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.<\/p>\n
This month XFINITY On Demand features one of his recent feature films, \u201cEthan Mao\u201d 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 \u201cWhite Frog\u201d to answer a few questions about \u201cEthan Mao.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEthan Mao\u201d 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.<\/p>\n