Best Of: John Turturro / Jordan Firstman on ‘Club Kid’

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor, the official Gilded Age podcast from HBO. Unpack each episode of the Gilded Age and hear from the people who bring 19th century New York to life. Watch the official Gilded Age podcast on HBO Max or listen wherever you get podcasts. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, John Turturro. He stars in the new film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. To prepare, he studied with a pickpocket.

0:29Terry Gross: I had my hands in certain places, but a lot of times I thought, well, if I take it out, then if I get caught, what am I supposed to say? I'm an actor. Yeah, I don't know if that would fly. DeTuro has starred in films by Spike Lee and the Coen brothers in HBO's The Night Of and is in Severance. Also, Jordan Firstman talks about writing, directing, and starring in the new comedy drama film Club Kid and how the story relates to his own life. He plays a hard-partying gay club promoter who discovers he has a 10-year-old kid. Firstman also stars in the HBO comedy series I Love L.A. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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2:28Learn more at WISE.com. T's and C's apply. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest John Turturro stars in a new movie that I'll tell you about in a minute. He's been riveting ever since the early years of his career, like in the film Five Corners, in which his character is totally unhinged and throws his mother out the window, and in the Coen Brothers film Miller's Crossing, as a bookie who's skimmed money from a gangster and is begging for his life as he's about to be executed in the woods. He was also in the Coen Brothers films Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother Where Art Thou.

3:05He was convincing as a racist in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and was also in Lee's films Jungle Fever, Moe Better Blues, and Clockers. Skipping ahead to the recent past, he's given great performances in the HBO series The Night Of and The Plot Against America, and he's in the Apple TV series Severance. Now he stars in the new film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. He loves playing people who are morally complex, neither all good nor all bad, and his character in Pickpocket is a great example. DeTuro stars as Harry, a skilled pickpocket who's becoming obsolete because of technology that he hasn't learned to use.

3:45He doesn't have a cell phone or a computer. Wallets he steals have lots of credit cards, but little cash. The watches he's been slipping off his victim's wrists haven't been worth much. He's financially on the edge, but he needs money to take care of his wife, who is unresponsive, probably from the lasting effects of a stroke. The story takes a turn when he steals the backpack of a college-age kid who turns out to be the grandson of a crime boss. John Totoro, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love this new movie. You're terrific in it. Thank you for coming today.

4:20Terry Gross: Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. So you did a lot of research for this. You even understudied a pickpocket-slash-magician. Not musician. If we were on the New York subway, would you be able to pick my pocket? Are you skilled enough to do that now? Well, it depends what kind of pockets you have, what you're wearing. Horizontal pockets that are really tight with tight jeans are hard. Back pockets are easier. Overcoat pockets are looser. Well, your backpack is on your back and your zipper isn't completely zipped up. Then your hand would be in it if you were a pair. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I basically did scout a lot of people and I had my hands in certain places.

5:09Terry Gross: But a lot of times I thought, well, if I take it out, then if I get caught, what am I supposed to say? You know, I'm doing research. Yeah, I don't know if that would, you know, would fly, you know. But I did it, you know, in the production office and on the set all the time. I was practicing. And Apollo Robbins, who I read a profile of in The New Yorker, who is a brilliant magician, pickpocket, who had half-brothers who were criminals, he really helped me, gave me exercises and worked with me. Usually pickpockets have worked as teams, a man and a woman, a lot of the time. Oh, for distraction? Yeah, for one person sets the other person up and moves them around because you don't come in directly in your line of vision.

5:58Terry Gross: You come in from the side. You go from the sort of the social situation to a little more personal until you can get really intimate with the person. The whole idea is that they're not going to feel what you do. But if you have a leather watch, a leather wristband, you know, he can take it right off of you with one hand. And that was something I practiced again and again and again. God, I have enough trouble taking off my wristwatch. I know. I'm not sure how you do that. Yeah. But a lot of it is misdirection. It's a violation, obviously, but it's a nonviolent crime. and you are taking, when people did carry cash, they're spending money.

6:42Terry Gross: You're not wiping them out. You may take your wristwatch. You're not stealing their bank account. No, you're not stealing their bank account. Like people do digitally now. That's right. It's a whole different thing. And it was a tradition for a long time. And a lot of the pickpockets came from, you know, broken homes, orphanages, and they formed these little families that they would bail each other out and they would work certain shifts with agreements, sometimes with the police, who would get a little taste of the action from them. Were you ever in Oliver and had to sing, You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two?

