Fire Island movie

From the beginning, Ahn knew it was essential that as much of the film as possible was shot on Fire Island itself. “For Joel Kim Booster, part of the ...

“For Joel Kim Booster, part of the reason he made this [movie] was so that he could go on vacation with his best friend Bowen on the island,” Ahn says. From the beginning, Ahn knew it was essential that as much of the film as possible was shot on Fire Island itself. Set on the eponymous barrier island located off the southern shore of New York’s Long Island, Andrew Ahn’s new film Fire Island follows two best friends as they take a week-long vacation that results in some unexpected couplings.

Director Andrew Ahn proficiently handles the numerous plot lines, character conflicts and the tonal shifts between raunch and sweetness.

Near the end of “Fire Island,” Noah asks Will a question you don’t hear too often in romcoms: “What do you want?” Will’s answer is a testament to how effectively this film wears its heart on its sweaty, sticky sleeve. It’s to Ahn and Kim Booster’s credit that they don’t overcomplicate things as so many films of this genre have done. And to be sure, this film is ultimately about memories and good times with the chosen families so many queer people created in lieu of the blood relatives who deserted us when we came out. Unfortunately, he gets far less screen time than the more stereotypically bodied men with their speedos and their six-packs, as if the film is hiding him. “Fire Island” tips its homage-wielding hand early with a verbal and visual shout-out to Pride and Prejudice. After a quick appearance by that novel, narrator Noah ( Joel Kim Booster) quotes its author, Jane Austen, then dismisses her lines as a heteronormative ode to marriage and monogamy. I’m glad someone mentions it, and that the film ruminates on the real and perceived shallow optics inherent in that statement.

All the best parts of Joel Kim Booster's gay rom-com (on Hulu), starring himself and Bowen Yang, unfold outside its genre framing.

And yet when the two have their big scene in the rain, he becomes as much a sounding board for Noah’s frustrations with their community as he is a love interest. Ahn made his debut with Spa Night, a highly focused 2016 film about a young Korean American man struggling with his sexuality and his relationship with his parents, and then moved on to the somewhat more conventional, but still deeply intimate, Driveways in 2019. All of its best parts — and there are plenty — exist outside of that framing, which raises the question of why it’s there at all except as a means of wrestling with its author’s ambivalence about the conventional wisdom that a happy ending is the result of a pairing off. Noah and his friends are a collection of femme, fat, and non-white people in a scene that prizes none of those things and are already constantly reminded of how unviable they’re seen to be as sexual or romantic partners. At the center of the friendship between Noah and Howie are their shared experiences of feeling rendered invisible by their Asianness. Howie wants but has never had a boyfriend, while Noah has sex but doesn’t date, having embarked on a campaign of “self-improvement” to mold his body better to current standards of desirability while locking himself off from the idea of being emotionally accessible. Fire Island is inspired by Pride and Prejudice, though focus too closely on mapping the details of Austen’s novel onto the film and you’ll notice that, as Noah, star Joel Kim Booster is effectively playing the witty one in his friend group (the Elizabeth) as well as its acknowledged beauty (the Jane). Such are the privileges of having written the script — Booster is also an executive producer — though Fire Island feels hemmed in by its source material even when being loose and irreverent with it.

"Fire Island" stars Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang talk the scarcity of gay rom-coms at the premiere.

This year, the summer will see just one other film in “Fire Island’s” archetype, Universal Pictures’ “Bros,” which bills itself as the first gay romantic comedy to be released by a major motion picture studio. “I’m genuinely so happy that Billy’s movie is coming out,” Booster said. Often they’re framed around violence and sadness, and “Fire Island” is defiant against that trope. Andrew would tell me a constant refrain: ‘We can’t make this movie for Twitter. The discourse will be what the discourse will be.’ I didn’t set out to represent our entire community, and I think that’s a fool’s errand to try.” “I love rom-coms, and there’s something about them that allows us to process the difficult emotions around being desired that, without a sense of humor, would be crushing.” The film features a group of gay Asian men, led by Booster and Yang, who head to the Pines for a final summer weekend before their host (played by Margaret Cho) sells her beach house.

Here's how to watch Bowen Yang's take on Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island. Find out when it's streaming, whether it hits theaters, and more.

