Jordan Firstman, the actor and filmmaker who makes his feature directing debut with Club Kid (opening Fri/13 in Bay Area theater) about a gay New York party promoter presented with a 10-year-old son, the fruit of an encounter he cannot even remember, has a theory about why people have children. He himself is childless, but he considered the issue while writing and making the movie.
“I was just thinking about my life and what it would take for me to have to instantly grow up,” Firstman says during a short stay in San Francisco where SFFILM screened Club Kid to a packed house at the Castro Theatre. “I think that’s why a lot of people do have kids. They’re like, ‘I want to feel like a grown up and I’ll have to be responsible.’ It just becomes exhausting to think about yourself all at the time, and a kid really forces you to not think about and to actually take care of someone else.”
That, at least, is the learning curve for Firstman’s Peter as he at first reluctantly takes Arlo (Reggie Absolom) into his home. The child is utterly alone, an ocean away from his London birthplace, and Peter has no choice. The drama’s tension is built in between what Arlo needs to thrive and Peter’s lifestyle, which revolves around partying, clubs, and taking and selling drugs.
But as he gets to know the boy, Peter falls in love with his son and the idea of fatherhood, even if his idea of parenting includes sharing playlists and integrating Arlo into his nightlife, since the kid has mad DJ skills.
The idea for Club Kid came a few years ago after Firstman went to a dinner party where there was an 8-year-old in attendance. He made the child laugh with inappropriate jokes and came to realize that he and the boy matched energy. He felt that he was still a kid himself. He sensed there was something funny in the situation. At the time, he was living in Berlin with a boyfriend, partying a lot, and having fun.
“I was in love and it was a great time, but it was definitely holding me back from what I wanted to do,” Firstman says. “I was like, ‘When am I going to grow up?’ I think all of these things were floating around my mind at the same time and that’s kind of the genesis of it.”
Firstman readily acknowledges his influences, starting with Kramer vs. Kramer, Robert Benton’s 1979 drama in which Dustin Hoffman plays a man who has to learn how to parent on his own in the wake of divorce. Others include Gloria, John Cassavetes’ 1980 film about a woman protecting a young boy from the mob; Robert Redford’s dysfunctional family drama Ordinary People (1980); and Martin Scorsese’s black comedy After Hours (1985), starring Griffin Dunne as a man experiencing New York nightlife as a trip through Dante’s hell.
Boaz Yakin’s Uptown Girls (2003), about a childish nanny (Brittany Murphy) looking after a precocious child (Dakota Fanning) is in there, too, as well as I Am Sam (2001), in which Sean Penn plays an intellectually disabled father fighting for custody of his daughter.
Firstman cites Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 comedy drama Paper Moon as perhaps the biggest influence on Club Kid. The film starred Ryan O’Neal as a Depression-era con man who may or may not be the father of his traveling companion, a little girl (Tatum O’Neal) who shares his talent for grift.
“Even though they’re both kind of evil, they get each other,” he says. “It’s like the first movie I’d seen where like a kid is not treated like a kid, and those two characters really understand each other in a way no one else does. And I think Peter and Arlo have that same thing.”
Firstman had a script, but as the film came closer to production, the key to success came in casting Arlo. The kid had to check a lot of boxes, in addition to having parents who would allow their child to star in a film with adult situations and dialogue. Firstman considers himself lucky to have found Absolom, who is now 14.
“It’s crazy. In the movie, he looks really young,” Firstman says. “I always talk about the miracle that is Reggie, finding Reggie, and he just fit. He checked every box for me. He looked like the character I was writing in my head. He’s actually cool. Has good taste in music. He’s an amazing actor. And if I had made the movie this year, he couldn’t have been it. He looks too old now.”
In Club Kid, Peter integrates Arlo into his world by having him DJ at his parties, pairing him with club DJ Saffron (former Bay Area club performer Saturn Risin9). The idea is to have the boy do an early set, before the night gets too wild.
“I think the magic trick of the movie is that when he first enters the club, I haven’t heard anyone who’s seen the film react like ‘he shouldn’t be there,'” Firstman says. “Like it feels so positive, and that’s because of the you know the vibe of the room and the way we shot it and the lighting and the candles, but it’s like you should feel good that he’s there. You’re like, ‘Oh my god, this kid is getting to be creative. He’s expressing himself.”
Those scenes are ultimately more complicated than that, but when it came to filming them, Firstman wanted to set a tone for Absolom. The young actor was actually DJing. His costars and extras were dancing to his tunes. The situation was fiction, but action and the vibes were real.
“It was a really good experience,” says Absolom. “It was the best first experience of the club that someone can really have. Because, obviously, it could go wrong the first time going. But since I was in such a safe place with loads of people around me that I could go to for help if I needed it or if I wanted it, I felt so safe there that it made me enjoy it like 10 times more.”
Throwing a child into a club and letting him DJ may not be a conventional way to parent, but Peter and Reggie aren’t a conventional father and son. Aside from the small detail that they are complete strangers, Peter is man child, while the actual child has grown up faster than he should have, thanks to his unstable mother.
“I like to think that like Arlo teaches Peter to be an adult, and Peter teaches Arlo to be a kid,” Firstman says. “Arlo’s been through so much, and he doesn’t feel like he can experience joy. And I think Peter teaches him how to laugh again, and how to how to create and how to be in a community that isn’t scary. Arlo learns how to have fun.”
CLUB KID opens 11/13 in Bay Area theaters.