7:19Terry Gross: I directed Oliver for my mom's church with my mom and my brother, St. Clair's Church, I think while I was in college. So I directed it, yes. Okay, good preparation. Yeah, good preparation. I'm a Dickens fan, obviously. But I read a lot of different books, especially the book Noah Segan, who wrote a beautiful script. He gave me a book called Whiz Mob by the fellow who wrote The Big Con that The Sting is based on. And it's sort of a sociological work because he interviews all these men and women pickpockets in the book. And you see their sort of code and their morality of what they do and what they won't do.

8:08Terry Gross: Like they won't steal from someone who's drunk or a really old person who, you know, has difficulty moving. It's the criminal with a code kind of thing. Yeah. No, they actually do that. The emotional center of the movie revolves around family. His wife, like your character's wife, is, I'm not sure. I said catatonic. Well, she's obviously not responsive, yes. What is her medical condition? Do you know? Well, it was never really specified in there. But obviously, sometimes people have a stroke and they don't respond. But their functions are okay. You know, but obviously he has to do a lot of intimate things, you know, with her, you know, carry her up the stairs, you know, give her, you know, bathe her, clean her, comb her hair, make sure she's hydrated.

9:09Terry Gross: Worry about her catheter. Yeah, her catheter. So there's all these things. And I was sort of struck when I read the script because I thought it's so well structured. It has an Aristotelian almost structure. It doesn't take place in 24 hours, but it's 36 hours really. And with this propulsive tension that's inherent in the script, there's this juxtaposed with this tenderness of this man who's never really taken care of anyone, as we discovered later. But now for the last bunch of years, he's understood what it is to care for someone or to use that most ambiguous of words, to love someone. Because that's an action.

10:03Terry Gross: It's not a word. And I think people are capable of growth. I don't think they change, but they're capable of growth. And you do see him treating everyone else in the movie very gentlemanly. He's always giving tips and trying to say thank you to people. And he depends on the kindness of strangers too. But he reciprocates. So you've been in the position of being a caregiver. I have. Your brother had paranoid schizophrenia, OCD, bipolar. Yeah. It's a lot. Depression. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. And you became his guardian after both your parents were dead. What did that mean to be his guardian?

10:55Terry Gross: Oh, well, I was his legal guardian because he inherited some money when I sold my mom's house. but I had to make sure he had a place to live. When the hospital discharged him, he was at Creedmoor for a long time. Yeah, he was there for like seven years, right? Eleven years he was there. I didn't realize they had discharged him. They had discharged him, so I had to find different residences, and then I put him in an apartment. I had to hire all the aides and then someone who was in charge of the aides so I could function. He could be very abusive and very unpredictable. so you never knew what was going to happen.

11:34Terry Gross: So I was always on sort of high alert. No matter where I was in the world, I tried to protect my own family from him. And then eventually he did sort of, we finally got him on a medicine which he could take monthly and he sort of, if schizophrenics live long enough, they sort of plateau. So they're not as volcanic. But there were times he'd be in a hospital because he acted up. He got thrown out of a lot of apartments. It was really hard to do because there's no system for mentally ill people. They wind up on the streets. But I know he depended on me. and he had a major effect on my life as a person.

12:31Terry Gross: And I did learn a lot about myself, how much I could withstand and how I learned to protect myself somewhat because you have to be able to sort of form a little barrier around you. Was he violent and did he ever like threaten you in a very serious way or members of your family, your parents. Yeah, he was violent, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons he went to the mental hospital was because I was worried about my mom because she was a widow. That's right. It was, yes. And yes, he could be violent. And he also had a lot of violence done to him because he would explode, you know, sometimes. And, you know, the thing about mental hospitals is that they don't, He did very well when he worked on the animal farm, when he had something to do, or he went to the living museum in Creedmoor where he was able to paint and play music.

13:28Terry Gross: They need activities, too, you know. And he was a very complex and very perceptive person. He could find your weakness, like, within a 30-minute ratio. You know, he'd find your weakness. And he could be quite generous. Not that he had that much to be generous with. He was a very good musician. And he just, I guess I learned a lot about human behavior with him and all the people around him. You had mentioned in an interview that you had renovated your mother's home and then your brother burned it down. That's right. He burned down the house. Intentionally or accidentally? He never said the truth until later on.

