Paying For It (The Film Edition)

By Chester Brown. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Softcover, 344 pages, B&W, 2024 (originally published 2013)

The critically lauded memoir about being a john is now a major motion picture!

Paying for It was the most talked-about and controversial graphic novel of 2011, a critical success so innovative and complex that it received two rave reviews in The New York Times. Chester Brown’s eloquent, spare artwork stands out in this new paperback edition, tied to the release of the film adaptation co-written and directed by Sook-Yin Lee, Brown’s longtime friend and the director of Year of the Carnivore and Octavio is Dead! 

Paying for It offers an entirely unvarnished exploration of sex work through Brown’s own life story, showing him as a timid john who rides his bike to his escorts, wonders how to tip so as not to offend, and reads Dan Savage for advice. The book demystifies an experience that is so often sensationalized, revealing a world of online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of clichéd street corners, drugs, or pimps. In it, Brown combines the personal and sexual aspects of his autobiographical work (I Never Liked You, The Playboy) with the polemical drive of Louis Riel, as he explores one of the most hotly debated issues in the world and advocates for the importance of legalizing sex work. 

Now with an introduction by Lee, expanded notes discussing the film adaptation, movie stills and behind the scenes shots, as well as a new cover by Brown and artwork that he created for the production, Paying for It: The Film Edition is an unmissable edition for fans of Brown and film-making alike. 

“Truly groundbreaking… As convincing a case for the decriminalization and destigmatization of prostitution as anyone I’ve ever come across in the prostitutes’ rights movement.”--Annie Sprinkle, The New York Times

“A sustained argument in favor of decriminalizing prostitution [that] will stick in your mind and perhaps in your craw. It’s a real if squeamish-making work of art.”--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Brown’s astonishingly frank account of using the services of prostitutes in Toronto is a thoroughly engrossing look at a world most people would otherwise never know existed.”--The Toronto Star

“As a demonstration of the limitless narrative potential of the comics medium, its ability to tackle some of the most difficult and loaded questions of our time, Paying For It delivers.”--NPR Books