In an almost two-decade career in filmmaking, Los Angeles-based director Quentin Lee
In an almost two-decade career in filmmaking, Los Angeles-based director Quentin Lee has made a more varied and diverse body of work than most filmmakers will in a lifetime. From werewolf coming-of-age dramas to sex-romps to teen hostage films to experimental video art, Lee’s adventurous brand of filmmaking knows no genre and category boundaries and has been celebrated at film festivals around the world.
This month XFINITY On Demand features one of his recent feature films, “Ethan Mao” in its Cinema Asian America collection. A tense, stylish, fever-dream-logic-driven teen drama, it tells the story of a young Asian American man who makes a series of drastic and life-changing decisions when his family learns he is gay and begins to unravel. Lee took a break from working on his latest film “White Frog” to answer a few questions about “Ethan Mao.”
“Ethan Mao” tells the story of a young, gay, Asian American man and the process of reconciling the many competing and self-destructive forces in his life. Can you tell us a bit of where this story came from? The story came right after my little sister Tabitha left home after an argument over a pet rabbit with my stepmother. The pet rabbit was symbolic of all the resentment over the years between Tabitha, my dad and my stepmom. I put myself in her shoes and imagined what it would be like if I had been 17 and gay. In the movie, the pet rabbit became the discovery of a gay porn magazine which was how many gay kids got outed to their parents from many stories I’ve heard.
In many of your films, you’ve played with familiar movie genres, but in a way reconceived and updated them. Your most recent film “The People I’ve Slept With” is a take on the sex comedy, and with “Ethan Mao”, you’ve played with the hostage film and the family drama. Can you tell us a bit about how you think about and use genre? I started off making “experimental” videos which are closer to experimental video art. I’ve always loved playing with genres, well exemplified by my film “Shopping for Fangs”, and I’ve followed the footsteps of the likes of David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and Ken Russell, mostly “genre” filmmakers. “Ethan Mao” swam between a teenage romance, horror film, thriller and black comedy wrapped around by a drugged up-teenage dreaminess a la “The Cabinet of Dr. Kaligari”. I know it can be frustrating for some audience but I love that dreaminess or dream logic which is the essence of cinema and imagination. “Ethan Mao” is my most critically-unliked film, as a critic described it as a “trainwreck,” but I’m very proud of it. De Palma once said, “I don’t cater to the public. Why should I cater to the critics?” You should cater to the public if you’re making a $100 million film, but for a $200k film? I’m making personal cinema.
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