Quentin Lee of Margin Films: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Producer
When I started film school in 1993, it was unimaginable to even get a mainstream feature film or TV series made with an LGBTQ or Asian American protagonist. As a person of color and LGBTQ, I naturally want to tell my own stories. When I went to college and grad school at Berkeley and Yale in late 80s to early 90s, multiculturalism has exploded on campus and within the intellectual / critical community. I knew then that it was important to tell diverse stories.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Quentin Lee. A member of the Producers Guild of America, Quentin Lee has directed and produced over ten features. His first feature Shopping For Fangs (co- directed with Justin Lin) premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and became a cult classic as part of Asian American New Wave Class of 1997.
His subsequent features Drift, Ethan Mao, The People I’ve Slept With, White Frog and The Unbidden have all been sold and played festivals worldwide such as AFI Fest, Vancouver International, Hawaii International, São Paulo, Turin and Cardiff.
As a producer, Quentin has produced Big Gay Love, Serial Killer # 1 and Gay Hollywood Dad. Most currently, Brash Girls Club, the limited TV series that he created, produced and directed is now streaming on Tubi. The TV series Comedy Invasian that he co-created, directed and produced was streamed as a Hulu Exclusive in 2018. In 2020, Quentin is producing three stand up comedy specials, three for Comedy Dynamics.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Quentin went to high school in Montréal, holds a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley, an M.A. in English from Yale University, and an M.F.A. in Film Directing from UCLA.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit. Can you share your “backstory” that brought you to this career?
I grew up in Hong Kong and our family immigrated first to Montreal, Canada when I was 15. Since I was twelve, I have wanted to become first a writer and then a filmmaker. I didn’t know how to get there until when I moved to Canada and my parents said I could go to U.S. to study. After Grade 12, I was accepted to Berkeley but got rejected by UCLA… so I decided to study English literature and literary theory first. It took me another two more tries to get into UCLA for film school. And I thought I finally would get to become a filmmaker. Little did I know, getting into my dream film school just meant I had a shot to start at the bottom of the Hollywood pyramid. I went to UCLA because I wanted to be an independent filmmaker. In 1996, I co-wrote, co-directed and produced my first feature Shopping for Fangs when I was still in school with my friend Justin Lin. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, put us on the map, and I have been making indie films since 1997, ironically being the year that Hong Kong got returned to China, the very reason that my family had to emigrate from Hong Kong in the 80s.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?
When I was making my first feature Shopping for Fangs, we were shooting by UCLA at Breadsticks in Westwood, a now defunct neighborhood market. We were trying to save money from hiring Assistant Directors so when Justin was directing I was his AD and vice versa. We closed the front door shooting a robbery scene and a crew member came to tell me a customer couldn’t open the door and looked concerned when he saw us rehearsing the robbery scene. “Let me put up some signs,” I said and started making a couple signs with a sharpie. Within a few minutes, I got outside trying to tape the signs and saw three police cars on the street and the police officers yelling at me, “Put your hands up!” “We’re just shooting a student film,” I said. They frisked me and I explained to them and said we even had permits. They went inside with me, saw the film crew and reprimanded me, “Put up some signs, kid.” “I was just about to…” I said. That was my first run in with the police ever… and I thought it was pretty funny.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
Most recently, I co-directed, co-wrote and produced a feature titled Comisery with my writer friend Adi Tantimedh during the lock down. Told entirely through web chat sessions, Comisery is an apocalyptic science fiction comedy about a group of Asian-American friends living through an invasion by an alien virus during the 2020 pandemic. Comisery will stream on Sep 1 on AsianAmericanMovies.com and Amazon Prime Video worldwide.
On September 8, Comedy Dynamics will release Brash Boys Club, the first gay male / non-binary comedy special about three diverse gay comedians each doing a 30 minute act, that I directed and produced. It will stream worldwide on many platforms.
