In the heart of Kensington, on a hidden street, lives modern renaissance woman Sook-Yin Lee. She is an actress, musician, filmmaker, radio host, media personality, and provocateur.
Sook-Yin Lee entered the Canadian collective consciousness as a VJ on MuchMusic. She gained international attention for her controversial role in Shortbus. She wrote and directed the recent film, Year of the Carnivore — all the while working as a radio host for CBC’s Definitely Not the Opera.
[Sook-Yin Lee’s house. Kensington Market. Night.]
THE VARSITY: How long have you lived in Kensington?
S: I’ve lived in Kensington Market for almost 10 years.
TV: What made you pick this part of town?
S: I lived and grew up in Vancouver, and one of my favorite streets was in Chinatown, in Strathcona. It was kinda like a group of impoverished artists and Chinese immigrants and children living in the same block…. We really knew each other well… And so when I moved to Toronto, it was at, like, John and Adelaide-
TV: Ew.
S: -and it was so… gross. It would always be like, you know, people coming in to party in the discos, and they’d end up squirting condiments in the entranceway, and there’d be wafts of donut smoke or hotdog smoke wafting into my place. So it was really hard, and I kind of hated it down there. And then when I found this place, and saw that it reminded me of my home in Vancouver, just physically, and also it had the same or similar aura. So I was like, I had to buy this place.
TV: You’re quite diverse in terms of your career. Do you ever see yourself ultimately pursuing one form of creativity over others? Following one path?
S: Unfortunately, no…. I’ve never really quite fit into one discipline. I feel like all the mediums are kind of propelled by one force. And its just curiosity, and… a desire to communicate and existential curiosity, and whatever happens to be the big questions in my head, everything is sort of informed by those pulses. But some forms are better suited for certain expressions. So I feel like I need to have a large paint box to choose from, and use whatever paint is the best one to communicate or articulate the question that I have. And they all inform one another, so what I love about singing will inform me as an actor. There are many interest crafts, permutations. Like, editing movies is music to me. It must have… a musical quality….
TV: And then, your opera… sorry, your radio show, Definitely Not the Opera. I just started listening, and you cover a lot of ground.Is there an underlying theme you try to adhere to?
S: For the show? Well, each week we wrestle with a new theme. But what focuses each of the episodes is just trying to examine life and do it in a curious, authentic and playful way. And we talk to supposed cultural experts, cultural creators and also regular people that you would never hear from. Essentially, every Monday I plant myself on the street and I bother strangers. A lot of people who work in the media, they hate going on the street and talking to people, because it can be risk being rejected. But maybe it’s because my microphone is covered in cat fur, or maybe because I don’t really look like I’m a roving reporter, but people really have a tendency to open up to me. And every time I go there, it just never ceases to amaze me.
TV: So, your film, Year of the Carnivore. Why the title?
S: Well, I just always liked that ring of ‘year of the carnivore.’ It’s sort of a funny reference to year of the horse, year of the rat, year of this, year of that. But then carnivore, I like the connection that it has to carnal, and meat, and devouring in the sort of human sense. So, it’s the year that Sammy, the main character, kind of takes a bite out of life and tries to figure out what the heck is going on in terms of herself, loving another person, and her body.
TV: So how did you come up with this story?
S: I felt like my first feature ought to start somewhere in my earliest recollection of something that was meaningful in my life. Not to say that the movie is autobiographical, but it is sort of reflects a kind of difficult passage I had as a young, very nerdy and inexperienced person, making a ton of mistakes when it came to trying to fit in, trying to seduce others, trying to navigate through love and getting my heart broken. So it seemed to be the logical place to begin.
TV: Right. Well then, because your work is ‘close to home,’ is it ever awkward with the family? Are they allowed to see your work?
S: No. My older sister really has no desire to see my films. She’s a bit more like, “Oh, did you have to…”, like, some of the stuff makes her squeamish to watch. She certainly wasn’t about to line up in the queue to see Shortbus… And I mean, my mom said “Oh, you’re just worrying about it, I’m sure it’s artsy!”. But she respected my desire to not have her watch it.
TV: There are definitely some really challenging scenes in Year of the Carnivore. For instance — spoiler alert — the parking lot scene, when she [Sammy, the protagonist] is soliciting men for sex. Were there complaints?
S: Yes. Interestingly enough, it seems to be okay for guys to do it. Like, we see guys seduce and solicit sex constantly and they’re a ‘player’, and they’re ‘cool.’
TV: Exactly…
S: But when a woman like Sammy does she’s sort of totally confused. And makes some decisions that are mistakes people make. But, yeah, when a woman does it it’s somehow morally corrupt. Some people react very strongly because they’re not used to seeing a woman be so completely assertive….
TV: Or in that dominant of a position.
S: That’s the thing that I feel weird about, that that’s what people have such a hard time with. I’m interested in the mistakes people make. I’ve certainly been ‘morally bankrupt’ in several situations in my life. And it seems remised that we don’t illuminate those moments of humanity.
TV: It seems like people don’t quite know what to think.
S: I thought I was making a sweet tale. I look back on my first love, and man, we really put each other through the wringer…. But there was love behind it, and we had to get through the bad shit in order to get to the place where it actually dropped that stuff and meet one another. And he’s still one of my best friends. I went in there thinking I was making a very sweet coming of age story.
TV: Any final advice for young kids in this big bad city? Anything you’d tell yourself at 21, 22?
S: I would tell my 21-year-old self — and myself today — to not be so hard on yourself. It’s just like, implicit in our culture that so many of us are hard on ourselves. Sometimes that actually pushes you to achieve, to go for things, but at the same time there’s a point where you just got to ease off.
