Why Fire Island deserves the Best Adapt­ed Screen­play Oscar

In a new series, we’re cel­e­brat­ing the films we loved that aren’t like­ly to dom­i­nate the awards race. Over the new few weeks, our writ­ers make pas­sion­ate argu­ments for the per­for­mances and craft that stood out to them, from block­busters to art­house and every­thing in between.

In Hol­ly­wood, every­thing old is new again, so the cur­rent Regency resur­gence is right on sched­ule. Thank­ful­ly, not every­thing is a Mr Dar­cy rinse and repeat. Joel Kim Booster’s adap­ta­tion of Pride and Prej­u­dice switch­es 19^th-cen­tu­ry Eng­land and the Nether­field Ball for gay hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion Fire Island and a skin-bar­ing under­wear par­ty at the Ice Palace. More than 200 years sep­a­rates the two, but the bones of the rela­tion­ships and class struc­ture remain.

Austen­ma­nia and con­tem­po­rary adap­ta­tions of clas­sic texts stud­ied at high school ran par­al­lel as two defin­ing movie trends of the ​‘90s, con­verg­ing with Amy Heckerling’s Clue­less. The lat­ter is the bench­mark for a mod­ern take on Jane Austen and teen movies. Clue­less (a riff on Austen’s Emma) debuted in the sum­mer of 1995, where­as Ang Lee​’s more tra­di­tion­al Austen depic­tion land­ed in Decem­ber of that year. It is no coin­ci­dence that Lee’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty pre­miered amid award sea­son, with Emma Thomp­son going on to win Best Adapt­ed Screen­play at the Oscars. Heckerling’s defin­ing Austen­verse entry was unsur­pris­ing­ly shut out. More than 25 years lat­er, Boost­er has expe­ri­enced the same fate, but this doesn’t mean this screen­play isn’t wor­thy of being con­sid­ered along­side more pres­tige dramas. 

Even if you haven’t read a sin­gle word of Austen’s nov­el, you have like­ly encoun­tered a ver­sion of, or homage to, this endur­ing sto­ry. Hit BBC mini-series star­ring Col­in Firth and Jen­nifer Ehle, Joe Wright’s (Oscar nom­i­nat­ed) 2007 movie, Brid­get Jones’s Diary or even Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies are just a few options from the last three decades. Para­me­ters impact­ing mar­riage and social sta­tus have evolved, but the fun­da­men­tals of class and dat­ing rules aren’t entire­ly sep­a­rate from the past. Boost­er has tapped into the text’s core while offer­ing a fresh take on the familiar. 

The writer-actor took Pride & Prej­u­dice as his beach read when ven­tur­ing to Fire Island for the first time sev­er­al years ago, which was a trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence in a space carved out by gay peo­ple for gay peo­ple. He couldn’t help but notice that class lines and social pol­i­tics across the Pines and Cher­ry Grove weren’t all that dif­fer­ent from what Austen’s hero­ine expe­ri­ences – abs are now a valu­able com­mod­i­ty, but finan­cial wealth still reigns. 

Booster’s jour­ney from read­ing Pride and Prej­u­dice on hol­i­day to adapt­ing it for the big screen takes a very 21^st jour­ney, begin­ning with an essay on a Pen­guin blog com­par­ing Austen’s world to the sum­mer des­ti­na­tion queer hotspot. Ini­tial­ly, the gay spin on the Ben­net sis­ters picked up steam when Quibi (RIP) green­lit the project. Quibi’s demise was cinema’s gain as rather than micro-episodes, Boost­er expand­ed the screen­play to a fea­ture-length film.

Per­son­al expe­ri­ence is baked into the script with­out veer­ing too far from the out­lines of char­ac­ters like snob Car­o­line Bin­g­ley and her adorable broth­er Charles. Recog­nis­able char­ac­ter­is­tics empha­sise how pre­scient the source mate­r­i­al is when nod­ding to arche­types of the hol­i­day­ing gay men on the island. Booster’s Dar­cy is well-drawn in Con­rad Ricamora’s Will, but the mod­ern-day ana­logue to the Ben­net sis­ters makes this movie sing — in some cas­es, quite lit­er­al­ly. Pop cul­ture ref­er­ences dou­ble as a friend­ship lan­guage, giv­ing the group dynam­ic a lived-in qual­i­ty that cements their bond. 