14:16And then he said he put a cigarette.

14:19Terry Gross: My mother was at her neighbor's house. And he wanted to see. And he left it on the couch. And he walked out. Because they have these compulsions. And he just left it there. He didn't put it out. And, you know, I had renovated the whole house with my dear friend, Brandon Cole. And it was after my dad died. It was something to help my mom recover from her grief. And between your father's temper and your brother's mental health problems, did you not only have to be vigilant all the time because there might be an eruption, did you have to study your family, their expressions, to see when was an explosion coming, either your father's temper or your brother's violence?

15:10and if you did, was that helpful to being an actor? Because you have to study people and then reproduce the human nature that you see around you.

15:25Terry Gross: My father was in the war, so he had PTSD in World War II. He was in D-Day and got blowing up and everything. He was on a destroyer. It hit a mine. They were in the front, the destroyers. And they were stuck there for like two or three days. So he had that. So him and my brother was not, it was not a great combination. And I was sort of the person who would calm things down. I'm the middle child. But I became like my mom's protector for a lot of my life growing up. And not that I chose to do that. I just did it. I guess you have that nature or you don't. But my mother and father were, they were sort of like the honeymooners, but it was as if maybe Charles Bukowski or Joe Orton wrote the honeymooners.

16:20Terry Gross: But it had that dynamic because my mother was very, you know, dry with that and funny. But you learn how to diffuse the situation. And, you know, when I played, when I was younger and I played all these explosive characters and stuff, I understood the reality of that versus just the imaginative reality of that. I saw a lot of violence growing up and I was in the middle of it a bunch of times. My guest is John Turturro. He stars in the new film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. He's also in the series Severance. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. This is Fresh Air Weekend.

17:01Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

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18:09Join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash fresh. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash fresh. So one of your breakthrough roles was in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. You played the racist son of Sal, the owner of the pizzeria. And Spike played Mookie, who is the pizza delivery guy. And there's like a kind of famous scene where Spike's saying to you, like, I don't understand how you can hate black people because like your favorite athletes are black. Your favorite musicians are black. Like how is this even possible?

18:48Terry Gross: Right. It's a phenomenon that exists until to this very day. Absolutely. So racially and ethnically, what kind of neighborhood, schools did you go to? I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood for the first six years of my life in Hollis, Queens. It was in a little garden apartment. I had no white friends. My best friend was black. The guy who was the nerdy guy was black. The bully was black. And we had some white people on our block, but I didn't really have any friends my age that were white. And I think that had a huge, musically, friendship-wise, sense of humor-wise, had a huge influence on me.

19:37Terry Gross: And when I moved to Rosedale, it was more of an Italian, Irish, and somewhat Jewish neighborhood. And that was the first time I felt kind of prejudiced against the color of my skin. Everyone thought I was Puerto Rican. So I found it much more aggressive personally to me, even from people who were supposed to be from a similar background to me. And then later on, I went to a school which was somewhat integrated, PS38. And then I got bussed out because it was busing to IS-59, which was all black, was a 90 percent black and 10 percent Jewish school. and that's where I learned to play basketball and made friends.

20:24Terry Gross: But it was a very volatile time because it was the whole, you know, 1968, I'm Black and I'm Proud, James Brown. It was the beginning of Black Panther Pledge. And that was a whole, I had to learn to navigate that all over again. So my experiences growing up have sort of helped me, I think, navigate a multicultural world. And I don't feel comfortable being in an all-white neighborhood. And Spike always laughs at me and goes, well, I know you're black and all this stuff. But I'm from like Sicily, which is a melting pot. You know, I have a lot of other things. Your family's from Sicily. Well, my mother's family is.

21:08Terry Gross: Right, yeah. My father's from Puglia. My father's from Puglia. But I think that really bonded me and Spike because he grew up in an Italian neighborhood. and so yeah I didn't know that about him I thought he grew up in Bedford Stuyvesant no he grew up in Cobble Hill mostly and his best friend was Italian so he it just was like I was like oh my god this is like someone I know my whole life we're three weeks apart and when he showed me the movie I said I know a lot of people like this and I said I'd rather play the racist guy because it's like that's what it's about the movie and he doesn't have a Ku Klux Klan hood on him.

