'Fire Island' showcases gay Asian American cast, director
(From L-R): Tomas Matos, Matt Rogers, Joel Kim Booster, Margaret Cho and Torian Miller in the film "Fire Island."
Credit: 20th Century Studios
Long Island’s world-renowned gay vacation spot plays itself in “Fire Island,” a romantic comedy that debuts June 3 on Hulu. The story concerns a handsome but penniless hero navigating the upper echelons of gay society while trying to play matchmaker for a mousy friend.
Does that plot sound familiar? It’s a twist on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — and perhaps “Emma” as well — albeit with fewer women and more Speedos.
Aside from being a gay update on an old classic, “Fire Island” (produced by Searchlight Pictures, the former Fox subsidiary) is also the rare studio project to be led by queer Asian Americans, both in front of the camera and behind it. They include its writer and lead actor, Joel Kim Booster, and his co-star Bowen Yang, the “Saturday Night Live” cast member. The film’s Mr. Darcy figure is played by Conrad Ricamora (ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder”), an American actor with roots in the Philippines. Margaret Cho has a supporting role. And the director is Andrew Ahn, whose previous films include the gay drama “Spa Night.”
“I think it is a first,” Cho said of the film. “Fire Island” may be a breezy romantic comedy, she added, but its spotlight on underrepresented characters give it an outsize power. “It makes a lot of sense for us to have this, and for us to have agency in our stories.”
“Fire Island” is the brainchild of Booster, 34, a stand-up comic with a complicated back story: born in South Korea, adopted by evangelical Christian parents and raised in Illinois. Booster channeled his experience as a gay Asian kid living in middle America into his stand-up material, and his career took off after a move to New York City in 2014. He landed an appearance on “Conan,” got his own Comedy Central special and earned a starring role in the NBC sitcom “Sunnyside.”
Meanwhile, he befriended Yang, a fellow Asian American comic (he’s of Chinese descent), who took him on his first trip to Fire Island. That was roughly 10 years ago, and to hear Booster tell it, the experience was both magical and eye-opening.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Booster said. On the one hand, he found the island’s gay enclave, Fire Island Pines, to be as liberating as he imagined: “a place to be gay and stupid and be with your friends,” he said. On the other hand, he added, “Fire Island also looms as this big scary place where privileged white gay men go on vacation. And it’s not necessarily for the rest of the community anymore.”
To that end, “Fire Island” frequently points out instances of casual racism and stereotyping within the gay community. And like Austen’s book, which Booster took with him on that very first trip, the film is keenly aware of class and wealth. Booster’s character and his rowdy friends — none of them rich and nearly all of color — feel like outsiders among the island’s moneyed types. “The scene in the movie where we enter the party, and they say, ‘I think you’re in the wrong house?’” Booster said. “That’s happened to me.”
Booster initially intended “Fire Island” as a series, and at one point struck a deal with Quibi, the short-lived streaming service. Following its collapse in 2020, Booster refashioned it as a screenplay and reached out to his friend Ahn, the director, who quickly signed on. Ahn, raised in Southern California, had never been to Fire Island until he started scouting locations. Booster gave him a “Fire Island crash course,” Ahn said. “I could see how much he loves the island. And that was something that I really held on to as I made the film.”
Shooting took place in the Pines for about two weeks starting in late August of last year. Locals will recognize such landmarks as the Ice Palace nightclub and the Blue Whale bar in addition to the various woodsy walkways that wind through the area. (Mainland Long Island also plays a role: Many of the interiors were shot at private homes in Sands Point and Old Westbury.) Ahn and the cast stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in the Pines during filming, an experience the director likened to “summer camp.”
“My room shared an air vent with Joel Kim Booster’s room, and I could hear him watching ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ with some of the cast,’” Ahn recalled. “Just to hear them laughing and having fun, it was very heartwarming.”
Fans of traditional rom-coms may find “Fire Island” something of a shock. For starters, the dialogue is so raunchy it might make even Judd Apatow blush. The sex scenes can be explicit. And Booster’s character refers to his friends using a word that many would consider a gay slur. (That word is also the title of Larry Kramer’s landmark gay novel from 1978, which details a chaotic weekend on Fire Island, though Booster said the reference isn’t intentional.)
“For me, it’s a reclamation of the word,” Booster says, adding that it’s been hurled at him “all my life. When I was younger, it’s because I couldn’t hide who I was. And people clocked it, and they called me that word.” As an adult, he said, “those things I wanted to hide so desperately, I’m not ashamed of them anymore. Many of them I’m quite proud of.”
Booster said he hopes “Fire Island” will serve an as antidote to mainstream gay movies that tend to focus on homophobia or the difficulty of coming out. “I think a lot of the movies that are aimed at our community are about our trauma,” he said. “I really wanted to depict a story about queer Asian American joy. I hope people of all stripes, all identities, are able to find the universality in that experience — that joy.”
