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.”
