Filmmaker Billy Luther ("Frybread Face & Me"): "I Just Knew I Had a Story To Tell"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Release Date: 11/22/2023
Playwright Audrey Cefaly & Actor Carolyn Messina (Alabaster): "I’m Very Serious About My Comedy"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom my playwright Audrey Cefaly & Actor Carolyn Messina from the play Alabaster, which is showing at the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles through March 30th. The play is a darkly Southern tale about a woman named June and her two goats who all survived an Alabama tornado and lived to tell the tale. June's sheltered world is rocked when a New York photographer named Alice comes to photograph her on her farm for an art project and a romance blooms. Oh, and one of the goats, Weezy (played by Carolyn) talks. In the interview, Audrey talks about how the play was...
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Author David Wichman (The Four Rooms): "I Think You're Great At Sex!"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by author and sex worker David Wichman to talk about his new book The Four Rooms: An Inqueery On Sexual Freedom and Well-Being. David talks about why he wanted to write the book, the struggles he faced along the way to publishing it and how, once it was finished, he delighted in having AI read it to him in the plummy British voice of actor-director Richard Attenborough. David also talks about why he calls his book "a non-self help book," and how he tries in his writing and his sex work to create a place where gay men can take down their armor. Other topics...
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Excerpts from Dennis Hensley's The MisMatch Game: All Thorned Up Valentine's Edition
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
This episode features excerpts from the February 8th performance of Dennis Hensley's The MisMatch Game at the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Renberg Theatre. The panelists are Danny Casillas as Reba Areba, Jackie Beat as Bea Arthur, Sherry Vine as Rue McClanahan, Melissa Peterman as Rena Z., Felix Pire as Antonio Banderas and Tom Lenk as Tilda Swinton. The questions cover everyone from Jonathan Bailey to Betty White to Benson Boone. The evening was a bizonkers blast and raised over $4,100 for the Center. After the MisMatch Game clips, there's a super-sized So This Happened...where Dennis talks...
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Margot Rose (Performer-Writer-Composer of the musical Unconditional): "I Had To Find a Purpose"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by actor-writer-composer Margot Rose to discuss her new autobiographical musical Unconditional, which is playing at the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles through March 9th. The play tells the story of how Margot became a mother of twins in her forties, got a divorce from her wife and then suffered an unfathomable loss in her sixties when her daughter Nora died suddenly in a car accident. The play asks the question: How do we, as human beings, go on after a devastating loss? Margot talks about feeling like her daughter Nora would have wanted her to create this play,...
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Actor-Writer Mitch Silpa (5 Game Shows & a Funeral): "For A Second, I Was Justin Bieber"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by actor-writer Mitch Silpa to talk about his one-person show 5 Game Shows & a Funeral, which documents the five different times he appeared on TV game shows as well as how the appearances affected his family and the way he felt about himself at the time. The five shows he appeared on are well-known shows like Card Sharks, Scrabble and Shop Till You Drop and as more obscure shows like Grab Bag and Hollywood Showdown. He wins some, he loses some and he learns some. Dennis shares stories from various shows he appeared on--or attempted to--like Jumble,...
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Filmmaker Kyle Henry (Time Passages): Oh My God, Is My Mom Flirting With Me?
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined by documentarian Kyle Henry to talk about his film Time Passages, which he describes as "time traveling through his family's archive to try and understand my family and myself." Kyle himself appears on camera and so does his mother, who has dementia and is living in a nursing home when the film begins. Later in the film, COVID hits his mother's nursing home and Kyle worries that he'll never get to be in the same room with her again. Kyle talks about what the time was like and how he believes there is stull so much unresolved COVID trauma. Other topics include, gay boys and...
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THE YEAR IN MOVIES 2024 Part 2 w/ film critic Glenn Gaylord and actor-writer-film lover Drew Droege
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Once again, Dennis is joined via Zoom by Glenn Gaylord, Senior Film Critic at The Queer Review, and actor-writer-film enthusiast Drew Droege to talk about the movies of last year; their favorites, the moments that have stuck with them and the movies they just weren’t that into. The films discussed include A Real Pain, The First Omen, Conclave, Babygirl, Strange Darling, Maxxine, Late Night With the Devil, The Girl With the Needle, Flow, The People’s Joker, National Anthem, September 5, Saturday Night, Sing Sing, Green Border, Nickel Boys, No Other Land, Emelia Perez, I’m Still Here,...
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THE YEAR IN MOVIES 2024 Part 1 w/ film critic Glenn Gaylord and actor-writer-film lover Drew Droege
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by Glenn Gaylord, Senior Film Critic at The Queer Review, and actor-writer-film enthusiast Drew Droege to talk about the movies of last year; their favorites, the moments that have stuck with them and the movies they just weren’t that into. The films discussed include: Memoir of a Snail, Anora, Scrambled, Wicked, The Brutalist, The Fall Guy, The Substance, Challengers and Queer, which Drew plays a supporting role in. The trio also talks about what a great year it was for cinema generally and Drew shares memories of shooting Queer in Rome and explains that he...
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Filmmaker Luke Willis (Lady Like): "We Built An Ice Cave For A Hundred Bucks"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by Luke Willis, the director, co-writer and co-producer of Lady Like, a new documentary about RuPaul's Drag Race Season 14 runner-up Lady Camden AKA Rex Wheeler. Luke recalls first meeting Rex through the San Francisco ballet scene where they both had danced professionally, then being knocked out the first time he saw Rex perform as Lady Camden, not knowing Rex had started pursuing drag. Luke talks about telling Rex soon after that first show, "Let’s make fun, campy, queer stuff together," and so they did. Their collaborations on short films eventually led to...
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Playwright & TV Writer Steve Yockey (Sleeping Giant, The Flight Attendant, Dead Boy Detectives): "I Write Theatre Instead Of Going To Therapy"
DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley
Dennis is joined via Zoom by playwright and TV and film writer Steve Yockey to discuss Steve's latest play, Sleeping Giant, which is playing at the Road Theatre Company in Los Angeles. The play, which is about a group of people dealing with a mysterious lake monster, is Steve's way of exploring authoritarianism, a theme that is even more timely today than it was when he starting writing the play in 2018. Steve talks about his journey as a writer; from making the decision to abandon the business school path in college in order to study playwriting, to getting withering critiques for his...
info_outlineDennis is joined via Zoom by filmmaker Billy Luther to discuss his film Frybread Face and Me, which comes out in select theaters and on Netflix on the day after Thanksgiving, November 24th. The film is a coming-of-age story set on the Navajo reservation in Northern Arizona and is based on Billy's own experience of going to stay with his grandmother on the reservation when he was about 11. Billy talks about the parts of himself that he put into his lead character of Benny, how he was able to assemble the perfect cast, developing the project through the Sundance Lab and transitioning to narrative storytelling after years of making documentaries like Miss Navajo. Dennis and Billy also bond over growing up in Northern Arizona and going to the movies at the Roxy Theater in Dennis's hometown of Holbrook (Billy attending high school in the next town over Winslow and was actually class president twice. Other topics include: the deliciousness of fry bread, the gloriousness of Arizona skies, Billy's childhood touchstones like G.I Joe action figures, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Stevie Nicks and the movie Starman, his 20-year friendship with Taika Waititi, working on the TV show Dark Winds and waiting on a lot of tables on his way to making his cinematic dreams come true.