Quentin Lee dishes on queer comedy, directing Chris Zylka’s revealing debut & the time he worked with Ellen
Brash Girls Club and Brash Boys Club specials, respectively featuring queer femme and masc comics, and the Comedy InvAsian series, giving the stage to emerging Asian performers.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.And now, just in time for Pride Month, Lee is sharing their latest comedy effort, Laugh Proud, which highlights a group of nine comedians that represent the breadth of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, from veteran Jason Stuart to 7G, “the world’s first intersex comic.”With the comedy special hitting digital platforms this week (May 30, to be exact!), we sat down with Lee for another round of our rapid-fire Q&A series, Dishin’ It.
In our conversation, the filmmaker unpacks why comedy is such a great medium for queer voices to flourish, remembers when they walked their college graduation in drag, and reflects on working on a film set with Ellen Degeneres and Steven Spielberg.Is there a piece of media—whether a movie, TV series, book, album, theater, video game, etc…—that you consider a big part of your own coming-out journey, or that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness?
Why does it stand out to you? When I was coming out or exploring my sexuality in late ’80s as a Canadian high schooler, there were literally no LGBTQ+ films that were accessible.
My coming out book was Edmund White’s A Boy Own’s Story, which a fellow author friend told me about when I was attending a children’s book writing conference in the summer we landed in Montreal at 16.
