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The Seventies were sexy and sleazy. At the epicenter of it all was Plato's Retreat, the controversial, first-ever swingers club. In New York's conservative Upper West Side, Plato's embraced adventurous couples who came to dance, to swim, and... to swap. It was the start of a revolution. The brainchild of Larry Levenson, the self-proclaimed King of Swing, Plato's Retreat quickly emerged as the mainstay of public sex for the me generation, welcoming anyone and everyone. For only $35, couples checked their judgments and pedigrees at the door; debutantes got it on next to bus drivers, as movie stars gave secretaries the starlet treatment. For Levenson and others, Plato s was a utopia. However, this wild party did not last. American Swing brings this enigmatic epic of excess to the screen for the first time.
History of Plato'sReviewed by P. Greco, 2010-03-07
It's a good documentry of swinging in NYC back in the 70-80's. If your from NYC you might like to know what was happening the same time as Studio54.
A Night With The King of SwingReviewed by Bryan A. Pfleeger, 2009-09-23
Jon Hart and Mathew Kaufman's American Swing tells the story of the
rise and fall of the legendary swinger's club Plato's Retreat but
it does more than that. It tells the sory of the rise and fall of
its creator and owner Larry Levenson the self proclaimed King of
Swing. In a sad way the film also tells the story of the decline of
the American dream.
Plato's Retreat was a club ahead of its time and yet also behind
the times caught in the swirling decade of the 1970's and early
1980's. Billed as a club for adult couples to live out their
fantasies and to strengthen marriages the club became the epicenter
of New York's nighlife for a short period. This was the place where
to locals rubbed elbows (and other body parts) with the superstars.
Beset with tax issues, drugs, and prostitution the empire came
crumbling down by the mid eighties.
The film presents a fond rememberance of the club by many of the
club's former patrons and employees. If there is a flaw it is that
the memories are all good. Nothiung really relates the problems
that the club faced in its later years. The film is pieced together
interviews with slightly sleazy footage shot in the club for a
cable TV show. This is perhaps exactly as it should be.
The film features about 30 minutes of additional interview footage
and is well worth watching as either a walk down memory lane or a
somber reflection on a lost period of American culture.
Pay Your Taxes (warning: plot spoiler)Reviewed by Samuel Chell, 2009-08-24
In recent years we've witnessed the emergence of a new movie
sub-genre that might be called "Sexual-Social Deviant as Hero."
Among the more notable entries are Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie
Nights," based on the career of porn star John Holmes, and a number
of others the titles of which have slipped from memory almost as
quickly as their subjects. Some who come to mind are Larry Flynt
(publisher of Hustler magazine), Howard Stern (ground-breaking
shock jock), and Bob Crane (TV series star who was a sex addict and
victim of an unsolved brutal murder).
"American Swing" is definitely in the same vein, except it's
unlikely that it showed on many theater screens. It's a low-budget
documentary about a libertine-crusader, Larry Levenson, who was the
founder of Plato's Retreat, the NYC swingers' club that might be
seen as a metaphor for heterosexual sex in the seventies (and a bit
beyond). If you never got around to reading Gay Talese's
comprehensive, authoritative best-seller "Thy Neighbor's Wife"
(1981, though it's currently available on Amazon in an updated 2009
edition), "American Swing" might seen as the Cliff's Notes version
(though Talese is admittedly one of America's talented
writers--check out his essay on Frank Sinatra).
All of the aforementioned five movies take a basically sympathetic
view toward their protagonist, making him appear like a sincere,
well-intentioned social maverick who was misguided (by his inner
demons?) and paid a price (though Flynt and Stern fall more into
the "to be continued" category). When all is said and done, none of
the major players, like so many near-tragic heroes, "knew what hit
him." Larry Levenson, like Bob Crane, left behind loving progeny
(one son, in Bob's case; two, in Larry's). Moreover, Larry's sons
have faces made for the screen--some of the widest eyes you'll ever
see in front of a camera lens. But the real gold mine for
filmmakers Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart is a pair of former Plato's
Retreat members--a married couple looking like typical retired AARP
card-carriers--both of whom can't say enough about Larry, his
adventures and misadventures, his alliances good and bad, and his
notorious buffet.
Of course, there are snippets of more familiar faces--Mayor Koch,
porn star Ron Jeremy, TV host Phil Donahue--but the camera's
constant return to the retired couple pretty much says it all:
Plato's Retreat was a dump, and poor Larry Levenson was, above all,
the captive of his own delusions. The complimentary buffet that he
took such great pride in was, in fact, deemed inedible by
experienced members, who knew enough to bring their own food if
they planned to stay for any length of time.
Despite the unpopular (if unforgettable) buffet, the disintegration
of his love life, the loss of all his friends, a brutal mob-like
beating that nearly killed him, and serving extensive prison time,
Larry kept his chin up and, like the Road Runner, kept coming back,
ever optimistic about the future and unshaken in his belief about
the rightness of his cause. But Larry was so caught up in his
magnificent obsession that he overlooked a minor matter: paying
taxes to the IRS. In fact, to hear the interviewees tell it, he
didn't go to the trouble of concealing the crime, he left witnesses
to his indiscretions all over the place, and finally it scarcely
occurred to him to mount a legal defense.
By now you no doubt will have guessed the ending, though it's still
probably worth hearing it told. Plato's is closed for good in 1985.
Larry winds up driving a cab. Larry dies (in the 1990s) before the
age of 50. The last shot of this 2008 film is of a former
acquaintance who, upon being asked his recollections of Larry
Levenson, responds: "Larry Levenson! Did he die?"
Good documentary; difficult subjectReviewed by Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com, 2009-05-26
"American Swing"
(Magnolia Pictures, 2008)
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(NOTE: some spoilers included below)
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This is an utterly compelling documentary about an amazingly seedy
topic, the life and death of a popular New York sex club called
Plato's Retreat, which catered to heterosexual "swingers" during
the height of the disco era. It was, apparently, the equivalent to
the swinger scene what Studio 54 was to the gay-socialite set, a
place of immense personal liberation and shocking group debauchery.
I used to think of the heyday of "wife-swapping" as being in the
early and mid-1960s, but this saga took place in the musty ashes of
the '60s Sexual Revolution, as the hippie era gave way to a more
generalized hedonism and self-centeredness in American society. The
film largely shies away from an examination of the larger changes
in society at the time, sticking closely to the immediate drama of
the Plato club, and indeed, it's a pretty compelling story. It's
also an unsettling topic: I had no idea that straight (hetero)
society had such an out-there free-sex culture, and while this is
fascinating in theory, seeing it made plain (there is quite a bit
of archival footage) is a little nauseating, if the truth be
told.
As the story unfolded, I assumed that the advent of AIDS and HIV
disease would be what would do the club in, and while it did factor
in, it was actually the club's ties to organized crime that rocked
its foundations: the club's owner, Larry Levinson, went to jail for
nearly three years for tax evasion in the early 1980s. Amazingly,
the venue survived for several years until finally being closed
down by the City of New York, as the AIDS crisis intensified and it
became clear that unsafe sex was unsafe no matter what sexual
orientation was involved. What makes this film so watchable,
though, is the parade of characters -- bouncers, clubgoers, porn
stars, journalists -- who are interviewed decades later, and who
speak of Plato's Retreat with both refreshing candor and sincere,
unrepentant, misty-eyed nostalgia. It's a slice of American
history, and a portrait of a time and culture that seems profoundly
remote now. Certainly worth checking out. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue
film reviews)
raw but intrigung look into the sexual revolutionReviewed by Roland E. Zwick, 2009-05-24
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.
