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Playwright Audrey Cefaly & Actor Carolyn Messina (Alabaster): "I’m Very Serious About My Comedy"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Release Date: 03/20/2025

Frank DeCaro & Jim Colucci (co-programmers of Pride Live!Hollywood): Frank DeCaro & Jim Colucci (co-programmers of Pride Live!Hollywood): "You Know What Sparks Joy? Clutter!"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined by his friends and past podcast guests Frank DeCaro and Jim Colucci to talk about a brand new arts festival they are co-programming. It's called Pride Live! Hollywood and it takes place June 11th through the 29th at various venues in Hollywood. JIm and Frank talk about the various events on the agenda, including a Norman Lear tribute, a screening and party of Saturday Night Fever with director John Badham and actress Donna Pescow attending, a Golden Girls tribute, the Where The Bears Are documentary A Big Fat Hairy Hit. a Queer as Folk cast reunion as well as screenings...

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Playwright Tom Jacobson (Tasty Little Rabbit): Playwright Tom Jacobson (Tasty Little Rabbit): "There Are So Many Stories Out There Waiting To Be Found"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by playwright Tom Jacobson whose latest play Tasty Little Rabbit is currently showing at the Moving Arts Theatre in Los Angeles. The play tells the true story of a 1936 Fascist Italian investigation of pornography charges in Taormina, Sicily. This artistic prosecution uncovers a much darker secret of a 1890s love triangle between photographer Wilhelm Von Gloeden, an a 18 year-old Sicilian boy and a mysterious Irish poet. Tom talks about how he first learned of the true story, visiting Sicily as part of his research, the riveting "Kissing Contest" scene at the play's...

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Actor Kasey Mahaffy (A Man of No Importance): Actor Kasey Mahaffy (A Man of No Importance): "We Need You To Be More Grounded"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by actor Kasey Mahaffy who is currently starring as Alfie Byrne, a Dublin bus driver who directs community theater at night, in the musical A Man of No Importance at A Noise Within theater in Pasadena. Kasey talks about relating more to this role than any he's played in the past, how he and the rest of the cast honed their Irish accents, why now is a very meaningful time to be telling this story and what it's like to hear audience members audibly crying while you're trying to play a scene. He also talks about his role in the 2022 L.A. production of Matthew Lopez's...

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Filmmaker Lovell Holder & Writer-Performer Roger Q. Mason ( Filmmaker Lovell Holder & Writer-Performer Roger Q. Mason ("Lavender Men"}: "Mother’s Got Her Flashlight On All The Time"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by Director Lovell Holder & Writer-Performer Roger Q. Mason, the duo behind the provocative and beautifully-crafted new film Lavender Men, which is based on Mason's hit stage play of the same name. The story centers on Taffeta (they/them, played by Mason), the put-upon stage manager of a play about Abraham Lincoln. After one too many backstage indignities, Tafetta cracks and decides to take the whole show over and narrate it as their fantasia and things get wild from there. Roger talks about the film's central themes of why do we, as humans, like what we like...

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Writer-Director Sarah Kambe Holland (Egghead & Twinkie): Writer-Director Sarah Kambe Holland (Egghead & Twinkie): "I Know There's Somebody Who Needs This Movie"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by filmmaker Sarah Kambe Holland whose new film Egghead and Twinkie flips the gay guy-straight girl trope on its head with the story of a gay girl-straight boy friendship that undergoes some changes after the girl comes out. Sarah talks about starting work on the project at 19, taking inspiration from her own coming out story, shooting a road movie within one hour of Orlando, Florida and having most of her crew be under 25 years old. She also talks about moving to the U.S. from Japan at nine and undergoing serious culture shock, incorporating her own love of animation...

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Chef Steven Havens (Winner of Season 3 of The Floor): Chef Steven Havens (Winner of Season 3 of The Floor): "We Call Ourselves The Floor-mily"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

In this special bonus episode, Dennis interviews his friend Steven Havens, who just won $250,000 as the last man standing on Season 3 of the Fox game show The Floor. Steven talks about how he came to be on the show, the months of rigorous coaching provided by his game designer husband Jeb (who happens to be Dennis's co-creator on the game You Don't Know My Life!), shooting the entire season over one week in Ireland and the moment, minutes before he actually won, when he thought to himself, 'I got this.' Other topics include: promising his husband that he wouldn't talk smack about the...

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Author and Designer Hillary Carlip { Author and Designer Hillary Carlip {"Willis Wonderland"} "It’s Like a Pop-Up Book On Steroids"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by Hillary Carlip the designer and co-author of the most fabulous pop-up book you'll ever see Willis Wonderland: The Legendary House of Atomic Kitsch, which is a book dedicated to the home, kitsch collection and all-round fabulousness of Hillary's friend, the late great songwriter and visual artist Allee Willis. (Allie is also the subject of a documentary that was featured on this podcast last year; The World According to Allee Willis. It's now streaming on Hulu.) Hillary talks about how the pop-up book project came to her, finding illustrator in Ireland and "paper...

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"Patreon-ize me, People!" The Dennis Anyone: The Patreon Project Sample Pack

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

As a Bonus on the main Dennis Anyone, here are two back-to back sample episodes of Dennis's brand new Patreon offering: DENNIS ANYONE: THE PATREON PROJECT, which you can subscribe to for $5 by going to Patreon.com and searching Dennis Anyone.  Topics in Episode 1 include: the Late Night With the Devil actor Fayssal Bazzi learning that I put him on my dreamboard and his response, Four Rooms author David Wichman does the Observation Deck, the Oscar-nominated doc Black Box Diaries, a magazine flashback with the late Michelle Trachtenberg and Dennis's decision in January 2020 to try...

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Author Paul Rudnick (Farrell Covington and The Limits of Style): Author Paul Rudnick (Farrell Covington and The Limits of Style): "I Know What People Have Been Through"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by writer for Part 2 of their conversation about Paul's new novel What Is Wrong With You? as well as his previous novel Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, both of which offer readers sides of Rudnick they haven't seen before. In Part 2, Paul talks about the raw rage and freedom he felt while writing Farrell alone in a room during the pandemic, the lost gay Koch brother who loosely inspired the book and his early 20's club days in NYC, dancing the night away at Studio 54 and Paradise Garage, both of which are featured in Farrell. He also talks about why...

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Author Paul Rudnick (What Is Wrong With You?): Part 1: Author Paul Rudnick (What Is Wrong With You?): Part 1: "I Cry Years Later"

DENNIS ANYONE? with Dennis Hensley

Dennis is joined via Zoom by one of his literary heroes, author, screenwriter and playwright Paul Rudnick, to discuss Paul's new novel What is Wrong With You?, which is about an offbeat assortment of gay and straight characters whose lives and lovelives collide at the destination wedding of a tech billionaire on the billionaire's private island. Paul talks about the stranger whose despondent blog post provided the spark of the book. He also talks about the straight personal trainer-gay client friendship that is at the heart of the book, why he chose to make the billionaire character way...

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More Episodes

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 inspired by a random image that popped into her head, of a scar-covered woman in a bed and how it then evolved into a love story between two very different women. Carolyn talks about researching goats to prepare for the role of Weezy and how she learned, among other things, that goats have four stomachs. Other topics include: how the two have been friends and collaborators since their high school drama days, the thrill of getting your play published by Samuel French, getting 11 productions of the play produced across the country as a recipient of the NNPN Rolling World Premier program, why their partnership works and meeting audience members after the show and having them share their own stories then ask for a hug.