To get to the Pines, you have to take the ferry. And even in the waning days of summer, even if it happens to be a sun-kissed Monday morning in September, you’ll find yourself riding with a procession of queer people. A musical-theater ensemblist loudly recounts performing at a dinner theater in Santa Fe. A beefy, tattooed man sits arm-in-arm with a person who could be his son, but is most likely not. A man in a White Claw hat who looks like he got lost on his way to Greenwich asks a stranger if he’s on the right ferry. He is. We’re all headed to the same place: Fire Island.
The Pines—a queer hamlet on the larger Fire Island, though the names can be used interchangeably—is a gay mecca. It’s a mythic place where every summer, thousands upon thousands of queer people (and only the strongest of allies) take the plane to the train to the bus to the ferry, to gather with sisters and strangers and escape the onslaught of heterosexuality that comprises day-to-day life. It also serves as the setting, inspiration, and title of the feature film Fire Island, from Searchlight Pictures which debuts on Hulu June 3.
“We made something really, really special and unique and gay,” Fire Island star and scribe Joel Kim Booster tells me over the phone, about six months after that ferry ride. “The fact that we did that feels miraculous, considering what we were up against.”
Produced by Jax Media (Russian Doll) and inspired by Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island stars Booster as Noah—a modern spin on Elizabeth Bennet. To Booster, the adaptation was a no-brainer. “Jane Austen’s observations about the way people are awful to each other without being awful to each other—I was like, Oh, my God. This is shade. This is what gay men do all the time.”
As the ferry pulls into the harbor, we’re greeted by the customary wave of islanders gathered at the Blue Whale, the waterfront bar home to “Low Tea”—a Fire Island tradition where practically everyone communes for happy hour. Instead of tipsy vacationers, today the Blue Whale is populated by cranes, cameras, crew, and cast as production on Fire Island is in full swing. “We were sort of the Walmart greeters of this beautiful queer enclave,” says Bowen Yang, the Saturday Night Live standout who costars as Booster’s best friend Howie. “It feels like the fifth lady,” Yang says—an allusion to the way New York City was frequently called the fifth star on Sex and the City.
On set, the hum of the island is inescapable as Speedo-clad locals breeze past the “Do Not Disturb—Shoot in Progress” signs to grab groceries and alcohol (mostly alcohol) at the Pines Pantry. Director Andrew Ahn doesn’t seem too concerned as they disturb a scene where Booster’s and Yang’s characters interact with their respective love interests, portrayed by How to Get Away With Murder’s Conrad Ricamora and You’s James Scully, and their friend, played by Nick Adams. The sequence also features friends of Noah and Howie, played by Yang’s Las Culturistas podcasting partner Matt Rogers, Torian Miller, Tomás Matos, and the inimitable Margaret Cho.
The film is scheduled to wrap a few days after my visit, with an overnight shoot recreating the infamous weekly underwear party at the Ice Palace on Cherry Grove, the village adjacent to the Pines. “I went with my cinematographer during the Pines Party—the most peak Fire Island experience,” Ahn says. “We went to the underwear party together and we were like, shot-listing—and we ran into Joel there, who was just there to have fun.”
In a world where queer content typically skews toward the treacly (think Love, Simon), or the tragic (think The Power of the Dog), making a story about gay love for a major movie studio is itself something of a radical act. (Though not too radical: Billy Eichner’s gay rom-com Bros, which also features an all-queer principal cast, hits theaters this September.) A major motion picture that puts queer joy at the fore—and not corporate pride Chase bank queer joy, but underwear-rave Fire Island queer joy—is practically unheard of.
Yang tells me that he often oscillates between taking for granted the fact that queer content is made in Hollywood, and being amazed that it exists at all. “I think there’s a middle ground there,” he says. “I think I lean more toward it’s a miracle that any queer shit gets made.”