While a far quieter and more serious film than Fire Island, Spa Night also features a primarily Asian American cast and focuses on the LGBTQ+ community. While this Greg Berlanti-directed dramedy with its plot of mistaken identity and misunderstandings all wrapping up neatly may seem a bit cliché, letting a gay teen character have that classic rom-com experience, complete with the happy ending, was quite novel in 2018 and to some extent still is today. Fire Island focuses on a group of longtime friends going on a week-long vacation to Fire Island Pines, the iconic gay resort off of Long Island. The lead role of Noah is played by Joel Kim Booster and playing the role of Noah’s best friend Howie is Bowen Yang. Legendary comedian and activist Margaret Cho plays Erin, a homeowner on Fire Island who Noah and his friends stay with. The misunderstandings and assumptions that get in the way of Noah and Howie’s relationships with their wealthier romantic interests are the focus of most of the plot. But as Joel Kim Booster noted when talking with The Spool, “there’s enough in it that is universal that anyone can key into.” The idea of a Pride and Prejudice-inspired story set on modern-day Fire Island first occurred to Joel Kim Booster when he was vacationing on the famous island with his good friend and SNL cast member Bowen Yang. Kim Booster told The Spool that “it really struck me how relevant Jane Austen’s work was, to me, as a 21st-century gay man.

The long trip to the screen behind "Fire Island," a gay rom-com loosely adapted from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," may be more interesting than the ...

Austen adaptations clearly never go out of style, but this latest variation reminds us that alone doesn't mean they pack enough accessories to completely validate the trip. There are also funny throwaway lines scattered along the way, including an overt Austen reference lest anyone have missed the parallels. , who has seemed poised for bigger things since joining "Saturday Night Live," and comic Joel Kim Booster, who is actually the movie's star as well as its writer.

Matt Rogers, Bowen Yang and Tomas Matos in 'Fire Island.' Jeong Park/Searchlight Pictures. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Noah (Joel Kim Booster) ...

It also helps that he and Ricamora, who has the shy-sexy-surly vibe down to a science, generate a genuine chemistry together, and that he has Bowen Yang as his wingman. It also has gay lead characters, gay love interests, gay heroes, gay villains, and gay people of color galore. It’s a valentine to a communal gay experience, penned in a way that’s uniquely both insular and inviting. The downside: That world is mostly rich, elitist, lily-white and casually — or not-so-casually — racist as fuck. (Her example for being financially irresponsible to a fault: “I was an early investor in Quibi.” Point taken.) Which is why, when a hot doctor named Charlie (James Scully) smiles at Howie from across a crowded room, Noah decides to play matchmaker. And now that Noah’s best friend, Howie (SNL MVP Bowen Yang), has left the East Coast for a cushy job at a Silicon Valley startup, it’s the only time these two guys get any significant time together.

Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang star in this sun-splashed love letter to queer spaces, gay male friendship, and the Meat Rack.

The love between friends in Fire Island, particularly Howie and Noah, is much more convincing and more compelling than the romantic love between the movie’s leads that we’re supposed to root for. Fire Island itself is as much a love letter to our best friends, those soulmates who bring joy to our lives, as it is a reminder that these friendships can be fleeting and should be cherished. For LGBTQ people, friendship can be redemptive, nourishing, familial, brave, and loving in ways that are just as valuable as the kind of romantic love that Austen wrote about. Howie and Noah and the Fire Island Bennetts don’t measure highly on that scale, and it gnaws away at them. The stereotypes, the ideas of masculinity, the casual bigotry ingrained in gay male culture, may all be hard to fully feel if you haven’t grown up queer and Asian. That being said, Ahn and Booster translate this unspoken understanding with thoughtfulness, ensuring that you don’t have to fully comprehend their dynamic to easily empathize with it. Altogether, it’s a vulnerable, honest perspective from Booster about the irrationality of gay male desire. Yet it’s rare that these stories, with decades and decades of history, actually become the inspiration for mainstream movies and get the financial backing that comes with it. He’s not looking for a husband, and he’s very much aware of the currency that his abs afford him. Noah doesn’t see long-term potential in Charlie, either, even though Charlie and Will seem purer and kinder than the company they keep. Is the promise of a one-night stand really worth it? And though they say they’re coming over for dinner and how fun that will be, they’ll never show up and can’t be bothered to give an explanation why. The other one will be about the worst.