Joel Kim Booster Responds To Billy Eichner’s Streaming Films Comments

Last week, Billy Eichner raised eyebrows with some comments he made during his press tour of the upcoming movie Bros, which seemed to be throwing shade at the film Fire Island. Now that film’s writer and star, Joel Kim Booster, has responded.

While speaking with Variety last week, Eichner talked about the film making history. “I told myself to look around and appreciate how rare and magical this moment is,” he said. “Because you are making a movie that looks and feels like all the romantic comedies you grew up loving, but you’re doing it as a gay man.”

“And this is not an indie movie,” he continued. “This is not some streaming thing which feels disposable, or which is like one of a million Netflix shows. I needed to appreciate that ‘This is a historic moment, and somehow, you’re at the center of it. You helped create it.’”

Naturally, people took this as a dig at Fire Island, which, while a huge success for the steamer, was released on Hulu rather than in theaters. 

Eichner has since explained those statements, saying it was in no way meant as a criticism of Fire Island.

“I want to clarify what I said about streaming content in Variety. I was not at ALL referring to the quality or monumental impact of streaming films, I was referring to the way that, historically, LGBTQ+ content has often been considered niche and disregarded by Hollywood,” Eichner wrote on Twitter. 

Now Booster is weighing in on the drama, and he made it clear that the two of them are “cool.”

“Billy was my first comedy boss, is my friend, and has supported me in countless ways in the process of making Fire Island and ultimately our movies have very little to do with each other,” wrote Booster. “It seems like he was pretty inarticulate in his excitement about his movie getting a theatrical release, which is really fucking cool and something I’m sure the studio and his publicist is making him constantly talk about. God knows I’ve said plenty of dumb shit without a publicist’s help.”

“I’m so proud of my movie and all the people who helped make it happen and am so grateful it was accessible to so many people on streaming, and don’t see it as any less valuable because of that,” Booster continued. “That being said, I’m also excited to see Bros on the big screen and wish Billy nothing but the best. I truly hope you can enjoy both or neither of our movies without pitting them against each other (even though that is obviously a very fun thing to do and basically what gay Twitter was created for). I’ve spoken to Billy and we’re cool.”

We may live for a little gay chaos, but ultimately we just want to see both films win.

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