CarnalNation

Though I've been to many underground sex parties in NYC I can't say I find them all that sexy. Hilarious—quite often; sexy—not so much. Maybe this is because I come from the BDSM world, which means I'm usually the biggest perv in the room. A lot of the swingers at the parties I've attended tend to get wide-eyed at the mention of something as ho-hum to me as caning, and mere screwing ain't enough to turn me on. Or maybe it's because I'm just a shallow genderqueer chick who won't touch any body that doesn't have muscles attached to a big dick. Or maybe it's because I was swinging on the playground when the original deal, NYC's notorious swing club Plato's Retreat, was in full swing.

But after watching American Swing, Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman's doc about the infamous '70s sex club, I can safely rule out that last possibility. Nope, I still don't get why average people having group sex is hot. (Once again, this could be because I spent nearly six years as a personal slave to a gay-for-pay porn star who spoiled me with orgies with his male stripper friends.) In fact, not only did the doc not shine a light on why Plato's was such a raunchy good time, but it caused Bruce Springsteen's anthem to blue collar nostalgia "Glory Days" to play annoyingly like mood music in my head throughout, roaring right over the film's time-appropriate soundtrack ("Do The Hustle"!) Yes, American Swing is painstakingly researched. It utilizes actual archival clips from the club and the era that birthed it, juxtaposed with talking heads that range from founder Larry Levenson's family members, to famous writers, to porn stars, to regular Joes. However, the colorful background settings most of those onetime Plato's aficionados are interviewed in are, unfortunately, much more interesting than the "colorful" characters themselves. It's as if the directors are desperately signaling, "Look, quirky folks!" through funky yellow couches, homey red bricks and bright day lighting, as if they have an inkling that this "treasure trove" of debauchery they've uncovered is nothing more than fool's gold—a bunch of old geezers sitting around the bar reliving that unbelievable home run.

"It looked more like a Bar Mitzvah," the journalist Howard Smith recalls of the parties that took place in the basement of the Ansonia building on the Upper West Side, complete with a poolside buffet. Indeed, it was Levenson and his girlfriend Mary's mission to bring swinging into the mainstream, to make the lifestyle as out in the open as the local gay bars. (In fact, the space Levenson rented was formerly home to The Continental Baths, the infamous gay bathhouse where Bette Midler got her start.) For while the partner swapping and group orgies that took place inside those walls might have been less than wholesome, the people participating were on average—Annie Sprinkle notwithstanding—the neighbors next door. In one vintage clip, a blonde expresses frustration that people don't seem to realize that swingers are just normal folks like them with mortgages to pay. And herein lies the problem with Hart and Kaufman's film: those next-door neighbors just aren't all that interesting. Even showboat Levenson, who seemed to never turn down a talk show invitation, comes across in the archival footage as more soccer dad than the bad boy "King of Swing." Despite being kidnapped and beaten in relation to either a love triangle involving Mary and the chauffeur or a problem with the mob, and serving time at Allenwood Federal Prison on the tax evasion charges that signaled the end for Plato's (a la Studio 54's demise), Levenson was no Tony Soprano-like figure. Though Plato's Retreat eventually fell victim to prostitution charges and Mayor Koch's sex club crackdown during the AIDS epidemic, none other than seen-it-all Ms. Sprinkle suggests that Levenson's love child in fact died a "natural death" like any other club in NYC; along with Studio 54 and disco, it had simply run its course. (Hart even first interviewed Levenson himself in the taxi he drove before succumbing to a run-of-the-mill death after quadruple bypass surgery in 1999.)

And while the filmmakers might not be in on the secret that, as Screw Magazine founder Al Goldstein puts it, sex is just the friction of bodies rubbing up against each other, several of the talking heads are. The wry Melvin Peebles, for example, is forever sporting a half-amused look as if to say, "You're interviewing me about one of the least interesting events of my life." Then there's the former patron who nonchalantly recalls the time he had intercourse with a woman who didn't even acknowledge him since she was too busy blowing her boyfriend. After finishing this little anecdote he looks around quizzically. "Am I being too vulgar?" he asks the silent room. (Nope, and you're not being all that interesting either, I thought.) Yes, editor Dian Hanson has a cute tale about all the men throwing their wives at a pro football player who frequented the club, and Buck Henry is always deadpan funny, but material like this is better suited to an HBO special or to an oral (pun intended) history book than to a theatrical release. Sure sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually it's much more mundane, like the carpool organizing to Hebrew school that went on even as people got it on back in those glory hole days.