What would you do if you learned of a devastating brain cancer diagnosis days before your 18th birthday? That’s the new reality for Nathan Lee, a high school student who takes the limited time he has left and lives every day to the fullest. From filmmaker Quentin Lee and writer Dennis Escobedo, Last Summer of Nathan Lee is a compelling narrative, infusing found footage elements to give the film a more intimate feel.
Last Summer of Nathan Lee stars Harrison Xu, Natasha Tina Liu, Matthew Mitchell Espinosa, Dru Perez and Aaron Guest. Quentin directs from his own story and a script by Dennis Escobedo.
Recently, I had the privilege of chatting with Quentin about the inspiration for Last Summer of Nathan Lee, what audiences can expect, the filming process and more.
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This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
Melody McCune: We had GGA love a good origin story. What’s your origin story? How did you get into filmmaking?
Quentin Lee: I grew up in Hong Kong. Growing up there, my mom let me watch some horror films. I got into horror films when I was six years old. When I was 12, I thought, “I want to make films,” but I didn’t know how. My dad had a little Super 8 camera. I started making short films with my sisters and friends. Then, I wanted to become a writer because I figured that if I didn’t have the budget to make movies, I might as well write stories.
We immigrated to Montreal when I was 15. In high school, I started writing plays. After high school, I got into Berkeley. I majored in English. When I graduated from Berkeley in 1992, I applied to UCLA for film school and got rejected.
So, I went to Yale for a year to do another Master’s in English. I figured I would not wait for film school to make my first film. I made a short film on a camcorder called To Ride a Cow with my boyfriend and best friend. It went to a lot of film festivals.
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Then, I finally got into the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. I came out to LA in ’93. Eventually, in film school, around ’96, I wanted to make a feature. I partnered with my friend Justin Lin, who now makes all the Fast & Furious movies.
We partnered to do our first feature. He wrote a story during Christmas break, and I wrote a story during Christmas break. We combined them and made a feature called Shopping for Fangs. It got into the Toronto International Film Festival in ’97. That kickstarted our career in filmmaking.
MM: Let’s talk about Last Summer of Nathan Lee. Can you tell me what it’s about and the impetus for creating this story?
QL: It’s a teen comedy about an 18-year-old boy named Nathan Lee who discovers he has brain cancer and one year to live.
When I was growing up, I was inspired by teen comedy. All the John Hughes ones — Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, etc. I’ve always had a fondness for those movies and that genre. When I was going into grade 11 in high school in Montreal, I had a friend named Nicholas who had brain cancer. He died before grade 12.
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I always thought, “What would I do if I were him?” That was the beginning of the movie. I wanted to do a teen comedy about a kid with brain cancer and a fun found footage movie. I also wanted to work with this young actor named Harrison Xu because I made a Canadian short film with him in 2010 when he was 16 years old.
Then, I reached out to my friend Dennis Escobedo, the writer. We were working on another romantic comedy together. It was at the height of the pandemic. We met outside my house in the backyard, and I had him meet Harrison. I also contacted a few other actors, like Natasha Tina Liu.
We started writing the script in June/July of 2020. We went into production in September of 2021. And this is an intimate film. It was very stressful, I remember.
I was the editor; I shot it on iPhone because I thought that aesthetic fit the movie. We were in post-production for six months and finished it around March 2022. Then, we started getting into film festivals. It wasn’t until March of 2023 that we got the premiere at CAAMFest in San Francisco. Now, it’s out in theaters and then coming to streaming.
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MM: What can audiences expect when they watch this film?
QL: I want them to have a good time. That’s the most important thing. Hopefully, they come away thinking about how life is fragile and that even though you’re dealt a bad hand, you can still have a good time and maximize it. All that came up a lot during COVID because you’re thinking, “Oh, wow, you probably could get COVID and possibly die,” so you might as well have the best time. I think that’s fun for a teen comedy.
MM: I know you said you were inspired by ’80s movies, but were there any movies in particular that inspired this one?
QL: I noticed that when I was growing up in the ’80s as a teenager, you would never see an Asian or BIPOC character in any way. The only Asian character is Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles.
Sadly, I think my generation of API men is traumatized because they were teased a lot at school about being “Long Duk Dong.” We wanted to do a teen comedy for BIPOC kids. It’s also telling us how our current generation, Generation Z, looks at sex and gender much more differently than previous generations.
I’m Generation X, so I was born in the ’70s. I recently took my son to a play date. He’s seven years old and playing with my other friend’s sons, who are two boys. One of them is trans and out. And I was thinking, “Wow, this is so crazy because this could not have happened in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s.” The Republicans or Baby Boomers don’t want trans people in schools. But the reality is that it’s already happening.
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The film tries to portray that level of thinking. And it’s about these kids banding together. It’s also putting these older, institutional ways of thinking, like traditional marriage, and turning those ideas on their head.
MM: Describe Last Summer of Nathan Lee using three words.
QL: Sexy. Vulnerable. Fun.
MM: What was your favorite part about the production process?
QL: My favorite part of the production process is working with the actors on more intimate scenes. It was my first time working with an intimacy coordinator. It was challenging because we were shooting an intimate movie during COVID.
We were shooting at my place on the third day of the shoot. At the end of the shoot, I was downloading footage. Then, my nanny came in wearing a mask and said, “Quentin, I’m so sorry. I’ve got COVID.”
I felt very lucky that I was not positive and could finish shooting the movie because we had a small crew — like a 10-15-person crew. None of us tested positive, which would have made doing the more challenging scenes more difficult.
It’s this process that I’m learning that was new then. It was also challenging, but I think that’s what makes the film valuable.
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MM: Do you have an on-set highlight that comes to mind? Like a fun memory?
QL: My most fun memory was working with the intimacy coordinator to stage that threesome scene with the actors. I always laugh at it when I think back.
MM: What else is on the horizon for you, career-wise?
QL: I have a graphic novel called Mystery Brothers through Simon & Schuster. I wrote a Halloween children’s book called Pumpkin Head Lost His Head. The illustrator of Mystery Brothers, Elis Zill, illustrates it. I also finished shooting a standup comedy feature/special documentary called Laugh Proud. It’s a 90-minute standup comedy feature with different LGBTQ+ comics that I think people will have a lot of fun watching.
MM: Have you watched anything interesting lately?
QL: The last thing I saw that was very interesting was Everything Everywhere All at Once. I like new movies that make you think.
MM: Name your top five favorite films.
QL: I’m a huge Brian De Palma fan, so one of my favorite films is Dressed to Kill. Evil Dead, My Life as a Dog, and Fanny and Alexander, the Ingmar Bergman movie. Lastly, Chungking Express by Wong Kar-wai. Those would be my top five.
MM: Thank you so much for chatting with me, Quentin!
QL: Thank you, Melody!
Last Summer of Nathan Lee is now in theaters at Laemmle Royal, with a digital release on SVOD slated for November 22, 2023. It’ll be released through Quentin’s streaming platform, AAM.tv, and on TVOD on Prime Video.
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What I do: I'm GGA's Managing Editor, a Senior Contributor, and Press Coordinator. I manage, contribute, and coordinate. Sometimes all at once. Joking aside, I oversee day-to-day operations for GGA, write, edit, and assess interview opportunities/press events.
Who I am: Before moving to Los Angeles after studying theater in college, I was born and raised in Amish country, Ohio. No, I am not Amish, even if I sometimes sport a modest bonnet.
Bylines in: Tell-Tale TV, Culturess, Sideshow Collectibles, and inkMend on Medium.
Critic: Rotten Tomatoes, CherryPicks, and the Hollywood Creative Alliance.
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