LIGHTS, BEATS, ACTION

‘Club Kid’ Is So Much More Than a Gay ‘Big Daddy’

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

This week:

In the Clerb, We All Fam

It should come as surprise to no one that I was not a club kid.

Don’t get me wrong: I spent my twenties in New York City. I have plenty of murky memories of crowded dance floors while altered to some sort of state supposed to summon the most euphoric version of myself, while instead I was likely an embarrassing fool. (For all the things I curse about this life, I thank God every day we weren’t using camera phones back then.)

The club kid lifestyle, however, seemed mysterious, maybe a little scary, and certainly out of reach for someone who self-consciously identified as nerdy (well, nerdy-ish) and buttoned-up. Still, it fascinated me, the way that unreachable, exotic, faraway fantasy lands seem alluring; you may know you don’t belong there, but the curiosity abounds.

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I’ve been intrigued for months by Jordan Firstman’s rapturously reviewed new movie Club Kid, which is now in theaters. Would I be turned off by it for not understanding that lifestyle? Would it not be “for me”? And does that mean that I was subscribing to the worst impulse in my community, passing judgment because I’m not “that kind of gay”?

Then I saw the film, this beautiful, generous, uplifting, and, revealing my prejudices, profoundly relatable piece of work.

I didn’t have to be a club kid to be broken open by Firstman’s movie. Neither do you. You don’t have to have experienced or understand that world to be entranced by his depiction of it, and then be completely undone by its depiction of a person who forgot to mature, forgot to get older, and forgot to need, let alone achieve, happiness in his life.

Then comes the miracle and the impossible, almost unmeetable challenge: He discovers the thing and the connection that might allow all those things to happen—if only the world would let it.

Thirty-five-year-old Firstman, known for his sardonic roles in comedies like I Love LA and English Teacher—not to mention a polarizing online presence that’s provided a font for passionate opinion from millennial and Gen Z gay men—wrote, directed, and stars in Club Kid.

It’s been (I’d argue quite patronizingly) described in shorthand as “gay Big Daddy.”

Peter (Firstman) is a party promoter whose long benders on a chemistry lab’s worth of substances are becoming less and less cute, and whose sense of responsibility and obligation is characterized by the bump he uses in lieu of a cup of coffee to finally wake up in the late afternoon. His life is upended when the biological son (Reggie Absolom’s Arlo) he didn’t know he had is left in his care; in fact, Peter was so blacked out when he conceived him in a dark room at a club that he was still certain that he had never had sex with a woman before.

As evidenced by that Adam Sandler movie comparison, it’s an extremely accessible story: Does Peter save Arlo, or is Arlo the one really saving him? Scoff, groan, and put it on a Hallmark card, I know.

What makes the film so remarkable is this rich world it grants us access to, shoving us in with no, for lack of a better word, kid gloves, and what it reminds us about the universal struggle for purpose, validation, and community—in all the ways those things evolve as we age.

We see, and maybe judge, the club as seedy, debaucherous, and even dangerous, a den where addiction and bad decisions can thrive. But we’re also privy to how it can, for other people, be a refuge, a sanctuary for joy, experimentation, and self-discovery. It’s instructive and specific.

It’s a hoot to be introduced to Peter’s circle of friends, unfiltered and untranslated for a mainstream movie audience. They’re people across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, speaking as they speak, dropping the pop-culture references that they’d use, and partying the way they’d party. Yet Club Kid is also a broad film. A man-child being forced to grow up in order to provide for their son is a framework we all know the emotional beats of. This queer world surrounding that framework adds the intoxicating, glittering flourish.

Peter is forced to finally confront his life and ask the questions we’re all forced to ask ourselves about how we got to where we are, what mistakes we’ve made, whether they were worth it, and where we go from here. We see how Peter’s fear of the future was the obstacle keeping him resigned to club life, creating an abrasiveness that he’d use to thwart any suggestion of an obligation to grow. But now, Arlo’s here. The stakes are higher.

That’s what really struck me about Club Kid, and what’s stayed with me in the weeks since I first watched it: What if the things we assumed were bad about people weren’t just good, but necessary?

Abrasiveness can be a mask, protecting a vulnerability one might be scared to reveal. But it also doesn’t have to be a negative quality, the way it’s typically prescribed. Have you experienced the world lately? It can be a vital tool for spelunking through the toxicity, for finding the way through the darkness.

In a similar vein, Firstman crucially reminds us that a person who might be considered messy, who is falling apart, or making mistakes, or sending signals every which way that they might be better off discounted—or, more truthfully, you might prefer life having discounted them—isn’t a bad person, or less of a person. They can be operating with the best intentions, even with optimism, but unable to climb that wall to reach goodness on the other side.

It’s a poignant message that radiates from Club Kid, sort of simmering and building throughout the film until it hits you like a solar flare. You don’t realize how visceral the emotions rising in you were until you suddenly find your cheeks soaked with tears.

