One night in 1973, Alysia and Steve Abbott’s lives changed forever when Alysia’s mother, Steve’s wife, died in a car accident. The following year, when Alysia was six, the two surviving Abbotts moved from Atlanta to San Francisco, where, in the wake of tragedy, Steve could live openly as a gay man and pursue his career as a poet. Alysia lovingly recounts the experiences and challenges of this unusual childhood during the ‘70s and ‘80s in her acclaimed 2013 book Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, offering rare insight into queer parenting. Over a decade later, the film adaptation, also titled Fairyland, is now in cinemas.
Alysia Abbot’s experience growing up was taboo at the time, even in a progressive haven like San Francisco. Alysia (portrayed in the film by Nessa Dougherty as a child, then Emilia Jones as a young adult) and Steve (played by Scoot McNairy) lived with various eccentric roommates between 1974 and 1976, before settling into a rent-controlled apartment when Alysia was 8. They lived on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, at the geographic heart of the counterculture movement. The film and book’s title, as Abbott explained on Zoom ahead of the film’s release, expresses their unique world—one that sadly wasn’t built to last.
“My dad had kind of a delayed adolescence,” says Abbott, who is an executive producer on the film. “Getting to be in San Francisco after the death of my mom, he was a single gay man. It was a time of tremendous freedom. To be gay didn’t mean you were sick anymore, and San Francisco was one of the few places where you could be really open. For me, it was like a Fairyland, a place of wonder, but also a place that died. Any utopia is too good to last.”
That death, both figurative and literal, came via the AIDS epidemic, which claimed millions of lives all over the world, and particularly ravaged queer communities like the vibrant one in San Francisco. When Alysia was in college at NYU and on a year abroad in Paris, Steve was diagnosed with AIDS, and she returned home to take care of him. Steve Abbott died in December 1992 at the age of 49.
Finding a kindred spirit in a director
Not long after its release, Abbott’s memoir caught the eye of Oscar-winning writer and director Sofia Coppola. “I read it when it first came out,” Coppola says. “I was really intrigued by the photo on the cover, and I had lived in San Francisco as a little kid in the early ‘70s. It was such a moving story. It reminded me of [the 1973 film] Paper Moon, this kind of buddy movie of a father and daughter. But I had never seen this story told before.” Coppola optioned the rights to the memoir back in 2013, and it took nearly a decade for the film to get made. “This is the first time I’ve ever produced anything that wasn’t my own film. In independent film, it’s really hard to get these small, personal, dramatic films made,” she says.
Coppola knew the perfect person to direct Fairyland—and it wasn’t herself, but her longtime friend and collaborator Andrew Durham. “I just thought, ‘Wow, he would be the best person to tell this story,’ because I knew he had lived a similar experience and could really bring something to make it authentic,” she explains.
Durham’s upbringing did, indeed, have striking similarities to Alysia’s. “I grew up in San Francisco around the same time as Alysia Abbott did,” he says. “My parents got divorced when I was about 10, and my father came out of the closet, and he moved us to San Francisco. My brother and I would spend weekends with my dad and all his friends in the city, and then we’d return home on Sunday night. During the week, we had this normal suburban lifestyle, with soccer practice and homework.” Sadly, Durham’s dad also died from complications of AIDS.
Like Durham, Abbott figured out that she was different from a young age. Kids at school would ask where her mom was, and none of the families she saw on TV looked like hers. “I spent time with my grandparents and would see my cousins and their families. Those were the kinds of families I’d see on TV, and that’s what I wanted,” she says. “I wanted siblings, and I wanted a mom. I would say this to my dad. He actually found a single mom with a kid that we could move in with, that could be roommates, and that way I could have, like, a sister and a mom. That [seemed like] such a great solution, but there were a lot of issues, and it didn’t work out. She would try to discipline me in ways my dad didn’t think were appropriate. But my dad tried, for my sake, to help me feel less alone.”
As Abbott got older, the shame associated with homophobia was a defining feature of life, even in San Francisco. The film depicts a teenaged Alysia hiding her father’s sexuality from her friends, and when she considers bringing them to her house, she hides any evidence of her father’s sexual identity—something Alysia did in real life. This double life spoke to Durham. “When she touches on keeping those two worlds separate in the memoir, that really resonated with me. I understood that balancing act you have to do as a kid,” Durham says. “Alysia and I had a lot of the same anxiety about having a gay father. Then, once her father got sick, what was happening for Alysia and Steve was almost identical to what I was going through with my dad. It was like reading a mirror.”
