Jordan Firstman arrived at Indochine just after midnight. By day Indochine is a French-Vietnamese restaurant in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood. But on that October evening, flashing lights, free-flowing martinis and a DJ remixing Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” had transformed it into a nightclub, a suitable after-party venue for “Club Kid,” Firstman’s debut feature, which had just screened at the New York Film Festival.
Firstman, 35, who spent the first decade of his career as a comedian, TV writer and Instagram troublemaker, was emotional, too. Having changed into a silky shirt unbuttoned past the sternum, he traversed the pink-lit room, hugging old friends and new fans, posing for pictures with his fellow “I Love L.A.” cast member Josh Hutcherson and the “Heated Rivalry” actor François Arnaud. (Last year, Firstman was pilloried for claiming sex scenes in that show were “just not gay.” Arnaud apparently forgave him.) Firstman greeted the party boys and party girls, daddies and dolls, with an eye-crinkling smile, pausing to whisper in an ear, to entwine pinkies.
“I cried,” a man with a complicated haircut said. Then he gave Firstman a lick of his lollipop. Though Indochine is not an actual club and Firstman is not a promoter, another man approached, asking if Firstman could get his friends on the list.
This was life imitating art. In “Club Kid” (in theaters), Firstman plays Peter, a queer party promoter depleted after a decade of late nights and club drugs. The arrival of a child, Arlo (Reggie Absolom), whom Peter doesn’t remember fathering, goads Peter to finally grow up. For a movie that opens in a hallucinatory whirl of casual sex and Class 1 substances, “Club Kid” is nakedly sentimental, which is perhaps the most provocative choice Firstman could have made.
The morning after the party, Firstman settled onto a sofa in a NoMad hotel, no worse for wear. “I had, like, two drinks,” he said. Growth! Peter wears a “Ketamine Barbie” T-shirt, but Firstman, in corduroy pants and a nubby brown sweater, with a latte by his side, was giving weekend dad.
Firstman had his first taste of nightlife at 20, via the gay bars of Los Angeles. A few months later, on a solo trip to Berlin, he visited the legendary nightclub Berghain, which he considers life-changing. “Berghain was my first public sex experience, my first dark room, my first molly I ever did, my first anything,” he said. He described a night spent clubbing as “limitless and spiritual.”
“You want to hang on to that moment forever,” he said.
Though Firstman wrote for several TV shows, his pandemic-era videos — louche and snippy — made him a minor sensation. It was easy for him to lean into that snarky persona, but he didn’t always like how it made him feel. That intensified during the press tour for the 2023 Sebastián Silva movie “Rotting in the Sun,” in which he plays a more obnoxious version of himself. People confused him with the character, which hurt.
So Firstman decided to make a project that showed more of himself, his real self. What was that real self? Rachel Sennott, the “I Love L.A.” creator who has known Firstman for a decade, put it succinctly. “He’s always been a secret sweetie,” she said in a recent interview.
Firstman began to write just after “Rotting in the Sun” premiered at Sundance. “I had the idea that me and a kid would be funny,” he said. A year and a half later, he broke up with his longtime boyfriend. While chain smoking and popping Adderall, he poured that pain into a new draft of the script. “It just got so much deeper,” he said.
Right as he was finishing that script, his older sister asked him to serve as a sperm donor for her wife. Firstman agreed. Suddenly the idea of him and a kid wasn’t only funny.
Budgeted at $4.5 million, according to Firstman, the film was shot a year ago, using real New York City locations and crashing a few parties. Those scenes involved hundreds of extras, most of them nightlife regulars rather than trained performers. “Background actors, you ask them to come in cool outfits, it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen,” Firstman said. His sister’s child was born the day before the shoot wrapped.
Saturn Risin9, an actress and DJ who appears in the film, met Firstman at a rave 10 years ago. She had not seen the whole of the film until it premiered at Cannes. “I was like, Jordan is very serious and not just some LOL on Instagram,” she said in a recent interview. Her own reaction also took her by surprise. “I cried because it was such a beautiful, wholesome story, but not wholesome because it escapes the realities of life,” she said.
At Cannes, “Club Kid” received a lengthy standing ovation that led to a bidding war, which A24 eventually won, with an offer of $17 million. “That ovation healed my inner child,” Firstman said. While self-esteem has chronically been an issue for him (and for Peter, too), that reception gave him real confidence. “Being taken seriously completely shifted how I act on a day-to-day basis,” he said. (Still, he admitted to going home after the New York Film Festival party and spiraling. “I had to be like, you just had one of the best nights of your life, stop,” he said.)
He is more restrained in his social media habits now. “I don’t feel like I need to prove anything, I don’t feel the need to provoke,” he said. “I just want to talk about the movie and talk about how grateful I am and leave it at that.” Only human, he still checks the reviews on Letterboxd.
His attitude to partying has changed, too. He lets himself cut loose three or four times a year, though now he feels more eyes on him. “It’s a bit more dangerous because I am being watched a little bit and I don’t like that,” he said. He can’t party in Los Angeles anymore or in New York. And film festival parties aren’t real parties, not when he has to promote the film in the morning.
“It’s great to celebrate, to see the cast celebrate, but I have to go home,” he said.
Additional cinematography by Gus Aronson.
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