The Party Girls at the Heart of “Club Kid”
Early on a recent Thursday, three of the stars of Jordan Firstman’s directorial début, “Club Kid,” were recovering from weeks of celebratory partying with caffeinated beverages in Seward Park, on the Lower East Side, near where much of the film takes place. A few older Chinese women were doing Tai Chi as a man in protective earmuffs and a neon vest blasted a leaf blower. The actors—Alaska Riley, Benny Jean Pierce, and Saturn Risin9—decided to take a stroll. Riley, sipping a chai, had been up for an hour; Pierce, latte in hand, had awoken at six to exercise; Saturn, holding a matcha, was unslept, having flown in from Los Angeles the night before and gone straight to the Swan Room for oysters and caviar fries. Firstman had cast all three for their real-life involvement in New York’s night-life scene.
Riley, who was wearing a gray hoodie and kitten heels, is a twenty-seven-year-old model and writer. She had initially hesitated when she received Firstman’s script. “A little too Method,” she called it. Then she ran into Firstman at Basement, a night club in Queens, after which he demonstrated his street cred by partying with her for more than eighteen hours straight.
The movie premièred at Cannes, where it was nominated for the Un Certain Regard award. In the film, a strung-out gay party promoter named Peter (played by Firstman) learns that he has a nine-year-old son by a woman he doesn’t remember sleeping with. Her best friend turns up with the kid, attempting to foist custody onto Peter, whose life is imploding. Riley, Pierce, and Saturn play his friends.
Saturn, a thirty-seven-year-old d.j. with a maternal disposition, has known Firstman for years. “Seeing Jordan’s performance, the veil was thin,” she said. “Like, Oh, wow, we’re telling the truth.”
The trio sat on a bench across from a playground full of clambering kids. “When I saw the film the first time, I ran up to Jordan and said, ‘I need to get sober, and I need to be a gay dad,’ ” Riley recalled.
Pierce, a twenty-seven-year-old actress who wore fur-lined boots and a slouchy leather jacket, smiled at the squeals coming from the playground. “It was so Kismet that I got to do this movie,” she said, “because the entire year prior to filming all I was talking about was family planning.” But she said that she had struggled to find examples of trans mothers to be role models. Firstman’s depiction of queer parenthood, a rarity in film, moved her: “When I saw it, I couldn’t stop crying.”
“I have always known that I would be a mom,” Saturn said, tearing up. As a trans woman, she looks forward to having kids who won’t face the pressures she’s had to fight against. “But I’m probably just going to raise a football-playing straight son,” she said. “He’ll have to live in fear of coming out to me.” A weary-eyed mom trudged by pushing a stroller.
The three actors had created found families through the club scene, and they demonstrate this closeness onscreen. The cast was just coming off of a unifying weeklong bacchanalia, which included a New York Film Festival after-party at Indochine. Riley, who is dialling back her partying, had kept it low-key, holding court at a corner table. Saturn had a long huddle with François Arnaud, the “Heated Rivalry” actor. “I’m trying to promote his bisexuality,” she said. “Like, O.K. . . . but is it in practice?”
Pierce jumped in: “As a bisexual, I understand the tumultuous nature of bisexuality. I always say, Are you a questioning bisexual, or are you a bisexual being questioned?”
Riley shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual, but, like, I don’t do anything about it.”
Pierce had brought a guy she knew from work to the Indochine party—a first date. “Something about that Martini,” she said. Cocktails had been passed on trays. “I’m at the point in my life where I have one shot and I’m, like, Should I get on the fucking table?”
“I looked over at her with this young man, who I now know is just some guy!” Saturn said. “And I saw that look in her eye.”
“The sun came up, and I was awake,” Pierce said. She’d ended up at a friend’s place in Gramercy. “But a lot of people went to the ‘S.N.L.’ after-after-party.”
Saturn put her head in her hands. “I was going to go, but my brain just forgot the invitation. I went with some gay boys to a place I could have just gone anytime.”
Pierce: “It does really suck when you realize you picked the wrong party.”
Riley, who’d been quiet, leaned back with a winner’s smug calm. “I went home,” she said. ♦