“It makes me really nervous when people say, ‘This movie’s going to be really important,’” Booster admits to me on Fire Island. “Like, please don’t. I don’t need that. I feel like the stakes are really high for me. I have a biweekly breakdown in front of Andrew, and then we’re done, and I go to set and everything is good.”
Booster’s love of Austen stems back to his childhood. “I would watch the BBC miniseries [Pride and Prejudice] with my mom at least once a year,” he says, “and of course Clueless was such a big movie for me growing up—I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched Clueless, from a time before I even understood most of the jokes.”
This obsession followed him all the way to his first trip to the Pines with Yang. On that maiden voyage, “I brought Pride and Prejudice with me,” Booster says. “I was reading it there with Bowen, and it just sort of clicked for me…. I turned to Bowen and was like ‘I should write Pride and Prejudice set on Fire Island. Wouldn’t that be so funny?’” Booster shelved the idea for years, only for it to reemerge in an essay he wrote for a now defunct blog about his connection to Austen as a gay man.
“My Comedy Central pilot had been passed on—I was so depressed—and my agent was like, You should write a show that’s based off this essay,” he says. “I was like, That’s the dumbest idea you’ve ever had, David. Don’t ever talk to me again. That’s so stupid.”
But something about the idea stuck. When Booster found himself on a plane to Japan, he wrote a half-hour pilot version, then called Trip. Eventually, the series was bought by the streaming service Quibi; we all know what happened next. “The day that I found out Quibi was folding I was like, ‘Oh that’s it, there goes that,” said Booster. Fortuitously, Booster’s team moved fast and Searchlight Pictures saved the series, upgrading it from 10 “quick bites” into a major motion picture.
A helicopter whirs overhead as a “Free Britney” flag waves in the background. At first, the chopper is a funny distraction from the monotony of filming—but by the third interruption, it’s a nuisance costing the crew valuable sunlight. Was there a gay Amber Alert we all somehow missed? Meanwhile, inhabitants of the Ocean Walk house kiki off-camera, breaking into Miranda Sings–style impressions of the Dua Lipa song softly playing in the background. “Do you guys know Dua Lipa? Dula Peep?” jokes Scully.
Booster yawns and vapes between takes. His call time was 6 a.m., and as both creator and star of this endeavor, it’s evident he has a lot on his plate. “Most days I feel amazing and incredible, but there are some days where I’m like, Am I making the worst movie ever made?” he says. Around 3 p.m., Yang admits to me that he’s also dragging, although you couldn’t tell from his performance. At the end of the day, he has to fall down the steps of the Blue Whale no less than 20 times while filming a classic, awkward rom-com moment. “There was a lot of business around how the stunt would be performed,” Yang says in a later phone conversation. “I remember really being bruised and battered by the end of the day.”
Although he wrote a romantic comedy, Booster had no intention of shying away from the stark realities of the island. In another scene I see, a character named Moses, played by nonbinary comedian Peter Smith, hits on Noah at the Blue Whale. “Are you Korean?” Smith asks Booster, obnoxiously. “Are you Filipino?”
“Sometimes if you’re gay, you don’t think you can be classist or racist,” Cho tells me between takes. Of course, that isn’t true. “That’s what the film is about.”
Or, as Booster puts it: “What happens when gay men are put together on an island and there are no straight people to oppress us? How do we oppress each other?”
“There is this idea that it’s only for white muscle gays,” Booster says, of the Pines—or for gay men with money. (In true Pride and Prejudice fashion, the suitors are of a different socioeconomic ilk than our heroes—they’ve got a waterfront rental on Ocean Walk, while Noah and Howie are staying inland on the less-tony Tuna Walk.) “But I think you’re starting to see a change there. There’s a dismissal from queer men of color of a certain ilk who are like, ‘that’s not for me.’ And it’s like: Fuck that.”
Now he’s getting heated. “Don’t let them win. If we all avoid this island because that’s who supposedly runs the island? I refuse to cede that ground. Just because there are shitty people who want to take ownership of it doesn’t mean that they actually own it.”
