Filmmaker and actor Jordan Firstman spent years heavily involved in the Berlin club scene, an experience he describes as dark and disorienting.
"I was doing drugs from Thursday to Monday when I was in Berlin," he says. "Then it becomes Monday morning somehow. Monday and Tuesday, you spend in bed wanting to kill yourself."
Firstman wrote, directed and stars in Club Kid, about Peter, a 30-something gay club promoter who discovers he has a son, Arlo, from a drug-fueled night a decade before. Arlo's mother has died and Peter, the boy's biological father, is the only family that he has. Peter is faced with a choice: continue his destructive and lonely lifestyle, or make a change and try to care for the boy.
"I was around 32-ish at the time. ... I was partying too much. I was having these come-downs," Firstman says of writing the film. "And I wanted to make a delayed coming-of-age film about a gay guy in his 30s. And so that's kinda how it started."
As it happens, Firstman became a biological father — or, as he describes it an "Uncle-Daddy" — last year, after donating sperm to his sister's wife. The baby was born the same week that he wrapped on Club Kid and his HBO comedy series I Love LA premiered.
In May, Club Kid was awarded Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a surreal moment for Firstman, who put so much of himself into the movie. "What a blessing that we have art and we get to make things. We get to make things that change us."
Interview highlights
On showing the highs and lows of club life
I wanted to show the highs and the lows because you do have both. … We as gay men specifically, we put ourselves in high-risk behavior, high risk and high reward. I mean, we really live. And I think because we, for so long, were not able to live. I think we choose to live very hard and love very hard and that comes at a cost sometimes. So I wanted to show the beauty and the joy and the community and the connection and the way we show up for each other.
On trying to capture an aesthetic of old New York
I just love the texture of '70s New York. We shot only in places that felt like old New York. That's why we shot in Chinatown and [the] Lower East Side, because it feels kind of unchanged, and some streets in SoHo. And we tried shooting streets with no cars, so it kind of had that older feel to it. But it was very important for us to capture a nostalgic New York that might not really exist anymore.
On shooting club scenes with real club kids in real parties
There was a community feeling happening in the film that made the queer underground New York rave scene really wanna show up.Jordan Firstman
We were allowed in those spaces because of my involvement in the last decade of clubbing and having friends. And there was a community feeling happening in the film that made the queer underground New York rave scene really wanna show up because they trusted that what we were making was gonna be a positive depiction because of its honesty. …
No shade to background actors, but they don't look like club kids. They just don't. We had to have a certain amount, just, like, for SAG rules, but we kind of hid them in the back. A lot of people showed up for this movie in the community.
On sneaking into New York City as a teen
[I would go] into the city by myself with my backpack and [go] to auditions alone. I would, like, crash at friends' houses that I knew from summer camp. I convinced my parents I didn't have school on Fridays for two years and they were going through their own divorce, so I don't think they were listening to anything at all, so they believed me somehow. … I would take the train from where my high school was in Syosset, to the city on Thursday, stay at my friend Ben's house on the Upper West Side from Thursday to Monday morning, go back, go to school for a couple days, and then do it again. So I was really living a very independent life. My parents did not know where I was from Thursday through Monday.
On relating to the portrayal of status-obsessed LA in I Love LA
I think it takes so much tenacity to make it in Hollywood, and it's not easy. You have to have so much faith in yourself to keep going, because there are years and years of, like, you get these minor signs that maybe you're worth something, but most of the time it's major signs that you're not. I was a photobooth operator for celebrity events from the ages 21 to 23 and so I was around all these celebrities. It's really funny: There's people that I won't name that I took photos of in the day that were so mean to me that are now in my DMs being, like, "I'm obsessed with you!" ... "You're my favorite actor!" It's funny how LA works and the social hierarchy. I worked really hard for a lot of years. I feel at home in LA now, and I feel like I've made a name for myself, and I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, and I feel good about that.
Therese Chaloner and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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