Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, Queer Cinema and a Flirty Festival Reunion With Andrew Scott

Jordan Firstman wears Suit, Shirt, and Tie Bottega Veneta. Watch Omega.

For Jordan Firstman, Club Kid is a chance to step outside the character that viral impressions built around him. He wrote, directed and stars in the film as a former Manhattan club promoter whose life is upended by fatherhood. The comedy, which Firstman describes as personal and tender, premiered at Cannes to a seven-minute standing ovation. A24 won the rights to release it this fall, putting the filmmaker on an unexpected path toward awards season.

At the Telluride Film Festival, on September 6, 2026, Firstman talked with actor Andrew Scott, who was there with Elsinore, about being understood on his own terms. Their conversation moved from the movie’s origins and its New York party scenes to queer storytelling, the pressure to entertain, and the increasingly playful intimacy between the two friends. The exchange is funny and loose, but its center is serious: Firstman wants his work to show the warmth that audiences may have missed in his online persona.

A character with room for tenderness

Firstman traces the impulse for Club Kid to his experience making Rotting in the Sun. He admired the film, Scott says, but Firstman felt that audiences had mistaken another person’s projection of him for a straightforward portrait. Some viewers took the character as evidence that Firstman himself was an “insane narcissistic monster.” That reaction, he says, clashed with his own sense of who he is.

His first response was to write a film that could reveal a softer side. The early draft had observations about the community and promising relationship material; after a breakup, Firstman returned to the script and found a deeper emotional current. He was still in love with the person he had separated from, and that feeling helped turn the movie into what he calls a love letter. Its critiques come from affection and empathy, not distance.

That combination seems to be what reached Scott. He calls the movie compassionate, including in the way it treats its central character. For Firstman, the response has also altered how he moves through conversations. After years of trying to make work that would land, he feels more confident and less compelled to deliver the funniest possible line every time someone looks his way. Scott recognizes the pressure: when people know you as funny or charming, they can start expecting a performance on demand.

Scott describes a related expectation in Irish culture: a need to stay friendly and avoid seeming as though you think too highly of yourself. He uses the Irish expression “notions” for that suspicion of someone getting above their station. Firstman’s question about whether Scott feels obliged to be charming gets a knowing answer, and the exchange underlines a tension running through the film’s reception. Being visible can open doors, but it can also pin a person to a single, simplified impression.

Real parties, real chemistry

The club sequences draw on places and people Firstman knows firsthand. Club Kid was filmed entirely in New York, including at real parties. For the sunrise scene, the production joined an actual after-hours gathering. The hosts let guests know that filming would take place, and Firstman remembers the atmosphere as both wild and fun. The setting gives the scene the texture of a night unfolding on its own terms, rather than a carefully tidied imitation of nightlife.

Another party produced an accidental comic moment. Firstman was meant to pretend to sell drugs, but some people thought the bit was real. When he handed out what they assumed would be cocaine, one person objected that it was “like lactose.” Firstman says he didn’t stop to stage a second take; he gathered material and planned to stitch the scene together. Scott credits that loose approach with the sequence’s convincing feel.

Firstman also built the cast through personal connections. He went to Pride in June to scout, approaching people at a party and asking them to audition. The film’s partygoers, he says, are people who actually belong to that world. Years of shared nights out supplied the performers with an ease that can’t simply be manufactured: the teasing, quick banter and familiarity are already there.

The scenes weren’t broadly improvised, despite Firstman’s comedy background. He writes with a sense of lines that might come out spontaneously, but the exchanges with friends—the “dolls,” as he calls them—had more freedom. The cast could play with what was on the page and say what felt right in the moment. That mix gives the movie structure while leaving space for the social rhythms Firstman wanted to capture.

Scott and Firstman also talked about how films portray party culture. Scott’s view is that a story needs to show why the scene attracts people before it can show the harm that may follow. If the fun never feels real, the darker turn can seem like a lecture rather than an honest consequence. Firstman agrees that this balance matters. Their discussion touches on substance use and harm reduction within queer communities, but the emphasis stays on the film’s choice to present the appeal and the risks together.

Shirt, Pants, and Tie Balenciaga.

What comes after the first film?

Firstman found watching himself onscreen difficult, particularly during the edit. He describes the process as “soul surgery”: the movie was deeply personal, and each rough cut made him question whether his thoughts and feelings could come together as a coherent film. Without music and with unfinished sound, even the bold choices could look like mistakes. If it didn’t work, he feared, the result would be an unusually public embarrassment.

