canadian actors union, for leniency. The actors are from my extended community, and artists in their own right. They are musicians, political activists, filmmakers, performance artists, and comedians who embrace sex-positive expression. With Paying for It, it was important to consider who tells the story and the insight they offer. To my relief, the union agreed to my casting of non-union actors, provided all the other roles were played by union actors, which was fine by me. I’m grateful and proud of the non-actors who boldly embodied the sex worker roles. They elevated the scenes.

Hannia Cheng, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Tanya Cheex, Dusty Lee, Lisa Smolkin, Jamie Whitecrow, Rubie Magnitude, Dainty Smith, Becca Willow Moss, Kitoko Mai, and Becky Johnson blew me away. All of them are brilliant. I would give them specific directions, and they would adjust and excel. Andrea Werhun, who plays “Denise,” is an author, performer, and activist who has previously collaborated with Chester. His graphic novel Paying for It inspired Andrea to write her own memoir, Modern Whore, about her experiences as a former escort, which she is now turning into a feature movie. Chester played the role of a john in her short film Modern Whore and designed the poster. Andrea was a consultant on Anora and Paying for It. It was a natural fit to cast Andrea as “Denise.” This is her first [major] role in a feature movie, and she really shines with pure magnetism and presence. I found lead actors Dan Beirne, who plays Chester, and Emily Lê, through a more traditional audition process. I’d seen Dan in Matthew Rankin’s awesome The Twentieth Century, and Dan was a fan of Chester’s graphic novel and conveyed sensitivity and understanding of the material and for Chester. He was a-ok with full-frontal nudity, which was a bonus! Emily Lê’s emotions are close to the surface, and like me, she comes from an alternative arts background. As first-gen Asian Canadians, we share some common experiences that inform some of Sonny’s choices. She’s chill and grounded and approached the role with the stamina of an athlete, willing to do as many takes to make it perfect.

What do you think is the current climate for indie films and what more can be done to support?

Paying for It is a low-budget indie grassroots movie. To recreate the ’90s, I cast locations like I would actors, finding real places that emanate authenticity. My friends and neighbours in Kensington Market let me shoot in their era-specific galleries, restaurants, homes and spaces. I filmed in my house where the real events of the story unfolded because it was cheap and mostly production designed. I shot in a brothel and the workers took the day off. I tapped my musician pals across Canada who made groundbreaking music from the ’70s-’90s: Thrush Hermit, cub, Pointed Sticks, Gob, and Ghetto Concept allowed me to use their music videos.

Paying for It is a celebration of their cultural contributions. My producers, Sonya Di Rienzo, Aeschylus Poulos, Matt Code, and I are distributing the movie ourselves through a circuit of independent cinemas across Canada. Somehow, we wound up opening at a big Cineplex in Toronto. Through word of mouth, we got bums in seats, and Paying For It was held over, which is a miracle. I think underground cinema is flourishing. Rep cinemas are attracting audiences hungry for offerings beyond the American mainstream. There’s a wave of tiny but mighty Canadian movies being made and enjoyed.

Paying for It is now playing in select cinemas.