Thirteen years ago, Chester Brown published Paying For It , a memoir of his experiences between and paying for sex work. It's a title Chester Brown hates, incidentally, due to how "paying" can be interpreted in a reprocussional sense in addition to the literal sense, and Chester Brown emerged from his experience as a strong advocate for the social value of sex work.
Indeed, I should note at the risk of spoilering this thirteen year old memoir about experiences from over twenty years ago, Chester Brown never really stopped paying for it, he just settled down with a single escort who also has him as her sole client. Sex work isn't any less of a hot button issue now than it was ten or twenty years ago.
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.
Now, I could explain what I mean by that, but since Chester Brown and Sook-Yin Lee were gracious enough to agree to an interview, I think I'd rather they field that subject. It's great to have you with us, by the way. Why was the graphic memoir unable to portray the sex workers' perspective as much as would have been ideal? But others were quite open and, casually, in the course of our conversations, told me lots of stuff about their families, their boyfriends, their travels, their childhoods β whatever β all sorts of personal stories and life-details.