You don’t need to be an Austen schol­ar to grasp that Noah (Boost­er) is the Eliz­a­beth Ben­net of the sto­ry, with Howie (Bowen Yang) tak­ing the spot of beloved sis­ter Jane. It is rare that a friend­ship of this depth between two gay Asian Amer­i­can men (and with gay Asian Amer­i­can direc­tor Andrew Ahn at the helm) is explored, let alone in a main­stream rom-com. Shift­ing Lizzie and Jane so seam­less­ly to Noah and Howie is wor­thy of atten­tion and acco­lades while show­cas­ing the orig­i­nal text’s relevance.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics from the Ben­net fam­i­ly are recog­nis­able with­in the group dou­bling as the Ben­nets with­out feel­ing forced, such as book­ish Max (Tori­an Miller) as a Mary who takes drugs. Stand-up com­e­dy icon Mar­garet Cho takes on the ​“house moth­er” role but is less med­dling than Austen’s annoy­ing matri­arch. As with the nov­el, her home can­not match the near­by pala­tial res­i­dence. Beach hous­es of var­i­ous sizes take the place of ances­tral estates, but gen­er­a­tional wealth reads sim­i­lar­ly in 2022. 

Gen­der-flipped sto­ries can be lazy or deriv­a­tive, but Fire Island is not a sur­face-lev­el ren­der­ing of Austen’s work — nor is it a direct gen­der flip. Instead, Boost­er hones specifics about inse­cu­ri­ties, friend­ships and mate­ri­al­is­tic flex­es that act as cur­ren­cy. Cho­sen fam­i­ly is cen­tral to an adap­ta­tion that organ­i­cal­ly taps into the original’s themes, offer­ing a reminder of how uni­ver­sal this sto­ry is beyond the puffed sleeves, bon­nets and empire line aesthetic. 

Pride and Prej­u­dice is both a bit­ing social satire and a love sto­ry, the lat­ter lead­ing to many attempts to recre­ate Firth’s infa­mous damp shirt scene. Rather than go the obvi­ous route à la Bridger­ton ear­li­er this year, Fire Island sub­tly opts for a shirt­less argu­ment. I use sub­tly here because even though it occurs after attend­ing an event with bare­ly a stitch of cloth­ing, it is not as bla­tant as a wet white top would be. 

Draw­ing allu­sions between the two oppos­ing social sets dials up the com­e­dy, par­tic­u­lar­ly wher­ev­er scene-steal­ing duo Luke (Matt Rogers) and Kee­gan (Tomás Matos) are on screen. From drink­ing too much at the near­by lav­ish sum­mer abode to the note-per­fect Marisa Tomei impres­sion dur­ing a game of Heads Up, their chem­istry serves sis­ter ener­gy. Their dou­bles, Lydia and Kit­ty Ben­net want to expe­ri­ence it all and are the horni­est of their sib­lings, which takes a sin­is­ter turn in both Pride & Prej­u­dice and Fire Island. Reimag­in­ing an ill-con­ceived and rep­u­ta­tion-ruin­ing mar­riage with Wick­ham into some­thing fit for a 21^st-cen­tu­ry gay man is Boost­er at his most imaginative. 

Where­as the under­wear par­ty is an unex­pect­ed and savvy Nether­field Ball choice, Luke’s humil­i­a­tion at the hands of Fire Island’s res­i­dent bad boy Dex (Zane Phillips) is a teach­able moment that doesn’t feel like an After­school Spe­cial. I have to admit being unfa­mil­iar with the term ​“enthu­si­as­tic con­sent” until I saw this film, but this sequence avoids turn­ing the Lydia update into a punch­line or pathet­ic fig­ure. While Luke and Kee­gan are the comedic relief, their open­ness and exu­ber­ance make them vul­ner­a­ble — sim­i­lar to how Austen draws the duo. 

Fire Island is a rom-com bol­stered by friend­ship dynam­ics that feel as lived in as the Ben­net Long­bourn home. While a sin­gle man in pos­ses­sion of a good for­tune isn’t always in want of a wife, Boost­er proves that Austen’s clas­sic con­tin­ues to stand the test of time.