2023 Rewind: Jordan Firstman on his Movie's Unsimulated Sex

This piece is part of EDGE's 2023 Rewind series. We're reaching into our archives and sharing some of our favorite stories from the past year.

Social media star Jordan Firstman, the star of Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva's Sundance hit "Rotting in the Sun," opened up about doing sex scenes for the movie that were real; not simulated.

Speaking with Variety from Sundance, Firstman declared of his performance, "I put my whole person into it." His choice of words is apt: As the actor added later in the interview he and Silva did jointly, "I have cocks down, down, down my throat."

Firstman went on to add that, in turn, "My cock is in somebody's throat."

"The guy who plays the cock I sucked has a beautiful cock," Firstman went on to say. "I originally wanted the biggest cock we could find. I wanted to be sucking a 12-inch." He had a say in the casting, he added: "Sebastian sent me the first round of casting and I said, 'Absolutely not!'"

As far as his thoughts on unsimulated sex in movies in general, Firstman offered a pragmatic take. "Everybody watches porn," the actor pointed out. "It's this thing where it can't be in a movie or a TV show when we're literally watching more porn than we are movies."

"Yeah, people watch porn while they're watching movies!" Silva chimed in.

"If there's a cock there, I'm going to suck it," Firstman went on to add. "That's how my life goes and how a lot of gay men's lives go. It's just there."

Silva, who plays a depressed movie director in the film, offered his own point of view. "People, especially Americans, are so scared of genitals," he noted. "I'm scared a little bit that a lot of people will center on the cocks and talking about cocks when it's just a trait of one of the characters."

Moreover, Silva added, the erotic action isn't the film's main focus. "There is sex," he said, "but we never center there for two seconds more than is needed."

"'Rotting in the Sun' marks Firstman's biggest feature film role to date after making a name for himself as a social [media] comedian," Variety recounted. "Silva, meanwhile, is no stranger to making Sundance headlines as his debut 'The Maid' won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema, while 'Crystal Fairy' won Sundance's Director Award: World Cinema Dramatic."

Watch Firstman and Silva's interview below. The subject turns to the film's unsimulated gay sex at about eight minutes and 10 seconds.