About 200 people are ferried on and off of the island every day while shooting on location in the Pines. The ferry that I rode magically turns into craft services for lunchtime, and transforms back to shuttle extras and miscellaneous crew to Sayville at the end of the day.
But the principal cast doesn’t leave; they’re staying together in a house on the island. “Andrew [Ahn]’s job was to get us to seem like we’ve been a close unit for a long time,” says Yang. “And then it so quickly veered into reality. Within weeks or days, even, just feeling like, oh, wow, these are close confidants of mine.”
“I don’t know if a group of people has ever had more fun than we had shooting that last week on Fire Island,” says Booster. “It is a little bit like summer camp, where you end up meeting and really falling in love, platonically or otherwise, with people on this island. It’s magical.”
Their camaraderie is clear between takes, as the cast discusses the recent Real Housewives of Salt Lake City premiere. “My family,” shouts Rogers, with perfect Meredith Marks intonation. “I have done nothing to Jennifer Shah.” Someone asks Matos—an ensemble member in Broadway’s Diana the Musical and the non-binary baby of the group—what type of car they would be, if they were a car. “I would be a Ferrari because I’m an expensive bitch,” they clap back. Every individual in the principal cast is queer, and that energy—that inherent kinship—pervades the set. “It’s a heist film—all bottoms,” Cho quips to me. “Bottoms Eleven.”
For Booster and Yang, the relationships run deeper than the shoot. They’ve been close friends for almost a decade, coming up together in New York City’s alt-comedy world and defining a generation of comics with their wit, intelligence, and deep friendship.
Despite their talent and success, it wasn’t inevitable that they’d headline a feature film together. “Ten years ago, I’m not sure Bowen and I could have existed in the same space, professionally,” Booster says. “I think there’s an idea of like, we check a lot of the same demographic boxes, so we must be exactly the same. To costar in a movie with him puts a spotlight on how different we are as performers. That was really powerful, I think, for both of us.”
“Shooting the movie was this thing that should irrevocably change us, and I think in minor ways it probably did,” Yang admits, laughing. “But I think we’ve come to this place where we’re closer than we ever have been before.”
The shoot is going so well, in fact, that a part of Booster is worried the experience is too good to be true. But he’s trying to quiet those demons: “It might just be something I have to create,” Booster says. “That’s the biggest lesson: You just can’t wait around for the industry to catch up with you. You have to just do it.”
The day is drawing to a close. A camera falls during a tracking shot. (“You didn’t see that,” jokes Rogers.) Bees have begun to swarm around the prop rosé. It’s time to head back to the ferry, back to reality. Looking back at the harbor, it’s hard not to wonder when we’ll all return. For many queer people, the Pines is a Brigadoon-esque escape, a sliver of an isle that only exists one season a year. Fire Island is the exception to the rule of our lives, in the same way that a gay romantic comedy with four Asian American stars is an exception to the rule of Hollywood.
“A Jane Austen narrative meeting an Asian American narrative meeting a queer narrative: Those three helices come together in a way that’s greater than the sum of their parts,” says Yang. “And to say that something is greater than a Jane Austen narrative is insane—unhinged of me—to do. But I said it.”
“I want people—especially gay men, especially queer people—to walk away from the movie happy that they’re gay,” Booster says. “I think that there are so many movies about the gay experience that are fraught with people who are unsure if they’re happy being gay or struggling with coming out…. I want people to come away from this movie feeling the joy of our experiences and that it’s not all tragic. There are many of us out here living our lives joyfully.”
In our later phone call, I ask Booster if he has any plans to return to the Island this summer. He lives on the West Coast, and work is coming in, which makes it difficult—but he wants to find a way to make it happen. “God, I hope I have at least three or four days I can escape to that island,” he says, with a sigh. “It’s just my favorite place in the world.”
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