Described as “The poor man’s Playboy Mansion,” the NYC swing club Plato’s Retreat was where just about anyone could score during the decadent disco days…that is, if you were a single woman, a single male celebrity, or a guy who happened to have a female date…that and a measly $35 provided you with entry to an oasis of hedonism where sexual hunger trumped looks. Once inside, you could become a happy writher in the mat room, or take a plunge in the definitely unsanitary waters of a whirlpool. And that’s not mentioning the buffet.

Plato’s Retreat was the brainchild of Larry Levenson, an unlikely legend among American swingers for promoting the gospel of free love and actually having an above-ground place to practice it in. Now, in the new documentary American Swing, co-directors Matthew Kaufman and Jon Hart take a hedonistically enjoyable look at the place where everyone wanted to be, even if they didn’t admit it to themselves. Yet somehow they’ve corralled such ’70s pop culture figures as Buck Henry and Professor Irwin Corey to talk about Plato’s, as well as a rogues gallery of aging swingers who hilariously and heartbreakingly remember Larry and the good old days.

Matthew Kaufman, a documentarian with credits from ABC News, Nightline and such non-fiction features as Swap Meat (it really is about meat), talks about resurrecting the ghost of the swinger’s Shangri La — a retreat long vanished into the mists of the pre-AIDS sexual revolution.

Daniel Schweiger: This is your first film as a director. Why make one about Plato’s Retreat, and why so many years after it closed?

Matthew Kaufman: This is not my first documentary, but it is my first to gain a theatrical release. While fishing for great stories, I met Jon and he told me all about Larry Levenson and the history of Plato’s.

DS: People usually find talking about sex to be a private matter or one that’s downright embarrassing. How did you get people to open up about Plato’s Retreat, especially celebrities like Buck Henry and Helen Gurley Brown?

MK: Plato’s existed during a different era. There was no safe sex. Our participants remembered those days quite fondly. Buck Henry wrote about Plato’s for Playboy, so he’s quite open about his time there. Helen Gurley Brown has no inhibitions as far as talking about sex.

DS: How did you track down footage of Plato’s Retreat, and were you worried about getting press releases from the tons of naked people in it?

MK: We tracked down people across the country to get people to talk. It was not easy. Many of these people are now professionals who did not want to talk but with cajoling, [but with] persistence, we made it happen.  Many got caught up in the memories.

DS: How explicit did you want the footage to be?

MK: This is not a pornographic film; it is a great story about a dreamer who made a lot of ordinary people very happy. Even though there is quite a bit of nudity and frank talk in the film, their effect is more of a light, happy time rather than some dark erotic perversion… Some of the footage will be shocking, but only because it is unvarnished — it’s the difference between naked and nude.

DS: Like Boogie Nights and Inside Deep Throat, American Swing shows a “sexual family” of sorts. Could you elaborate on this?

MK: Plato’s was a meeting place. It became a family of disparate people of all backgrounds — the people [who] really got into Plato’s and swinging were really an interesting bunch who probably would never have met otherwise.

DS: Would you consider Larry Levenson to be a hero of the sexual revolution?

MK: Larry was a revolutionary simply by being himself.

DS: What were your own moral reactions while making the film?

MK: I am very open-minded. I had no reaction other than utter rapt fascination, which seems to be in line with the audiences who finally see the film.

DS: Do you think there’s more attention today given to gay and lesbian sex in the media, but almost none to unabashedly hetero practices like those we see here?

MK: Plato’s was indeed the first and most-publicized openly heterosexual swing club. It actually paved the way for frank discussions that allowed many people to emerge from any number of “closets.”

DS: Do you think an above-ground sex club like Plato’s Retreat could exist now?

MK: Places like Plato’s still exist in every nook and cranny of this great country — just go online and Google “swing club” and your town.

DS: Do you think audiences for a documentary like American Swing will get a vicarious thrill from it?

MK: Yes, but probably more as liberation from personal inhibitions than anything else.

DS: Would you like to see your documentary become a fictionalized feature, a la what they’re trying to do with Inside Deep Throat?

MK: This documentary is perfectly suited for a feature film. No one could have written a better story. We have a fascinating underdog protagonist with a fabulous dramatic arc of moral crusading, all set in a hilarious carnival.

DS: An interviewee says, “Everything has its peak.” Would you say the same thing about swinging?

MK: Swinging and the couple’s movement have their ins and outs with the public’s consciousness. Oprah seems to be running segments on it every other week. At any moment, swingers can be social pariahs, then, on the other, hoisted into the public forum as open-minded social pioneers. I guess the term “swinger” is especially apt in this case.

American Swing opens this weekend in New York and April 3rd in Los Angeles.