Awards Season will be here before we know it, and there are already a few projects getting early buzz. One of them is the new A24 movie Club Kid, which stars Jordan Firstman, who also wrote and directed the acclaimed dramedy. Club Kid is my favorite movie of the year, largely thanks to its heart and the authentic representation of queer nightlife. I had to ask him about bringing those sequences together, and he got honest about why the club scenes (especially in the darkroom) went so hard.
Club Kid is a new LGBTQ+ movie, and as a gay man myself I was immediately take by how real those club scenes felt. As you can see in the video above, I asked Firstman about how he brought those sequences together, especially the scene where his character Peter has sex with a woman in a club darkroom. He told me:
I got in like a fight with someone because they're like 'Darkrooms like didn't come until like 2019.' And I was like, 'They definitely came in 2016.' I like remember like at least they were popping up in New York, but I remember going to like a sex party in 2015 or 16. But I say like the Berlin-ification of New York, mama, in the movie. But I do feel like, you know, Chris Cruse started this party Spotlight in LA, which was kind of like our first like LA introduction into darkrooms. It was a cool moment for queer people because we like weren't like doing that publicly before really in my generation. So yeah, it was important for me to like show that and show what goes down at the club
For those unfamiliar, darkrooms have a long history in queer history. They're typically pitch black rooms in bars where patrons can engage in anonymous sexual activity. They were shown in the media dating back to Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy back in 1988, and Jordan Firstman's movie brings them back to the big screen in a more modern context.
In a drug-fueled haze Peter has sex with a woman early in Club Kid in a darkroom, and that unknowingly gets her pregnant. That's how his son Arlo ends up dropped at his door over a decade later, with the party promoter suddenly forced to become a parent to a child he never knew existed.
There's been a ton of chatter lately about LGBTQ+ movies actually starring queer actors, and Jordan Firstman was able to bring a very real, niche experience to the mainstream as the director, writer, and star of Club Kid. Later in our conversation he spoke more about the way the darkroom scene was shot, telling me:
But I think also showing it in a elegant way, like I really love how that scene is shot. I think it's like very classy. And it's not, it's like, I don't know. It just it's like beautiful, but still it does, a dark room does feel that way.
He's not wrong. The darkroom scene isn't a sexually explicit scene, despite the setting. Instead it uses light in a fascinating way that's immersive, but not overly graphic. The audience sees Peter decide to have sex with a woman at the behest of a guy he's interested in, and it's that union that serves as the catalyst for the movie's primary story.
The authentic way the darkroom is shown, as well as the unique chaos of the nightlife as a whole, instantly brings Club Kid into a specific time and place. The movie shows what the club scene is like for LGBTQ+ folks, warts and all. While it's a world not all moviegoers might understand, the specificity of Firstman's work ends up making the story universal.
Club Kid is in select theaters now as part of the 2026 movie release list, and will be getting more screenings as the month goes on. I laughed, I cried, and I loved how real the movie felt as a member of the queer community.