21:47Terry Gross: He's just the guy who sells pizza. And I worked at a pizzeria before that and the guy wasn't that different from the guy I was playing. So the thing was to expose it in a way. So you're on the verge of turning 70. I deny that. And it's the age in which I think a lot of actors assume like it's going to good roles are going to be really scarce and you've been getting like great roles yeah you know in the last few years i'm just like the night of and severance and you know the only living pickpocket in new york your new movie i mean these are these are like terrific terrific roles well 70 is the new 50 i guess i listen i try to stay in shape and keep my memory sharp.

22:39Terry Gross: I think as an actor, if you get the opportunity, you have a bigger toolbox of experience. Yeah. You can't jump over a fence as quickly or run as fast, but you can distill your experiences. Well, neither would your character. Right, that's right. But you can distill things and understand what stillness is and be really precise because your toolbox is much fuller. You've experienced so many things. And I feel very rich in that way right now. And when I see the only living pickpocket, I see a person who has lived a lot of life, you know, and that's me too. John Turturro, what a pleasure to talk with you.

23:27Thank you so much.

23:29Terry Gross: What a pleasure to talk to you. I really, really enjoyed it. John Turturro stars in the new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Our next guest, Jordan Firstman, is an actor, writer, and director who became known for his comedy on Instagram during the pandemic. His feature film debut, Club Kid, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and will be in theaters this Friday. Jordan Firstman spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. When we first meet Peter, the main character in Club Kid, it's 2016, and he's the life of the party. He's a New York City club promoter who not only promotes the parties, he owns them, getting people in, keeping people out, giving out drugs, and taking them himself.

24:18His parties are filled with music, sex, drinks, ketamine, and confetti. It's a lot. And Peter loves being in the middle of it all. Fast forward 10 years, and Peter is still promoting parties like he used to, but he's older, a little worn out, wanting to take a break, but still getting sucked back into the center of the scene. That changes when a 10-year-old British boy is brought to his Lower East Side rent-controlled apartment. The boy, Arlo, is the product of a hookup Peter doesn't remember. He doesn't even remember ever sleeping with a woman. But it turns out Arlo's mother has died, and Peter, the boy's biological father, is the only family that he has left.

25:03Arlo's arrival leads Peter to reevaluate everything and to question if he's outgrown his old lifestyle, and if leaving it would make him a better father and human. Jordan Firstman wrote for TV shows like Search Party, The Other Two, and Big Mouth. he became Instagram famous as a comedian during the pandemic. He starred on the TV show The English Teacher and played a fictionalized version of himself in the film Rotting in the Sun. He currently stars in the HBO comedy series I Love L.A., which is coming back for a second season. He also released an album called Secrets, inspired by actual secrets that strangers messaged him.

25:46Let's start with a clip from the film Club Kid. Arlo, the 10-year-old, played by Reggie Absalom, has been living with Peter for a bit and shares that he knows about his mother's death. Peter, played by Firstman, is trying to comfort him. How does that make you feel? It's sad. Yeah, that makes sense. It's super sad. But that's okay, you know, to feel sad. You know that, right? You don't? You don't think it's okay to be sad? Why not? Dunno. Well, in my house, it's definitely okay to be sad. Encouraged, even. You know, if you want to cry for a week straight, like, it's fine by me. You know, sometimes I cry for a week straight.

26:41Well, why do you cry? Mm-hmm. You want the real answer? Yeah. Um, yeah, I basically, like, don't have any self-esteem. What does that mean? It means that I don't really like myself a lot of the time. But, you know, actually, recently, um, you know, kind of since you got here, I've been feeling better about myself. Which is, that's good. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Jordan Firstman, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. Listening to your intro, it's a bit surreal to be here. I'm like, we were a Fresh Air family. Oh. And, you know, we'd be in the car listening to Terry Gross, and I'd be like, Mom, put on something else.

27:40It's so boring. Like, let's listen to Nirvana. Now look at you. Yeah, now look at it. I mean, I think my parents will be gagged, so to speak. But, you know, then I became a Fresh Air fan when I got my senses together. And so it's really an honor to be here and actually a bit emotional. Well, we're very happy to have you here. I want to ask about that scene we just heard. I like how in the scene, you know, your character Peter is trying to make the kid Arlo feel better by saying it's okay to cry for a week. And it kind of feels like Peter is also trying to convince himself that it's okay. Yeah, I think it's interesting to try to explain something in its simplest form to a kid.

