Single gay dad turns his life into Web series
As a gay Asian man in Hollywood, Quentin Lee has had to work extra hard to carve out a respected independent film career, a calling that has consumed most of his time over the past two decades.
But a feeling of emptiness has always been there for the UC Berkeley-educated director. Not because he is often without a partner, although he has a tight-knit group of friends. But because he has always wanted to be a father.
“I’ve always wanted to have a kid, when I was really young, since I was 12 or 13,” said Lee.
“Why would you want to have a kid without a partner? But I really can’t control whether I’ll have a partner or not . ... Should I not have a kid since I don’t have a partner?”
So Lee took time out from his career to have his own biological son, with the help
of an egg donor and surrogate mother. Casper Lee was born on June 6, 2016. His dad’s present to his son: a new Web series, “Gay Hollywood Dad,” which debuted Thursday, June 22, on Revry (www.revry. com), a streaming site dedicated to LGBTQ content. The site is also making the pilot available on YouTube (https:// youtu.be/pvQZ9E7FAwk).
“The reason I’m doing this is people asked me, what are you going tell your kid about how he came to be?” Lee said. “Well, I’m a filmmaker, I can shoot it, and if his friends want to know how he came to be, they can watch it.”
Lee, 46, hopes that the series will help remove what he perceives is a stigma attached to LGBTQ single parenthood. Adopted and surrogate-born children to LGBTQ couples are finally on the road to acceptance as normal in American society, but Lee says he was sad for years at his own prospects for fatherhood until he decided to take the plunge.
Episode 1 chronicles Casper’s birth through Crystal, his surrogate mother, who has an interest in horses and lives in Parkersburg, W.Va. (Casper was born at a hospital in Marietta, Ohio, about a 15minute drive from Parkersburg). Their bond seems unlikely — Lee was born in Hong Kong and spent time in Canada before heading to Berkeley and, later, Hollywood.
Future installments of the six-episode first season will focus on how Lee’s lifestyle with his gay friends changes with the arrival of Casper; introducing Casper to his conservative mother in Hong Kong and his father in Vancouver, British Columbia; and bringing Casper along while promoting his latest film, the indie horror flick “Unbidden,” at the San Diego Asian Film Festival.
Lee, whose career began with the horror film “Shopping for Fangs” (1997, codirected with good pal Justin Lin of “Fast and Furious” and “Star Trek Beyond” fame), is a regular at CAAMfest, where his drama-comedy “White Frog” opened the festival in 2012 and his energetic comedy “The People I’ve Slept With” was the centerpiece presentation at the 2010 festival.
He is balancing fatherhood with preproduction work on his most ambitious film project, a sci-fi flick to be made in China that he describes as “‘E.T.’ meets ‘The Terminator’ ”
Of course, his biggest production has been Casper, and no project has brought him quite the same passion as “Gay Hollywood Dad.” He’d like the series to go on for years, sort of a documentarylike “Boyhood” approach to chronicle his son’s growth.
There will be a Season 2 (“Just wait till the terrible twos!” he laughs), but beyond that the marketplace will decide. No matter how long the series goes, though, Lee feels he has accomplished his mission.
“I really want people to know that my kid is not a freak. That’s all I want.”