Triple Play
An ambitious new film shows the highs and lows of a three-way marriage.
by Ada Calhoun
October 14, 2005
he right dinner party can change your life. Susan Kaplan went to one in 1996, at which she encountered a couple of guys she knew from her childhood and their . . . wife. Samantha, Sam and Steven, then in their early-to-late-twenties, considered themselves to be as married as any traditional couple. They shared a massage business, household chores, and a bed, where they had sex as a group or in any of the three possible twosomes.
Kaplan asked the trio if she could film their daily life as they tried to have a child, and she wound up sticking with them through two kids and eight years, at which point things got messy. (To say more would be to ruin the who's going to bail? suspense.)
The result is Three of Hearts, a film that's sort of New Age-y at times (you could build a drinking game around how many times someone says, somberly, "in the relationship . . ."), but ultimately fascinating. It's rare enough to get an inside look at a couple that stays together for thirteen years, let alone a triple.
Nerve spoke with filmmaker Susan Kaplan by phone as she sat in a friend's car in the rain outside a Tribeca restaurant, where she'd been meeting about her next project: ironically enough, about a nuclear facility. — Ada Calhoun
How did you meet your subjects?
A mutual friend told me that she was having dinner with these three folks and two of them were from Miami Beach — where I'm from — and, as it turned out, I knew the two guys from school. I had very warm feelings for them. My friend told me about the relationship, and it was very intriguing, as you can imagine. I spent an evening with them and by the end, I was struck by just how natural they were and how they felt like any other couple that I'd spent time with, but they were a triple. At the end of the evening I asked if they would ever consider letting cameras into their lives, when they decide to have children, and they all said, "No, we don't want to exploit out relationship." They didn't really know me that well. Samantha actually went home that night and said, "The nerve of that woman asking about our story! It's our story we're going to tell it." In some ways that's exactly what's happened.
You wound up following them on and off for eight years.
I never went in thinking I would spend that long with them. In fact, I always thought I'd stop after their child turned a year old. After I was filming and almost finished with the first version of it, the relationship shifted and I just couldn't send the story out into the world in the way that it was. It just wasn't right, and so I committed to another three years. Because I needed to show that they were going on with their lives. I know people find it very depressing at the end, but through their therapy and their personal journeys, they come to understand themselves in a way that they didn't so many years back.
But therapy's what really screwed things up. They were fine until they started on their personal journeys.
Exactly, and for me the film's major theme is self-discovery. Once Sammy decided to get into therapy, the three of them were so tightly woven together that each one of them felt obligated to go into therapy as well. And there are complications that take place when you bring children into the world and you're growing a business and you live and work together.
It's ironic that as they got in touch with themselves, the relationship was in trouble.
Right. In order for that relationship to work as a threesome, they had to give up a part of themselves. And that's why their relationship seems so wonderful, and in the beginning it was very hard to get to their conflict because they weren't willing to go there themselves.
You don't actually film the worst time in the relationship. It's just dealt with as a "two years later" over a shot of the city. Why?
I was finishing the film! I wish I had those years back. I think it was like a year and a half. But I was in touch with them and I knew that they were starting triple counseling. When it became obvious that the therapy wasn't going to work, I had to continue. I went back and restructured the film.
It was interesting to see how society is not at all set up to handle a three-way marriage. You can't have two dads on the birth certificate, for example. Is that part of what caused them problems?
Well, they live in New York City and they very much created a very particular kind of world for themselves, of acceptance. I do think it was enormously stressful for them to not be able to have the two dads on the birth certificate. The day we started filming in August of '96, I came home at two or three in the morning and my boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, said to me "Susan, this is going to be a very political film, because you're filming on the day that the Marriage Defense Act was passed," which defines marriage as one man and one woman. And in the months that we premiered in Toronto the whole issue was exploding in San Francisco and Massachusetts and around the country. So even though our film is not overtly political, it does have political overtones.
Do you think three-way marriage is a viable relationship option?
Well, I can say that the three of them never thought that they were making some sort of political statement with their lives. They never advocated. They had never met any other threesomes. Sam says it's not something that he ever thought was so strange, because he had worked it out psychologically that he needed a woman and a man. I think it's enormously complicated, and for some young person . . . I would definitely hope that people would steer away from that kind of relationship, just because it's complicated. But people have to make the choices that they make and learn their own lessons.
Should it be legal?
Oh, God! I'm absolutely not advocating that a three-way marriage be legal. I felt that by showing an intimate portrait of the three of them and the choices that they made would push the boundaries of what family is. But I'm not advocating that the answer should be legalized marriage for threesomes, foursomes. I just meant to say that the idea of family has changed and is changing.
You got married while you were filming. Did making this film affect decisions you made about marriage and family?
I was single when I started the project. From 1996 to 2005, in the course of making this film, I met the man I married and we had two children. As I gained life experience, I understood their story so much differently; we were all kind of growing together.
Did you and your husband compare your marriage to theirs?
In the beginning, my husband and I loved spending time with the three of them separately, but as a threesome they were enormously captivating. We all became very close. And David — who is actually our executive producer and the mediator in the film — and I would spend a lot of time talking about how we learned from them because here they were making a three-way relationship work for so many years. Most two-person relationships don't last for that long. So in the beginning we spent a lot of time talking about what you have to give up to serve the relationship. We saw that in fact too much perhaps was given up in order to make that relationship work. But I think that everyone believed, and I hope that people who watch the movie believe, that they were a family. They're still very much involved with their children, raising them and caring for them.
I don't want to give away the ending, but it was a little disappointing that later in the film the bisexual male characters essentially say they really prefer men. It's the ultimate cliché.
It's funny, because I often see reviews where they're saying, "Two gay men marry a straight woman." They were two bisexual men. I had this conversation with Steven last night about this issue of bisexuality. Not being a bisexual woman, I wasn't aware of the feeling in the gay community that bisexuality doesn't really exist. And Steven said that he very much could sleep with a woman and has enjoyed sleeping with a woman, but his preference is with men. He, in the relationship, was very much a partner with Sam and Samantha. Why do you think people don't trust bisexual men?
I think when people think about bi women they see a pillowfight and when they think about bi men they see anal sex and danger.
But danger to whom? It's not an issue for straight males — at least the men that I know. It seems to be an issue within the gay community.
Bi men can pass more easily as straight, so I think some gay men resent them for not having to fight the daily fight that gay men fight.
I think it's very brane of Sam and Steven that they've embraced their bisexuality and their preference for men.
Is there anything that was left out of the film that you especially miss?
There was so much more about Sam's life and I'm hoping that can live in the DVD. I interviewed his father in the penitentiary. It was really fascinating. He's in denial. He doesn't get that he's a criminal. He looks at himself as a really great father. He's so proud of his kids. Sammy had to overcome so much, not only being a gay man but being a gay man of a mafia hit man, but also being Catholic. It was just a double whammy. A triple whammy.
The therapy trifecta. So how are the kids these days?
They are very aware of their uniqueness. Siena [the trio's oldest daughter] is eight or nine. The issue came up recently and she told Samantha, "I know, mommy. I have a very unique family."
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©2005 Ada Calhoun and Nerve.com