Melly Lee

The many faces of Quentin Lee

Quentin Lee has been called a "Gaysian" filmmaker, representing two significant minorities in the industry. He both exemplifies and defies Asian stereotypes, impressively obtaining degrees from three top universities but then dedicating himself to the arts instead of the sciences. And through a series of defining moments -- often coinciding with the first day of school -- Lee has become a prolific writer-producer-director, with four of his films, old and new, coming to L.A. screens this month.

Born in Hong Kong in 1971, Lee knew, from the age of twelve, that he wanted to come to America and attend UCLA's film school, but it took a while to get there. He started making his first films with his parents' camera when he was thirteen. When his father realized that Lee was serious about pursuing the arts, his only major concern was that he didn't have the contacts to help Lee get a leg up in the industry -- not the reaction one would expect from a culture that stereotypically pushes its children to become doctors, lawyers or businessmen.

At the time, Lee was just grappling with the issue of how to get to America in the first place. But when Lee was fifteen, the family moved to Montréal "because Hong Kong was turning over to China in 1997 and there was huge panic in the 80s," he says. "Because, in the 80s, China was very Communist and repressive, so everybody in that generation [was] planning to immigrate to Australia, Canada or [the] U.S."

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Jonathan Pierce

Danny Boyle and Josh Trank outside the Aero Theatre

Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has an almost childlike quality about him. He appears to approach his surroundings with the brimming excitement of a kid who is just about to open a present and the sincerity of someone who hasn't been in this business for over 20 years.

The moment people recognized him last night at the Aero Theatre, a swarm of fans gathered around. Boyle was there for "A Conversation with Danny Boyle," which not only served as a Q&A session with Boyle and Josh Trank, director of Chronicle, but to promote Boyle's upcoming film, Trance, a psychological thriller starring James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson.

We were lucky enough to sneak in a quickie one-on-one interview with Boyle prior to the event -- our time made even shorter by one particularly nervous and enthusiastic theater worker who followed us into the manager's office for Boyle to autograph a photo of the two of them together from the 2009 Directors Guild Awards (when Boyle won for Slumdog Millionaire). Apparently he predicted correctly that Boyle would win. (He probably wasn't the only one who did so.)

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Photo by and courtesy of Art Shay.

Shay's photo: Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) in Home Locker Room

Art Shay has been a troublemaker ever since he moved from the Bronx to San Francisco to become Life magazine's youngest bureau chief at 26. "That was recently," he jokes, "in 1948."

On election day of that year, then-California governor and Republican candidate for vice president Earl Warren was posing for staged press photos as he pretended to cast his ballot in an Oakland garage. "All the photographers from San Francisco took the same picture for each of the six newspaper services. So I thought, 'My god, this is a great Life spread,'" Shay remembers, speaking by phone from his home near Chicago.

But of course, he couldn't settle for the same staged photograph that all the others were taking -- he wanted the real thing. So when Warren slipped behind the curtain of the voting booth, Shay followed behind and lifted the curtain to snap a photo of Warren actually filling in his ballot.

"It was a violation of privacy," Shay acknowledges. But it's his willingness to violate privacy for the sake of art that has allowed him to produce his most famous photographs, including Simone de Beauvoir naked in a bathroom, Muhammad Ali just after knocking out opponent Alex Miteff, the Supremes looking exhausted backstage after a 1965 concert in Detroit and Judy Garland hysterical with laughter in a Chicago dressing room. These photos and more than 100 others are on display now in Shay's West Coast debut at drkrm gallery.

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Dr. Gino Strada in Open Heart: "Political issues should be left outside hospitals. Doctors are doctors, and medical personnel have to look after people who are in need. And that is the end of the story."

Dr. Gino Strada immediately lights up a cigarette as we sit down for the interview in one of the outdoor sofas near the pool at the Mr. C hotel. There's a weariness to his demeanor despite the relaxing atmosphere -- as though he is carrying the world's problems on his shoulders. And in a sense, he has been for a long time.

For the past several years, Dr. Strada has been working as one of the cardiac surgeons at the Salam Centre in Khartoum, Sudan -- one of the many hospitals built and run by the Italian NGO he founded, Emergency. Prior to that, he was the chief surgeon at Emergency hospitals in Rwanda, North Iraq and Afghanistan. And before that, he'd been a war surgeon all around the world, treating soldiers and civilians alike. No wonder he's feeling tired.

In town for the Oscars, Dr. Strada was invited for his part in the nominated documentary short, Open Heart, which followed eight Rwandan children with rheumatic heart disease to the Salam Centre, where they were operated on. (The film didn't win.) "To me, it was [a] strange experience. I'm not used to that kind of award [ceremony]. But, I don't know, I hope it's going to be useful somehow. Maybe not immediately but planting seeds. We'll see."

