Dennis is joined via Zoom by Glenn Gaylord, Senior Film Critic at The Queer Review, and actor and writer Drew Droege to look back at the Year in Movies 2021. This is Part One of two-parts. Movies discussed include: In the Heights, West Side Story, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Everybody's Talking about Jamie, Flee, Summertime, Red Rocket, Pleasure, Jungle Cruise, Titane, Come On C'mon C'mon, CODA, Free Guy, F9: The Fast Saga, The Worst Person In the World, Zola, Don't Look Up, Pig, Lamb, Language Lessons, and Together Together. Lots more movies into come in Part 2 including The Power of the Dog, Drive My Car and Licourice Pizza.

In his first official episode as part of the DNR Studios family of shows, Dennis chats via Zoom with D'Arcy Drollinger, the star, writer, director and co-producer of the new Dragsploitation flick Shit and Champagne. D'Arcy talks about the movie's stage origins, his creative inspirations--Mel Brooks, the Zucker Bros, Foxy Brown, Charlie's Angels--the pros and cons of having a swear word in your title, finding the perfect stunt boobs and how he raised the money to get the movie made. He also talks about what it's like to be the owner of the largest drag queen-owned drag bar in the country (The Oasis in San Francisco) and how a 12-hour telethon with drag queens on telephones helped him raise enough money to keep the club alive through COVID. Other topics include: playing Suzanne Somers, Betty White and Kim Cattrall in various stage spoofs, the mainstreaming of drag, the peculiarness of And Just Like That, and the lie he was told as a child involving the Captain and Tennille that he never got over.

https://www.darcydrollinger.com/

Dennis is joined via Zoom by Stephanie Koenig, the writer-director-producer-star & editor of the feature film A Spy Movie, an action movie parody which recently dropped on You Tube. She talks about coming up with the idea while hanging with friends on a bench in Marina Del Rey, mining her Mission Impossible: Fallout obsession for tropes to skewer, doing her own stunts and how she strikes a balance between scripted moments and improv. She also talks about the no-budget Do-Everything-Yourself process of making A Spy Movie--and previous projects like The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo and Stupid Idiots--and how creating her own stuff has empowered her, opened doors in Hollywood and even made auditioning more fun. Other topics include: acting in the upcoming Paramount + series The Offer about the making of The Godfather, her love of snow, being recognized at Gay Pride from her web videos and that time she and her Spy Movie collaborators Bryan Jordan Alvarez, Chris Riggi and Michael Strassner took way too many buckets of fried chicken onto a cramped tour boat in Alaska. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YziovxOn6kE

Dennis connects via Zoom with author Eddie Shapiro to discuss his book A Wonderful Guy: Conversations with the Great Men of Musical Theater and the actors featured in it including Raul Esparza, Michael Cerveris, Joel Grey, Ben Vereen, Cheyenne Jackson, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christopher Sieber, Jonathan Groff, Gavin Creel and many more. Eddie talks about why he thinks the world of musical theater seems to favor female performers over men and how the men he interviewed reconcile that. Eddie also talks about the passing of Stephen Sondheim, how Sondheim personally mentored the men in the book and Eddie's own memorable interactions with the composer. Other topics include: being openly gay as a Broadway leading man, how much stars make on Broadway, Playbill hoarding, sassing back to Elaine Stritch, the stage door encounter he'll never forget, crying during the diner scene in tick...tick...BOOM... and, of course, the length of Cheyenne Jackson's shorts in Xanadu.

Dennis chats via Zoom with performers Mitch Silpa & Drew Droege about their stage show "It's Mitch & Drew and We've Never Felt Younger," which plays Tuesday, November 23 at 8:00 PM at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. They talk about some of the sketches that will appear in the show, including one that was conceived while they were watching The White Lotus and another that features the characters from their hit Instagram videos "Two Old Queens Who Just Have a Minute To Catch Up." Mitch and Drew talk about how they first met over 20 years ago at the Groundlings, how the sketch-improv world is adapting to changing social mores and what it's like to play a serious role after always being expected to bring the funny. Other topics include: how much has changed in recent years in terms of what it's like to be an LGBTQ performer in Hollywood, the sexy deliciousness of Lil Nas X, retro coming out statements and inspired by the various name-tag, clipboard person roles they've both played, Dennis pitches the pair a TV series idea: Counterperson F---boy Island. www.dynastytypewriter.com

Dennis connects via Zoom with filmmaker Jesse Moss, the director of the new Amazon documentary Mayor Pete, about the history-making presidential campaign of openly gay South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. Jesse talks about how he came to make the movie, how keeping up with Pete and the campaign was like being on The Amazing Race, how Pete and Chasten's love story became the center of the film, Pete's chemistry with Joe Biden on the trail and the jolt of energy outspoken Communications Director Lis Smith brought to the campaign and the documentary. Other topics include: Pete's famous "Take a pill to make myself not gay" Victory Fund speech, seeing trauma and hope in the faces of voters on the trail, the sweet Chasten moment that ended up on the cutting room floor and Jesse's conflicted feelings around Pete's campaign song "High Hopes."

Dennis connects via Zoom with illustrator Glen Hanson whose work as been seen on everything from animated TV shows like Beetlejuice and Daria to magazines like GQ, Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide, for whom he did four different covers when Seinfeld went off the air. His ubiquitous illustration of the Golden Girls is on everything from book covers, to T-shirts to phone cases. Glen talks about when he knew he was gifted as an artist, his creative process, dealing with procrastination, getting turned on while drawing hot guys (or not) and the extensive research he does before he sits down to draw a celebrity. Other topics include: his Ladies at the Biden Inauguration image that went viral, resisting the temptation to lampoon the Trumps, discovering long lost relatives on Ancestry.com, "soft homophobia" in the workplace and that time Sharon Stone posted a photo of herself wearing a Glen Hanson Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct T-shirt. www.glenhanson.com

Dennis connects via Zoom with poet Steven Reigns to discuss his new book A Quilt for David, which explores through poetry the story of David Acer, the dentist from Treasure Cove, Florida who was accused by multiple people of giving them HIV through dental work in the early 1990s. The story made national news, led to several $1 million-plus insurance settlements and turned David into a convenient scapegoat for a nation wary of gay people and terrified of AIDS. Steven talks about the book's mixture of poetry and investigative reporting, going to Florida to research and interview people who were around at the time and his goal with the project of humanizing David Acer. He also recites two of the poems from the book.

www.aquiltfordavid.com

After surviving a breakthrough case of COVID, Dennis returns with this Zoom with filmmaker Wes Hurley whose delightful autobiographical film Potato Dreams of America is currently playing the festival circuit and will be released in 2022. The film tells the story of how he moved from Eastern Russian at 16 when his mother became a mail order bride for an American man in Seattle. He talks about his decision to use magical realism to tell his own story, using two sets of actors to play the mother and son characters and how he came to cast Mean Girls Jonathan Bennett, Orange Is the New Black's Lea Delaria and Love Boat's Lauren Tewes is key supporting roles. He talks about how American movies shaped his childhood in Russia and becoming obsessed with Gregg Araki's gay classic The Living End...but renting it in secret so his stepfather wouldn't find out he's gay. He also recalls what it was like when he first came to the U.S., the challenge of making friends, his mom helping meet other gay people and how he learned English by immersion. Other topics include: Keanu Reeves in tighty-whities, rebelling by listening to Marilyn Manson, Freddie Mercury being huge in Russia, what it took to get the movie made, his Russian grandmother's visits to Seattle, how getting a hotel room from a film festival made him feel legit, the grant he received that changed the game and the times when his mother says, "Stop being so Russian."