I think it's so important as a safe haven for people to be themselves. And so, for me, I think it's very cool that Fire Island has this legacy. "As much as it is a safe space from straight people, it's still a risky or uncomfortable space for people who don't necessarily fit into this white, cisgender, muscle gay kind of role. "We didn't want to sugarcoat the Fire Island experience," Ahn says. It's as much an indictment of Fire Island as it is a love letter. With Booster's hilarious, nuanced script that cleverly twists Austen's themes supported by Ahn's exceptionally thoughtful direction, Fire Island manages to move well beyond its source material to become both a meditation on queer male idenitity - particularly queer men of colour - as well as an examination of often toxic sociocultural divides within queer comminities. Darcy in Will (Ricamora), an uptight lawyer who initially clashes with Noah (though fans of Pride and Prejudice can guess how that turns out). Bennet becomes Erin (Cho), the group's lesbian mama bear who provides a safe haven for her boys every summer. Lizzie becomes Noah (Booster), Jane becomes Howie (Yang) and Mrs. The Bennet sisters become a chosen family of gay men heading to Fire Island for their annual week-long adventure. Their collective efforts would result in a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice not unlike how Amy Heckerling adapted Austen's Emma for Clueless (a film that is aptly referenced multiple times in Fire Island). Ahn (whose previous films Spa Night and Driveways are wonderful if you haven't seen them) came on board to direct, and Cho, Ricamora, Matt Rogers, Torian Miller and Tomás Matos joined Booster and Yang in the cast.
Thankfully, Booster's series hadn't gone into production before Quibi's demise, and Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures purchased the idea to be turned into a feature film: Fire Island. Unfortunately, that deal was with Quibi, the streaming network that very much crashed and burned months after launching. A year later, he had a deal to develop a comedy series alongside Yang that would be somewhat inspired by that experience. In 2018, Booster (who you may know from his stand-up, roles in shows like Shrill and Sunnyside or his podcast Urgent Care) wrote a popular essay about reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time while vacationing on Fire Island with Yang, who he had befriended when they were coming up together in New York's comedy scene. It's been quite the road to that magical milestone. "We're the first orgies on Disney+!" Booster replies.
I can't imagine how surreal that must be for him.
Talking to Booster (who also stars in the film) over Zoom, I tell him how surreal it's been as a queer man to see the poster for Fire Island all around town with the Disney logo under the film's title, the names of four openly queer actors of colour (Booster, Saturday Night Live's Bowen Yang, How To Get Away With Murder's Conrad Ricamora and the legendary Margaret Cho) and the image of a group of smiling queer men in their bathing suits. Celebrate Pride: check out more stories on LGBTQ+ icons and activists.It's also better than most straight romantic comedies could ever aspire to be, as Canadian viewers will soon find out since it begins streaming on Disney+ today (Disney-owned Hulu is releasing it in the United States). Written by Joel Kim Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn, Fire Island is the first romantic comedy ever released by a Hollywood studio to be exclusively created by and starring queer people. Which might not sound so monumental until one includes the part about how this contemporary adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is set at a hedonistic gay vacation destination, features an all-LGBTQ cast, includes plenty of sex, drugs and Marisa Tomei-impressions and is being released by Disney.
This weekend, queers all around the world are going to sit down in their living rooms and watch … a movie adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens.įor all the horrifying ways society feels like it's moving backwards, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ people, let us all just take some Pride Month™ comfort in one thing that feels so very forward.