By Thom Fowler
March 7, 2003
I first encountered Dennis Hensley in the flesh during OUTFEST 2002, the Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival. I had heard OF him when his novel (MIS)ADVENTURES IN THE 213 hit the best-seller list. He hosted the HOME VIDEO GONG SHOW where people brought in there most outrageous clips from television and the celebrity panel, in this case Julie Brown (not Downtown Julie Brown, but the cool “STRIPMALL, Everybody run – the homecoming queen’s got a gun” Julie Brown), Jane Wiedlin and Ann Magnuson. I nearly crapped my pants laughing at the more scandalous videos – a 70s-era sex ed film with a leisure-suit Larry Uncle Chester guy showing a young boy pictures of an erect penis and asking “Does this ever happen to you” and a seventies era video for retarded girls to understand menstruation.
Or maybe it was just one of those hyper-socially conscious sex-ed videos that used a retarded girl in a “See, we all menstruate the same, whether you are black or white, tall or short, fat or thin, one X chromosome or two. Everybody bleeds the same.” And Margo Thomas would come out with an acoustic guitar and they’d all hold hands and sing, ‘Everybody bleeds the same’ while pictures of napalmed Vietnamese children would flash on a screen in the background and when they were done singing they’d play non-competitive sports.
Afterwards they’d pass around a joint and have a snack of granola bars and no-sugar-added fruit juice. And the mom’s would drive around later in their station wagons and stop at the store later for some Wonder bread and bologna. Those were the days when everyone had their shit together – the hostages were in IRAN, people lined up for miles on odd number days to get gas and Gilda Radner and Bill Murray were regulars on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Everybody always smiled.
What happened to the dream?
Dennis Hensley’s SCREENING PARTY came out of a series of articles writing for British PREMIERE. Dennis invited a group of his friends to watch classic films of the good and bad variety and he recorded their mid-movie banter. The kids on the other side of the pond ate it up except for one guy who wrote a particularly nasty letter saying he’d rather get poo in his mailbox than British Premiere featuring Dennis Hensley. So when Tony Tripoli one of the SCREENING PARTY gang ended up in England with a Chippendales style male “dance” revue, the disgruntled reader woke up to a little steaming present in his mailbox courtesy of one of the dancers. “It was hilarious how proud he was of it,” said Tony. “Like, ‘Look, there on the ground, more proof that I’m a stud!’”
The book is a reinterpretation of those early articles and their thoughts about GLITTER or JAWS are just as entertaining as the accounts of the parties themselves. In the chapter about male stripper movies, Tony Tripoli and Laureen O’Donovan compare high school diary entries. While Tony was obsessed with Christopher Atkins, Laureen had gotten to be so popular in school she no longer knew who to eat lunch with.
And did you know that sequined thong underwear cuts at your butt hole? Neither did I. The cast of characters all bring their unique perspective on the film which makes it more interesting than listening to a bunch of snarky movie geeks bagging on the films they secretly love to watch. Instead you get a bunch of snarky movie fans trying to understand what exactly they are watching. The whore jokes in the PRETTY WOMAN chapter run fast and thick while Dr. Beverly Beavermen busts out with the Freudian analysis.
The night I did this interview, Dennis asked me to come along to a reading at A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco to read the part of Ross Fowler - the surly, straight, video store clerk with a crappy, albeit appropriate job. Ross brings note cards full of trivia to the parties, which is kind of like having their own personal Pop-Up Video to illuminate the back story of the movie itself.
After the reading, some guy came up to me and asked me to sign his book. Really, I’m not Ross Fowler. There is no Ross Fowler. I’m THOM Fowler and I’m just up here reading the PART of Ross Fowler. That guy in the book isn’t me. It didn’t matter. I would forever be Ross Fowler to him.
It seems that we sat a little too close to the exuberant French trio the next table over at Café Flore where we taped this as I picked up their conversation as well as ours. For the sake of clarity, I have left out the parallel French running dialogue but I’m sure it went something like this. “Those two American men are so cool, hot and sexy. I wonder if they are famous Hollywood movie stars. Oh La La, I think they know Julia Roberts. She is so very cool, sexy, hot. We love your famous American Hollywood Celebrities.” But all I heard was, “Mublahblahblah Jeshwasamooblah. Segebluhdurfuflahflah.”
As a little souvenir, I blotted my coffee cup in my notebook. It’s something I do now and again because it makes my notebook look all writerly and bohemian.
Dennis Hensley:Aren’t coffee stains cool? If you like I’ll shoot a load on that too.
Thom: Let me draw a little target for you.
DH: Yesterday I interviewed Brian Singer, director of the X-MEN and he grew up with Ethan Hawke. He said that when he started out he was making Super-8 movies with Ethan Hawke and I was like “Were they porn movies or did Ethan Hawke just jack off?” He didn’t think it was very funny.
