Joel Kim Booster presented Outfest Achievement Award to his “Fire Island” director Andrew Ahn

Happy Friday everyone!

I’m settling into Outfest mode which is one of my favorite modes. It was during Outfest in 2006 that I was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Daily News and it was suggested I blog about the festival. So I did and that was the start of my first blog called Out in Hollywood. I got bit by the blog bug and have remained bitten!

Anyway, opening night on Thursday was terrific and one of the highlights came before the screening of the film Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Fire Island star Joel Kim Booster took the stage at the Orpheum Theatre to present the Outfest Achievement Award to filmmaker Andrew Ahn, the director of Fire Island which has been nominated for a 2023 Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Television Movie.

Booster wrote the screenplay for Fire Island and said of the film’s director: “I have to say without a doubt that Andrew is the greatest creative partner that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He not only pushes you, but he uplifts you and working with him has made me a better, smarter and tighter collaborator if you can believe that.”

Booster, who received an Emmy nomination this week for writing the movie, expressed his gratitude for Ahn’s role in “being able to tell this story – a story that is at its center, queer and Asian, I am so grateful that I was able to tell it with a queer Asian man like Andrew. He elevates everything he touches. This movie very easily could have been a really bad Hallmark movie. But instead, Andrew made it art. And for that I am eternally grateful because I couldn’t have done it on my own.”

In addition to Fire Island, Ahn also directed 2016′s Spa Night and 2019′s Driveways. He also wrote, directed, edited and produced a short film entitled Dol (First Birthday), which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It won awards including the Grand Jury Award Outstanding Narrative Short Film at Outfest.

Still, when notified he was to received the Outfest Achievement Award, Ahn said he tried to turn it down and emailed organizers a list of other filmmakers he thought would be more deserving.

“This still feels too early in my career,” he said. “But I’ll take this as an opportunity to promise you all my friends, colleagues, mentees, my continued commitment to this community and to this art.”

Ahn spent part of his speech praising the work of other filmmakers in this year’s festival: “This is what I love about Outfest and independent film – the representation that you’re creating. It exists here.”

He went on to share why Outfest is particularly crucial this year: “We as queer people have to navigate an uncomfortable existence, code switching and figuring out where we’re safe. And this is why our fest is so important. This is a place for us to support each other, to get strong so that we can get out there to pick it up to protest and do the work to improve our society.”