Scott pushes back on that fear, praising Firstman’s performance. Asked what he wants to do next as an actor, Firstman draws a distinction between his interests and Scott’s. He doesn’t think of himself primarily as someone who wants to disappear into a succession of characters. He wants to tell different stories from his own point of view, and sees himself first as a writer, then perhaps a director, and third an actor. That order says a lot about Club Kid: its performance is inseparable from the perspective shaping the story.

Audiences have responded with strong feelings, which Firstman welcomes even when post-screening conversations take an unexpected turn. People sometimes approach him to recount their own experiences with drugs. He jokes that he would appreciate a simple “great movie” now and then. Scott, meanwhile, expects that screenings of Elsinore will prompt conversations about AIDS, sex and mortality. The two speak candidly about how stigma shaped their understanding of sex, including Firstman’s memory of his mother warning him not to develop a “gay voice” or contract AIDS when he came out.

That recollection leads into a gentler argument about voice and identity. Scott says he once heard his own voice on an answering machine and worried that it sounded gay. Now, he says, he likes a voice that carries a little “fruity” quality. Firstman’s dating preferences are just as cheerfully specific: he wants men who are comfortable enough to “queen out,” watch Celine Dion and enjoy the fun he associates with gay life. The banter lands because neither treats queerness as one fixed way of speaking or being.

PrEP comes up in the same conversation as Scott recalls meeting someone who didn’t know what it was. He and Firstman reflect on the fear and shame that connected sex with death for people coming of age amid AIDS. Firstman says he experienced more shame than fear of consequences. The exchange is personal rather than a guide to sexual health, and it shows how changing knowledge and lived memory can sit side by side.

A flirtation with history

The conversation’s most openly flirtatious stretch revisits Firstman’s longtime crush on Scott. Firstman remembers being surprised when he learned Scott was gay, and admits that he once imagined the actor as a future husband. Scott asks when the crush ended. Firstman points to a party at the W, though he quickly qualifies the story: they still flirt whenever they meet.

There had also been dates during the pandemic, Firstman recalls, with excellent banter and a sense that the two were “locked in.” Scott agrees that they clicked. Firstman remembers their first messages with theatrical disbelief—he was texting a “hot priest,” he says, and immediately pictured a shared future. Scott’s answer, “I belong to the church,” keeps the joke alive. Their easy back-and-forth gives the interview its title-ready spark without taking attention from the friendship beneath it.

Queer films in the same frame

At Telluride, Firstman was struck by how many queer films were appearing across the festival circuit. He points to Cannes, where films by Pedro Almodóvar, the Javis and Ira Sachs were part of the conversation, then welcomes the work Scott and his collaborators brought to Telluride. Firstman wants the filmmakers to move through this moment together, and says the people around these projects feel generous rather than competitive.

Scott connects that sense of possibility to the variety of artists telling these stories. He remembers resenting the idea of being reduced to “the gay one,” as if that identity could only produce one kind of film. Seen together, the movies make the range clear. Firstman goes further, suggesting that the contrast can expose how narrow straight stories may sometimes feel by comparison. The shared festival presence doesn’t flatten their differences; it makes each filmmaker’s particular voice easier to see.

Then Firstman asks the practical question he has been carrying through Telluride: how to handle the festival circuit and the stretch toward awards season without getting sick or running out of energy. They’ve reached day four, and he’s already feeling the pace. Scott mentions IV drips; Firstman likes the idea, then jokes about the price of a B12 shot and says he would rather buy the vitamin and inject it himself.

The conversation turns to peptides when Firstman says he takes several. He names KLOW and describes it as containing GHK-Cu, which he identifies as copper, and BPC-157. He says he takes it daily and associates it with skin, hair and workout recovery. Scott says he doesn’t use peptides and asks which one Firstman likes best. Their exchange is casual and personal; it’s not presented as advice or evidence of what readers should try. Firstman’s final answer—“I will try anything”—captures his appetite for experimentation, as well as the mischievous tone that runs through the interview.

Jacket, Shirt, Pants, Tie, and Shoes Balenciaga. Watch Omega.

Grooming: Kerrie Urban using Oribe Hair Care and La Mer at The Wall Group.

Production Direction: Alexandra Weiss.

Photography Production: Georgia Ford.

Fashion Assistant: Hannah Loewen and Kathia Sánchez Ruiz.

On-set Production: Richard Knickerbocker.

Shirt, Pants and Tie Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.

Jordan Firstman Gets Flirty With Andrew Scott appeared first on Interview Magazine.