Fire Island - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

A feature entitled "Shel Silverstein on Fire Island" appeared in the August 1965 Playboy magazine, with humorous quips about the gay club scene there.

Frank Perry's Last Summer (1969), adapted by Eleanor Perry from Evan Hunter's novel about a summer of sexual discovery on Fire Island, brought an Oscar nomination for actress Catherine Burns. The American writer Patricia Nell Warren, known as "the mother of Frontrunners" — the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender running/walking clubs — locates parts of her 1974 best-selling novel The Front Runner, as well as of Harlan's Race, a 1994 sequel, on Fire Island.

Stock film footage of the lighthouse on Fire Island was used as part of two of the opening sequences of the CBS soap opera Guiding Light. The first sequence, showing the lighthouse with a blue sky, was used from January 1970 to spring 1974; the second sequence, showing the lighthouse with an orange sky, was used from spring 1974 to November 1975.

The song "Come to Me" has been described as "the definitive Fire Island dance classic" because of the legendary beach concert performance by the 16-year-old France Joli before an oceanfront Fire Island audience of 5000 on July 7, 1979. When Donna Summer cancelled at the last minute, Joli stepped in as a replacement and became an overnight sensation. The song "Gay Messiah" on the 2004 album Want Two by Rufus Wainwright makes a reference to the popularity of Fire Island for gay and lesbian tourists, remarking that when the "gay messiah" comes, "He will fall from the star / of Studio 54 / and appear on the sand / of Fire Island's shore". The 2003 album Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne featured the song "Fire Island" about two siblings' home-alone shenanigans while their parents vacation on the island.

When Ocean Meets Sky, a 2003 documentary detailing the 50-year history of the Fire Island Pines community, had its television premiere on June 10, 2006. The film includes much previously unseen archival footage. The mockumentary Beach Comber was filmed on Fire Island in 2004. ABC's reality show One Ocean View (2006) was shot on Fire Island. Fire Island is also the setting of Terrence McNally's play Lips Together, Teeth Apart.

The Village People included a song titled "Fire Island" on their 1977 debut album, Village People. In the song, they refer to the island as "a funky weekend" and mention several locations on the island such as the Ice Palace, the Monster, the Blue Whale, and the Sandpiper. The song also includes the warning "Don't go in the bushes" because "someone might grab ya" or "someone might stab ya."

Fire Island is featured prominently in Ann Brashares's 2008 novel The Last Summer (of You and Me), about two sisters and a friend who grow up together, vacationing on the island every summer. Fire Island serves dual meanings as both a vacation destination and a homoerotic euphemism in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. In the story "Blood Work," Sedaris describes an instance in which he is mistaken for an erotic housekeeper and his would-be john makes frequent and emphatic mention of FIRE ISLAND as a secret code. Fire Island is the location of Burt Hirschfeld's best-selling novel Fire Island. It is the story of some show-business and television people who spend their summers with their families on the island.

Robert Kelsos in the NBC series Scrubs have a son called Harrison that openend a store on Fire Island called Everything Mesh.

Fire Island is repeatedly referenced on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. Many references are made to the adventures had by Will Truman and Jack McFarland during their vacations there; the impression given in the references is that gay people are welcome and there is a loosening of one's inhibitions when there. On the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, the island is referenced by Devon Banks (Will Arnett), a young gay executive who flirts with a gay shop employee and plans to rendezvous with him later on Fire Island. In season four, a charge read at a hearing states "in 2007, a officer used corporate funds to throw a Cabaret-themed Halloween party on Fire Island."

Fire Island is referenced in the song Raw Deal on the album Sin After Sin by Judas Priest.

In the 2002 film Men in Black 2, the lighthouse on Fire Island was used to depict a Massachusetts post office where Tommy Lee Jones' character Kevin Brown was working after leaving MIB in the first film.