Right Now, but Booster’s script delves deeper. Noah and his friends are mostly on a mission to find Mr.
#Movies of gay men having sex movie
Later in the movie, there’s Ahn lighting and staging the aforementioned underwear party to look even sexier than it is in reality.īooster himself has said that he doesn’t mind if straight audiences don’t get his jokes and references - anyone still curious about the Meat Rack after seeing the movie will have to visit in person. After all, gay stories are exponentially easier to sell when gay men aren’t having enjoyable, hot sex in them.īut Ahn and Booster relieve those fears throughout the film, opening with Noah (Booster) irreverently quoting Jane Austen while sorting through the chaos of a one-night stand (Noah is not, for the record, in want of a wife). As a longtime practicing homosexual, I was a little worried about Fire Island’s debauchery - the Meat Rack (which, despite its name, does not involve an artisanal butcher), the underwear party at the Ice Palace, the back room at the underwear party (which is exactly how it sounds) - being buffed down in an effort to avoid offending the mainstream masses. The film’s golden, sun-splashed cinematography will also likely induce FOMO if you haven’t already booked a vacation this summer. It hits all the required notes for the genre, and even sneaks in some thoughtful commentary on gay male desire, and platonic friendships between gay men - there’s a pesky trope in movies and television to pair off the gay male characters romantically.
Yes, there’s a musical number in Fire Island. Written by and starring comedian Joel Kim Booster, the joyful rom-com captures the silliness, sweetness, sex, raunch, and love that one week with friends spent at the eponymous New York islet can bring. It’s premiering on Hulu on Friday, stars two Asian American queer men as its leads, and doesn’t include any tragedy or harangued coming out (usually the kind of gay stories Hollywood leans on). That’s why director Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island stands out. More recently, family-friendly mainstream rom-coms like 2018’s Love Simon and 2021’s Single All the Way have been released, but Fire Island is the first of two high-profile comedies out in the next few months (Billy Eichner’s Bros will be released at the end of September) that promise not to shy away from gay men’s sex lives. This isn’t to say that romances centering gay men haven’t been made, but they’re usually indie flicks. Mainstream Hollywood has a history of reluctance when it comes to featuring stories from minorities, let alone queer men’s sexual and romantic fantasies. 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. That’s the magic of Fire Island and places like it (Provincetown, Rehoboth Beach, Palm Springs, etc.) For decades, these queer enclaves in the United Stares have allowed LGBTQ people to let their guard down, and live their most enjoyable lives - sex, love, friendship, and everything in between - without worrying about acceptability. Those memories probably involve friends, handsome strangers, the beach, a sunrise, a hot tub, being sassed by the high school girls working at the Pines Pantry grocery store on their summer break, squealing laughter, and maybe some parts that they don’t totally remember.
There’s also a very strong possibility that both those nights are one and the same. One will be about the best night of their lives. If you ask a gay man from New York City about Fire Island, chances are he will have at least two stories.