American Swing

It was a very grounded movie of course built in the concrete slabs of New York's Bad Side. The very notion of swinging poses a threat to individuals sturdy in there long term relationship. However that's how it began a complacent experimentation with couples into a daring position of new romance. To me it showed the germlike possesiveness that spread into heavier waves throughout the time-span of wreckage and renewal. All planned by one destroyed businessman - yet love is diverse in it's care and steams of fanatiscism do carry the broken to a position of identity.

Conservatives will know this as a beautiful ephemeral trash building of eternal reclamation.

Anyone who ventures into "American Swing" expecting to see a documentary on Benny Goodman is in for one hell of a rude awakening - and that's putting it mildly. For the "swing," in this case, actually refers to the "wife-swapping" phenomenon that swept through middle-class suburbia in the 1970s. And no figure did more to popularize that trend than Larry Levenson - the "King of Swing" as he came to be called - whose "live sex club," Plato's Retreat, located in Manhattan's Upper West Side, served as the epicenter for so much of the action.

Let it be stated right up front that this eye-opening documentary is not for the prudish or the easily offended, for its footage is graphic and its language raw, often akin in its look to crude 1970's porn. It takes us straight into the heart of a scene that became famous for its flagrant nudity, its unbridled group sex, and - if the eyewitness accounts are to be believed - its really bad food (apparently, the smorgasbord that kept bringing the people in was of quite a different kind!). Directed by Matthew Kaufman and Jon Hart, the film features interviews with many of the now-aging club regulars who happily regale us with tales of their personal escapades there. A number of celebrities who frequented the club, as well as certain reporters and broadcasters who covered the beat at the time are also interviewed.

"American Swing" is most interesting as a social document, showing how the "free love" ethos espoused by the hippies in the 1960's expanded into the mainstream a decade later. Suddenly, ordinary businessmen and housewives, truck drivers and longshoremen could partake in the life of the sexually liberated. In his own mind, Levenson sincerely believed that he was serving a salutary purpose with his club, providing couples who didn't want to be stuck in a monogamous relationship with a more honest alternative to "cheating."

It is not the intention of Kaufman and Hart to judge the people who took part in what Plato's Retreat had to offer, but neither is it their intention to shy away from some of the less savory consequences that eventually overtook many of them: principally, the diminution of romance, rampant drug abuse, and the spread of disease. In fact, it was the sudden appearance of AIDS in the early 1980s that brought the decade-long love-train to a screeching halt. That, along with Levenson's own troubles with the IRS (including time spent in prison for tax evasion) and possible dealings with the mob, is what eventually brought an end to the place - and to the era of licentiousness that helped to spawn it.

So, was Levenson a trailblazing sexual revolutionary who made it possible for otherwise ordinary middle-class people to live out their wildest fantasies? Or was he an emotionally stunted individual who cast away the mores of society in a bid to fulfill his own kinky desires and make a kingdom and a name for himself in the process? To their credit, Kaufman and Hart provide no easy answer to those questions, neither for the prigs in the audience nor for the libertines.

All same for the movie itself - for even though Levenson's life ends sadly, "American Swing" does not play out like the typical cautionary tale. For, in the end, we are left to reach our own conclusions as to whether Plato's Retreat was in reality a hedonistic paradise or merely a moral cesspool - or, indeed perhaps, a little of both.

The only thing you can really do is check out "American Swing" and make that determination for yourself.

Typical of "documentaries" (I hate that categorization -most such films are as fictional/non-objective as any acted-out feature) by untalented amateurs, this peek at the creator of '70s iconic club "Plato's Retreat" is a worthless, probably intentionally misleading bit of history/myth-making. Clearly made to cash-in on the prurient aspects of its subject matter (porn for people afraid to watch real porn) it has no guts and proves to be laughably sentimental, when a cold, steely-eyed look was necessary to elevate this minor material to something worth watching.

Even the interviewees are given euphemistic identifiers on screen, as wimpy an approach as one could take. The great and enduring porn actress Annie Sprinkle is called "Artist" and even the inevitable (and unhelpful in his gibberish comments) Ron Jeremy is called an artist for some reason, perhaps "artiste"?? -not. Fred Lincoln, a favorite porn director of mine, is merely identified as the manager of the club (hardly his epitaph) and gets the last word in the show which merely paints him as an ignorant idiot. For all the sentimental slop slathered on the subject of this picture, Larry Levenson, poor Fred is treated like dirt.