Thom: You are more adventurous than me. I play it safe all the time. I would have just said, “Oh, like Derek Jarman?”
DH: I should have been like that. My porn comment didn’t go over very well.
Thom: I once got quoted in the Los Angeles Times. I said about Lydia Lunch’s Unhappy Hour at the Parlour Club that it was “authentically edgy.” It sounds like such a Barbie response. It’s so safe. It’s a safe way of saying, “These artists are hazardous to the status quo. Thank God.” But you know if I don’t say what I really mean, then I am just playing right into that whole “safe for mass consumption” mentality. As if my success in media is predicated on how willing I am to be milquetoast. A few doors slammed in your face is good for your career, I’ve discovered.
DH: You served up the goods.
Thom: How did you start doing the Gong Show?
DH: I had been a friend of OUTFEST. I used to volunteer there for years and I just knew the people involved. They saw somebody do it at another festival or one of the organizers had done it in New York and then came to Los Angeles and they were like, “We want to do this in L.A., who can we get to host it. They thought of me because I write for magazines I’m known and I was a friend of the festival. At the time they didn’t know if anyone would show up and not many people did. They knew that if it was a big bomb I wouldn’t be upset. It’s not like I’m Bruce Villanch or anything. The first year we did videos that people made themselves and then we figured out it would be better if we had two categories. We let people bring things they taped off TV or from archives, like a special with Liza Minelli and Ben Vereen, people go nuts for that stuff.
Thom: Where did the menstruation training video for the retarded girl come from?
DH: Christian McLaughlin had it. He wrote GLAMOURPUSS and SEX TOYS OF THE GODS. He’s a friend of mine. He has all kinds of nutty videos like that. I called him and told him to we were doing this thing and I asked him if he could bring some of his good stuff. We showed that two years in a row because people can’t get enough of it.
What I love about is that the girl is just retarded enough. She’s not so over the top that you go, “this is too wrong.”
Thom: Actually, she’s totally retarded. It’s completely wrong.
DH: Okay, yeah. What’s really nutty about that video is that everyone around her is nuttier than she is, and the retarded girl is not really nutty, she’s just retarded. It’s not “let’s make fun of the girl and her bloody sanitary napkin.” The whole Gong Show pitch could be “come to the show where they show the movie of the retarded girl learning about her period and see her bloody tampon.” That could be the name of the event. People can’t get enough of the part where she pulls down her underwear and she’s wearing a pad with a big red stain on it. You were there this year with Jane Wiedlin, Julie Brown and Ann Magnuson as the judges, right?
Thom: Yeah.
DH: This year was really fun.
Thom: John Waters collects stuff like that. You should get a hold of him for some stuff for next year.
DH: We keep trying to make it better. Every year it gets better but I want it to sell out. I’ve started saving new stuff.
Thom: How did you get Julie and Jane and Ann to do it?
DH: Outfest knew them. The festival got ‘em and they were really nice.
Thom: You put in your order for celebs and the magic box delivered?
DH: Pretty much. I got e-mail saying, “We can get Julie Brown, what do you think about that?” I was all, “Great. That would be amazing.” I kept a souvenir from the show. One of Jane Wiedlin’s score cards read, “Well, she’s no Belinda Carlisle.” My hunch is that Belinda Carlisle is kind of cranky.
Thom: I don’t think about her too much.
DH: I just wouldn’t want to meet her in dark alley is all I’m saying.
Thom: My last official memory of Belinda Carlisle is the cover of that album that has “Heaven on Earth” on it.
DH: And then after that you hopped off the Belinda train?
Thom: I was never ON the Belinda train. Maybe by default because the GO-GOS were so big when I was in junior high school, but I was never big fan of Belinda, per se. Besides, Jane wrote all the big Go-Go’s hits anyway. Did you see that VH-1 GO-GOS BEHIND THE MUSIC? I went back and updated their cool factor after seeing how trashed and dysfunctional they were. Aaah.. the glory days of REAL bands.
DH: Yeah, they were a lot of fun. I made a lot of good friends out of that Gong Show. We bonded over goofy videos and now we’re really good friends. Crazy videos bring people together.
Thom: Is your primary interest in film or performance?
DH: I was in plays and musical in high school and college and then I worked on cruise ships after college, singing and dancing and doing shows.
Thom: Is working on a cruise ship like being in Drama class?
DH: It’s better because there is an audience and they are paying you. Then there is a lot of cheesy shit you have to do like wear a blue lamé sailor suit like a disco Cracker Jack boy and sing a song called “Life’s a Cruise” and a shortened medley of songs from CATS while wearing a cat suit that’s been on the ship for six years and a lot of people have been in it. The whiskers are all banged up and you have to wear tights and everyone can see your basket.
