Alysia Abbott Says ‘Fairyland’ Hits Differently in the Current Political Moment

The sun-drenched, postcard-like shots in the film Fairyland evoke a bygone era of San Francisco.

Shot on location, the film depicts the city in the wake of the Summer of Love. A father, Steven Abbott, moves his young daughter, Alysia, to the city after the death of her mother. It’s a new beginning for both of them; he embraces an openly gay life while raising his daughter in a world full of artists, drag queens and former boyfriends.

Over the years, their relationship ebbs and flows; Steven’s orange Volkswagen Beetle struggling up the hills of his new home is an apt visual metaphor. The story culminates during the AIDS crisis, when university-age Alysia returns home to care for her father.

Based on the 2013 memoir of the same name by Alysia Abbott, Fairyland premiered at Sundance in 2023. She says the film, which would have come across as just nostalgic to audiences two years ago, now has more to offer in a wide theatrical release, starting Oct. 10.

“Through the lens of 2023, it might have seemed more quaint. And I think now there’s more of an urgency to this story,” she says.

In addition to its contemporary relevance, Fairyland serves as a love letter to San Francisco, and an intimate examination of parenting, grief and coming of age. Abbott spoke about her book and the film adaptation with KQED’s Brian Watt.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Brian Watt: Your dad Steven Abbott was also a writer, and as you were growing up, he didn’t hide who he was. Tell us more about your early years.

Alysia Abbot: Certainly, I think he approached parenting with a lot of naïveté and idealism. He had grown up in a repressed home in Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1950s and 60s. [It was] the kind of home where children were not to speak until they’re spoken to, and when he was left to be an only parent after my mother died, he saw this as an opportunity to raise me in a different way. He was very bohemian, and I really do think that he believed that he was teaching me independence by leaving me to fend for myself.

By the time I wrote my book, and certainly by the time I watched the movie, I came to see him with a lot of compassion. There are still things where I’m like, I can’t believe he did that, but also, I believe he made a lot of his choices out of love and because he didn’t have any models. Today there are a lot of queer parents who are married and have wonderful families. In that era, where we were living, anyway, most of his friends didn’t have children. I spent a lot of my time around adults.

I am very taken in the beginning of the film with the gaze and lens of young Alysia. This very young person, surrounded by adults in a new place, trying to take it all in, trying to process it. Is that something that struck you or maybe it was important to you in how the beginning of the film is shot?

It was a conscious decision to shoot those early parts of the film looking from the perspective of a child, a child’s point of view looking up, to show that sense of disorientation. Over the course of the film, the perspective changes, where by the end, we can look down at Alysia and her father in this later stage of their relationship.

When I was writing the book, I had recently taken a class at Harvard on children’s literature. I re-read some classics, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, the story of Peter Pan. In both of those stories, there would be Wonderland or Neverland. So I thought of marrying this idea of San Francisco as a fairyland, where people were arriving to play, to maybe not grow up, to explore themselves, but also as a child that I might arrive as if on an adventure. The way that Alice follows the rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Tell us more about being involved in the making of the film. In a memoir, you have more control. But how did you make sure they were getting it right on film?

I had a meeting with the director Andrew Durham and Sofia Coppola when they wanted to option the book. I learned that Sofia was going to serve as a producer, and Durham, a longtime collaborator but more of a photographer professionally, was going to be directing this film for the first time. I also learned in that conversation that he had a dad who died of AIDS the very same year that my father died, in 1992, and [Durham] had lived in the Bay Area and came of age approximately the same time I did.

We did a research trip together in San Francisco. My father’s papers are at the San Francisco Public Library. We dug out those boxes and went through them together. We rented bikes and bicycled through Golden Gate Park, where I could point out to him important sites where I used to play or where the cover of my book was photographed. Over just that short visit, I felt a camaraderie and an ease.

I was able to spend time on set, and I learned in the process just how personal this project was for much of the crew, meaning we had some high-level professionals who were possibly taking a pay cut to work on this project simply because it was very important to them. Other folks took me aside and said, “Listen, there’s someone I used to work with who died of AIDS and I just think this history is important.” There were a lot of people who had something at stake.

A lot has changed in the world since the film’s premiere in 2023, namely the political climate. The Trump administration cut federal funding for some HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Many people in the LGBTQ+ community fear for their rights. How do you see this film and its story landing now?

There’s a scene in the film where Steve is listening to the radio and hears about the Briggs Initiative that was being proposed and pushed by Anita Bryant and Sen. [John] Briggs that would have outlawed gay men and women from teaching in schools. Steve looks so shocked to hear that, and that doesn’t feel so far away now.

Certainly with HIV funding, this idea that the U.S. used to be an important leader in more recent years on supporting medications for people suffering from HIV and AIDS around the world and now with the U.S. withdrawing from that, there’s a shocking sense of apathy. There’s a sense of loss beyond the loss that was felt of all the people who died of AIDS that we might be mourning as we watch this film together. I also feel that there’s grief about what we have lost as a country. How have we changed in ways that are maybe irrevocable?

A couple of years ago, people might have said, “Oh, this is an emotional film. This is weepy.” I kind of feel that right now we need weepy. We collectively are grieving more than we’ve had space to acknowledge because we’re always having to react.

‘Fairyland’ opens nationwide on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025.