28:26Because I think Peter has never, you know, he knows the way he feels and like he spirals about the way he feels. And, you know, when you're in a state of spiraling, whether you're coming down from drugs or not, like when you're in that space, it's millions of thoughts about how you're not good enough and how you don't matter and how you're doing the wrong things. But to explain it simply to a kid, I think like that's maybe the first time Peter's just like, yeah, I don't like myself. And to maybe hear it out loud for him, I think is kind of his first step forward. You cast Reggie Absalom as 10-year-old Arlo.

29:04He's so good in the film. Can you talk about writing from the son's perspective, like what he might be thinking or feeling after going through really difficult things in his young life? You know, I did a lot of kind of psychological research on traumatized kids. My sister's actually a social worker for his exact age in Minneapolis. So we talked a lot. And she read every draft of the script and really helped me with Arlo. And, you know, she said a lot of times kids that have dealt with a lot of traumatic experiences do grow up a lot faster and they do tend to know how to try to make consistency work for them or try to make something that feels good work for them.

29:52And so I think that's what's going on with Arlo. I think he, he knows what is, is waiting for him back in London is bad. And I think there's this chance of hope with Peter, like, even though he's a mess, he's kind and he feels safe. I just wanted to make sure he had his own kind of intentions and motivations. And even as a 10-year-old, with what he's been through, I think he just yearns for safety and he yearns for consistency and he yearns for consistent love. And I think he sees that Peter is capable of that. It seems like Peter is also looking for that. Yeah, I think Arlo teaches Peter to grow up, and I think Peter teaches Arlo to be a kid.

30:39Well, what inspired this story? When did you start writing Club Kit? I started in the winter of 2023, I believe. And I had had another project, a TV show in development, that I really was like, I had always kind of categorized my projects, like my A projects I put my whole soul into, and my B projects were like my fun idea projects. And I had my A project, and it was like seemingly moving forward at a network. And my B project, I was like, oh, that's a fun idea, me and a kid. Like, I feel so inappropriate in my life that, like, what would happen to my life if a kid showed up. And then the A project didn't happen.

31:26Thank God actually now that it didn't. And, you know, I had to then find, find my soul in, in the fun project. And I just had to kind of sit down and look within myself. And I was, you know, around 32 ish at the time. And I was like, am I an adult? Like, when is that going to happen? When am I going to feel like adult? I was partying too much. I was having these comedowns. I was having this self-hatred. And I was like, OK, there's a way to overlap these two stories. And, you know, and I wanted to, yeah, make a delayed coming of age film about, you know, a gay guy in his 30s. And so that's kind of how it started.

32:13And then as you worked on it more, it still had that humor, but it maybe became darker and sadder. yeah I think like everything I do has like an undertone of of sadness and so that was always going to be there it's like if if I'm making it it's going to be a little sad um but uh once I I reframed it in my mind as a drama with funny stuff instead of a comedy with dark stuff yeah it completely changed and I felt like I could just actually live from a truthful place and and be honest with myself and be honest with the story. And I knew the jokes would be there because, you know, jokes are all around me.

32:55Jokes are always a part of my daily existence. And so, yeah, I think just leaning on the honesty and leaning on the drama is what, like, pushed the story forward. And then, you know, there's still a lot of jokes left in the movie, so you can imagine. We're listening to the interview Fresh Air producer Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Jordan Firstman. He wrote, directed, and stars in the new film Club Kid. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Whole Foods Market.

33:32Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department ever, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And all their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want only at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more.

34:06Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. This message comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council. When the chainsaws come for ancient forests, when bulldozers take the only home a species has, when drilling rigs are plunked onto public lands, something is lost that can't be brought back. NRDC is in court to stop this destruction. From the wonders of the Arctic to baby sea turtles hatching on beaches, it's all still here. Help defend it. Donate at nrdc.org slash fresh and your gift will be matched five times. Let's get back to the interview our producer Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Jordan Firstman.

