The Party Girls at the Heart of “Club Kid”
The New Yorker · Holden Seidlitz ·
Jordan Firstman’s directorial début tells the story of a gay promoter who finds out he’s a father. On a groggy Lower East Side morning, the three actors who play his night-life posse compare notes on queer family planning. Holden Seidlitz reports.
Riley, who was wearing a gray hoodie and kitten heels, is a twenty-seven-year-old model and writer. She had initially hesitated when she received Firstman’s script. “A little too Method,” she called it. Then she ran into Firstman at Basement, a night club in Queens, after which he demonstrated his street cred by partying with her for more than eighteen hours straight.
The movie premièred at Cannes, where it was nominated for the Un Certain Regard award. In the film, a strung-out gay party promoter named Peter (played by Firstman) learns that he has a nine-year-old son by a woman he doesn’t remember sleeping with. Her best friend turns up with the kid, attempting to foist custody onto Peter, whose life is imploding. Riley, Pierce, and Saturn play his friends.
Saturn, a thirty-seven-year-old d.j. with a maternal disposition, has known Firstman for years. “Seeing Jordan’s performance, the veil was thin,” she said. “Like, Oh, wow, we’re telling the truth.”
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