Is there any world as rigid in its social structures and codes as the Regency-era England depicted in the novels of Jane Austen?
For actor and comedian Joel Kim Booster, there was an obvious parallel to be found in the mating rituals of modern gay men, especially in queer vacation destinations like the Pines on New York’s Fire Island.
“I went to Fire Island for the first time in 2016 with Bowen (Yang) and ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ ” Booster told The Chronicle during a recent interview in San Francisco. “The whole time I was reading it on Fire Island, I just kept putting it down, turning to Bowen and saying how relevant her observations are to what we’re experiencing now.”
Booster jokes that the genesis of the film “started as a threat. I would be drunk and be like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote a gay “Pride and Prejudice” set on Fire Island?’ I slowly started to crystallize this story, what the parallels were between what Jane Austen wrote about and what gay men experience on that island.”
“Fire Island,” written by and starring Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn, follows in the tradition of films like “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Clueless” by translating the work of Austen to modern times. Booster stars as Noah, a gay man who serves as the story’s Elizabeth Bennet stand-in as he tries to set up his best friend, Howie (“Saturday Night Live” cast member Yang), with a hot hookup during their stay on the island, forgoing finding his own sexual partner until Howie does. Complications arise when Will (Conrad Ricamora’s Mr. Darcy-inspired character) appears on the scene, sparking a flirtation with Noah that’s heavy on verbal sparring with added class and racial tensions between their respective cliques.
Review: Pride, prejudice, poppers and parties flood Hulu’s ‘Fire Island’
但是不要让电影的文学inspirati贞洁on fool you. “Fire Island” does not shy away from showing gay hookup culture; the use of party drugs like poppers and ketamine; or the kind of explicit language around sexuality that’s true to many gay men’s experiences. But as expected from Booster — a voice actor on Netflix’s “Big Mouth” and star of the upcoming stand-up special “Joel Kim Booster: Psychosexual” for the streamer — the topics are explored with a brand of humor that is at times critical and celebratory, but always honest to the lives of its characters.
The script also deftly skewers the romantic comedy — from meet-cute introductions to “quirky best friend” character tropes — while ultimately embracing some of the optimism about relationships the genre has long represented to audiences.
“I have worshiped at the altar of Nora Ephron since I was a little kid,” said Booster of the writer of “When Harry Met Sally …” and writer-director of “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.”
“I think especially when I was rendering the bones of the story, I really wanted to honor the rom-com tropes and not be cynical. I wanted to have that part of the story be the full rom-com fantasy,” but of course, Booster pointed out, with a uniquely queer point of view.
“I really love (that) in modernizing ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and queering the rom-com, Joel’s screenplay shifted the emphasis away from the romantic relationships and on to Noah and Howie,” said Ahn, whose previous projects include the 2016 film “Spa Night” and the series “This Close.”
“I think that feels really queer. Our chosen families play a bigger role in our lives often than our romantic partners,” Ahn added. “We kept trying to figure out what the gay equivalent of ‘bros before hoes’ is.”
Central to the film’s chosen-family dynamic is the character of Erin, the owner of the vacation home Noah, Howie and their friends stay at every summer. The role, played by San Francisco native Margaret Cho, is the film’s maternal figure a la “Pride and Prejudice” matriarch Mrs. Bennet, albeit a lesbian chosen mother with an appreciation for circuit parties and raunchy humor. Both Ahn and Booster, who is Korean American, also cite the comedian as a significant groundbreaker for both queer and Asian American representation. Cho’s 1994 sitcom “All-American Girl” was hailed as the first television series to center on an Asian American family.
“I can draw a straight line from ‘All-American Girl’ to this movie,” Booster said. “When I was growing up, the only Asian people you saw (in media) were martial artists or sidekicks. (That show) blew my world wide open to what I thought was possible for myself at that time. I don’t know that I would have ever even thought I could do this if it wasn’t for Margaret Cho.”
Cho sees a parallel between Erin and the chosen-mother character of Mrs. Madrigal in Armistead Maupin’s San Francisco-set “Tales of the City” series. She called Erin “the lesbian elder voice we all need.”
“It kind of mimics the real-life role I had with Joel and with Bowen,” Cho said of her character in a separate interview. “I love them. I think that they’re so important because they’re creating a path for the next generation. We’re entering a phase where their voices are being heard, and they’re being seen in a way that’s really important.”
In making the film, Booster and Ahn both said Searchlight Pictures was supportive of their desire to create a story that was a reflection of both the overall queer experience and the queer Asian American experience. But with so many references and inside jokes specific to the LGBTQ community and gay men in particular, it might seem natural for Booster and Ahn to be concerned about losing straight audiences unfamiliar with queer culture.
“We were adamant that we were OK if a straight person doesn’t understand every single joke,” Booster said. “I think that’s where a lot of queer media goes wrong; it feels the need to be didactic about our community. The thing is, everything is for (straight audiences), and we have to have an experience of having to be like, ‘What does that mean?’ all the time with that material. They can have that experience for once.”
“Fire Island”(R) is available to stream Friday, June 3 on Hulu. It also screens at 8:50 p.m. Thursday, June 23 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F., as part of Frameline46. For more information, go towww.frameline.org.