34:50He wrote, directed, and stars in the new film Club Kid, and he stars in the HBO comedy series, I Love LA. I read that you lived in Berlin for some of the time when you were writing this and your time there kind of inspired it specifically the gay club scene there. Can you talk about that and how that kind of informed Club Kid? Yeah, I just fell head over heels for this guy that I met in Berlin that became my boyfriend. And it was just like the most in love I had ever been. And, you know, he was, he was a party boy in Berlin. And so I got really, really into his scene and his friends were amazing and like amazing people, but it was, yeah, I was doing drugs from Thursday to Monday, you know, when I was in Berlin and, you know, even like trying while I was writing the TV show that didn't happen.

35:44So, you know, when you're doing this marathon style partying, like you start, you know, Thursday, it's like, they're all chill dinner but there's cocaine and then friday is like now we really party like a night at berghain or a night and in in the club can feel like a lifetime and then it becomes monday morning somehow monday and tuesday you spend you know in bed wanting to kill yourself and then you're like i have one day of the week to work that wednesday so i got to get a lot of work done on that wednesday for people who don't know can you describe what berghain club is in Berlin. It's kind of like the pinnacle of a gay club culture.

36:22Yeah. I mean, it's a club that's, that's been there for a long time and they really value queerness. I think it's, you know, become way more mixed, but I still do think they, they value its roots in, in queerness, but I don't know. They just have the best DJs in the world and the best sound system in the world. and there's different mazes and different places to have sex and to do your substances. And, you know, there's Panorama Bar on the top that's more kind of like house music, like a little more fun. And then the main room is techno and people really get down there. It's like not really encouraged to talk on that floor.

37:02You kind of just dance. But, yeah, it's like it's a whole world. It's a whole world inside that place. And, you know, it's become a little bit of like a meme or a joke, like, oh, getting into Bergheim. But like, then like anyone who goes, it's like, yeah, it's still kind of is just that girl. Like they just do it right. They care about the space. The reason it's so hard to get into is because the people at the door are curating the experience inside and they can, they can really sniff out a vibe. Like if you belong there and you can wear as much black as you want in that line and you can not smile and you can do all the right things.

37:37But if they they can smell the vibe. When you were getting into Burkheim Club, what would you wear? I would usually wear like gym shorts and either like a T-shirt or a white tank top or yeah, just kind of like gay guy outfit. Like very, very minimal gay guy outfit, like fanny pack, gym shorts, sneakers and like a windbreaker and a tank top. Very casual. You didn't have to try that hard. They just knew. No, they just knew. And I just I don't want to brag, but I have never been rejected from Berkheim ever. I want to talk about how you made the club scene look in your film, like how you portrayed gay nightlife in New York.

38:30What was important for you to kind of convey? Because I feel like you ended up conveying like the joy of it, like the pleasure of it, but also the darkness of it. And how did you sort of manage to do both? Yeah, I think that was my exact intention. and I wanted to show the highs and the lows because you do have both. I think it's not going to be like an oral history of what it is to be gay, but I think we as gay men specifically, we put ourselves in high-risk behavior, high-risk and high-reward. I mean, we really live, and I think because we, for so long, were not able to live, I think we choose to live very hard.

39:17and love very hard, and that comes at a cost sometimes. And yeah, so I wanted to show the beauty and the joy and the pain in my life and the culture around me. You shot the movie with film, and that gave the movie kind of a look that connects it to other films about New York. Were there certain films that inspired you that you kind of wanted Club Kid to kind of be in conversation with? the 70s are just are just my favorite era of film ever like I need to be a little bit more knowledgeable about like what exactly went down with this I know the studios collapsed and then and then like you know they were just taking more chances on a tours and so you know you were having these movies with you know a bit of a budget that felt so creative and so free and you know we had you know, Altman and Cassavetes and Paul Mazursky and, and, uh, Scorsese.

40:17And it would just, I mean, everything was happening and it felt so alive what was happening then. And so I've, I've always just loved seventies cinema and in New York specifically. So yeah, I mean, of course we were, we were looking at, um, you know, after hours and, and King of Comedy and Scorsese's early work, But yeah, so I just, I just love the texture of seventies New York. And so we really tried to also, we shot only, only in places that felt like old New York. That's why we shot in Chinatown and Lower East Side, because it feels kind of unchanged and Soho and some, some streets in Soho.

