American Swing
By Dianne Brooks

As a child of the 70s and someone who came of age in New York City in the early 80s, I had a vague memory of something called Plato’s Retreat but I’m pretty sure I didn’t really know what all the fuss was about. By the time I arrived the tide had already turned and we were hanging out at the Pyramid Club, The Limelight, The Tunnel and other long defunct locales. Now, after seeing the documentary on the notorious sex club, I’m absolutely sure I had no idea what was going on just up the avenue

I’m also not entirely sure what inspired producer/directors Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart to take on this subject but it’s certainly a quirky and surprisingly untittilating story. It’s got a VH1 Behind the Music “rise and fall” quality in a sex club for nebbishes setting. It seems to have all started (and ended) with an exceptionally horny wholesale meat purveyor named Larry Levenson. Whereas probably most middle class suburbanites “fantasized” about the free love unleashed in the 1960s and referred to in films like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, by the 1970s people didn’t want to stop fooling around just because they happened to get married. So just as Hugh Hefner caught a mood of the culture so did Mr. Levenson, although on a much smaller, bridge and tunnel crowd scale.

Levenson opened Plato’s Retreat in the Ansonia building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1977, while the truly beautiful people partied at Studio 54 and the angry punk people headed downtown to CBGBs. Probably the most curious thing about the film is the matter-of-fact quality of the patrons -- they were just regular people who go out at night and have fun...doing it with other people, lots of other people. So where we might expect lots of botoxed, tanned and fit “ageless” types on camera, we mostly get to listen to run-of-the mill looking grandmas and grandpas discussing the joy jumping into a naked pool or rolling around in the notorious “mat room” where, well, do I really need to describe it? Many naked people, mats on the floors, everyone’s having sex...you get the picture.

Although there is some footage from the club, it’s grainy and vague: not really any more shocking then the nicely choreographed stuff on pay cable and much less than the raunchiest porn. So ultimately what makes the film so hilarious is the dirty grandma bits, and the ex-manager couple, The Grippos, who are still married, love being on camera and who are still talking about how much fun it all was. Since it is a rise and fall narrative, however, it’s not all fun and games. The inevitable downward trajectory for Larry Levenson begins when he’s sent to prison on tax evasion charges (the Grippos took off for Vegas and won money on a game show). By the time Levenson was released, the club scene had move on and the AIDS epidemic had taken hold. Larry tried to insist that AIDS was only a gay problem and banned anal acts, but public orgies went back in the closet, reserved for masochists and the like. Unfortunately Larry did not rise again or successfully reinvent himself: he became a cab driver and died of a heart attack in his early sixties.

I’m not sure if I’m sad or glad I missed the sexual revolution but I’m happy it’s being chronicled, as is everything the boomers have ever done. If you want to see a film about something you probably completely missed, or if you want to relive the glory days of nude hot tubs and disco dancing, American Swing is a “I can’t believe...” kind of experience.

Written and directed by Mathew Kaufman and John Hart; produced by Gretchen McGowan and Christian Hoagland; director of photography, Christian Hoagland; edited by Keith Reamer. Released by Magnolia Pictures. Running time: 81 minutes.’

With: Helen Gurley Brown, Professor Irwin Corey, Betty Dodson, Dan Dorfman, Al Goldstein, Dian Hanson, Buck Henry, Edward I. Koch, John Leo, Melvin Van Peebles, Howard Smith, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera.