Every other studio had passed on “Fire Island,” and Booster’s other big break - a supporting role on NBC’s 2019 sitcom “Sunnyside” - had capsized, leaving his career in a precarious place: “People were like, ‘It’s going to be huge, it’s the next “Office,” you’re going to be able to buy a house with the residuals once it gets to five seasons.’ And then we were canceled after three episodes.” Yes, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-form streaming app has since become one of Hollywood’s most infamous flameouts, but at the time, Booster was all-in. And even the peculiar prejudices of the island became grist for the mill once Booster read Austen’s novel and realized that her story of social stratification would map neatly onto his own experiences.ĭon’t laugh. “You don’t realize the weight you carry every day by just walking around in straight spaces,” he said. Still, the more time he spent with his friends on Fire Island, the freer he felt. They knew that the island had a reputation as a haven for rich, white gay men with muscles, but it still unnerved Booster when someone would fix him with a hard stare that all but declared, “You don’t belong here.” In those days, both men were still clinging to their day jobs (Booster was the project manager for an internet sock company), and to make the trip economically feasible, they fit 11 impoverished friends into a house with three bedrooms. THE FIRST TIME that Booster and Yang went to Fire Island, it was with a certain amount of trepidation. “And I don’t think there will be anything in between that.” “The night before we started shooting, I was like, ‘This is either going to change my life or it’s going to be the biggest flop of my career,’” Booster told me. So you’ll have to excuse Booster if he can’t take on everybody else’s concerns right now - not when he’s still got plenty of his own to grapple with. Even now, his conservative family is barely aware that their son is making gay rom-coms that the entire internet is determined to weigh in on. Booster was adopted as an infant and home-schooled by white parents in Plainfield, Ill., before he came out as a teenager, studied musical theater in college and moved to New York to become a stand-up comedian.
(Booster, who moved here from New York a few years ago, picked Akbar because it was one of the few gay bars in town “that didn’t feel like WeHo or a Chipotle.”) We were joined by Ahn, who initially drew Booster’s attention after directing the 2016 indie “Spa Night.” They met years ago and bonded over being gay and Korean in an industry that rarely makes room for their stories.Īnd he totally gets that, but it’s all superseded by the fact that he’s the protagonist in question, and he can never be all things to all people because his own story is so specific. Darcy.Īfter Booster was done dodging internet comments and replying to his friends’ texts about the trailer, he met me at Akbar, a storied Los Angeles gay bar with amber lighting, strong cocktails and kitschy, beaded bamboo curtains. (Think of him as Elizabeth Bennet in a pink Speedo.) Noah didn’t come to Fire Island to look for true love, but as he attends to his insecure friend Howie (Bowen Yang) during their vacation gone wrong, he also takes the measure of a stiff and arrogant suitor who just may be his Mr. “But now, being on the other side of it, I’m just like, ‘Well, that’s the most ridiculous thing in the world!’”Ī modern, same-sex gloss on “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, “Fire Island” (streaming on Hulu) stars Booster as our narrator Noah, who makes knowing observations about the titular gay enclave and its social mores.
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So consider this his mea culpa: “I’ve done it, too - I’ve made massive judgments about a movie based on two minutes,” said Booster, who is 34, bleached-blond and possessed of a voice so NPR-smooth that a microphone almost seems superfluous.
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Booster had anticipated this moment with a not-inconsiderable level of anxiety, so he met the morning with a plan: After posting the trailer online, he would go back to bed, then keep himself distracted with a trip to the gym and several palliative episodes of “Real Housewives.”Ī few hours into this plan, as his phone blew up with text messages and Twitter began to pick the trailer apart, he texted the “Fire Island” director Andrew Ahn to announce that he was having either a heart attack or a series of mini-strokes. This was the theory Booster advanced to me one evening in late April, just hours after the trailer was released for “Fire Island,” a gay romantic comedy he wrote and starred in. Joel Kim Booster had a thought: Why do we even need movie trailers? Sure, they give people a bite-size look at a film they might find intriguing, but couldn’t we just … not?