40:55And we tried to shoot with streets, shoot with shooting streets with no cars. So it kind of had that older, older feel to it. But it was, yeah, it was very important for us to, you know, capture a nostalgic New York that, you know, might not really exist anymore. But then, you know, we have the modernity of the club. And for those club scenes, you did shoot in real clubs and real parties. We did. We did. I mean, we have these real parties where people are really partying, I'll say. And we were allowed in those spaces because of, you know, just my involvement in the last decade of clubbing and having friends.

41:37And there was a community feeling happening in the film that made the queer underground New York rave scene really want to show up because they trusted that what we were making was going to be a positive depiction because of its honesty, I think. And I think I was in the perfect point in my career, and I don't think I'll ever be able to do this again. I think I was in the perfect spot because they knew my work enough to know that I was not going to make something horrible. But I was also not big enough that it felt like I was coming in and taking advantage. Well, you wanted to get it right, too.

42:20You didn't want to make a movie about the scene and have it not feel authentic. No, I mean, that would be the worst thing I could have ever done. It was like the most important thing to me and like no shade to background actors, but like they don't look like club kids. They just don't. So, you know, I we had to have a certain amount just like for SAG rules. But, you know, every we kind of hit them in the back. And yeah, we got a lot of just a lot of people showed up for this movie in the community. Now, you grew up on Long Island. Did you have a very suburban Long Island childhood? I would say so.

43:00Yeah. I was in kind of a picturesque town, like kind of Gilmore Girls vibes even, called Northport. And my parents were both journalists at a newspaper. My mom ran the health and science section. My dad ran the sports section. Very kind of 90s rom-com vibes. and uh yeah i had i had two older siblings twins uh we had a dog named molly a cat named jasmine that they weren't getting along so like my mom said she like gave her to someone good but i kind of don't trust her you got an agent when you were 14 i read did you go to new york and get an agent or did you start calling people like how did you do that and what kind of actor did you want to be yeah I remember like dragging my parents to an open call for Lion King to play Simba and like which is famously like oh was always like a person of color like there was never a white Simba ever and I went to the audition there was like 500 black kids in me and I was like I think I could I don't know maybe like I'll be the one to like change the rules but I don't know I had this like blind confidence.

44:12And my parents were like, I don't know what's going on. But yeah, I found I don't remember how I found found that agent, but she would start to send me on auditions. And, and, you know, when I was 16, I got really close to being the lead in Brighton Beach memoirs on Broadway. And I was going into the city all the time to audition for acting stuff as a kid. And And my parents were very supportive of it. But I just, I don't know. I just, I knew what I wanted very early. I think it's funny now that, you know, I am where I am. And, you know, filmmaking has become the thing for me. But for the first couple years, it was definitely acting.

44:53And you were very much into musical theater. What musicals were important to you? And did you want, you wanted to perform in musicals? Or did you want to write musicals? i hid for so many years that i like musicals the last 10 like i mean like i just thought it was like the the least cool thing and i still do believe it is the least cool thing but i can also admit told two truths that i do also enjoy it um but i just i like the good ones though like i like sondheim fancy music some artists transform the art form you know i'm not going to see like I don't know whatever like recreation of a movie that's like they're going on Broadway you know that's not my type of musical but you know I became obsessed with Sondheim when I was like yeah probably 12 and like obsessed with company I'm like I I like related to Bobby and company like a 35 year old single bachelor in the 70s I'm like I am Bobby like I like yeah like someone to hold me too close someone to sit in my chair someone to ruin my sleep like I'm like of being alive.

45:59Like that's me. And, uh, but also I'm Elaine Stritch and, uh, um, actually I was, I dressed up as Elaine Stritch for Halloween for three years in a row from ages 14 to 17. Um, so yeah, I, I loved it. I, I live for the stuff and, you know, I, I've gone through many, like many loves of art and like my, you know, then I got really into Keith Haring when I was 17 and like that became my whole identity. And, you know, then I, then, you know, Mazursky came at 21 and then that was my thing. And so, yeah, I think I've, I've, I've looked, I've looked to like certain artists more than art forms, I would say like certain artists have really changed my life.

