William Schwartz talks with Chester Brown and Sook-Yin Lee on the making of the movie version of Chester Brown’s graphic novel Paying For It, for The Comics Journal.
From the intoduction to the interview:
Sex work isn’t any less of a hot button issue now than it was ten or twenty years ago. But Paying For It is back in print via Drawn & Quarterly with a new paperback edition to tie into the film version of the story that starts playing in theaters this January. The story behind the film version of Paying For It is as intriguingly weird as the original graphic memoir. Sook-Yin Lee was Chester Brown’s girlfriend at the start of the memoir- her attempted renegotiation of their relationship with Chester Brown eventually led to his decision to start paying for sex. Despite the perhaps inevitable collapse of this relationship, Sook-Yin Lee has maintained her friendship with Chester Brown over the years and become an advocate for sex work in her own right. Her film version of Paying For It is more of a companion to the graphic novel than a proper adaptation, and one that somewhat ironically solves one of Chester Brown’s big issues with the memoir- its inability to empathize as much with the sex worker’s perspective as much as he would have liked.
Read the interview here:
The Toronto Comic Jam 