On the development side, I’m developing Hollywoodshare.tv, a comedy series, with Shannon Elizabeth, Mindy Cohn and Sampson McCormick attached. Up North, I’m also developing a Canadian comedy series titled Son of Smiley with comedian Ed Hill, Edison Chen, Steph Song and Nadia Hatta attached. I’m also developing a dramatic series titled Demos with my co-writer Elizabeth Wilson, winning an Impact Award from the Roddenberry Foundation. I’m also developing a feature titled How to Talk with Spirits, inspired by the true story of San Francisco psychic June Ahern, with Veronica Cartwright attached to star as the lead.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
The most interesting person must be my son Casper. He’s now 4. He’s a surrogate baby. I’ve been observing him grow from an embryo and it has never ceased to amaze me how a human learn and grow in such an unexpected way. I sound like an alien, don’t I? He has picked up such interesting vocabulary and he would say, “Daddy, the water is lovely!” I wondered where he learned that. Right, Peppa Pig indeed. It fascinates me a lot in how he learns and gains a personality, which is all a beautiful mystery unfolding right in front of me.
Which people in history inspire you the most? Why?
I’ve been very inspired by Virginia Woolf and particularly her classic, A Room of One’s Own. Her struggle to become a writer in Victorian England pretty much parallels my struggle to be a filmmaker as an LGBTQ and person of color in America.
We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
When I started film school in 1993, it was unimaginable to even get a mainstream feature film or TV series made with an LGBTQ or Asian American protagonist. As a person of color and LGBTQ, I naturally want to tell my own stories. When I went to college and grad school at Berkeley and Yale in late 80s to early 90s, multiculturalism has exploded on campus and within the intellectual / critical community. I knew then that it was important to tell diverse stories.
Coming out to film school in Los Angeles in 1993 was a rude awakening. I realized Hollywood was that conservative. My friend was Asian American and head of a major studio, but even he couldn’t greenlight a movie with an Asian American protagonist. For years, diverse filmmakers and creators like me had been pushed to the independent film world. It really wasn’t until a quarter of a century later… like a few years ago that Hollywood finally caught up and realized they needed to tell diverse stories with diverse protagonists. Honestly, I’ve just been waiting for the mainstream film and TV industry to catch up.
I’m glad I’m not jaded. I’m still hopeful.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I have my own religion called Metadivinism. It’s essentially a meta religion that believes religions are like languages and there is no one religion better than another. A religion is like a language for you to communicate with the divine. It’s an intellectual and philosophical way to look at spirituality, resisting religious dogma.
I coined Metadivinism 10 years ago and I am in the process of writing a book about it. Producing, directing and developing films and TV projects along with raising a kid as a single dad has taken all of my time right now.
Nevertheless, I have gotten ordained last year from Universal Life Church and just married my first couple earlier this summer as a minister of Metadivinism.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Most importantly, I wish I knew about “being myself” was that important. Coming to North America as an immigrant, I felt the obligation to be proficient and integrate into North American culture. And everyone in the beginning always gave you a million advice that pulled you in all kinds of directions. At the end of the day… after all these years… being yourself and just do it are the most important advice I wish I took earlier. I did a lot of things with a lot of self doubts in the beginning, even though they were things I wanted to do.
I also started dancing hip hop in my mid thirties… and I still dance. And the best advice one teacher said was, “I realize I have been dancing for so long being uncomfortable with myself and my own body. As soon as I accepted myself and got comfortable with my own body, I became a better dancer and teacher.” I remember that advice to this date… that if I had been myself earlier… I would have been willing to take more artistic risks that would have pushed my arts further.
And again, if I had waited for someone giving me an opportunity to make a film, I probably wouldn’t have made anything. So learn the craft and just do it!
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this. :-)
I grew up reading the now defunct premiere magazine. When I was 19, I read an interview by Brian De Palma on how he storyboarded every shot of Casualties of War. I had already been a De Palma fan, loving Carrie and Dressed to Kill. He really had inspired me take practical steps to be a filmmaker, and I would love to just meet him one day.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Really as I talked about earlier and risking sounding like a Nike ad, “Be yourself and just do it.”
