CHICAGO — The romantic comedy “Fire Island” is a very gay, very horny, very charming riff on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” set on present-day Fire Island in New York. There is banter aplenty, a lot of it dirty. Both sweet and filled with spiky humor, it comes from screenwriter Joel Kim Booster, who also stars alongside Margaret Cho and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Bowen Yang, the latter of whom is one of Booster’s closest friends — on screen and in real life.
Though it touches on everything from beauty standards to classism to racism — the snobs in the film are ripped, white and obnoxiously rich — “Fire Island” (which premieres Friday on Hulu) is resolutely a rom-com with a tender heart. Yang’s character isn’t looking for casual sex; he wants the fantasy of “kissing in the rain and (someone) standing outside my window with a boom box or confessing things in a gazebo.” Booster plays a guy slightly more cynical about the whole pairing off thing, and instead encourages his friend to embrace the hookup potential around him: “You are going to have missionary, vanilla sex with the man — men — of your dreams.” They each find someone to be with in the end, but it’s the central friendship between Yang and Booster that carries the movie.
As a writer and performer, Booster launched his career in Chicago’s theater scene. He grew up in Plainfield, Illinois, and aside from Melissa McCarthy, he might be one of the only other notable performers to emerge from this town 45 minutes southwest of Chicago. “And Shea Couleé from ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’” Booster said. “We all went to the same high school.”
Booster also co-stars in the upcoming Maya Rudolph comedy series “Loot” on Apple TV+, which premieres later this month.
Q: How did you land on the idea of playing around with Jane Austen?
A: The first time I went to Fire Island with Bowen in 2016, I brought “Pride and Prejudice” with me as my beach read. And I remember reading it there and sort of marveling at how relevant her observations on class, and the ways in which people communicate across class lines, were to what we were experiencing on the island. I kept putting the book down and saying to Bowen, “This is crazy, she is speaking to us at this moment.”
And it started as a joke, honestly. I kept saying that week: “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote gay ‘Pride and Prejudice’ that was set on Fire Island?” And people would sort of boo and hiss and throw things at me. And then over the years, I would come back to Fire Island with Bowen, and every year I would bring a different Jane Austen book with me to read, and slowly it just began to crystallize.
Q: How long have you and Yang been friends?
A: I moved to New York in 2013 and we met shortly after that. We were introduced by a mutual friend and we performed together in a comedy variety show and we just became fast friends. We had a lot in common — there weren’t a lot of gay Asian men working in comedy at that time.
I think there are a lot of people who wanted to pit us against each other because we happened to check a lot of the same boxes, demographically. But we resisted that and rather than being competitive, we wanted to lean on each other, because no one understands what it’s like to be us in this industry quite like the other.
Q: The feeling you were getting from some people was: There can only be one gay Asian guy who’s funny.
A: Yeah. And this movie is a response to that.
We so often go in for the same parts, but we don’t ever get to work together and I said (screw) that — if the industry is not going to afford us this opportunity, I’m going to do it myself.
I hadn’t written a film script prior to this. I had written for television, for “The Other Two” and for “Big Mouth” and “Billy on the Street.”
So I had originally written this as a half-hour comedy pilot, on spec, and I took it out and tried to sell it. And nobody wanted to touch it. It was seen as very niche and unsellable. And then Quibi came about (the short-lived streaming service that specialized in episodes chopped up into short “quick bites”) and, say what you will about Quibi’s eventual demise and whether or not it was a good idea, they were really taking chances on new talent and I was one of those people.
So I developed it with them. I wrote it, it was greenlit — and then Quibi crashed. So I thought it was over, that was the end of it.
Q: When Quibi collapsed, did all the rights revert to you?
A: Yeah. We were supposed to shoot in the summer of 2020, and because of the pandemic we had to postpone, and that ended up being sort of fortuitous. Because we hadn’t shot anything, it was pretty simple.
And then we sent it out and Searchlight very quickly snatched it up. There was a timing thing, certainly: Bowen’s star was on the rise (having joined “SNL”) and the holiday movie “Happiest Season” had just been a big hit for Hulu, so they were hungry for another gay rom-com. And I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Q: How did it go from a series to a film?