I was on with this one guy and his tights were brown and showed off his basket better.
Thom: Did you feel like you got short-changed in the basket department?
DH: Compared to him, yeah. I should have done some stuffing.
Thom: So you grew up in Arizona?
DH: Yeah, ninety miles east of Flagstaff, right off route 66.
Thom: So in your small town dream world was Drama class your gateway to Broadway?
DH: I would do speech tournaments and they were a refuge, a way to tap into my creativity. My family weren’t into movies and plays. They were into hunting and fishing. So I was able to find my drama geek people. It wasn’t a big department so you always got cast in things. The drama teacher was really influential to me. She really had faith in me. She was my most important teacher. She really thought I could do something and that made me feel good.
Thom: And now here you are.
DH: Yeah, here I am, so good for her.
Thom: In my high school, drama class was the place where all the closet cases, all the really weird people who didn’t fit in because they didn’t want to and all the really weird people who couldn’t fit in no matter how hard they tried all got together. So we had all these really creative crazy people mixing it up with actual crazy people.
DH: It’s a fine line. Depending on the show, you can use all of them. I really liked speech tournaments because you’d meet all the other gay guys from all the other schools. Nobody had a clue and nobody was saying anything or doing anything but I remember being aware of the guys from the other schools in their Angel Flights slacks.
Thom: Angel Flights? How old are you?
DH: I’m 38. I want to lie about it though. I was a little too young really for Angel’s Flights but I really liked the hoisted basket. I never even really got to wear them but I’d see older guys wear them and they drove me nuts. I write about that in the SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER chapter.
Thom: I haven’t read that one. I can’t wait until the GLITTER chapter.
DH: The GLITTER chapter is great because all the rules change. We actually go to a theatre and its not in the house anymore.
Thom: I noticed you didn’t do XANADU.
DH: People ask about that all the time. I went to see XANADU the musical last year. It was incredible. And then I went to XANADU sing-a-long at OUTFEST. Did you go to that?
Thom: Yeah.
DH: It was a dream.
Thom: Oh yeah, it was like religion. That’s exactly how I described it in my coverage of it. They were going to bring it up here to San Francisco. It almost happened and then the project fizzled. I wrote an online review for XANADU at HollywoodBitchslap.com and its gotten 140 user comments. It has by far the most comments of any previously released film on the site, almost as many as a review for some super-popular current movie. What’s weird about that is that you have to go and look for the review in the archives, it’s not just lingering around the home page for people to just read and post their comments easily. I’m wondering how people are even finding the review.
DH: I’d love to a screening party of XANADU but it would just be us loving it for 90 minutes. Michael Beck sucks in it though. He looks good in those shorts, though. I love that soundtrack. In a way that’s not even campy. I just love it.
Thom: No, I know. When I saw that movie in the theatres I was blown away by it. It’s all in the review, go read it.
DH: XANADU live on stage you would have just lost your mind. The actress was exactly like Olivia but she did it kind of airheaded.
Thom: Is Dennis Hensley’s Screening Party going to become as widespread as Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club?
DH: If Oprah would pick the book, it might be. She’s the gateway to that kind of popularity.
Thom: That’s probably why she stopped doing it. I can just imagine the kind of pressure big name publishers would put on her to pick their book.
DH: I heard she’s starting it up again.
Thom: Yeah, but its going to just be classics.
DH: I’m starting to get emails from people about screening parties that they did. Nobody ever figured out how to turn on a television and put it in a video before I came along.
Thom: You’ve got this whole thing though about what kinds of movies to pick, how to get the right mix of people together and theme snacks to turn a routine MST3K’ing of a flick with your friends into an event with the same kind of brand cachet as a Tupperware™ party.
DH: I do have some tips, that’s true. Snacks are important and it’s also important for people to be honest about the movies. Don’t try to just be witty and one-up each other. If you have an embarrassing memory or a true opinion then you need to be able to say it right out loud because that will be interesting and allow other people to open up about their predilections and fetishes.
Thom: Where can people get the pamphlet you wrote about how to have a screening party Dennis Hensley style?
DH: It’s going to be on my website, dennishensley.com. My designer guy is really cool and he’s working on putting it up now. There are tips in there like who to invite and I say, “Invite Rosie O’Donnel because she’s been nice for too long and she’s really ready to let it all out.” There’s also advice like picking movies that you have a personal attachment to. What’s a movie you really liked when you were younger?
Thom: I liked EXCALIBUR. I didn’t love it, but I still like watching it.
DH: Well then you need to get some serious D&D people and other people who don’t understand D&D at all and who want to learn to come watch it. It stirs it up. You need someone who says, “I don’t get it.” You need the voice of dissension.