46:41Mike White, when I watched Enlightened, that was a game changer. Frank Ocean, like Tyler, the creator, SZA, Lana Del Rey, Amy Winehouse, like, like it's really artists who, who shaped me rather than art forms. You've talked about how you became independent in your teens. Was being an actor or trying to be an actor part of that? I think so. I think I liked the idea. I like always, again, it's like I think company and like I guess watching Woody Allen movies, like I wanted to be in the 70s and be a bachelor on the Upper East or West Side. Like that is what I felt I was born to do. And so I think going into the city by myself with my, with my backpack and, and, you know, go like going to auditions alone.

47:30And then, you know, I would like crash at friends houses that I knew from summer camp. And, you know, I convinced my parents I didn't have school on Fridays for two years and they were going through their own divorce. So I don't think they were listening to anything at all. So they believe me somehow. And, um, my teachers would be like, girl, you need to come to school on Fridays. And I'm like, I think I do. I think you should check the attendance. I think I'm there. Um, but I would, I would take the train from where my high school was in Syosset to, uh, to the city on Thursday, stay at my friend Ben's house on, on the Upper West Side from Thursday to Monday morning, go back, go to school for a couple days and then, and then do it again.

48:12So I was really like, yeah, I was living, I was living a very independent life. My parents did not know where I was from Thursday to Monday. Well, so then did acting or, you know, life in New York become a way to escape what was going on at your house? Probably. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know. I think I think that's another part about part of the film like that in that conversation that you played. I think I didn't like know my parents were people and I feel like they kept so many secrets from me and like I you know I for my bar mitzvah my parents were like you could either have a big party um or you can have a party at the house and go and we'll take you on a trip anywhere in the world and so I was very cultured at a very early age and I chose the trip and so I chose Italy and you know it of course took like four years to get the trip together.

49:07So by the time we were doing the trip, I was 17. And like all of a sudden my dad like had work and couldn't come and it just became me, my mom, my sibling, and my mom doesn't drink. And the first night we get to Italy, she does one half a shot of limoncello and immediately says she's divorcing my dad. And so obviously the trip was ruined. We like left early like my it was like the worst trip ever. But you know, I didn't have any indication of what was going on and like there were some factual things that were really bad happening and I was just so in the dark and then I was so mad at my mom for so many years and then so mad at my dad for so many years and I just like never knew the story and I never like I never knew them as people and so I think I was definitely just trying to create my own life of of me having an honest experience and like living too.

50:02I was like going in the city and like hooking up with guys too. You know, I was like interested in being an adult. I felt like I, from the age of like 15 on, I wanted to be an adult and start my life. And then how soon after that did you move to LA? I did like a year and a half in college in Ohio and I dropped out to do a play in New York. And I had a really traumatic year in New York that I don't want to get into so much, but a lot of bad stuff happened. And, yeah, I was just like, I can't live here. And I, you know, I'd never been to L.A. before. I had I didn't know anyone there and I didn't know how to drive.

50:45So, you know, I learned how to drive in two weeks, like passed my driver's test, like within an inch of my life. And and, you know, just just moved to L.A. And I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, like why people move to LA, I'm going to reinvent myself and, and start a new life. And that's what I did. Now in Club Kid, Peter has to figure out how to hold onto the parts of his old life that matter while making room for something new. Is that something you've been dealing with yourself? I've heard you say that it's difficult for you sometimes to leave the party, like, literally and kind of figuratively.

51:22and I'm wondering where you are with that. Yeah, I am just so proud of this work. I'm so proud of this movie. And so I'm just focused on getting the movie out there because this movie does touch people. And I think it touches a lot of different kinds of people that I wasn't expecting. And we went to Telluride and I watched 75-year-old men, white men, walk out of the theater weeping. And I was like, oh, okay. that was not what I had planned for but then it is there now so now it's kind of my job to like you know a 75 year old man isn't gonna see like the premise of like club kid and go to the movie so I have to figure out how to get it to them and then after that ends I need to really recalibrate and and think like what do I want next for my life and my art and what do I what do I want to talk about him?

52:21And, you know, where, where is my head at? I've been nonstop working for about three years now without any breaks, like really not like even a week. And so I think I need a little bit of a break and, and, and just time to like really think about where I am and where I want to go. Jordan Firstman, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Jordan Firstman spoke with Fresh Air producer Anne-Marie Boldonato. Forsman wrote, directed, and stars in the new film Club Kid. It's in select theaters this weekend. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger.

53:03Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Prolon. With their five-day fasting mimicking diet, a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com slash NPR. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.