Schisgall and Cogan filmed extensively in Littleton, Colo., a year before the Columbine massacre ("The Lifestyle" premiered three days before the tragedy), and Schisgall claims he wasn't surprised by it. "I knew that behind the facade of this 'little town' -- the name was even perfect -- there were all kinds of things going on." Schisgall says he was attracted to Littleton because it is "the perfect suburb. It's the last place you'd expect, given the way -- the wrong way -- we think about the suburbs, to have any type of deviant behavior.

"People weren't just going to work, coming home and watching television. To me, Littleton was a hotbed of swingers. It was a place where people were doing all kinds of things sub rosa that broke the rules, and so I wasn't surprised that these kids -- these evil kids -- broke the rules. Because to me, everybody there was looking for a way to break out of the straitjacket of normality."

In Schisgall's view, one of the reasons urban liberals look down their noses at people like those in "The Lifestyle" is precisely because they refuse to conform. He believes that we set out to make a nation of rebels and are succeeding more and more. "It's just scary ... because everyone wants to think that everyone else is normal." says Schisgall. "The idea that we could do away with a normative way of living is very frightening."

Among those who seem to have been frightened by the film were North American film festival directors and independent film distributors. Schisgall says he expected to piss off the usual suspects -- but didn't expect them to include the indie film community.

At one point, Schisgall showed a rough cut to the president of one of the large independent distribution companies, who left the editing suite in a rage. "His veins were bulging, he was screaming at me, 'What's your point? What are you trying to say?' It took me about 20 minutes to convince him that he'd been provoked. People all talk about how they want to be cutting edge and radical, but nobody wanted to stand up next to me and say I agree with this guy's conclusions. It's too radical. And I'm proud of that."

The same was true of festival programmers.The film was eventually accepted at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and later at the Seattle Film Festival. Every other film festival in North America rejected it. Schisgall says that the person who runs one of the best known, most prestigious festivals in North America was convinced the film had been paid for by the Lifestyles organization and "did not want to take the film because he thought it was too positive a portrayal."

"Another well-known festival director refused to look at the final cut after having seen the rough cut -- the film had changed radically -- even though that was something he had done many times before to great success," says Schisgall. "He said, 'I don't like that film, I'm not having it in the festival.'"

The last 12 minutes or so of the film are devoted to a party. Couples arrive, eat, chat about everyday things. Most of the couples interviewed in the film are in attendance, their ease in front of the camera indicative of their familiarity and comfort with the crew. The camera captures the rhythm of the party, which like any other, heats up in waves. Of course, when this one heats up, you don't necessarily want to look.

In one hilarious, disconcerting scene, a naked sexagenarian redhead (who at one point also propositioned 31-year-old Cogan) invites a naked middle-aged man downstairs. But the man is momentarily distracted: Two feet away from him, his wife, who is suspended from the ceiling in a leather harness, is having sex with another man while the three of them carry on a casual conversation.

The redhead continues to call to the middle-aged man to come with her, but he tells her to wait, watching the action in front of him in the sort of distanced, dispassionate way one might observe the cogs and gears of a machine.

"It's now or never," calls the impatient redhead.

The man turns to her and shrugs. Then, pointing to his spouse's sex partner, says in mock alarm, "He's fucking my wife." Then he turns to the guy and says, "Give her hell, Bob."

"He's joking," Schisgall tells me when I ask what's going on. "There's a lot of joking going on. It's not this intense psychological theater. It's kind of goofy."

And incredibly goofy it is. Depraved, but goofy. It's also quintessentially American -- friendly, superficial, excessive and almost perversely devoid of perversity. It's a nightmare vision of what happens when you finally get everything you always wanted.

"Totally," says Schisgall. "That guy owns like eight Jiffy Lubes."

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