Jordan Firstman Turns Instagram Notoriety Into Sentiment in 'Club Kid'

Jordan Firstman's debut feature "Club Kid" screened at the New York Film Festival this October, and the 35-year-old former Instagram troublemaker arrived at the after-party at Indochine just after midnight.

By day, Indochine is a French-Vietnamese restaurant in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. That evening, flashing lights, free-flowing martinis and a DJ remixing Whitney Houston's "So Emotional" turned it into a nightclub — a fitting venue for a film about party promoters, and a stage for Firstman himself.

Firstman spent the first decade of his career as a comedian, TV writer and Instagram provocateur. At the party, wearing a silky shirt unbuttoned past the sternum, he worked the pink-lit room: hugging old friends and new fans, posing with his fellow "I Love L.A." cast member Josh Hutcherson and the "Heated Rivalry" actor François Arnaud. He greeted the crowd — party boys and party girls, daddies and dolls — pausing to whisper in ears and entwine pinkies.

One detail bears noting: Arnaud's presence follows a real rift. Last year, Firstman was pilloried for claiming the sex scenes in "Heated Rivalry" were "just not gay." Arnaud apparently forgave him. The word "apparently" is doing quiet work there; no reconciliation was announced, only implied by a photograph.

What is the film actually about?

In "Club Kid," now 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 (played by Reggie Absolom), whom Peter does not remember fathering, pushes him to grow up.

Here is the structural irony the film hangs on. A movie that opens in a hallucinatory whirl of casual sex and Class 1 substances turns out to be nakedly sentimental. For a filmmaker who built his name on provocation, that may be the most provocative choice available: sincerity.

Whether audiences buy the pivot is a separate question the festival screening alone cannot answer.

Life imitating art, briefly

The party blurred the line between the film and its maker. A man with a complicated haircut told Firstman: "I cried," then gave him a lick of his lollipop. Another man asked whether Firstman could get his friends on the list — though Indochine is not an actual club and Firstman is not a promoter.

The morning after, Firstman settled onto a sofa at a NoMad hotel, no worse for wear. "I had, like, two drinks," he said. He wore corduroy pants and a nubby brown sweater, a latte by his side. Peter, his character, wears a "Ketamine Barbie" T-shirt; Firstman in person, as the profile put it, was giving weekend dad.

The gap between the two is the film's real subject. With "Club Kid" now in theatrical release, the test is whether Firstman's audience — built on Instagram chaos — follows him into sincerity.