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Photo by Tomás Dittburn, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Gael Garcia Bernal as René Saavedra

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*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage
*Our Review of the Movie 'No'

In 1988, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced to call a plebiscite, allowing the country to vote on whether or not he would rule for another eight years. Based on true events and using the real footage of the ads that ran during this time, the film No, out today, follows René (Gael García Bernal), an advertising executive, as he leads the "No" campaign. He soon finds that the main obstacle is not convincing the Chilean people to vote no -- but to have the courage to vote, period.

This is the third film that director Pablo Larraín has made about the dictator Pinochet -- Tony Manero depicts the most violent period of his dictatorship, and Post Mortem shows its origin. It is not surprising that Larraín would be interested in this subject matter, given that he was born in 1976 in Santiago, Chile, in the middle of Pinochet's reign.

We caught up with Larraín and Bernal at a pre-opening LACMA screening a few weeks ago, a little after they'd found out their film had been selected as one of the Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Film.

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Clare Brown

Dream Time Dancing

Clare Brown says she might be the first artist ever to coordinate specific color hues into all of her paintings. It's a bold claim, but the Topanga transplant knows a thing or two about color. As a 10-year-old growing up in the late '60s, Brown spent her days immersed in giant plastic colored eggs. The zany cocoons of color were the invention of color theorist and healer Theo Gimbel, who worked with Brown's mother, who was blind, in his Gloucestershire, England laboratory. "They were massive -- say about 10 feet by 10 feet," recalls Brown. "You walked into it and sat down on the seat and it was like, boom! Yellow. You couldn't see anything else but yellow. I'd stay in there for ages."

"My mother's blindness really influenced me in the sense of, she made me see more, in a way," Brown says, before admitting how odd it must sound.

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Photo Courtesy of La Luz de Jesus Gallery

The Plot Against JFK by Hudson Marquez

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*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week

"I can talk about the people in the paintings or the things in the paintings, but as far as talking about art, I think you just look at it," says L.A.-based artist Hudson Marquez, whose new series of paintings depicts people like Jayne Mansfield, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sophia Loren and Ray Charles and things like stilettos and Cadillacs. "Anybody who talks about their own art is, like, full of shit," says Marquez. "They should just be quiet. Let people look at the art."

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*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage

It's possible that the price of fame has never been higher -- and not just in the tried-and-true Hollywood storylines of fame, fortune and the tragic falls from grace. In his new documentary $ellebrity, seasoned celebrity and event photographer Kevin Mazur looks at the money-making machine that is the world of paparazzi photography, tabloid magazines and reality television and how it's changed through the years in Hollywood.

Out January 11, the film interviews rumor mag stables like Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony about their worlds under microscopes -- as well as some people who helped put them there, like former Us Weekly/current HollywoodLife.com editor Bonnie Fuller.

We talked with Mazur about the film, how his own career as a photographer and as the co-founder of red carpet and event photography database WireImage (now part of Getty Images) relates, and what he thinks it will take for the paparazzi to relent.

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Courtesy of Pirooz Kalayeh

Pirooz M. Kalayeh is an energetic and loquacious multi-hyphenate who directed and wrote the film adaptation of Tao Lin's novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, which has its world premiere tonight at the Los Feliz 3 theater. Combining absurdist documentary and cinematic realism, the dramedy blends Lin's autobiographical narrative as a young writer in New York City, his brush with the clothing company's loss prevention procedures, and the crew's misadventures in depicting all this on film.

A first generation immigrant from Iran, Kalayeh's background includes being a home and garden reality TV show producer, an English professor in South Korea, a graphic novelist, a writer and an actor. He also has a blog, Shikow, where he interviews filmmakers and writers. The up-and-comer's first project, The Human War (a movie based on Noah Cicero's book of the same title), is being submitted to festivals, so Shoplifting From American Apparel is Kalayeh's first feature release, as part of a unique distribution model.

Here's our interview with Kalayeh:

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Photo of Paul V at Rockaway Records by Ted Flett

Cover design by Sugar

Long before Lady Gaga's second full-length album ever hit the charts, thousands of kids across the globe played out its title song in real life, showing friends, family members and themselves they were "Born This Way" -- namely, gay. In January, 2011 Paul V. Vitagliano (aka DJ Paul V.) launched BornThisWayBlog.com, a web-based compendium of childhood photos paired with the subjects' grown-up musings about their own homosexuality.

"I knew it would have a really positive impact on the gay kids of today," he says, "And I knew that it needed to be seen by as many eyes as possible."

It was. Now, millions of blog hits later, Paul V. is the proud papa of a book inspired by the website, Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay, published in October.

The book features dozens of photos and blurbs from people such as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, Erasure's Andy Bell, columnist Michael Musto, singer Sia, drag star Jackie Beat and more. Collectively, the stories are meant to show kids and parents of all persuasions what it was like to grow up gay, but Paul V. also has a deeper motive.

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