Jordan Firstman Knows When It’s Time to Leave the Party

By David Fear

David Fear

Even hard-partying clubgoers worth their weight in white-label records run the risk of staying at the party too long. Thankfully, Jordan Firstman has figured out, through years of trial and error, the perfect time to call it a night.

“It’s 4am,” Firstman says, during a visit to the Rolling Stone Studio. “If you’re really partying, 4am is perfect. It’s before the sun comes up, and then you can be up and still go to the gym.”

The writer, director, and star of Club Kid knows of what he speaks. A longtime fixture in New York City nightlife and a regular at hot spots like Basement, Firstman had been spending a lot of time in Berlin doing what he termed an “excessive” amount of party drugs (“a lot of different letters, a lot of different numbers”) when he realized he needed to slow things down. Then, at a dinner party, he began talking a friend’s kid and “I was saying a bunch of inappropriate stuff around [him]. Everyone was laughing. I thought, ‘Oh, there’s something here.'”

Those two factors helped inspire Firstman’s directorial debut, a story of a club promoter named Peter who ends up having a particularly wild night out. Ten years later, someone shows up at his door and introduces him to the son (played by newcomer Reggie Absalom) he never knew he had. The reluctant dad and his kid end up bonding, as fatherhood inspires this thirtysomething to grow up and leave his drugging days behind him. “It’s like Kramer vs. Ketamine,” Firstman says, namechecking the 1979 Oscar-winner.

A massive hit at Cannes — where Firstman and his cast and crew ended up on a yacht during the premiere’s after–after-party and admittedly did not adhere to the 4am rule — the movie ended up being picked up by A24 and is now one of the buzzier movies schlepping its way through awards season. For Firstman, however, seeing his cast, many of whom he pulled directly from the LGBTQ+ clubgoing community, was already a dream come true.

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