Read more: Children of LGBTQ Parents Reflect on Their ‘Coming Out’
Seeing a father through a new set of eyes
Abbott played a part in helping the film come to life, though she was comfortable in letting Durham and Coppola take the reins of Fairyland. “The best movie adaptations aren’t necessarily ones that replicate the book. The best are those where the director has their own vision, and the movie is based on the book, but it isn’t the book,” says Abbott. As the project took close to a decade to complete, it gave Durham the chance to rewrite the film numerous times to capture the essence of Fairyland. Where Abbott was essential was in those physical details of the film.
“I did a trip to San Francisco with Andrew,” says Abbott, “and we went to the San Francisco Public Library, where my father’s papers were housed. We went through that box together, and he found some things that weren’t in the book that he could put in the movie.” “I read so many of those journals,” says Durham. That allowed him not only to understand Abbott’s process in creating a memoir of her father, but also another side to Steve, especially how he lived when he wasn’t with Alysia.
That led to one of the most striking moments in the film, and one that struck Abbott the hardest. “There’s this scene of my dad, alone in a bar, wearing a cowboy hat, trying to pick somebody up so he doesn’t have to go home alone,” says Abbott. “Obviously, I didn’t witness that as a child, but that was so cool to see things through Andrew’s eyes. I could really see my dad in that moment, and in [McNairy’s] portrayal, there was such vulnerability. That was really profound.”
Many of Abbott’s personal items appear in the film, lending a poignant dose of reality. That includes the photos all over Alysia’s grandmother’s (Geena Davis) house, all of which belong to the real Alysia. One of the most touching moments in Fairyland is when Alysia comes back from NYU to visit her father. At a restaurant, Jones-as-Abbot presents him with a handmade book filled with her writings from college. “That was the actual book that I gave my dad,” Abbott says.
Another scene was inspired by Durham’s experience with his father. In Fairyland, Alysia goes to the pharmacy to pick up her dad’s medication and finds an old roommate now working as the pharmacist. “That never happened in Alysia’s life,” says Durham. “But there was a conversation I had with my father about the medications he was taking at the time—specifically AZT. I was worried about him taking them because it was so poisonous. I asked why he was taking it, and he said, ‘I’m not doing this for me. I’m not getting better. This is for the next generation.’ He told me that one day they’re going to figure out how to make a pill that will stop you from getting AIDS, and he was exactly right. That conversation has stuck with me all these years.” The pharmacist, played by Maria Bakalova, gives Alysia a similar monologue, in tribute to Durham’s father and those who underwent the unthinkable, leading to the eventual cure.
Capturing the highs and lows
Alysia’s relationship with her father was far from perfect. He was often out late at night, trying to find himself, leaving a young Alysia to fend for herself at home. Yet what remains clear, despite their often frayed relationship, is that Steve always tried to do his best for his daughter’s sake. Fairyland is a story of two different coming of ages: both Alysia’s and Steve’s. “I love the moment where Steve says that he wasn’t old enough—he wasn’t ready to take care of her, and then Alysia isn’t ready to take care of him,” says Coppola. “It’s such a beautiful part of the story. They both experienced caretaking when they weren’t ready for it. No one ever feels ready for that, but it’s an idea that expresses the mirroring of their coming of age.”
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Fairyland authentically captures Alysia and Steve’s toughest moments; it also captures their best. The Pride parade scenes are some of the most powerful in the film, reflecting how going to parades with her father is one of Alysia’s fondest memories. Durham incorporates archival footage alongside shots of a young Alysia with her father to create a dazzling effect that situates the Abbotts within their own history. Though the filmmakers were forced to use archival footage because of a restricted budget and just 21 days to shoot the entire film, the result might ultimately be better than a full-fledged shoot would have been. “It’s that special kind of creativity that comes from when you don’t have a lot of resources to work with,” says Coppola. “I wanted to make sure people knew that there was archival footage, because it’s really important to me that it serves as a tribute to those who were there,” adds Durham.
Abbott agrees that the Pride sequences are among her favorites in Fairyland. “In school, I felt like I had to hide being with my dad. But when I was out at those parades, I felt like he was so happy, so I could be happy. It was just really joyous,” says Abbott. “Sometimes it’s hard to feel joy when the government is denigrating you,” Abbott says. “I am so grateful that the movie could show that joy that is an important part of our history.”
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