After all, at its core, it's just two people hunkered down for a really good time.

But at a Sundance Film Festival panel discussion Monday, the group turned human sexuality into a debate as appealing as the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the socioeconomic construct of European societies.

But hey, this is the Sundance Film Festival, where overstating the obvious through overwrought analysis has been raised to an art form.

The panel discussion held at the Yarrow Hotel was about the state of sexual taboos in film. My first warning sign was when I noticed they needed 10 people for the panel to discuss the issue in just 45 minutes, and two of the panelists were college professors.

"Human beings are constructed by social relationships. What we see, what we expect to see are about histories of relationships that have been set in motion for hundreds of years. The work we have to unseat our expectations are extraordinary," one professor said about the history of sexual relationships (I think).

See what I mean?

Even famed German director Werner Herzog, who was in the audience, chimed in with how deplorable it was that censors will only allow so many sexual "thrusts" into what I believe are wildlife documentaries.

It was hard to hear him over a shouting Ohio woman in the audience who wanted to turn the argument of sex into a "red-state-vs-blue-state" rant.

I don't want to sound overly simplistic in an issue as obviously volatile as sex in society and culture, but sometimes - to stay in theme - I thought the panel was simply its own form of . . . er . . . mental self-gratification.

After all, the panel was called "The Sex Stays in the Picture."

The least they could have done was, you know, show some clips.

The only sensible people seemed to be entertainer and now director Penn Jillette, the "larger and louder" member of Penn & Teller, and comedian-turned-filmmaker Paul Provenza, who together made the festival favorite "The Aristocrats," about 100 comedians who each tell in their own way one very obscene joke.

They believe artists should put the movies out there and give audiences the right to decide for themselves what they find offensive. As Jillette said: "The free market takes care of all of that and it will work it out."