A little after 10 p.m. on Thursday, the actors Jordan Firstman and Reggie Absolom sat at a piano at the Ukrainian National Home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and belted out “Thoroughfare” by Ethel Cain.
The crowd around them cheered them on and held up their phones to capture the moment. “So cute!” one guest said.
This vignette of the two of them together was a re-enactment of a scene from the A24 film “Club Kid,” in which Firstman plays Peter, a hard-partying club promoter who is forced to suddenly grow up when he learns he must take care of Arlo (Absolom), a 10-year-old son he didn’t know he had. The movie, which will be released in select theaters on Nov. 6, tracks their budding relationship against the backdrop of New York’s vibrant queer nightlife scene.
Just hours earlier on Thursday, Firstman, Absolom and the rest of the cast, including Cara Delevingne and Miss Benny, attended the movie’s premiere at the Regal Cinemas theater in Union Square. On the red carpet, the cast huddled for a group photo holding up T-shirts printed with one-liners from the movie, like “Daddy Peter” and “Evelyn died,” though many included spicier language than can be printed in The New York Times.
Absolom, who is 14 and lives in a town near Oxford, England, was able to fly in for the premiere because his school was out for a week. He started acting when he was 8, mostly starring in advertisements and short films. “Club Kid” was his first job in a feature-length film. Going back to school after filming with the team last year has been “soooo boring,” he said, because being on set “is like a whole different world.”
After the movie screening, the crowd walked over together to the Ukrainian National Home, a cultural and community center that had been transformed into a pulsing club designed to pay homage to some of the city’s most iconic nightlife fixtures from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The team that designed the event, Souvenir Shop, picked this location because it was home to the D.J. David Mancuso’s legendary Loft parties. The parties, first held at his apartment in 1970 to help him pay rent, later became a pillar of the dance scene and rotated through several downtown locations. Other references for the space were Area and Electric Circus, which often had art installations, performances and cutting-edge music, said Sam Bloom, co-founder of Souvenir Shop.
All three of those clubs reflected the rise of the hippie counterculture movement of that era, bringing an eclectic mix of people into an inclusive, playful space, free of commercial agendas, Bloom said. People of “varied walks of life” — including the Kennedys, Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol — often found community and chosen family there, she added, themes that undergird “Club Kid.”
A giant disco ball and silver tinsel hung from the ceiling of the Ukrainian National Home, and the dance floor was covered with hopscotch panels. Neon lights told guests they were at Club Labor, the fictional setting of the film. Downstairs, at the ground-level restaurant, guests nibbled on pierogies, stuffed cabbage and French fries.
There was a kind of “’90s Euro dance party” feel to it all, said Kareem Rahma, the comedian and creator of the popular internet talk show “Subway Takes.”
Other guests included the actress Chloë Sevigny; Julian Shapiro-Barnum, the creator of the talk show “Recess Therapy”; the writers Hunter Harris and Peyton Dix, who host the podcast “Lemme Say This”; and the actress Joey King.
“What’s cool about the movie is that people leave in a mood to be with other people and hang,” Firstman, who also wrote and directed the movie, said. “Like, look — everyone’s vibing,” he added, gesturing around the club. He couldn’t walk three steps around the room before being stopped by friends and fans, telling him how much they loved the movie.
“It was amazing,” said Mustafaa Simpson, an influencer. “It made me bawl my little eyes out.”
“I cried probably three times,” said Izzy Alcantar, an influencer who makes skits with Simpson for social media.
At the back of the club, in a lounge area, guests sprawled across sofas while sipping on pineapple-jalapeño cocktails. One guest wore bunny ears, the only reminder that Halloween was around the corner.
For Josh Mosh, a writer, the film spoke to the “elongated adolescence” that many millennials feel trapped in. “We’re kind of held back from maturity by the pressures of society,” he said, “It’s harder to buy a house these days. It’s harder to start a family. There’s no jobs. There’s no opportunity. So I think it’s a really interesting examination of how our generation approaches these sorts of milestones.”
Later in the evening, a few guests ran over to the dance floor to play hopscotch, giggling like children.
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