Quentin Lee has been writing, directing, and producing films since the late 1990s, including several award winners. But The Way You Dance is the veteran filmmaker’s first Canadian content feature. Pancouver caught up with Lee—a double immigrant to Canada and the United States—on the Vancouver set of his coming-of-age film. It’s about a Los Angeles-based choreographer named Twinkle (Kyle Toy) who returns to Langley to care for his estranged father (Tzi Ma).
“We’re editing it as soon as possible,” Lee says. “We want to finish the film by the beginning of next year. Then, we’re previewing it for festivals.”
In Lee’s script, the choreographer meets up with his high school friend, played by Josette Jorge, a Canadian Screen Award winner with many acting credits. Her character encourages Twinkle to teach a dance class. It turns out that one of his students (Roshan Gopalasamy) is transitioning from a boy to a girl. Other cast members include Emily Giannozio, Ryan Kong, and Lily Bollegraf.
“They are finding the transformative power of dance, particularly hip-hop,” Lee states. “I’ve been dancing hip-hop for 20 years or so.”
The filmmaker says that he drew inspiration from a visit to his father’s home in Richmond last January. Lee was there to deal with some of his dad’s affairs.
Toy, the star of the film, tells Pancouver that he felt drawn to The Way You Dance because of the relationship between the choreographer and his estranged father. Because the father is ill, the son has a finite amount of time to rebuild a connection.
“That was the biggest thing for me,” Toy says. “But then, I’ve also got a very extensive dance background.”
Lee attended high school in Quebec
Last year, Lee won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Comedy Special for Rez Style—an episode of his docuseries Comedy Invasion. He was director and producer and shared this honour with co-producer Cindy Au Yeung. It was Lee’s first project through the Canadian branch of his production company, Margin Films.
The Way You Dance qualifies as a Canadian content feature because at least 75 percent of production and post-production costs are paid to Canadians.
“We have federal tax credits and I was able to find an investor that loaned me the money to make this movie,” the filmmaker reveals.
He’s collaborating with producer Alan Chu, whose father ran a Chinese movie theatre in Montreal. In the 1990s, Chu worked for Oliver Stone’s production company on films such as Nixon and The People vs. Larry Flynt. Chu describes Stone as a good boss who treated him well.
“He is a very demanding individual but the demands he put on us were the same demands he put on himself,” Chu says. “When I was working for him, it was very intense. But looking back, he was bringing out the best in everyone.”
Chu has been friends for many years with Lee, who was born in Hong Kong. Lee moved with his family to Montreal at the age of 15, attending high school in Quebec and becoming a Canadian citizen.
“Then I went to the U.S. and went to study at Berkeley,” Lee notes. “And then I was in the East Coast for a year at Yale for a year of English.”
Watch the trailer for the 2018 version of Quentin Lee and Justin Lin’s Shopping for Fangs.
Inspired by Brian De Palma
From there, Lee earned an MFA in film production and directing at UCLA, where he made the feature movie Shopping for Fangs. Co-directed by Justin Lin (Star Trek Beyond, Fast & Furious), it was about a married woman (Jeanne Chinn) who starts receiving seductive phone calls from a lesbian, and a man (Radmar Jao), who believes he might be a werewolf. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, attracting nominations for the People’s Choice Award and Best Canadian Feature Film.
“We started this thing called the Asian American New Wave,” Lee recalls.
In subsequent years, Lee emerged as an important LGBTQ director, winning awards for films at gay and lesbian film festivals in Miami, Torino, Dallas, and Kansas City. In addition, he won a Roddenberry Foundation Impact Award. He also captured the Jury Prize at the Yale in Hollywood Fest as well as the Diversity in Film Award at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
“I was inspired into getting into filmmaking by Brian De Palma,” Lee says. “When I was a teenager, I read this article that said he storyboarded every shot.”
Before filming The Way You Dance, Lee decided to rewatch De Palma’s 1993 crime thriller Carlito’s Way.
“He is such an organized filmmaker,” Lee declares with obvious admiration. “I’m shooting a lot of dance sequences, and Carlito’s Way is so well choreographed…shot by shot and with action! Brian De Palma is definitely the one I look up to.”
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