Swing Set: Couples bare souls in Gantz brothers’ Sex With Strangers’

Kirk Baird

Thursday, July 18, 2002 | 8:20 a.m.

Dimly lit rooms in seedy clubs. Cheetah-print bed sheets. Smoking jackets. Shag carpeting on the walls. The absence of love.

There are many stereotypes about swinging, the lifestyle choice of couples who engage in sexual encounters outside of marriage with like-minded couples.

However, most of the notions about the swinging lifestyle non-swingers have simply aren't true, insist brothers Joe and Harry Gantz, who produced and directed "Sex With Strangers," a documentary film about three couples who swing. The film makes its Las Vegas debut Friday at the Brenden Theatres Las Vegas 14 at the Palms. (Joe will also be appearing for a question-and-answer session directly following the two evening showings on Friday.)

"I'd say if you look at them as a whole, that they would defy the stereotype because of all the different kinds of people, all different ages," Harry said. "You really can't make generalizations about the lifestyle from our film, but you can learn something about it from these people's very personal journey.

"We think they're going through things that most every couple can relate to."

The Gantz brothers are best known for their HBO series "Taxicab Confessions," which began its run on the cable network eight years ago. The series is a voyeuristic documentary, in which a cigarette-sized hidden camera is placed in a cab and records back-seat passengers as they dish dirt to a cab driver.

In fact, the idea for "Sex With Strangers" came from a Las Vegas couple who confessed they were swingers to a cabbie.

"They were such a regular couple with just regular jobs and kids," Joe said. "So on that level they just seemed so normal and everyday. And on another level, they were describing these sexual activities that were so over the top and they were talking about this all in a very matter-of-fact voice.

"We started looking into this. We found that a lot of people were doing it. We were interested in how that affected a relationship to live that kind of sexuality openly with your partner."

The brothers agreed to make a documentary of swingers their next project. The difficulty lay in locating enough couples agreeable to being open about swinging, a lifestyle choice not readily accepted by the mainstream.

"It wasn't easy," Harry said. "A lot of swingers are leading double lives, where their community, their friends, and even some people in their family, don't know what they're doing. Most of them are regular, conservative people who have families and jobs and have a lot to lose if it comes out that they're swingers."

Both Joe and Harry began a nationwide search to find participants for the documentary. They talked to couples in swing clubs, sent out mass mailings and scoured the Internet.

They eventually settled on 12 couples, but within six weeks 11 of those were dropped from the film.

"You can usually tell if they're going to be honest about who they are and let you into their lives," Harry said. "A lot of them weren't. They either had some agenda -- like they had some website to promote -- or they just let you into part of their life. For instance, you could get into their sex life but not necessarily their emotional life."

The Gantz brothers eventually found three couples who were both open and honest about swinging.

James and Theresa are in their late 30s and are very comfortable with their lifestyle, which began soon after they married six years ago. On the weekends James and Theresa take off in their motor home and travel from city to city and club to club searching for swingers. The next morning the two then openly discuss their experiences they had together and in separate encounters.

Calvin, Sara and Julie are in their 20s and new to swinging. As it turns out Calvin and Sara have considered marriage. Once introduced to swinging by James and Theresa, their relationship begins to change. Then Julie is introduced into the equation. Julie and Sara often find each other competing for Calvin's affection.

Shannon and Gerard are married and have one son. The couple live in a small Mississippi town, the kind where everyone knows your business. Nevertheless, Shannon and Gerard began swinging to save their relationship, on the advice of a marriage counselor after both had repeated affairs. Gerard, however, is much more open to the lifestyle than Shannon.

"We wanted to choose people who would give us really complete access to who they are. Sort of like, 'This is who we are, whether you like it or you don't, whether you agree or you don't.' We wound up with people like that," Joe said. "They lived their lives, it felt to us. And after a very short period of time, the cameras didn't seem to bother them at all."

Harry and Joe spent a year following the lives of these couples and ended up with 200 hours of film, 1 hour and 45 minutes of which was used for the documentary.

Every other weekend, there was a camera crew recording the three groups as they met other swingers -- their conversations before and sometimes during sex -- and how they felt after the encounters.

"This is a cooperative venture we had with them," Harry said. "We're not like the reality shows on TV trying to get strangers together and put them in a room and manipulate them to create some drama. Everybody knew what we were doing.

"We're not there 24 hours a day. They let us know when important things were going to happen ... and we tried to make sure we were there for those events. Like, for instance, Shannon telling her mother that she was a swinger."

Shannon's confessional to her mom is typical of the honesty of "Sex With Strangers." The couples genuinely seem at ease with cameras present and the fact that their activities are soon to be known and debated by millions.

As it turns out, Shannon's mother is also comfortable with her daughter's decision and confides to her daughter and son-in-law that she often thought of sleeping with other men when she was married.

"Sex With Strangers," which is unrated ("We thought it wouldn't get an R rating," Joe said), doesn't shy away from nudity or sexual content. The documentary played in several major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco, and was telecast on Showtime late at night.

For the most part, the documentary has been well received.

The Las Angeles Times called it "illuminating," and Richard Roeper of "Ebert of Roeper" found "Sex With Strangers" "fascinating." His partner Roger Ebert, however, was not so kind.

The movie critic questioned "Sex With Strangers' " authenticity, since the documentary features so many reaction shots, similar to a Hollywood production. A typical documentary is filmed with one camera, so there is very little cutting back and forth between subjects.

"We shoot with multiple cameras so we can edit the documentary the way people are used to seeing the fiction films unfold," Joe said.

Some swingers have also questioned the documentary's accuracy in depicting their behavior. They maintain they have never had the problems some of the couples in "Sex With Strangers" had.

"Once we picked our couples, it was really about those three couples and wherever they took us with their lives," Joe said. "That's where the documentary takes us. It's really about those swingers' lives rather than trying to make a blanket statement of them all."

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