A: One of the appealing things about the Quibi of it all is that the rights reverted back to you after two years, no matter what, and you could take these short-form quick bites and turn them into whatever you want and repackage and resell them. So when I was developing it, in the back of my mind I was always structuring it as a movie that I would eventually be able to sell. So when I sent it to Searchlight, I just took out the chapter breaks and squashed it together — and it worked!
Q: The movie is this combination of very sweet and very horny. How did you go about deciding things like how much nudity to show?
A: We didn’t want to shy away from anything. We didn’t want to shy away from the realities of what it is to be on that island, both the sex stuff but also the racism and classism and body expectations. We wanted it to feel like a real Fire Island experience and we were very upfront with the studio about that. And to Searchlight’s credit, they were very open to letting us go there.
Andrew (the film’s director Andrew Ahn) asked very early on, ‘Can I show (penis)?’ and they said, ‘You can have as many butts as you want, but no (penis).’ (Laughs) And we said, “We’ll take it!” So that was the extent of the discussions of how explicit we could go.
Q: In the movie, Yang’s character often feels insecure because he isn’t considered attractive. I had to suspend my disbelief because he clearly is attractive — but is there a sense on Fire Island that he isn’t?
A: I think you’re underestimating the power of gay racism. The scene in the movie where we enter the party and someone says, “I think you’re at the wrong house” — that has happened to me personally, twice, on Fire Island. So it is amazing the ways in which we can oppress each other when there’s no one around to oppress us — when there are no straight people around, we very quickly have the propensity to turn on each other. And as much as this movie is a celebration of chosen family and queer family, I wanted it to be an exploration of that toxicity.
Q: You grew up in Plainfield and became part of the theater scene in Chicago after college.
A: Really the thing that inspired me to get out of Plainfield was Margaret Cho. I mean, I can draw a straight line from (her 1994 sitcom) “All-American Girl” to “Fire Island,” because it really gave me a window into the possibility that I had as an Asian American in this industry. I had never seen myself reflected on screen before and that’s what really changed my life and my conception of what was possible. I was eight or nine when it was on the air, and I was sitting three inches from the screen watching it every week.
Q: You were home-schooled for most of your childhood.
A: Until I was a junior in high school, and the reason for that (switching to public school) was performing — I wanted an opportunity to perform. I always wanted to perform, I was a ham from the jump. All I wanted to do was write, tell stories and perform.
When I came to Chicago, I came to be a playwright. That was my goal at the time. I was in love with the storefront theater scene and my first play was produced as part of the Chicago Fringe Festival. I became a company member at The New Colony Theatre (which has since changed its name to The New Coordinates) and was working on their play “5 Lesbians Eating A Quiche” and that was where I met Beth Stelling (who now co-stars on “Rutherford Falls”) and she was the first person to tell me to do standup. After that, I started to straddle the line between comedy and theater. That’s the beauty of Chicago, it’s an incredible incubator and it allows you the freedom to sort of dip your toe into a lot of different waters.
It slowly became more interesting to me to do comedy because I felt a bit more freedom in that. When I started going out for more on-camera work as an actor, it was so limiting. We weren’t having the same conversations about diversity that we’re having now, so I started doing stand-up as an outlet to really express myself and tell an authentic version of my story. I was tired of being called in to audition for “Chinese food delivery boy.” So I was in Chicago from 2010 to 2013. Moving to New York was a conscious decision on my part to say: OK, I’m going to try to make it as a comedian.
Q: Yang is obviously on “SNL,” was that ever of interest to you?
A: Oh god, no (laughs), it is not a skill-set I possess. And quite honestly, it’s grueling work. And a little limiting, I think; they really own you during your tenure on that show. I think Bowen is doing an amazing job, he handles it with aplomb, but I never need to be as famous as Bowen Yang, I can tell you that. After going out to gay bars with Bowen? I’m very happy with who I am.
Q: What is it like to socialize with a friend who suddenly becomes famous?
A: He handles it so gracefully, but it is just a constant stream of people coming up and telling him how much he means to them. It’s an honor and a responsibility that he takes seriously. He’s great with people.
But I am his de facto photographer when we go out — people will ask me to take a picture of them with him — and that’s a role I take very seriously, as well (laughs).
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