Club Kid isn’t asking for pity or empathy. It’s insisting on recognition. Don’t we all deserve that goodness? How much does one have to do in order to prove they do? Worse, what happens when the world—the world we fashioned that abrasive mask to face—makes it so that the goodness you need, the goodness you deserve, is still out of reach?

I may not have been a Club Kid. But I am this movie’s biggest fan.

The Newlyweds Conundrum

I love a network sitcom. A breezy 22-minute jaunt with a few good belly laughs? It’s refreshing. It’s a tonic. After hours and hours of screening bloated hour-long dramas and thrillers, it’s like coming home from work and immediately changing out of hard pants and into soft pants: a relaxing sigh, a weight lifted, an absolute pleasure.

That is why I’m torn about the starry new NBC series Newlyweds. It’s a multi-cam sitcom, which is a throwback in itself, starring real-life couple Tim Daly and Tea Leoni as a divorcée and a widow who jump into a second marriage together, with Jamie Lee Curtis swanning in and out to deliver sassy one-liners as the ex-wife.

From the format to the ba-dum-ching jokes about relationships, it’s as if a sitcom made and aired in the ’90s somehow got caught in some sort of soundstage space/time continuum and teleported into a 2026 network lineup.

There’s a novelty and nostalgia to that, especially when so many “comedies” are so blatantly unfunny that riots rage about category fraud each time award shows roll around. But it’s also a bit like if someone wanted to play me their new favorite song and handed me a cassette tape, or if someone needed to tell me something urgent for work, so they tried to send a fax. It’s a feeling of: What am I supposed to do with that?

Yet Daly, Leoni, and Curtis are so charming and likable, and such pros, that even the antiquated, stale writing comes alive and elicits decent laughs, to the point that I’ve found watching the first batch of episodes an unusual combination of quite enjoyable and groanworthy. I’m usually pretty quick and confident in judging “for me” or “not for me” when new shows come out. I’ll need to see what happens past the honeymoon phase with this one.

History’s Most Infamous Glove

Have there been enough TV series, documentaries, books, podcasts, and tell-alls about the O.J. Simpson case? Absolutely not. There could never be enough. It is one of the most fascinating topics in our country’s history, and what once shocked me, but now doesn’t surprise me, is how each new deep-dive into the case exhumes more jaw-dropping information, new context, and new perspective.

Peacock’s new two-part documentary O.J.’s Accomplice is another example. Now streaming, it explores one question that has haunted the case for decades: Did O.J. really act alone? The original investigators and detectives, as well as Nicole Brown’s sister, Kato Kaelin, and new eyewitnesses present evidence that Simpson might have had an accomplice, yet again raising the question of what the truth is in this case—and will it truly ever be told?

The Blunami Comedy Hour

Sometimes X can be the greatest place on the internet. All the toxicity and harm is cast aside for jokes. So many jokes. The smartest, most ridiculous jokes. The site becomes a comedy party where, with a necessary self-awareness, a responsible mandate for political correctness is unburdened, and hilarity ensues.

After the Election Night blue wave, that meant mocking all the ludicrous things that MAGA were afraid of if Democrats were in power—concerns about transgender people, wokeness, and Muslim leaders—would now immediately happen. Mandatory sex changes! Men reversing their vasectomies to facilitate more abortions! “Born This Way” is the new National Anthem, and he/him or she/her are no longer legal pronouns. Chick-fil-a? Not only is it now open on Sundays, but their menu is now halal, and it is a drag brunch…for kids!

There were so many of these posts that it would be impossible to cite the best ones, but here are two links that curate some of the most hilarious jokes, including a heroic effort by one of X’s best accounts, Bald Ann Dowd.

Even after reading all those jokes, the hardest I laughed on Election Night was when, in the background, hearing Kaitlin Collins mention Mariah Carey, Anderson Cooper’s head popped up like a meerkat in the savanna.

For gay men, the priorities are: doing your job <<< the future of democracy <<< being a Lamb.

One Last Election Thought

Red, White, and Royal Blue is vindicated.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

Bobby Moynihan and I chatted about the new season of Reggie Dinkins and why the new SNL cast has it easy. Read more.

I interviewed Jessica Lange about what she says is the best, most meaningful role she’s played in here career. Read more.

This new movie starring Amanda Seyfried just became incredibly timely. Read more.

What to Watch This Week:

Club Kid: This movie is really special. I can’t recommend it enough. (Now in theaters)

Wild Horse Nine: This could finally score John Malcovich his first Oscar win. (Now in theaters)

Slow Horses: I feel like the Keira Knightley/Ben Whishaw spy show was engineered specifically to convince me to watch a spy show. (Now on Netflix)

What to Skip This Week:

I Play Rocky: The story of the making of Rocky from the filmmakers of Green Book: worst Hollywood Mad Libs ever. (Now in theaters)

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Kevin FallonEditor-at-Large, Obsessed

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