As a reporter for Variety throughout the '80s I knew a fair number of these interviewees and could easily have asked them more useful questions than are on display here. Perhaps the closest to the truth comes from the admittedly exaggeration-prone mouth of Screw mag founder Al Goldstein, who basically takes the contrarian view in deflating over and over Larry's self-importance. I agree with Al whole-heartedly - the creation of a locally popular club for swingers, which got tons of publicity (we see the Voice reporter repeatedly who inadvertently acted as a shill to give the project notoriety) making it a tourist mecca (including bridge & tunnel locals technically as tourists traveling to Manhattan).

But swinging existed before and continues today, recently well- documented in Adult Cinema with a slew of features such as those produced for self-promotion by kink.com. Is the British major domo of kink.com with his famous Frisco armory home base the 21st Century version of Levenson? Perhaps, but IMHO, who cares?

Levenson's need for self-glorification (and constant sex) created this transitory phenomenon of Plato's Retreat, which Annie Sprinkle very accurately sums up, in referring to its decade-long rise and fall, as merely another trendy club which would have died of its own aging as all "hot spots" due, as the trendsters and club kids move on to the next and newer one. When I was covering restaurants for Zagat I remember the meteoric rise of the West Village's trendy Moomba, where Leo DiCaprio and his gang hung out for awhile, even earning praise for its menu by the Times' then-critic Ruth Reichl. But the moving finger wrote and moved on, and within a couple of years Moomba went from world-wide symbol of hip to an early grave, now housing an Irish pub in the 7th Ave. South space.

So did Plato's, the sexual equivalent of a dive bar, or to be charitable one of those Vegas-imitating Brooklyn Russian supper club/restaurants that overcharge their loyal Russian clientele for vodka and the illusion of sexy glamour. The nostalgia interviews with both famous (Buck Henry, so talented and so in love with slumming) and nonentities (a portly lady who heaps oodles of self-praise on herself for having gone from shy wallflower to swinger in one easy Plato's lesson) reduce this would-be documentary to a collection of anecdotes, 95% of which should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Levenson's decline from the "king of swing" (self-described) to working as a cabby is one big yawn. He kills off any sympathy one might have for him with video footage of his idiotic and dangerous remarks about AIDS when he was fighting to keep his unsafe-sex venue open during the '80s crackdown on sex clubs like his, though the filmmakers here mangle the issue of Gay vs. Straight in their focus on Levenson to the exclusion of all else.

As that great show used to say, there are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them, but unfortunately one that didn't need telling, so trivial is its content and import. If one wishes information on the sexual revolution in America, so dramatic in the '60s and '70s, one should focus on Hugh Hefner, Betty Friedan, Gerard Damiano or other giants. My reaction to Levenson is similar to what I felt after watching the horrendous British biopic of local smutmeister Paul Raymond (as played by Steve Coogan) -yuck! I'm sure another overrated sleaze merchant Bob Guccione will receive the sentimental documentary treatment next, but count me out on that one.

"American Swing" is not about Joe DiMaggio, Reggie Jackson, or even Derek Jeter. However, it is about another New York basher who had one hell of a swing, but no baseballs needed here. He would be Larry Levenson, the impresario of the famed New York heterosexual Swingers club "Plato's Retreat". "American Swing" orgies its way dickimentary, I mean documentary style, in its telling of Levenson's New York sexual staple which ran from 1979-1985 and also on his obsession on being the "King of Swing". Directors Jon Hart & Matthew Kaufman do a credible job in presenting the zaniness of the Plato period by interviewing many Plato players including: managers, patrons, employees, and even celebrities that would take a swing at Plato from time to time. Their Plato philosophies & storytelling is the rouser of "American Swing"! On the negative swing of things, the doc also presents the downfall of Levenson and "Plato's Retreat". "Plato's Retreat" will never be a historic landmark but it laid (had to use "laid" sooner or later) the foundation of the Swingers Heterosexual Sex Club Enterprise which, whether you like it or not, have been erecting from year to year in our country and are here to stay. It might not be for everyone in the household, but I say "take a swing" at the entertaining documentary "American Swing". **** Good