Thom: Is that how you feel about pop-culture in general? “I don’t get it?”
DH: I must get it on some level. I know that I have an ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY waiting for me when I get home. I love watching ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT because everything is tied into eating disorders and Jennifer Aniston. It is kinda bullshitty on some level. Clearly, these are subjects their audience wants to see and they’ll tie it in however they can.
Thom: Is watching ET like watching a bad movie?
DH: Yes, it is. ACCESS HOLLYWOOD I like better because I know the people who are doing it get it. ET, the people are a little puppety. Like Mary Hart is nuts and Jan Carl is nutty. They are all nutty-plasticy-phony and they are half the fun. And Jan Carl really overreacts in her interviews. She’s kind of muggy.
Thom: You have to always smile on TV.
DH: Do you remember in THE HOME VIDEO GONG SHOW that clip of Jan Carl interviewing Julia Roberts and she keeps imitating her. Like, Julia laughs at something George Clooney is doing on the red carpet and then Jan imitates her. It’s dumb, but it’s funny.
Thom: It’s like the show of the show. There are so many layers of illusion in commercial entertainment media.
DH: You have to be able to enjoy all of it. Do you like reality TV?
Thom: I don’t know if I like it.
DH: Do you have fun with it?
Thom: I got burnt out on reality TV after the third season of THE REAL WORLD. I realized people were doing what they realized was expected of them. It wasn’t like capturing people in a fishbowl or an ant-farm. It started to look phony. It’s like JERRY SPRINGER. Everyone knows what to do when they are on that show to create a good JERRY SPRING SHOW. We are all educated about how to do that.
DH: Yeah, It’s like, “I’m going to throw a chair 15 minutes in.” I’m really into reality TV. I think you see personalities. Somehow, in little ways their true colors come through and they are characters that you couldn’t create if you were trying to. Alana Steward on I’M A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE is like one of the most intriguing nutcases on television. She’s so passive aggressive its amusing. And when she gets into a fight with Downtown Julie Brown, it’s hilarious. And when you see Melissa Rivers in plastic pants getting bugs dumped into her pants and she’s screaming, I can’t take my eyes off that. I love THE BACHELOR, I love AMERICAN IDOL.
Thom: I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel sorry for how desperate these people are for work or if I’m supposed to be amused at the irony of it all? I just don’t get it. That’s why I can’t watch it. I’m too connected to these people as human beings and not as performers. And its easier for me to think of their work as performance if I know it’s been scripted and then I can get involved in the character. But when I watch reality TV there is this part of me that says, “This is so pathetic.” But I love THE ANNA NICOLE SHOW and THE OSBOURNES. Like, I really love Anna Nicole Smith and I think Jack Osbourne is totally cool. I want to hang out with those people. So I watch them on TV instead.
DH: See, you are conscientious and kind. Those are good qualities. Don’t lose that. I’m willing to make fun of them for all us.
Thom: So why do bad films get made?
DH: I just co-wrote a movie called TESTOSTERONE that is coming out in the next year. My writing partner, David Morton, who directed EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, directed it. We just started watching it in the editing room and playing around with and I learned that it’s really hard to know what kind of experience an audience is going to have with a movie when they watch it. You may be thinking you are creating one thing or creating one kind of mood or telling one story and they may experience it in a completely different way. I realized how really talented people can come together and make a movie that doesn’t work with an audience. Ours, people by and large, really like it. But that first time when you think you’ve got one thing and people who aren’t familiar with the script go, “But I don’t get that one thing,” I totally get now how bad movies happen. You can’t please everyone. TESTOSTERONE is kind of edgy and we aren’t trying to appeal to everyone with it. We want it to be a little naughty and irreverent.
Thom: What is TESTOSTERONE about?
DH: It’s about a comic book artist in L.A. whose boyfriend dumps him and so he chases him down to Argentina to get closure. The boyfriend was the answer, in the artists head, to all his problems and one day he just walked out. The artist is totally obsessed and can’t let go. A lot of crazy stuff happens to him while he’s down there in Argentina.
Thom: Are you going to send it around to the festivals when you finish it?
DH: That’s the plan. We don’t have a distributor for it yet.
Thom: Who’s paying for it?
DH: An independent financer.
Thom: What does that mean?
DH: I don’t know, David [Morton] found the money somehow.
[About this point the conversation devolves into a discussion of Matt Damon’s ass in OCEANS ELEVEN and the close-up of George Clooney’s bat suit crotch in BATMAN RETURNS and while it is interesting to mention, its not instructive, or possibly even polite, to print what we actually said. And then it was time to head over to the bookstore. The fat lady sang, the disembodied hand swooped down with a plumed pen and wrote THE END, God sat on his throne and the world spun merrily along.]
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